A Fragment

It’s dark. Only a few, scattered candles illuminate this room, as machiavellian shadows dance along the walls, playing tricks on my eyes. I’m nine months pregnant, and I’ve been laboring for what seems like an endless, boundless expanse of time.
I'm 28 years old. I’ve moved through nearly innumerable challenges in this life thus far. Yet this, without question, and by many orders of magnitude, is the greatest challenge that I have ever faced.
I’ve come so far in my healing journey. I've flown in the face of countless allopathic doctors who once diagnosed me as incurably, irreparably ill.
Nonetheless, I am now filling with self-doubt. The last, forgotten layers of an old narrative are resurfacing; stories of bad genetics, of my body being a “lemon," damaged, broken, helpless. What if I can’t do this? What if I really am broken? I'm fighting an internal battle, and I feel myself to be losing ground.
I’m pulled from my inner turmoil by the midwife, now standing over me. She is concerned, saying something about the need for a hospital transfer. I’ve been in labor too long, she says, sternly. My heart sinks, my thoughts race. I stammer out the question foremost in my mind “Is the baby in danger?” The midwife explains that the baby is fine; strong heartbeat, responsive moments. It’s me she's worried about. She thinks that I can’t do this on my own.
“You can't do this on your own.” With these words, something within me just… snaps. It feels like a dam breaking, or a crack of lightning across a pitch-black sky. Breathing, I stand, and face her, as a bolt of potent energy which, at this moment, feels altogether alien, surges through my body. I look directly into her eyes, and in a tone of voice which sounds almost uncanny in its absolute confidence, I speak the declaration “I can, and I HAVE to do this on my own.” She seems taken aback, and truthfully, I am as well. “This life has been one long, cyclical story of victimization, self-doubt, sickness, and suffering,” I continue, “that story ends here.”
No more than thirty minutes later, with determination, grace, and deep faith in the ability of this body, my healthy, happy, radiant daughter is born.