I was not born in a maternity ward.
I was born in a Christmas.
A Christmas without bows,
without commercials,
without carols sung in harmony.
A Christmas with cold in my bones
and with God so close
that there was nowhere left for Him
except my soul.
I was already grown when it happened.
I had years, children, fears, failures.
I had layers of shame stacked one over another
like unwashed laundry in a large family.
But one night,
when everything was supposed to be bright
and it wasn’t,
when others were taking pictures
and I was just trying to breathe,
I disintegrated.
That is when I was born.
Like a newborn pulling air into its lungs for the first time and it hurts.
Like a newborn hearing its own cry for the first time.
Like a child torn by force from what it thought was safety and comfort
and thrown outside
into a raw and cold world.
I was born out of deep exhaustion,
out of an “I can’t anymore” spoken only inside,
out of a life I was present in with my body
and absent from in everything that mattered.
My Christmas had no trumpets and no angels.
It did not soothe me.
It did not offer blankets and warm breaths.
It passed me through fire.
It took all my masks,
all the beautiful images I had about myself,
and burned them.
And in the ashes, only a small voice remained.
A living flame.
For the first time, I saw myself uncovered.
And I felt shame.
The shame of Eve after biting from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
For which others were killed
so they could cover their naked souls.
But for the first time, I stopped performing other people’s births.
I allowed myself to be born.
No one came with gifts.
But something came with space.
With “you are allowed.”
You are allowed not to be whole.
You are allowed not to be radiant.
You are allowed to grow slowly.
The Christmas that gave birth to me
did not smell like sweet bread.
It smelled like warm blood and beginnings.
Since then, I can no longer love a holiday
with forced smiles
and peace taped together with tape.
I love the Christmas that tears a woman open
and brings life out of her.
The Christmas in which I no longer sacrifice myself.
The Christmas in which I bring myself into the world
(with fear, but I am born).
The Christmas in which God is not born in a manger.
He is born in a heart that has died
by finally refusing to lie to itself.
This is my Christmas.
The Christmas that gave birth to me.