Empty

Ten years ago, I thought I was pregnant.

I was late, I was afraid, and I took a test. I was dating the man who would later be my ex-husband, and in no way was I prepared for, nor did I desire, to have his children. It was a feeling that never left, even in the years we were married. And when we finally split, child-free, I rarely wondered if it had been the right decision not to have children. When we were together, the thought of children turned my stomach. All of my friends were having kids, yet the idea of having them for myself? No thank you!

After I split with my ex, I realized that it wasn’t that I was completely closed off to the idea of kids; it was the idea of having kids with HIM. To this day I have doubts whether or not I will ever be a mother, but I do know that my desire to have children was not so strong that I would have been willing to have them with him. Harsh, maybe. But the truth? Absolutely.

It is here in our story where God or some unnamed Jokester Supreme Being decreed that it should be so that this month, two months after coming off of a 13 year-long almost uninterrupted run of being on The Pill, that my period should be late. And that in the three weeks leading up to this lateness, I should feel. Like. Ass. Ass in ways I have never felt before. Assy enough for me to Google every possible symptom, even signing up for an account on a baby mama web community site, wondering if this is actually fucking happening.

For three weeks, The Jokester looked down on all of this and was amused. Me freaking out and wondering every day, is it too early to take a test? Me, second-guessing every decision I made in the last month. Should I have eaten that donut? I drank a few beers…will my unborn child have two heads? Should I have stood in front of the microwave while heating up my tea? If I wasn’t focused on these things, I was fretting every other thing one must consider when it seems a possibility that one could be bringing a child into the world. How’s the boyfriend going to feel about this? I spent days imagining the two of us, walking through Wal-mart, the entire eyes of Houghton County upon us. Former local rockstar knocks up unemployed Asian chick. It would be enough to make front page news. Not to mention that children hasn’t exactly been an item on our recent relationship agenda.

For whatever reason, The Jokester got tired of the game and decided to end it. And I found myself lamenting the thing that probably never was in the first place. The symptoms I thought were pregnancy were most likely gas from a bad burrito. And for the last few days, I have been inconsolable.

Last time this happened? I took a test. It was negative. The relief was accompanied by a brief moment of sadness, a unexplained feeling of loss. I started my period the next day, and life went on. And this time? No relief, only sadness. Disappointment. What should have felt like a giant weight being lifted off my shoulders was instead a feeling like someone had reached inside me and gutted me, laughing while he did it. Only a week late and you thought you were pregnant? You FOOL.

I don’t understand how I can feel such loss for something that (most likely) never existed. Maybe it was that in my gut I felt something that I couldn’t explain. Something that told me, THIS IS HAPPENING, and it is this feeling that prevented me from testing for certainty. It was if I felt I KNEW what the result would be, but I wasn’t ready to handle a full-blown confirmation. In my tendency for paranoia and jumping to conclusions long before they should be jumped to, I spent a lot of time processing this possibility, and in the end, I had finally gained peace about it. I knitted baby booties, joking that I was engaging in Operation Reverse Psychology On My Uterus, but inside I felt that one day down the road, I’d be pulling out the booties, thinking you had a feeling and you were right.

Turns out it’s Mission Accomplished; the joke’s on me. To quote one of my favorite writers, life goes on, I think.