Wednesday 2 April 2014

Truth

I'm turning comments off for this one, not because I don't trust you to be supportive and kind, just because it's feeling pretty sensitive for me right now and I don't want to have feedback, as strange as that might sound.

I've talked about it enough with friends and loved ones and sure, maybe if it's that close of an emotion I should just keep it to myself but I want to share, just don't want to hear more thoughts on it.  I have enough of my own.  I hope that makes sense.  You can send virtual hugs though.  Those I'll feel and take and accept.

I went through a binge watching of Call the Midwife a couple of weeks ago.  I think I watched the whole third (?) season in a week.

Call the Midwife, for those who aren't familiar is a British tv show based on a memoir of a nurse-midwife in London in the 1950s.

I originally became interested in the show because my Mom was a nurse-midwife in Scotland around the same time and so we talked about how the uniforms were the same and the lifestyle and going to dances and dating handsome men and things.  A sweet, innocent time really.

But something happened as I watched all these episodes.  I got sad.

Sad with the realization that I'll never experience childbirth.

I won't.

Please don't be kind and tell me there's still time or there's a way or some other well meaning thing, just know that this isn't something that's going to happen in my life for a number of reasons.

It's not that I want to necessarily be a parent, that thought it too much, not in my realm, but I won't ever get to do this thing that's so very basic and fundamentally feminine.  I won't get to carry a child and birth that child and when I'm lying on my death bed (happy and healthy many many years from now please) I will regret not having had that experience.

I will.

There are lots of other things I may not get to do, or may choose not to do, I'm ok not trying bungee jumping.  I'm ok not eating live grubs, but watching this show, watching these women push and struggle and sweat their way into falling in love with the new life that emerged?  I felt sad that I won't ever have that.

I won't ever know what it's like to hold and love my own flesh and blood.

I don't mean nieces or nephews or the friend's children who call me "Auntie" I mean my own DNA.  When I die there will be no one else.






As one of my closest girlfriends and I talked about, that's no reason to have a child.  Just so I don't regret *not* having a child but I'm still sad about it.

It bums me out that I'll probably never be an astronaut.  I'll probably never win a gold medal for the 100m sprint (oh good god I'll never win that medal) but to never have a child?  That makes me sad.

But the alternative... have one and give it away?  I couldn't do that.

Have one and pay a nanny to raise it?  Well, that just seems it would lead to a messed up kid and years of therapy, no?

I'm not saying I'm craving having a baby, not by any stretch of the imagination.  My biological clock was never properly installed.  I'm just having a moment, a time of really feeling the loss of this experience.

I suppose there will be other losses like this throughout my life.  The losses age will bring.  Physical achievements that I one day will be less and less likely to achieve.

Prima Ballerina?

Not going to happen, I'm afraid.

And I'll maybe cry about that one on my death bed too.