Ten days ago, I was excitedly getting ready for a first date, with a cute guy I'd met online. I felt nervous, a little nauseous even, but I'd been feeling under the weather all week. I brushed it off as pre-date jitters and got on my bike to meet him in the city. We met in the park, and left our bikes outside a cafe as we strolled around, talking music, movies, work, and about our friends and families. The time flew by, and as I raced home on my bike, I couldn't wait to see him again. I couldn't stop smiling, and, for the first time in almost a year, I had butterflies.
* * *
Later, as I sat in my home office typing an email, I started to suspect the butterflies had given way to PMS. As I fidgeted in my chair trying to find a comfortable position, I thought back to my earlier nausea, and how I'd been feeling a little off all week. Was I coming down with something? Or was it just the monthly trials of womanhood? My period should be starting any day now, right? I glanced at the calendar, counting back the weeks. I counted again.
I'm late.
* * *
It's 4 p.m. The pharmacy doesn't close until 7 p.m., but I have a team meeting via video conference at 5 p.m. For the next hour I sit there, a slow panic rising, as I try to trace back over the last four, five, six weeks.
Before my vacation. That guy I'd been seeing. The condom that broke.
But he'd realized right away; he didn't finish inside me. I know the chances of being pregnant are slim to none, but my periods have always come like clockwork. If I am pregnant, that's when it happened.
I log in to the video conferencing suite, smiling at my colleagues. Working remotely, we rarely all see each other, and under normal circumstances I'd welcome the chance to see everyone's faces. But all I can think about is peeing on a stick.
* * *
I've always been a list-maker. To-do lists, shopping lists, packing lists . . . living a life as unpredictable as mine equipped me with not only the desire for order, but the ability to soothe any anxieties or upheaval with lists.
My eyes are glazing over as my colleagues nod along to what our boss is saying. I pull my notebook towards me, the same notebook I'm writing this in now, and flip it open, drawing a line down the middle of the blank page. At the top of the left column, I write PROS, on the right, CONS.
Forever linked to a guy I don't want to date, I wrote in the right-hand column. I knew from my brief time in childcare how hard co-parenting was when you loved someone, and how impossible it could be when you didn't share any of the common values and beliefs child development depends on. I knew I didn't want to raise a baby with someone I didn't want to be with.
In the left column, without thinking about why, I write But it's a baby, reminding myself of the famous List in Friends, when Ross realizes that though Julie was a great woman, she wasn't the right woman for him, because she wasn't Rachel (or, you know. Rachem. Oh, typos and the trouble they cause!)
Costs a lot of money, under CONS. Then, under PROS, but I make a lot of money. A new category is drawn up at the bottom of the page: QUESTIONS.
How would work and having a baby . . . work? I ask myself. Back up to the CONS: mom isn't here, and I don't want to raise children in the UK. Another PRO: My friends here are wonderful mothers, and would be an incredible support system. Also: I can make really good baby food, a nod, I think, to my general sense of feeling better prepared for family life after my time in childcare. I have no illusions about knowing everything I need to, but I know I have a better idea than many single women my age.
Last question: How would having a baby affect my application for immigration to the US?
* * *
Finally, my team meeting is over. I grab my phone, keys and jacket, pull my shoes on, and race downstairs, pushing my bike out the door. I weave through the dark streets to the pharmacy and pull up outside. Deep breath.
Silently cursing the condoms as I walk past them, I scan the shelves, looking at the many options in front of me. Some boxes have three tests, others only two. Some come with ovulation tests, or tell you how far along you are. I figure this isn't the time for thriftiness, and grab the box of three, the most highly recommended - and most expensive - brand, and turn in the direction of the check-outs. Waiting in line, I see a basket of caramel-filled chocolate eggs, and (thinking they'd probably help no matter what the results of the test are) I grab three.
The young guy at the register picks up the box, turning it over in his hands.
"These don't have security tags, do they? Don't want them setting off the alarms."
"No," I say evenly. "Because that would be embarrassing."
He looks up, mortified, and I smirk at him, letting him know I'm just busting his chops. I don't want to be a cliché, I want to be the woman who can buy a pregnancy test as if it's no big deal, a big joke.
He bags the test and chocolate and I walk out, stuffing one of the eggs in my mouth whole. If I'm about to give up drinking, my body's going to have to get used to me mainlining chocolate as a coping mechanism.
* * *
I'd heard people say those three minutes can be some of the longest minutes we experience as women. I plugged my iPod into my stereo and hit play. At the end of this song, I'll go back into the bathroom and check, I tell myself. Another chocolate egg disappears.
* * *
There it is, then.
Not Pregnant.
The instructions say to take another test in three days if I still haven't gotten my period. I tidy the box away, throw out the stick, wash my hands. I make a cup of tea, and take it upstairs with the last chocolate egg, sitting back down at my desk, where my PROS and CONS list still sits.
I smile, breathe, flip the page, and start a new list for tomorrow. FRIDAY TO-DO LIST....
* * *
3 days later and still nothing.
It's Sunday morning. I've pretty much forgotten Thursday's events; I'd been on another date with the cutie from the park, seen a great live concert, made plans for a weeknight dinner date. I'm getting dressed for a long walk on the beach, packing a picnic, pulling my walking boots on. I'm enjoying the weekend, with last week's drama far from my mind.
As the pebbles crunch and shift beneath my feet and the wind whips my scarf about my head, my thoughts drift back to the moment I walked back into the bathroom. In that moment, I knew which outcome would disappoint me, and it was right there, glaring at me from the sink.
All the logic and reasoning I had couldn't take away the sadness that softly washed over me when I saw the single blue line. Not even a hint of that second line that would have turned my life upside down. No lists could tell me how I felt better than that fleeting, painfully authentic moment.
I was relieved, of course I was. I was glad I didn't have to think about the money, whether I'd need to move, the conversation I'd need to have with the guy. I was glad I didn't have to call him and turn his life upside down too, or figure out how to raise a child with someone I didn't want to be with.
But when I looked inside myself, I saw how much I'd wanted the test to read positive. And now . . . now I had to find a way to un-see it.
By the time I get home that evening, my period has started. Again, expecting relief, I am hit with another wave of sadness. No excitement, no thanking God for my freedom. Just a gaping 'what if?' in my apparently empty womb.
* * *
I spend the next week focusing on other things. I work, I flirt with the guy, go on two more dates. I start to really like him. We share so many core values, appreciate similar things in life, want the same things out of life. He has a great smile, and although there are no big fireworks, I am definitely attracted to him. I've learned to value the fireworks much less in recent years, and our compatibility speaks to me much louder than sexual chemistry. There's definitely something between us, though I know he's not in a place where he wants a serious relationship, so I try to move slowly, hoping I don't scare him off.
It doesn't make a difference. After only ten days, he tells me as I'm walking through the park where we first met that he doesn't feel the necessary spark, or perhaps just isn't ready to date at all. "Still broken" he says. Either way, it's over. I cry, just a handful of tears that were as surprised to find themselves on my cheeks as I was to feel them there.
I look out at the river, gazing at the blue skies, thankful for such a beautiful day when the forecast said rain. I wrap my scarf around my neck a little tighter, dig my hands deeper into my pockets, and walk away.
