We'd had the conversation before we were married. I didn't want children. He was OK with that.
The second year we were married, I got a job in a portrait studio at the mall. I started in September, and went through my first holiday retail season. I was sick with the flu for most of November. Around Thanksgiving, he was the one to notice.
"Have you...?"
I had to check the calendar, because I hadn't had time to think about it, but, no, I hadn't. Stress always messes with the cycle and so did being sick, and I hadn't been particularly regular all year, and anyway, we always used condoms, so. No. There was no way.
As the first week of December ended, I started to worry. I was working part time, he was in grad school, we were doing OK financially, but not great. Pregnancy was not only something I did not want, it was incredibly stupid. That was the month I found out the nearest Planned Parenthood was two hours away, in Saint Louis. Having always lived in towns that had them, I was suddenly at a loss. What would I do if my fears were real? Would I drive all the way to Saint Louis, or would I have to find someplace local? Or what?
So I ignored it. I was wrong. I was sick, I was stressed, I was not pregnant.
New Year's Day brought some of the most horrible cramps and bleeding that I have ever experienced. There was a lot more... stuff than usual. Sure, it'd been ten weeks, but also, it'd been ten weeks. I can never say for sure what that was, but I have my suspicions.
During that same long week, when I felt like my insides were trying to claw their way out of me, he said to me, "I hoped maybe you were."
I still remember how terrified I was in that moment, the certain knowledge that we were vaguely aware of the exact same possible situation and holding opposite points of view. I was too scared to even write about it at the time, but I remember.
As spring came, he started bringing it up, more and more. We should have a child. I would be a great parent. Didn't I want to have a kid? I asked for three years to think about it.
I still have the document I started. May, 2009. It's a list of names, calendars tracking when certain milestones would occur for various dates of birth, information about labour and delivery and decisions I'd made about the circumstances under which I would agree to this. In 2012, I'd said, "OK, let's start thinking about this and taking the steps we need to make this happen."
My dreams were full of dead children.
I wouldn't find out until 2014 that he'd been sleeping around since October of 2009.
When I found out, I said, "You've been doing this while I've been trying to decide if I should have a child with you?"
"You said to give you three years, and then nothing happened."
"First of all, at the end of those three years, I said to you, 'prove to me that we can afford this, and that we can live a life that will be conducive to introducing a child and we'll do it,' and that never happened. Second of all, you didn't even wait six MONTHS before you started having sex with other people. Please don't lie to me about your motivation. What if we had a five year old now?"
"I probably wouldn't have done it."
It still makes me absolutely petrified, the idea that I could have had a child I didn't really want, but had been willing to consider having with him anyway.
I wonder if that was the change, if he decided he needed to tick another box on the traditional life goals check list and when I didn't want to contribute to that, he decided not to be with me anymore? I don't know. It's another one of the many, many things I never get to know about whatever our relationship and marriage were.
Why did I try to trust someone who didn't deserve it?
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