5 year postscript – 12/4/2001

I took my time getting ready for work this morning. I preened to my heart’s content, and wore my little black dress with my two-tone pink suede shoes, and painted eyelashes. Ate my vitamin pill drank a coffee smoked a cigarette.

 

Again, I jumped a cab, Lebanese cab driver, talkative and good sense of humour. He talked about relationships. He was separated with custody of his 2-year-old. He was a bit sleazy, greasy and flirtatious. I did the cool Capricorn ice queen thing, polite, cold but laughing my ass off on the inside.

 

He told me most guys are on a permanent rampage to destroy women physically and emotionally (not bash them just ravish them). He said how old are you 35? (This is the first time someone has overestimated my age – and the first time in my life that I haven’t been asked for ID at pubs.) I must be looking stressed. No, a little younger than that. He smiles a game playing smile, like he enjoyed getting a rise out me.

 

He said, your not one of those women, who’s been married, now divorced, no kids and feeling really bitter are you? I said, no, I’ve never been married. He said you look as though you are put together really well. You don’t meet many women who are not damaged by relationships, without baggage. He told me I better start having kids.

 

I had my staple killer skinny cappuccino. I went to work, killed a complaint that I have been working on for months and wrote my board report contribution. I met D for a cigarette for lunch. I worked until 9:45pm and ate peanut butter sandwiches again for dinner.

 

I received an e-mail from the partner of a friend of mine. K had a baby girl last night. I don’t know how that makes me feel. I am happy for her. She really wanted a kid; even though her partner has a child from his previous marriage and swore that she was his last.

 

However, it leaves me with a sense of regret for past decisions. How can you bring a child into the world, (even though the thought of knowing you are pregnant is the best feeling you ever had – a sense of accomplishment, needed, unconditional love for a bunch of cells inside of you) when the father doesn’t? Even after seven years in a relationship?

 

I have never been so enraged in my whole life making that decision. I told mum, dad and T. Each of them instantly said, when are you terminating the pregnancy? I didn’t even get posed the question "What do YOU want to do?" The termination was carried out on the same day as the anniversary of my bro’s death. December 14th.

 

I kept thinking that my brother had reincarnated into the poor little pod/soul inside of me, waiting to be re-born. I had to abort that – I had to send him back (a double death). T took me to the clinic, we sat in the car and he cried. I asked him why HE was crying. He said it was because it was HIS first child and HE was never going to be born.

 

I had a general anaesthetic and I don’t recall the procedure.

 

I lay in a recovery chair, and was woken by T who drove me home and put me a bath. He had bought bath oils for me to relax in – the gesture made me sick, as if anything could take my pain away today. I cried for days. I spat anger and venom at him for months afterward. I slammed the doors so many times, that they started to hang off the hinges and cracks appeared in the walls and ceilings.

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Soon after, my g-friend A and I went on a road journey to Melbourne (800kms away) to have a coffee and make a road movie. I sat on a beach with her, along the pacific coast wearing my swimming cossie, sunglasses and a Walkman, listening to Tool – Aenima. Angry music that made me feel happy to be angry.

 

It took me a year to make the decision to leave. I tried couples counselling, anti depressants, trying to trust T (even though he was having an affair with internet porn, phone sex and a girl at work). Once I made the decision, I immediately felt my dignity return. I was alone, readjusting to single life but without compromise.

 

I remember that Christmas afterwards, everyone who turned up at my Auntie’s house was pregnant or just had a kid. I could not stand being in their presence. I was wracked with envy. I ran out, gritted my teeth, angry tears streaming down my face.

 

At the time I was working with kids. Parents would whine about them, consider them lifestyle accessories, scold, mistreat and not spend anytime with them.

 

I consider kids magical, my only source of joy and hope. I could not continue working with kids, it would have killed me.

 

My little half sisters sometimes came to my house and ask to read books that I had bought for my unborn children. I wouldn’t let them touch them. It was mean and selfish of me. I would say these are special for my kids one day. You will be their aunties. They would say you need a dad to have kids. A, we don’t think you’ll ever have kids. Plus you will be a Stalin in a skirt.

 

These days, I let them play with the books; I can talk about babies with my pregnant/mother friends.

 

I have reconciled myself to the fact that I made the right decision at the time. I still have at least another 10 years to choose that path. I realize that until I can learn to look after myself, I cannot be ready to take care of another human life. I am selfish and set in my ways. I can’t zone out in a trance and give a child the attention it deserves.

 

I didn’t feel any bitterness at the cab driver.  How was he to know? I have learnt not to gloat to other people about the good things happening in my life, as I know what it feels like to want those things so badly and to have to privately long for them.

 

I know that having someone unconditionally need me is a huge responsibility, one that I do not know whether I am ready to undertake (certainly not to quell my own longing to be needed).

 

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."

Andy Warhol

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Post script – Five years later, I am still single. I would still love to have a child. I still cry about that decision. I still think it was the right thing to do at the time, even though it doesn’t feel that way.

Now I am grappling with the idea of adopting as a single mother.