The oven timer drags me back to reality. "Life is what you make of it, Mercy, and you just made dinner.Soeat your heart out, babe." Nothing like a self-pep talk.
Giving the stink eye to the pill bottle over the sink,Ishakeone out and take a swig of water. Plate in hand, I sprawl out on the couch instead of the empty dining room table and flip through the channels while my food grows cold. I do thiseverytime. Maybe one day I'll learn and decide what to watchbeforeI sit down with my food.
Maybe.
What's this?I flip back two channels. "Tarzan," I announce to no one in particular. "Sure. Why not?" I'm a sappy woman. Animated movies are the best.Sosue me. I select "Watch from beginning" and settle back as I take a bite.
Before five minutes have passed, I regret choosing it. How could I have forgotten how emotional it makes me? It's all too much—parents escaping a fiery death only to be killed by a wild animal; the lonely baby crying for someone...anyone…to give him just a little bit of love; the mother gorilla cradling him and taking him as her own.
Right on cue, the bitter tears come. Our situations aren't entirely the same—mine and Tarzan's, that is—but I see enough of myself in it to trigger a depression session. My parents died when I was too young to remember anything about them, but I know all about crying out from the inside for someone to love me.Please, just love me and give me a new mommy and daddy who'll push me on swings and read bedtime stories.
Appetite gone, I let them stream hotly down my cheeks as I chuck the rest of my food in the trash and wash the dishes. Why do I do this to myself?
But it's too late. I've been through this so many times that I know the only remedy now is to let the episode run its course and cry it out in the shower.Sointo the shower I go. At least I get the weekend to claw my way back to happiness. Or neutral existence, rather.
The water beats down on me, washing away my tears. It doesn't help when I realize my birthday is in a few months. I try to forget about it when I can because every year serves as a painful reminder that another rotation around the sun has happened and I have no family of my own.
No one to hold at night. No baby to rock to sleep. No car seats to put in my empty car. No precious hugs from chubby arms or sticky kisses. I'd even take the sleepless nights staying up with a crying baby because it would meanfamily.
The pain cuts deep, like nothing else.I know lots of people have it worse than I do and it's not the same as having loved and lost someone, but it's its own brand of torture because it's the emptiness of whatcouldbe there but isn't. Pain is pain, no matter the cause, and it hurts.
I want a man to hold me so tightly that I can't breathe. To lay on top of me when life gets to be too much and just let his heavy weight comfort me. I want to surprise him with little love notes in his socks when he's getting ready to go to work, and toreallysurprise him by attacking him when he gets home from a long day of work.
I want a family.
Wiping the last of my tears away, I dry off and walk naked into my closet. If I weren't feeling so emotional, I'd begrudgingly admit that walking around the house in the nude isn't something I could do with kids running around the house. But rightnowI want to wallow in the pits of my self-despair, so wallow I will.
I pull on some panties, ready to sleep away my feelings. The closet door almost falls shut all the way when I wrench it back open to look at the mirror hanging on the inside. As if in a trance, I trace the outline of my reflection's lower abdomen on the coolness of the mirror. Then I move to my own warm skin, lips trembling as I try to imagine myself rounded with a small life growing inside of me and stretch marks radiating from my center.
But my womb is empty. No flutter of little feet kicking me. Nothing.
Without a doubt, there are things about pregnancy that aren't enjoyable, like morning sickness, swollen extremities, and bathroom issues, but to think that life could be created and incubated inside of a woman... The thought is so beautiful that I start crying again.
Unable to help myself, I go back to the guest bedroom and look at everything that isn't there. Nothing there except formyblue rabbit I always took comfort from the first months inside a new foster parents' house. Picking it up now, I squeeze it to my chest, hoping to draw strength from it like when I was a child. I hold it sohard,lettingits shabby fur absorb my salty tears and snot.
Waiting...
Waiting...
Waiting fornothingbecause it's an inanimate object that can't hug me back. Inexplicable fury rises within me and I violently fling it where the baby bed would be.
"Why do youdothis to yourself, Mercy?" I storm back to my room and climb into bed, pissed at my body and its failures. Yeah, it's not just my social and emotional skills that are lacking. My body felt left out and ever so kindly contributed to the pile.
In addition to having PCOS—polycystic ovary syndrome—I also have one fallopian tube, making what are already risky odds of pregnancy nearly impossible. Especially considering I don't have any prospects on the horizon and am not the type to just fall into some man’s bed for a night.
So not only do I deal with depression brought on by my loneliness and PCOS, I also have everything that comes along with this syndrome—excess body hair (I have a nice patch right where a tramp stamp would go), thick black chin hairs that need plucked dailyfor population control, the occasional adult acne, and an increased struggle to get pregnant, just to name a few.
Not like I've actuallytried, but the doctor told me it would likely be a difficult process. I resent having to take a little white pill that's supposed to improve my ovary function and help regulate my periods when I've never even had sex before. Between all of this and my relationship woes, I'm sinking deeply into the Mariana Trench of depression.
And just because I like kicking myself when I'm down, my brain starts thinking about the guys living it up at Midnight Blues right about now. Putting the moves on their lady of choice for the night. They might already be having sex right now. Right this moment, one of them might be wrapped all around a woman. Thrusting inside her.
What if his condom has a hole? Or what if she forgot to take her birth control pill? How many babies are being created all over the world at this very moment?I can't stop the random thoughts from racing through my head.
Then I think about Amos Shay.I have plans of my own,he'd said. If only I'd gotten the nerve to somehow get his attention before today. Now it's too late. He's retired and I won't ever see him again. Clenching my eyes shut, I try to go to sleep, but the sounds of my biological clock echo and reverberate inside my head.
Tick.
You don't have a chance.
