Today I go in for a consultation to get sterilized. Today I also start writing.
Publicly, anyway. I’ve written since I’ve been able to hold a pen, what feels like multiple lifetimes of words in only so far what’s less than half my own. But I’ve mostly been too precious about skill to ever share anything. I think this is a casual enough medium my brain will be able to skim over the hurdle. A blog or a diary or a journal is not a final draft, “immaculate” need not be worried about. But right now, I feel as if I will be swallowed by the world the way light is swallowed by a dying star. And the only way to feel as if I’m not already disappearing is writing. Of all the things I love, more than painting, more than photography, maybe even more than singing.
Today I go in for a consultation to get sterilized. I also have a bad cold. Under other circumstances I’d simply reschedule, but now every second feels like a decision, and every decision dire. If I don’t show up at the OBGYN on this rainy and monotonous Tuesday, will I get a second chance? Irrational, maybe. After all, I live in a “safe state”, but that doesn’t stop the feeling of the hot breath of some liver-spotted man on the back of my neck.
I’m trying to decide what to wear. I’m not sure how exactly this could go. I could get a progressive doctor that’s ready to hand me the paperwork. I could also get some leave-it-to-beaver bitch that decides I need the permission of my husband, father, and god to make a decision about my own body. Lucky for me I’m not married, my father knows his place and could care less, and as far as I’m aware god-as-most-people-see “him” and I don’t talk. Either way, I won’t be wearing sweats. I must appear Adult, Professional, Of Sound Mind and Capable of Making Hard Choices.
I’ve rehearsed what I need to say and how I need to say it. That I’ve never wanted kids—even when I was a kid myself—and never will. That’s only half a lie. I truly have never wanted children. I want to travel and make mischief and continue to sleep in on weekends. I’ve considered sterilization many times. But now instead of making the choice out of convenience, I’m making it out of fear. Fear my Safe State may not always be safe. Fear that god forbid I be forced to carry a rapists baby. Fear that even if it’s a child born of love I am and always will be too much of a selfish, mentally ill person to be a proper mother. Or I simply die in the process and leave a child behind. And with a life of certainty behind me, for the first time, now that I have no time, I’m not so sure. But isn’t that the bitter, comical irony of life.
I decide I’m wearing jeans.