I needed somewhere to process this, where no one knows who I am, but I won't be alone. The people that love me will just try to encourage me, try to tell me I *will* be a mother someday. Maybe I will. Maybe that diagnosis won't be true. Maybe someday the aching will stop and I'll have a baby in my arms and I'll laugh and laugh at the woman who cried about never having children when she didn't even know their father yet. Maybe it's stupid to mourn my fertility while still single, especially when so many women have tried for years to get pregnant and gave been unsuccessful, or even lost a baby (or more than one).
But maybe there's a place for me, too. A place where I can grieve the little lives I've wanted so desperately all my life, but was told will not be coming because my body is so broken and sad that it can barely sustain me, let alone a child. And maybe, other women, especially other women of faith, who aren't actively trying to have a baby, but grieve the lives that were never conceived, and who grieve the woman they were before the fateful doctor's appointment where they heard, "I'm sorry, it just won't be possible for you."
...well, maybe this will be a place for those women, too.
And so, I'm going to write. I'm going to write letters here to the baby that only exists in my dreams, because when I was 23, I went in for an appointment to ask for help managing my PCOS, and my obgyn looked at my test results and very kindly told me that it was extremely unlikely I'd be able to get pregnant without medical intervention, something that, as a faithful Catholic, is not as widely available to me. Maybe one day, 30 years from now, I'll show these to a grown-up daughter or son of mine, and she or he will know how dearly I have always wanted them, even when I was single and facing this diagnosis alone. Alternatively, I could read them with a husband someday as we mourn what cannot be together. Who knows, maybe this will be all that's left of me when I die, an ancient, anonymous obituary of a woman who lived a long and happy life, but a life alone all the same.
Maybe I've cracked, and there's a reason I didn't post this on my main blog because I knew my mutuals would worry if I did.
Regardless, here's letter one. I feel a little lighter already.