April 8 11:47 PM Somewhere between wanting and waiting
Tonight we talked about babies.
It started with something simple — my brother and his girlfriend are expecting next month. And then he said it. He wants kids with me. I don’t know why that hit me the way it did. Maybe because I haven’t allowed myself to think of that possibility in a long time. Not since everything fell apart.
I asked if he meant now. He said, in two years. And that sounded okay — two years gives time, space. Two years sounds like something I can hold without panicking. But then he asked if there’s a “cut-off” — if there’s a point where it becomes too late for me.
I told him what I’ve heard — 35, they say. I’m turning 32 this year. I tried to sound casual, but my heart dropped a little.
Then I asked him, “What if I can’t have kids?” And he said, “I want to have kids.” And I understood.
I told him I do too. But I also told him about my hormonal imbalance. About how maybe my body won’t make it easy for me. And he just said — “We can work it out.”
That one line undid me. I cried.
Not because of him, not entirely. But because I suddenly realized how much I had buried. How much of me still aches for a family. How I once believed it would come easily, naturally — and how my past taught me otherwise. I thought I had given up on that dream after my last relationship. It felt like something I had to let go of just to survive. But now it’s coming back — cautiously, like a flower blooming in late winter. And that terrifies me.
Because I know now: no matter how much I want something, I can’t control how it all turns out.
I want to believe in this. In him. But I also don’t want to drown in expectation again. So I’m learning to stay in the present. To breathe in what is, not what might be. And still — there’s grief. Grief for the time I lost. For the version of me who thought she’d have a child by now. For how my body might betray me. For how love once did.
But tonight, I also felt something else: relief. That someone wants what I want. That someone sees me, and still says, “We’ll work it out.”
I’m scared. I’m hopeful. I’m healing. And I’m still here.
And maybe — for now — that’s enough.
