I grew up in a very traditional Catholic family. My parents grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same grade school, and then started dating when they were teenagers. They were married by the time they were 20. When my parents went out, we didn't usually stay with babysitters, we stayed with our grandparents and drove them nuts. Sometimes I would get to spend the night at my cousins and we'd wear ourselves out playing Star Wars and then crash on the family room floor in front of the TV. I grew up very safe, very sheltered - protected from the knowledge of the outside world, sure that my way of life was the best. In retrospect, I was very lucky as something I later learned is that not everyone grows up feeling so safe, feeling so loved, never hungry, with siblings, cousins, and grandparents, let alone two parents even. I never knew how much work went into it or what my parents went through everyday to provide this canopy around us at all times. My Dad worked on his feet all day and my Mom, while I was little, was a traditional stay at home Mom. I always knew we were a little spoiled, but not overly so and certainly not by modern standards.
I hate to be clichéd but my recollection of life before puberty was idyllic. I didn't understand the world was changing, that more and more women were going to work, that there might be a chance I would reach adulthood with zero husbandly prospects, or that I'd regret not going to college. I was so naïve. I just thought I would meet my person, I would be swept off my feet, fall in love, marry, and have like four babies - two of each, of course. As if it was all pre-ordained, as if anything could ever go wrong. I thought that's what all people did and as I entered High School, I learned that life wasn't so idyllic, that love wasn't something that just happened, that your friends might not really be your friends, that you could choose wrong, that you could give your love to entirely the wrong person, feel nothing but pain or that you could learn to, after much criticism, hate and criticize yourself - give up on yourself so easily. In High School I didn't know how to try to plan for a future or which university to go to or to think of myself as having a profession. I was stuck in a different time. Someone was supposed to marry me and I would cook, and clean, and take care of the kids, and do the laundry. What did I need college for? I let myself be talked into things. I never knew how to speak up for myself. I certainly had no notion of having value as an individual with individual wants and needs. I couldn't tell you what those wants and dreams were as I always just dreamed of being a Mom. I took care of my siblings, changed my brother's diapers even - taught him to ride his bike. I had already been groomed to care for others. It was just who I was naturally supposed to be.
I made so many mistakes and hated myself for them and it didn't help that by the time I was 19, I was officially plus sized. I spent most of my 20s trying to reconcile myself with all my mistakes - make up for all of them. I tried so hard to do everything right. I hated that I knew so little of the world and that I was uneducated. I learned to like non-fiction. I had a giant hole and I filled it with everything good, cultured, intellectual, or political I could find. Fascinated, I became obsessed with religion and began to study them in great detail and the more I learned, the less I wanted to be a part of one. No matter what I did, read, absorbed, or encountered, it seemed my hole was still hungry. I read about life - other people's lives and even tried living through friends and loved ones. There was a part of me that didn't think I deserved good things because of past mistakes and another part of me that didn't know how to go about having a life or one that didn't involve having my nose in a book.
Having been harangued every day of my life for as long as I could remember about my weight, I was very ashamed of how I looked. I dressed frumpy, had no knowledge of how to be sexy or dress sexy. I wasn't anywhere near as plus sized as I am now, but I didn't feel comfortable getting dressed up or going out. I always felt enormous and like people stared at me. What's sad is that they didn't and if they did, it was probably because of my frumpy lack of fashion sense. It was nothing like these days where I have to worry what I'm going to bump into every time I walk into a room. In hiding myself from the world, I became borderline agoraphobic. I hated going anywhere where I hadn't prepared myself to go. I spent a lot of time in coffee shops and bookstores. I loved going to the movies. I wouldn't go near a bar and wouldn't dream of ever going near a nightclub. I always pictured myself as a dancing blob compared to the dancer I used to be when I was younger. I had a problem with noise sometimes and I hate being crowded and I thought people would be embarrassed to be with me. I would go out to dinner and after a couple of drinks, I would loosen up, be alright, and have a good time. If anyone changed the plan, it would cause so much psychological distress that I would almost and did sometimes ruin my own night. I always brought my own car so I could leave if I didn't want to go to the next place or if people wanted to stay later than I was comfortable with.
As I grew apart from High School friends or their lives evolved to where they had families, etc. I got over my loneliness when I formed new friendships at work. I began to go out with co-workers for Happy Hour and since it was to a restaurant with a bar, it was not as scary. I developed a friendship with a very outgoing and very patient friend who spent a lot of time going to all the places I was 'comfortable.' She was encouraging but never critical but as the years went by, I could tell she was disappointed when I never wanted to go out to bars with her - and she always asked. Eventually I went to Happy Hour with her at a local jazz bar and had a weird encounter with a guy who was
handsome and he had facial hair and all this curly black hair - like a Spanish painter type and when I went to the bathroom and came back, he had left before I got up the courage to talk to him. I was so angry with myself. Over the next couple of weeks, my friend told me how he'd been there every Friday so I finally went back, and then I went again - and then I went again. Finally, about the fourth or fifth time, she taps me and says look - there he is. I looked. I said "that's not him." She says "oh well, at least I got you out." I just looked at her... and then I started laughing. Fear conquered. I'd say I was about 34.
After that, we started branching out and I asked her to help me go through my wardrobe and we kicked out a lot of what was frumpy. I started wanting to go to new places and try new things. I had more confidence then at any other time in my life. I didn't meet many men though. In general, it all still reminded me of my first mixer where all the girls stand on one side or dance in a group and all the guys stand around until one or two people get the courage to ask someone to dance. Men didn't seem to get any courage until closing time and then even if I caught them glancing back at me all night, they would pick someone else. I began to notice that I'd get a lot of looks but men would quickly turn away after they dropped below my breasts and realized I had hips. I would have courage to smile or say Hi but I perceived (maybe inaccurately) that I could tell when they were uncomfortable if I said "Hello." I joined online dating sites but didn't have the best of luck and my emotions would get so wrapped up in trying to build something that I would often try to read too much into it or think I had feelings that I later realized weren't there and it was just that I was very lonely.
I struggled during this time with more weight gain - sometimes from dieting and failing and other times from nothing at all that I could discern. It didn't help that with every cycle, there would be a period of manic behavior where I would have mood swings and become someone else for a time before finally returning to myself only to repeat again in another couple of weeks. As the years went by, I got more courage to try to start conversations and I found I was just so thankful for the times I met people that were intelligent or who could converse about the world. Still, if there was romantic or sexual interest, it was the alcohol talking or alcohol giving them the courage to not see only a fat girl or a plus sized woman. For a time, they seemed to just see me. A person. It always hurt so much afterwards to find out it was just the alcohol talking. When I have met someone who seemed into me, even if it was not serious, but I know they desired me, it was a true gift within the context of the grand struggle.
I never imagined I'd still be single at 41 or that I would have zero children. To not be a parent is my greatest heartbreak. My only consolation is in the fact that if I were with someone and we were trying, it would probably be total hell because of the PCOS because, if you have PCOS, you often have trouble conceiving if you aren't almost completely infertile. Or, because of the thyroid issues, you miscarry. I know from my support groups that women with PCOS try for years - can you imagine being married and having to have sex based on your wife's body temperature or proof of ovulation or when your wife is having to take crazy fertility drugs that make her feel insane and have hot flashes - for years at a time? Can you imagine how she feels? She's the one going through it all. Do you even enjoy sex anymore? I can't imagine for a second what that feels like- to have the intimate enjoyment of making love with your spouse reduced to such fruitless work.
I always think about how I have so much sexual aggression, in part because of my own obsession with sex, (from being overly repressed) but also because of all the androgens - and I think about how I would love it if I could have sex often - but I would hate it if it were like that. I have watched women with endometriosis go through this also and it is not fun. However, I do think it's extremely unfair that unlike a lot of other women, I don't have to be coddled or coaxed to have or like sex, and that while I am in my sexual prime and completely wanting it all the time, I am not desirable to what feels like 99% of men. It really sucks.
Both my family and my friends were supportive of me trying to have a baby on my own. I told myself I would give myself 'til age 38 to try to meet someone but when 38 came, I began to try to imagine myself with a child and doing it by myself and aside from even trying to figure out what kind of donor or father to find/give, I knew I wouldn't want to share custody with a stranger. I knew I didn't want to make a baby with someone who's facial expressions I didn't know or whether their laugh was irritating or something crazy like that. I would sit there picturing all the little faces of the children I imagined having over the years and looking into their eyes that looked like mine or maybe my Mother's or have curly hair like mine, or whatever and just sob. I wanted them all so much. I wanted to be part of building some truly spectacular little persons, but after the crying spells would end, I would think about how I also wanted to see part of someone else in them as well - their father and then I remembered how there wasn't one and then I imagined myself telling those little faces how I was so selfish, I brought them into the world without a second parent on purpose. (& I say second parent because I don't feel families have to be only a man and a woman or that people can't adopt or use insemination, etc. I'm just pointing out what I would want for me.) I never wanted to have to explain that to them or make up stories about what happened to their father. They deserved the best
that I could give. I decided to love them enough not to do that to them - to love them enough not to have them. It just didn't seem right to me. Life is hard enough and I also worry about passing on this disease. At least in my line, it dies with me.
After I thought I was comfortable with my decision and starting to accept it, I had a friend who is also childless say that there was no way she wasn't going to be a Grandma one day. It was like a giant punch in the gut. I had been so focused on my sadness related to not being a Mother, that I never even realized this other thing that I would not have. I wouldn't have children who had what I had. I won't see my parents pickup my child and love on them or spoil them. I won't see my kids run circles around them or play tricks on them or call them Nani and Papi. I won't see them recognize if they have the same nose or hands or eyes. There won't be playtime with cousins at Nani and Papis. So extremely painful but I am learning to accept. I think though it would hurt worse to have someone in my life and spend nine or ten years trying to have a child and not being able to. At least I save someone else from watching my uterus fail time and time again even if I'm terribly lonely.
It makes me sad as I spent years building hope chests (so old-fashioned,) and buying things for the home I would someday have. I have my Grandmother's china and my other Grandmother's silver and I have no reason to use it. It just sits in boxes. It won't get passed on to my children. I refuse to put a lot of money into a home that sucks me dry of cash and then I'm trapped in it - trapped by a mortgage. I hate feeling trapped. If I can't have my dream, then I'll have my freedom to just live and blow my money however I please. Still, I try not to feel I've disappointed those around me - my parents, for example, but I know I surely must have - no matter how much they love me. They didn't want this for me - this or illness. I do feel like a failed female but I am fortunate to be able to give my love to my two extraordinary nephews and I know I make a difference in their lives and I would give them anything in the world. They get all my maternal love and I get to spoil them besides. I've figured out how to realize I'm still important and that my life is important - even if it's only so to me. In learning who I am, I also learned to make a new list of new dreams and try to make them come true. I can love and give to myself and if I can afford it, then none of my new dreams aren't within reach.
New dreams are possible whatever heartache you have. Don't give up.
No comments:
Post a Comment