It was innate in me, the predetermination of my fate
as a mother. I was never one of those
people that planned to be married and have a child by a certain age, but
I always knew I would have children at some point. So this last birthday, yesterday in fact, was
particularly bleak. Because now I have
had to face the reality that I will not be a mother, that I will not nurture
and raise my own child or any child.
I am thirty-four, which again, has never
bothered me. Age didn’t really worry me,
but looking at it refracted though the lense of illness, is different. Each year is another nail in the coffin of
motherhood. And this year, it has been inescapably dark.
Throw most anything at me, and I’ll keep
getting up, keep fighting, but the realisation that I will never hold that role
has near obliterated me. So much so I
have found it hard to even admit to myself out loud, for fear I might sink
never to get up again. It is not that I
am without hope that I will ever get better, but at my age with the combining
factors of Endometriosis and PCOS it would have been a battle anyway. Then just recently I had this
revelation, I have always known that
short of finding a brilliant partner to support me, that it would be impossible
while I am sick to even consider mothering a child, but then I realised that there was a good chance, if current research is correct, that I could pass on
this insidious beast to my child. And
there is no way I can gamble on that. Ironically the fierce protective mother
in me won’t let me be one.
But I am a Ma to two fur babies. And as much as I used to take the piss out of
obsessive pet owners with their stupid pet clothing and accessories and toys, I’ve
now become one. I draw the line at
clothing, but toys and furniture, I’m all for it, because without my two fur
babies, this blow would be too much.
So my adoration for them has increased if that
is even possible, and my heart sometimes feels like it might burst because it
just cannot fit all that love in there. In
moments when things are at their worst, when I cannot move but cannot sleep, I
put my ear to the bed and Tobey’s purr reverberates through my head and I
listen to his sighing breathing and it puts me to sleep. Then when I toss and turn, Cooper lifts his
head off his front paws and chats to me, berating me until I lift the doona so he
can crawl under and curl into a tight little ball against my chest literally
protecting my heart.
They make me smile every day, and laugh and
yell, and without them I would be terribly alone.
So in future when I hear someone talk about their pet as though it is their
child, I will nod my head in understanding.
It is not so silly after all. Maybe the crazy cat lady isn't so crazy.
