Hey me, it's you!

Dear Me,

Well, that first half of life was a thing, huh? There was joy, there was fun, there were seasons in the sun...and a whole lot of bullshit. Life isn't fair, and I'm sure it's unfair for everyone. But, man, the hand it's dealt me feels particularly unfair.

Since I was a little girl, I imagined having a little one of my own. When I got older, I made decisions centered around that "one day." I pursued a career in teaching because I expected to go on family roadtrips, beach days, and all of the things summer vacation was meant for. I'd even be able to see my kid at work. 

I bought a house with plenty of bedrooms. Two was the goal. One boy, one girl. But, really, we would have been thrilled with one of any gender. 

I married a man who would have been an amazing father. 

Now, in the second half of life, it is becoming desperately clear that motherhood is a station that my train didn't get to stop in. 

(If anyone is reading this, please READ THIS BEFORE you comment.)

It's a missed stop that affects not just me but also my husband, our immediate and extended family and friends, and our ability to move through life without feeling completely untethered from purpose. Because a little family of him, me, and a little one, was my purpose. 

I built my skills as a teacher in service of one day bringing those tools home. 

But, that station is gone, and I still have a train, and there are stops ahead. The track under me can still take me to beautiful destinations. But, none of those destinations would be Stork Central.

When this realization first came to me, I thought of it very much like an unhatched egg. 

We did everything possible. 

We built the nest, we made an egg, and we spent a decade sitting on it. The brightness of hope that one day a thing that was just for us would come bursting out of the egg and into our nest grew dimmer. 

I felt like I had been taken from my familiar night skies and dry land and thrown into this horizonless expanse of water, treading water comfortably, but lost under completely foreign stars, completely blind to any navigation with only unfamiliar constellations and their glassy reflections for guidance and company.

All of these metaphors have, over the years, made it easier to accept the unacceptable. 

Everyone has something unhatched—some path of lampposts that lit the way to a defined and predictable path. Everyone is expected to walk under those lampposts, but some of us have no way to reach them.

After a while, those lampposts go dark and the path is lost. 

I don't want to spend my energy mourning the dark lampposts. I want to step forward, even if it is in the shadows, even if it is only in the company of dim fireflies. I want to step forward. 

At the end of the pathway is inevitable death. I will leave no children behind to remember me, no legacy to carry love for me when I am gone, and then curiosity about me when I am forgotten due to some family tree project. 

All I leave behind will be created by my own hands. This blog is a gift to that part of myself that is ready to live unapologetically in this childlessness, to let the sadness and the grief do their work through these words to give me the space to draw new constellations, to chase fireflies into the fog, and to curiously probe at this unhatched thing in my nest. 

I've poured a decade of myself, dreaming of the baby inside that never hatched. But, surely, all of that love, and wishing, and dreaming must have nurtured something inside. 

We've asked about the fate of the dream deferred, but what about the dreamer? The broken heart that has to pick up the cutting pieces in their bleeding hands and try to make sense of what to do with the jagged pieces?

I plan on sanding mine down so they don't hurt me, or anyone else, and using them in a mosaic of stained-glass windows so that they provide color and insight. 

I am no longer gripping the broken shards desperately.
I am putting on my gloves and firing up the grinder, ready to make something beautiful out of what's left. Because that is all I can do.

Love, You