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Last year: The maid service came today... I wonder if they dust the cat? |
I'm coming home from the trip. It's been a long day. I'm tired, glad to be almost home. I pull into the driveway, smiling to see Matt's car. I park, pull my things out of the back seat, slinging the luggage over my shoulder, and head up the porch steps. The front door is locked. I fish out my keys, jingle out the housekey, and unlock the door. The door doesn't want to open - there's something blocking it. I feel a brief surge of irritation - Matt's left his shoes right by the door. It doesn't matter. I can't wait to see Matt. I force the door open.
It wasn't shoes blocking the door. It was Matt. His head is twisted at some strange angle... He tripped and fell down the stairs while I was gone, and he died, all alone, of a broken neck. I never got to tell him...
Sigh. Stupid Mutant Worrybrain.
I've been reading this other journal, lately, trying to decide if I want to make it a regular. In the archives, the woman who writes it is trying to get pregnant. You can tell she adores kids, would make a good mother, and desperately aches for one of her own. The joy when her husband agreed it was time to try was almost palpable.
But she's going to all of this trouble. Every day, she takes her temperature, monitors her cervix and cervical fluids... She ovulates, and then tries to see symptoms of pregnancy in everything. I've read through three failed cycles so far, and she's already crushed. She thinks she's a failure because she hasn't conceived in three months. (These are archives, so I sortof know how it turns out. I followed a link to the journal congratulating her on a positive test, and in the "Cast" section, she mentions the fact that they're having trouble conceiving because her husband isn't very fertile. But where I am in the archives, they haven't tested his fertility yet. She still thinks it's her fault. Only three tries!) To be honest, I think half the problem is that she's trying too hard. Stress will fuck up your hormonal system like nothing else can.
It's no secret that Matt and I aren't interested in having children right now, if ever. But if we ever decide to change our minds, I hope we won't be like that. I'd like to think that the only special arrangements we make would be to try to have sex more during the middle of my cycle. I hope I wouldn't worry about it if we didn't conceive right away, and then if it turned out that we couldn't, we wouldn't blame ourselves for nature's foibles.
The purpose of life is to enjoy it, to appreciate it. Raising children is worry enough - what's the point in worrying about conceiving them?
My doctor told me a couple of years ago that statistics show that it's getting progressively harder and harder for women to get pregnant, and that no one's really sure why. Here's my weird theory - are you ready? It's a doozy.
Nature balances itself. When the deer population gets too big, the wolves dine well, and their pack grows. The larger wolfpack eats more deer, and the deer population dwindles. A smaller deer population means some of the wolves starve, and the pack shrinks. Fewer wolves mean fewer deer are killed, so the deer herd grows... It's all about cycles and balance.
Humans don't have any natural predators. There's no other creature out there to cull our numbers. And so nature instills in us another means of reducing our population. Whether it's a hormonal response to being around a great many other people, or some sort of superconscious suppressing fertility, I don't know. I'm definitely not talking about some deity sitting up on high deciding which of us are worthy enough to reproduce and punishing others with sterility. There is no rhyme or reason to fertility and reproduction. Nature is like that. She encourages all sorts of combinations, just to see what we come up with. Mutation is the name of her game, after all.
(And despite my use of the pronoun "she", I don't think nature is a sentient force, either, but something that simply is, like the force of gravity, only infinitely more complex.)
That's my theory. And that's why - should Matt and I ever change our minds and decide we want children - I won't rail against fate if I turn out to be sterile. (I may complain about having to go through menstrual cycles needlessly, though.) And I won't accept chemical inducements to fertility. No injected hormones, no pills. The efforts this other journaler is going through are, for me, the most extreme measures I would ever consider taking. If nature's random bolt of lightning has determined that I am not meant to have children, then - if I still wanted children - I would adopt.
I'm not condemning people who go to fertility clinics. I applaud medical science and every advancement, and I understand there are people out there for whom the desire for a child is so strong it causes them physical pain. I don't understand why some of these people won't consider adoption, but that's their choice, and I'm not condemning that, either.
But those are my beliefs, and my choice.
Word of the Day: doozy - an extraordinary one of its kind
News of the Weird: Egyptian hospital calls in the snake-charmers
-- Snake charmers were called after workers reported snakes and scorpions in the halls of Assiut University Hospital.
Since September 13, the charmers have caught six snakes and a scorpion.
- The Merro Tree by Katie Waitman
Current Projects:
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Diet Progress: 16.5 lbs lost
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