about this baby. Let’s do it. I don’t want it.”
My stomach twists and the oxygen in the room disappears. “You don’t? But we wanted to have children,” I mumble.
He gives me a confused and angry look. “What gave you the idea that I wanted kids in the first place?”
My thoughts come to a complete stop, and I blink a couple of times before I am able to speak. “What?”
“When did we agree on having kids?” His tone is condescending. “At what moment in our relationship did I give you the remote impression that I wanted a child in our lives?”
“When you suggested we go to the DMV and get a marriage license. You said something along the lines of having a bigger house to fill it with kids.”
He points at the dogs, “I referred to them. The horses, the dogs, we now have an alpaca and the chickens—our family is growing.”
“But you said…” His intense green eyes flash anger. This is worse than those nightmares when I’m dying and no one comes to pick me up. When did we become strangers? This man… I barely recognize him.
This isn’t just disappointment. It is searing, raw pain. We are living different lives. Our expectations changed, or maybe they were never the same. All I know is that our frequencies have been parallel from one another for quite some time.
And this confirms it.
“I thought that you inferred children,” I say it, even when the words are useless. This conversation is maybe two years old. Perhaps it’s not as old, but it’s overdue. “When I told you I was going to go off the pill, you were happy about it,”
“I don’t see the point of you taking that shit,” he says with such disdain that I actually want to slap him, and I don’t believe in physical force.
“I asked my doctor to prescribe it so I wouldn’t get pregnant, and we could stop using condoms. Not taking it implies having babies,” I snap, and I hate my condescending, angry, and loud voice. I take a few calm breaths. “I told you that too. Every time I get my period you…”
Registering all the times that I’ve come to him to give him the bad news I realize he wasn’t sad. He was avoiding the subject.
“You didn’t care, did you? You actually didn’t give a shit that I was heartbroken.”
I fight the tears, the anger, the disappointment. We need to see this conversation through. When did I lose my big guy? I had a hunch that he was gone, but I was in denial.
“We have never discussed the possibilities of having a baby, or I would’ve set you straight,” he dares to say, and I pray for strength because I’m about to punch him.
“When I see a baby, and I point at it and say, ‘I want one,’ it gives you a clear message that says, ‘I. Want. A. Baby.’ I am implying that I want us to have one. There’s no obscure meaning behind my words. So, are you telling me that you never wanted children?”
He shakes his head. “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Why would I ever want to bring a creature into this world?”
An hour ago, I could answer the question without prompting. Right now, I don’t even know how to address him anymore.
“You never told me that,” and before he says anything, I add, “Not even when I’ve said, ‘I want one.’ So, if I get pregnant?”
The answer scares me. I’m okay being on my own, but what if he leaves me because I’m having his baby? He’s not with you anymore, the voice of reason screams at me.
He rubs the back of his neck, giving me a stiff smile that hardens his features. “You won’t. It can’t happen.”
“You say it, so sure of yourself. Why?” I ask, bracing myself to hear some childhood tragedy.
Mumps, an accident…why can’t he have children?
“I got a vasectomy years ago,” he says, and I want to slap him because that’s the kind of information you share with your wife—the one who has been trying to have our baby for so long.
“You lied to me,” I accuse him.
“No,” he states.
“By omission,” I retort, and I want to hurt him the same way I am hurting.
It seems like I lost my husband, I’m losing the family he never promised, and I’ve been hard on myself for something he did.
He kept all this to himself—like everything else.
“How long ago did you get the vasectomy?” I ask, because what if