Choice

I can’t do anything, she thought, as she looked at her reflection in the vanity. Despite being in her office she could see straight through into her bedroom—the joys of studio living. It was funny really, how quickly her cans could turn to can’ts, how her capability could turn to idleness, the motivation to act vanishing all at once into the atmosphere. Breathing had never felt so difficult; it was as if someone were sitting on her chest so that only fractions of air could get in at a time. Her face felt tense even when she actively relaxed each muscle one by one. She closed her eyes and brushed her hands over her face—forehead to scalp, nose to ears. She tilted her head back and turned to look out the window. Taking the day off had never seemed like the right choice, but it wasn’t really—wasn’t really a choice that is. A person can only fight their body so much until it gives way, and then that person is just thoughts, thousands of thoughts that may never see the light of day. It seemed she always sat in front of a blank page, as emails flew in, letters piled up, and deadlines came and went unsatisfied. The sun shined on the half open blinds creating what felt like a prison to her, trapped by disappointment, threatened by the future’s vendetta. Peeking through, she took notice of a young couple and a child in front of the house across the street. The man and woman stood face-to-face in the driveway, arguing as the child clung to its mother’s calf. From her cell the dialogue was unintelligible, but the body has its own language in which we are all fluent. The way the woman aggressively waved her finger and raised her arms in disbelief, the way the man violently shook his head and sneeringly raised his eyebrows made it clear he had erred, and she was reacting. Eventually he did what the script called for: got in his car and drove away, evading responsibility. The woman’s screams followed him down the road, but the child still clung to her, keeping every other piece of her there in the driveway.

During the nine months her mother carried her sister, she grew increasingly curious about pregnancy. How did she get in there? And more importantly, how would she get out? At nine years old her knowledge of female anatomy was fragmented and only went so far as what she could personally identify. She knew of a few holes in the body, but not one of them was big enough for a baby to come out of. As the due date approached, this became an issue of growing concern to her. She imagined doctors cutting and tearing away at her mother’s flesh, digging around her organs and ferociously navigating through pools of blood to find her baby sister. It ate away at her until finally, she decided that she herself would never give birth. She professed this to her mother who buoyantly replied “okay.” She chuckled, “but good luck finding a man.” She thought this would go right over her nine year old daughter’s head, but it did not. She felt guilty about it everyday. She felt guilty before she really even knew what guilt was. When the women in her family spoke of how much she had grown and how lucky any boy would be to have her, she smiled and thanked them, but oh, if only they knew the secret she was keeping! That she, a now fertile young woman was refusing to do for any man, the one thing he could not. Following one family gathering in her twelfth year, she once again relayed her position to her mother, who told her she would change her mind once she had received the proper education and started to see boys as more than just playground mates. 

She learned about sex and pregnancy. She dated and experienced intimacy, but throughout it all she felt ashamed. In her adolescent relationships, she could keep it to herself, with the strong confidence that things would not last long enough for it to become relevant. But with age comes a less certain future, and on top of all that typically concerns a transitioning young adult, this thing that had been planted in her subconscious was now a full-grown tree which branched out into every aspect of her life. She never knew the right time to bring it up. She feared opposition or the notion that it might be a premature conversation. She could never be sure how much weight parenthood held for her partners and felt it just as unfair of her to assume its importance were great as to assume it were little. But was it also not just as unfair to allow a relationship to be so heavily dependent on this one decision? No she thought, no it isn’t at all. Everyone has a vision of what they hope their future to be, and how dare she stand in the way of that, how cruel of her to deny someone she loves something that would make him happy, something which would put him one step closer to his vision. She once again became aware of the pressure on her chest. Yes, the addition of a child to her plan would only make that pressure more intense, that feeling of immobility more prevalent, and the future more daunting, so why would she do it? Why would a girl who wants to escape mundanity sacrifice her freedom for the sake of someone else’s happiness? Right now, there were things hogging her attention: bills to pay, a landlord to appease, and a new job in which she had to prove her youth was no obstacle to her adeptness. They were things that made her tired and aggravated, drained her so completely some days, but they were things she was capable of doing, and things she chose to do because they were temporary and pushed her closer to her ambitions. Bearing children was something she was capable of doing, but so was saying no. No to giving birth, no to becoming someone’s mother, or wife, or anyone’s anything, no to being the woman standing at the foot of the driveway.