This is the first installation in a series called, “Doing It Alone,” to share some of the trials and tribulations of my attempts in 2017 to get pregnant as a single woman.
I look at the list of sperm donors and start crying. I don’t mean to cry, it just comes upon me, unexpectedly.
I push myself back from my computer and fall on my floor. A distant part of my brain is noting that my actions seem very dramatic. But it’s beyond me and impossible to control. I cry. Big, heaving sobs. I’m mourning for the expectations I had from the time I was a girl: I would marry a great guy and we’d have a family.
I don’t want to be looking at this list. I’m supposed to have a loving, supportive husband. We’re supposed to be holding hands, stepping forward into our brave new future together. Instead, I am 42, single, and live in a small basement suite in one of the most heinously expensive cities in the world. My company has just cut my hours, I’m paying off my Masters Program, and now I have a crazy scheme to finance an expensive version of turkey baster inception.
To make it worse, I’m angry with myself. After all, it’s not as if I haven’t had the opportunity to make the leap to motherhood in the past. There have been good men in my life. Men who would have gone on the journey with me the old fashioned way. I hate myself for being foolish, for not figuring it out earlier, and for feeling ten years behind my own destiny.
So I cry on the floor.
And when I’ve worn myself out, I pick myself back up, wipe off my snotty face, and go back to my computer. I buck up. I may live in an expensive city, but I’m lucky enough to have health care thanks to Canada. I may live in a studio basement suite, but I also live two blocks from the beach. I may be single, but I have a great community of friends and a loving family. Okay, my family lives 2000 miles away, but right now I am going to focus on the positives.
I look at my strapping list of possible sperm donor daddies.
They’re all under 25.
