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"You should start considering egg retrieval and freezing if you don't plan to start a family in the next few years. You know, this is the best your eggs will ever be"
I was laying on my back, spread eagle, while my gynecologist performed my yearly women's exam in the back of his stuffy office in Chelsea. He was a friendly man in his mid-50s who I'd been seeing the last few years, always throughout, yet gentle, with my exams. A few years back he'd inserted a copper IUD that was one of the most unexpectedly excruciating pains I've yet to experience (why did no one warn me..?). The IUD was good for five years and I was only 28. I would be 33 when it was time for a new one. Surely, I would know by then more than I knew now. I would have it figured out.
At 31 now, I can confidently say I do not have it any more "figured out." I turned 31 on August 1st. My birthday has long been a day I dread, strange for a Leo, but then again I never felt connected to my sun sign. As I jokingly say with my therapist, I do believe in some woo woo shit to an extent, and finding out I'm a Pisces ascent made things finally click. I've always been emotional, sensitive and empathetic to a fault. I've never liked to make my birthday a big deal, typically opting for a quiet day spent alone.
Who likes to be alone on their birthday? I found out through many disappointing birthdays that I do, I guess. There is a need to honor within me all of the complex emotions my birthday brings to the surface. My birthday is a reminder of the passing of time and passing stages of my life. Which truthfully, this stage feels as though it's slipping out of my grasp year after year.
There is promise of your 30s being far more enjoyable and less tumultuous than your 20s and at 31, it's hard to say quite yet. While there is some much appreciated consistency and stability I've found in this new decade, I can't help but feel more confused about life now than I ever did in my 20s.
How do you ever know? Do we ever really feel ready for anything? Is there a moment when the adult milestones you see as a child become less daunting? I think of my mother getting married, freshly having turned 20 just days prior. Buying her first house by the time by 25 and having me at 27.
At 27 I was still going through heartbreaks with nonchalant boys, old enough to know better.
--
The choice to have children is a deeply personal and intimate decision for every woman.
For a long time, I was unsure if I wanted children. After losing my grandmother two years ago, I reflected during that time on familial generations and carrying on memories of our loved ones. I knew then I wanted her to always be remembered through me and beyond me. I want my mother to meet her grandchildren and for her to see me cradling a small being swaddled in a blanket, becoming a mother for the first time myself.
And at the same time, I feel so distant from this reality that so many people my age, and often younger, inhabit. It never occurred to me when I moved to NYC at 22 how different a path I would take. For those first few years, the lives of my peers didn't feel so different from my own. And then year after year as everyone grew up, I felt like a child left behind at the after school pick up line. Waiting for an adult to show up.
I would never change the last 8 years of post-grad. I feel happy with my life. I look around at what I built, how I've grown and nurtured my truest self here, and I am proud. At the same time I wonder "what's next?"
Timelines keep me awake at night. I do the calculations in my mind next to a soundly sleeping C as the horns and voices from the street below drift into our apartment. If I'm married by 33 I can have a house by 34 and then still get pregnant before 35. Am I on track? What if things get derailed, what is the timelines change? They can't change. There's no time. I'm too late already, I'm behind. I--
-
One foot is planted in my past. One foot is planted in my future. I want them both, selfishly for myself. I desire to hang on to everything I have because I feel myself falling behind. Life has changed slowly for the last decade, then all at once. My parents moving out of my childhood home of 25 years. Learning to be an adult child. Fostering a long-term relationship with a partner. Saving for a house. Reflecting on reality of my fertility window. Contemplating my career. Trying to discover what truly feels right for me and not just for now.
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"Does anyone ever feel ready for anything," I asked my therapist this week. It was the last ten minutes of our session and we were tying up the loose ends of our bi-weekly conversation.
She paused a moment on the zoom call, contemplating a response. "You know, I would say there are some people who know. The fog clears and they cross that decision line pretty confidently. But, a majority of people? They might feel 80-90% ready for something, but they'll never feel 100%. They take a leap into the decision and know that they'll figure it out as they go along, with the help of those around them."
I guess there isn't a right way to "do life." Many of the people whose paths I admire have probably not felt confident in their decisions when making them, whether it was buying a house, getting married, having a baby, moving to new city, starting a new job, entering a new relationship or whatever life may bring.
This quote sums it up:
Everything has been figured out, except how to live. - Jean-Paul Sartre
With much love,
Lauren
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