To my 20, 30 and early 40 something self
Dearest Sarah
You were never ambivalent about having children. You loved your dolls and I suspect you still enjoyed playing with them long after many of your friends had discarded them. You had it all planned out didn’t you - engaged by mid 20’s, married by 27/28 with your first child on the way by the time you were 29/30 with number two and number three following on and possibly even number four.
I am angry with you for not being able to let go of relationships which were clearly going nowhere, for not listening to friends and family and giving other men a chance. Had you had the courage to do so, you may not have ended up being single and childless.
I know you fell head over heels in love when you were 20 with Mr Music Man and then again with Mr Charisma when you were 26 but why couldn’t you get them out of your head when the writing was on the wall that the relationship was over with Mr Music Man and that things were never going to go anywhere with Mr Charisma.
Why were you so convinced that you and Mr Music Man would get back together when you left poly and moved to London. A lot of people meet their husbands or wives at university and you weren’t really short of admirers if you had given them a chance.
Of course you didn’t get back together but you did finally let go.Unfortunately though, you did not learn your lesson as in the summer of 1992, just before your 26th birthday Mr Charisma entered your life. You didn’t even want to go out that night but your flatmates persuaded you to join them for a drink. You immediately fell head over heels and couldn’t believe that someone as good looking, successful and with similar interests as yourself should want to chat with you. I know you had some great times together but he also treated you badly. You used to describe it as a quasi relationship and felt that he kept you at arms length. He upset you on so many occasions and you vowed that that was it but he had a great knack of worming his way back into your life.You believed that if you hung on, he would choose you. That was naive. Why did you let him treat you so badly? Your friends warned you but you thought you knew better and as a result wasted the best part of a decade of your life and your best baby making years too chasing after what should have been clear to you was never going to be. Consequently, you missed opportunities and let men who were genuinely interested in you slip through your fingers. In the end, they moved on. They met someone else, got married and guess what had children.
All that said, you don’t know how many of those men would have stuck by your side when they found out you had a genetic condition which had a 50% chance of passing and possibly in a more severe form. You yourself only knew the full implications of this when you were 36 and that the only way to get round it would be IVF and donor eggs. I remember how devastated you were to learn this and also how worried you were about having to have that conversation with boyfriends. Maybe you were right to be worried too as in your early 40s when two men, re-entered your life and you told them, they quickly dropped you and moved on and not too long after, they met someone else, married and had children.
I forgive you for your uptightness around sex. You were brought up to believe that ‘nice girls did not have sex before marriage’. You held on to that belief in your late teens and very early twenties whereas most of your contemporaries did not. I know you thought that cost you your relationship with Mr Music Man but not necessarily so and if that was the reason, he wasn’t the right person for you.
Dear Sarah, I want to give you a big fat hug because I know you endured so much heartache during these years. You saw all of your friends marry and just wanted to be next. I will give you another big fat hug for the visceral pain you felt when Mr Charisma told you his girlfriend was having a baby. You thought she was just a friend. I remember how the tears fell and the shame and anger you felt. I wish you had not had to experience that pain.
I know too how you so very much wanted to join your friends in the ‘Happily Married’ Club and the mixture of emotions you felt when they all started to have children. You were happy for them. You still thought you had time in the earlier years but the dynamics of your friendships changed and before long, you felt very much left behind. Sadly this feeling will continue into your fifties but when you join Gateway Women, an online community for women who are childless not by choice (now called Lighthouse Women), things will begin to change. You will find your tribe and I promise you, you will begin to feel less alone.
My darling, I know how much you yearned to be married and to be a mother and I’m sorry it didn’t happen for you. I don’t understand why life can be so very unfair and why things work out for some but not others.
I know that having a baby was always important to you but I also know that when you were in your twenties and thirties, it was important to be married first and for the baby to follow. However, I think that as your thirties rolled into your forties, the baby did probably become more important than the man because you realised you were running out of time and were desperate not to miss the boat.
And then, when you were 38, two months before you were going to start IUI treatment using donor sperm, just when you were least expecting it, along came Mr I Really Do Think He Is The One. A complicated relationship from the start but you really thought he may be The One. You put your treatment on hold. With hindsight, possibly not the best idea but you really wanted to give it a chance. He said he loved you, he was married but told you his wife didn’t love him and was going to get divorced. He had two small children and wanted more. He wasn’t concerned about your genetic condition but in the the end he couldn’t leave his family though he did go onto leave his wife, get divorced and remarry about 10 years later.
Would things have been different if you hadn’t said you wanted children of your own? Would it have made a difference if you hadn’t miscarried? It wasn’t a planned pregnancy but you were so happy when you found out. A heartbeat was detected at six weeks. This is good news you were told. Very few pregnancies are lost after a heartbeat has been detected you were told. Your baby was due on 2 December 2006. You saw that heartbeat again at just over 9 weeks but at 11.5 weeks, just before your nuchal fold blood test you persuaded your consultant to do another scan. You just wanted to see your baby again but your baby had died. Those words ‘ I’m sorry I can’t find a heartbeat’ cut through your very being and the pain of them will never fully go away. That relationship ended five months later leaving you devastated beyond belief.
Dearest, I know you beat yourself up about the decisions you have made and the decisions you made when you boarded the IUI/IVF rollercoaster in 2007. You found it difficult to disembark but eventually fell off when you were 52, totally broken. Sarah, I understand why you made the decisions you did. All of your feelings, wishes and hopes were valid. You really did try your best and I am just so very sorry that your deepest wishes were not fulfilled.
Don’t beat yourself anymore my love. You are forgiven.
Lots of love and hugs from your 56 year old self xxxx.
Sarah M
Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash