IF YOUR FRIEND DOESN'T WANT CHILDREN
Our love began on a driveway on the other side of the ocean. Reston, Virginia, to be precise. I was not looking at all for butterflies and certainly not for the American kind. Yet I apparently always manage to choose the most difficult situation. Although in hindsight, I would have signed up if it had stayed that way. Because what is distance anyway? Love conquers all, they say. Unfortunately, I have experienced that this is not the case.
It wasn't the distance, and the fourteen years age difference was something we accepted. And especially in the beginning, our relationship was one big party. The trips to America and within Europe, then to California, then the flight to Phoenix, Arizona, and finally together as expats in London. Mr. X traveled a lot for work and I traveled behind him. And due to my XL portion of wanderlust, I found that quite adventurous. Especially in the first years, it was just hotel-hopping enjoying all the positive things in our boundless love (those jetlags are terror but hey, you can guess how the reunions were time and again). We made the most beautiful trips together and yet we preferred to be at home. Just, on the couch, with a self-made pasta and a bottle of wine on the tiny balcony, where we could watch the planes flying over all evening. He lived right next to the airport, the place where our highest peaks and deepest valleys occurred. We also dreamed of a home in America and a place where my roots lay.
And then came the moment when my ovaries slowly started to rattle. Because while many women dreamed of a career, I had been dreaming of diapers since childhood and it was the intention that I would at least be bouncing around with a baby bump before I turned thirty. And then the sensitive topic suddenly came up. Just like that, on an early Sunday morning when we were enjoying the awakening of our favorite city, under sheets of Egyptian linen in a posh hotel downtown San Francisco.
The desire for children.
Because while Mr. X initially thought along about the name of our future daughter and about the stack of passports that the little girl would get (he had both a British and a blue passport), he suddenly saw our future as childless. He was content with me, with our adventure. The feeling that overwhelms you at that moment is indescribable. It is a topic that cannot be rationalized and there is no other argument than ‘I just really want it’ or: ‘I don't want it’ that exists. Ultimately, of course, you both have equal rights to want or not want a child. No matter how painful it is, the one who doesn't want it almost always wins. Although I don't think winning is the right word. In the end, you both lose.
Letting each other go because you no longer love each other or because one of the two finds love with another is ultimately a matter of learning to accept. But having to let each other go while you still love each other intensely and actually want nothing more than to face a future together feels like a knife stab in the heart. Because that happened. I returned to my roots. Alone. Or actually, not alone. I still see myself standing at customs, tears streaming down my cheeks, and instead of a budding belly, I had a broken heart.
