A second faint line appeared, and my entire world came crashing down around me.
I knew I wasn’t pregnant, but I also had an ultrasound scheduled for the next week (an unrelated visit), and in the off-chance I actually was pregnant, I didn’t want to find out by seeing a baby in my uterus on the screen in front of me.
I wasn’t nervous while taking the test because I knew it’d be negative. I only took it for peace of mind and to rule out the slimmest possibility it was positive.
So I quickly took the test and moved on with my day as soon as I saw it was indeed negative.
A little while later, it dawned me I might not have waited long enough before looking at the results.
So, I ran back upstairs, grabbed the test from the trash, and lost all sense of who I was, where I was, and what I was doing when I saw the second blue line staring back at me.
In an instant, my brain ventured to places it had never wandered before. My immediate present and once-desirable future flashed before my very eyes, and I crumbled into myself. I leaned on the windowsill in my room, mouth agape, and gave way to the out of body experience tumbling toward me.
I grabbed my phone as fast as I could and messaged him. The two minutes it took for him to respond felt like two years. “ANSWER!!” is all I could think. “DON’T YOU KNOW OUR LIVES ARE ABOUT TO BE COMPLETELY UPROOTED?!”
When he responded he told me the results of the test were no longer valid because it was past the correct window of time, and what I saw was an evaporation line. He told me, “You are not pregnant.”
I was relieved and furious all at the same time.
Relieved because I wasn’t pregnant.
Furious because for the one millionth time, I was experiencing a milestone of womanhood and was the last to understand it.
Why is it that every single twist and turn on this journey feels like a scavenger hunt? You’d think I was the first woman to walk the Earth by the little information I have about what it’s like being one.
When will we stop having to learn the hard way? When will we make room for the intimate moments that billions of us have to navigate alone?
And what makes me more furious is I constantly have to consider: Am I asking for too much? Or am I telling you too much?
~
I’ve spent a lifetime walking squarely between those two questions, treading lightly, always second-guessing the placement of my footing, and what I’ve gathered is that life as a woman is not about walking on eggshells.
It’s a balance beam act of constantly deciphering faint lines.
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