A story not about a dress

I've asked a lot of people over the years how certain you have to be to marry someone. Do you have to be 100% sure, or is it something less than that? I've found that everyone tolerates a different level of uncertainty, but I'm not sure you ever get to 100%. I didn't. I wasn't 100% sure that should marry him, but I also wasn't 100% sure that I shouldn't. But I had to make a choice, so I made the one that I thought would be the easiest to live with. Years later I know only that I may not be someone who ever gets to 100% with anyone, and the person I wanted to be with the most is someone else, and I'm not with him.

So the story goes, and brace yourself, it takes a long while to get to the point (maybe go get a snack actually) - and by the way, this isn't really a story about a dress - it's more like the story of my life and all of my relationships, but we don't have time for that - so, I'll have to limit it, and probably I should edit this, because it's been sitting here for days, but I don't feel like it - so, here you go. All my life I wanted to have children and I was always sure that I would. I suppose because I was trained to believe that life works out that way, and why shouldn't it? Why shouldn't you believe that you can have something you want. You want something, you get it. Not so. Turns out that I have a lot in my life, and I have many of the things that I wanted and I've been very successful in my career, but the one thing I've wanted the most, has always eluded me.

And then there was a time in my life when I thought my career might matter more than a family. And there was a moment when I thought I could have both the career that I wanted and the family. There was definitely a point at the beginning of my career when I went from wanting children to feeling uncertain about it. I felt like I would want children someday but not any time soon, because I really wanted that career that I was working so hard for and paying so much money for. And there were also moments when I really thought I could picture a life without any children in it. Well, what I have today is the career and none of the other things, not the husband, not even a boyfriend, and not the family.

So I met someone and was engaged to be married at 25. There was fighting about money, among other things. But in the end it came down to just one thing, just one insurmountable thing. All along we felt similarly undecided about having children - like we might want them, but not soon and I had every intention of having a career that I wouldn't give up when we did. And I was okay with the uncertainty because there was a part of me that could picture a life without them - I honestly didn't know how I would feel in the years to come. But he was older than me and one day, before that day in April that we were supposed to be married on, he just decided that he didn't want to have children at all.

And in the conversation that would be the beginning of the end, what he told me was that he decided he didn't want children, but that he was *willing* to have them if I really wanted to. There were some other things said about it. And when he said those things, all I could think about was that kid that I was going to one day bring into the world, knowing that its father didn't really want it and would probably resent both of us for it. And for right or wrong, all I could see after that was impending unhappiness and an impossible situation.

The fighting about money and having children, among other things, continued. It got ugly even. He had some unfounded fears about money because I didn't have a job lined up and things seemed somewhat uncertain with the bad job market at the time, and at one point he even accused me of taking advantage of him for his money. Well, all I have to say about that is that I do more than quite well for myself financially, thank you very much. For me, it never had anything to do with the money and I was obviously quite capable of supporting myself. But accusations were made and things were said that were uncalled for and maybe unforgivable. We went around and around about all of the issues and we always came back to the one thing that he said I should just let go of and I couldn't - the issue of having children.

In the end I walked away for one reason only, not because I knew I wanted children, but because I didn't know if I didn't want them. I walked away on a maybe, something completely uncertain - because I knew that I couldn't have children with someone who didn't really truly want them, which meant that I couldn't have children with him, and at that time in my life, at the age of 25, I was unprepared to make that choice. It was really that simple, I couldn't make a choice like that and feel comfortable with it at the time. All of the other issues I would have tried to work through. I would have held my ground and compromised and figured it out. But there was no room to give on this one. I just couldn't give in. Never did I think that what I might one day want would not be a possibility for me. I thought I would find the right person, have my career and have my family - if that's what I wanted. Sometimes I wish someone would have spent more time talking to me about reality, and less time making me believe in the possibility of having everything. Never did I think that I would be sitting here right now, this many years later, alone and still surrounded by uncertainty. And yes of course, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking - but you are only 30 (very nearly 31), you have so much time left to find someone and have children.

However, there is irony in the fact that I walked away from him for that reason - for the reason that I might someday, many days and even years from that day, decide I wanted/was ready to have children. Because on my 29th birthday when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and told that I would have to take chemo drugs - I was also told that those drugs, that would hopefully save my life, that would hopefully ensure me a long life (that long life, during which I could accomplish and have anything I wanted), could quite possibly leave me infertile. I realized in that moment, the way you can only realize exactly what something meant to you in the instant it's gone - just how I felt about having children. I wanted them. And I wanted them to be my own biological children.

I wanted them desperately enough that I tried every which way I could think of to bargain with God in exchange for my fertility. There was a moment, when if I had had a choice - I might have felt willing to give up my life, or part of my life, just to keep my fertility. Could I have not taken chemo drugs and risked my life, just to make sure I stayed fertile? And in that exact same moment when what I wanted really became clear for the first time - the possibility was gone, or so it seemed, all in an instant. I might have walked away from him for nothing after all. Or maybe I walked away from what would be my only opportunity.

As it turns out, I walked away from the only person I've ever dated who treated me well. All of my other relationships - both before and after have been bad and dysfunctional to varying degrees, including abusive (but that was before and a long time ago). I have no doubt that we were both to blame. And I also know that there was much more going on than whether to have children - but I didn't know then what I know now about myself, or life even. I was 22 when I met him and 25 when I walked away from him. And since then I've dated several people, made a successful career for myself, stopped drinking and gone to AA, survived breast cancer, and married and divorced someone else in the process of surviving cancer, because I believed that no would ever want me again because of it. Anyway, I'm a completely different person than I used to be, because well, you can't go through what I went through and be the same.

Four months after I finished taking chemo drugs, my period started. I dropped to my knees and started thanking God. I'm probably the only person who thanks God every time my period starts. I am lucky. In all likelihood I am still fertile, but we have not done any testing to confirm it. I believe that I am, but I guess I don't actually know, because they have warned me that it is possible to have your period come back and not be fertile (but not that likely). I've gone back and forth about whether to verify it.

But here's the thing - all they know when you are lucky enough to have your fertility come back, is that you won't be fertile for as long as you would have been. They can't tell you for how long you will be, they just tell you not to wait to have children. They tell you to have them as soon as you can, but definitely don't wait for too long. They tell you that you should assume that you will go through menopause 10 years earlier than your mother did. My mother went through menopause very young and by that calculation, I'm almost already out of time.

And the thing is, I don't have anyone to have children with and the more time passes, the less likely it seems that I will find someone in time. I don't want to settle for someone just to have children and I don't feel up for having relationship after relationship to try to find him, so I've stopped bothering to try because I've failed at it repeatedly. I have a friend who waited to find the right man, and when she eventually did find him, it was too late. And I know what you are thinking - and I've given a lot of thought to that - to whether I would just get a sperm donor and have children alone if I don't find someone in the next couple of years, just to make sure that I get to, but I've pretty much decided that I don't think I will. The reason why is another post. And yes, I know, you think I am hanging far too much on this one issue and giving it far too much importance in my world. I know you think that.

I walked away from my ex-fiance largely because I believed that something more was possible, something more amazing, that I could be happier, that he could be happier with someone else and that we would be unhappy together, even though it was the only good relationship I've ever had. But what I didn't know at the time, that I know now, was that my happiness and unhappiness had nothing to do with him, and that I would be unhappy regardless, with or without him. That I would continue to search and never find what I was looking for. That I would suffer more than I ever thought possible. That what I had walked away in the hopes of finding - it wasn't to be mine anyway.

Did I make a right choice? Probably, at the time. Do I think we could have been happy? Probably, but I don't really know. How do I feel about it now, knowing what I know? It doesn't really matter, does it? Don't ask me about the person I most wanted to be with, because that's a story I'm not going to tell. And there is one tiny (huge) and pertinent detail of the story that I'm leaving out, but that's because I feel like I can't talk about it here without being judged horribly. It seems that as the years go by, I understand less and less why I made the choice I did and what I was so afraid of. And it's painfully clear that it was very much a choice based on nothing but fear, like all of the choices that I made in my life up until about a year ago. The choice to marry him or not marry him were both fear based, and so I made the choice I made because I couldn't make the other choice and it was really that simple, and I promised myself that no matter what, I would not regret it. And I don't, but I have come to regret many other things in the process of questioning that decision.

I have stopped believing that anything is possible and that the thing that I thought I was once looking for exists. I don't think it does. Or it doesn't for me anyway. Much of my disappointment in life stems from the fact that I had expectations about the way I thought it should be or the way I wanted it to be, and they haven't been met. And I'm learning not have to those expectations anymore because if you don't expect anything, then you aren't disappointed.

The one thing that I've wanted the most in life, has eluded me, like I said. And that thing is a healthy and right relationship. Regardless of how it all turns out, the one thing that I do know is that whatever I used to believe to be true about love, I don't believe in anymore.