I Am Not A Mother

8 years old

When you become a mother, you will know! My mother yells. She shakes a finger in the air, her lower lip quivering. I look at her as if I’m singing la-la-la.

I don’t take that line seriously not because she says it all the time, but because at eight, I don’t think about becoming a mother too much. It’s just something that will inevitably happen when I am all grown up.

12 years old

My mother takes me to the doctor as soon as we find out that I wasn’t normal. Apparently girls are meant to bleed in their pants once a month. I hear that it happens on the same day of the month for some of them, quite like birthdays only monthly. Bizarre.

My last period flooded the chair I sat on in the middle of finals. Bad timing.

PCOS, the woman in the white coat says. I don’t understand much. The woman continues to speak: weight gain, irregular period, difficult to have children in the future. My mother’s labored hand enveloped mine, a moisture barrier brewing between our skin.

I have an aunt who’s the only woman I know with no children. I think she’s sad but it could be just what my mother speculates.

So will I be like her? I ask on the drive home.

Don’t spew nonsense! My mother spits. Denial is an affliction she suffers from.

15 years old

I take a pill to make my period come. My mother says that it will make me normal and not being normal should make me afraid.

I am not thinking about my fertility as much as my weight gain. At school I am classified as overweight and mandatorily enrolled in my secondary school’s TAF (trim-and-fit but also FAT spelled backwards) club. After classes we run laps around the school compound.

My crush returns a love letter. You’re fat, he writes back.

Back home, my brother matches in circles around me when I eat. He chants, you are what you eat. I pop my pill for the day. I don’t care if my period doesn’t come, but I hope it will take my weight away.

21 years old

Everyone is giving themselves anglo-saxon names now. It’s trendy and easier to remember. I try Autumn and then Justine, but neither feels right so I take half of my Chinese name away and end up with Ling.

In case my babies wind up with the same trouble, I start collecting baby names that I like. I have been imagining two: a boy and a girl. Maybe Cyrus for the boy, like Cyrus the Great, and Amber for the girl because it reminds me of fire and I want her to be unafraid.

I am forgetting about my condition. I stop taking my pills. I forget about my periods too unless they surprise me on my panties. Liking not bleeding every month makes me not think about the future it will cost me.

Like my mother, denial is an affliction I am beginning to suffer from.

28 years old

I try to visit my family once a year after I leave. America has made me promises through television shows that I want it to keep.

At one of our family dinners during one of my visits, my five-year-old niece burrows her way to me and chirps as though she’s a middle-aged auntie who likes to gossip, why are you so old and not married?

I did other things, I say. It is the truth and also a lie.

My sister-in-law apologizes to me on behalf of her daughter. Dating in America is just different, I make an excuse for my single childless plight.

32 years old

I never want kids, the American boy says.

What? I exclaim. I place both hands on the dashboard as though he is swerving the car. We are stuck in traffic.

Later, he leaves me. Later, I go to the shelter and I adopt a dog. I name him Cyrus, like Cyrus for the boy.

35 years old

After a few more failed relationships with boys I don’t know how to keep, I go to the fertility clinic to freeze my eggs.

Your follicles look like how they should look at your age, and with PCOS, the man in the white coat says. We can get started right away after you sign the consent forms.

I go through consent forms. It details the things to expect during the ovarian stimulation period. Self-administered nightly injections. You may experience mood swings. It is important to have a strong support system, like a partner or a trusted friend, an article I find online says.

I do not have anyone. I do not sign.

36 years old

I sit on the fence but the fence melts as I sink deeper into one side of the fence. I am not choosing, but I am choosing.

It is unclear to me if I have been choosing this entire time. Perhaps I chose when I came to America. Perhaps I chose when I picked the men I dated. Or perhaps I was paralyzed by indecision. Forced into this life because I didn’t know better. Couldn’t know better.

Regardless, it is factual that I am living it. It is the life that carries me. It looks different than the one I saw for myself at eight.

When you become a mother, you will know! Sorry, mom. Maybe I will never know. But maybe, just maybe, that is completely okay.

38 years old

There is joy and grief in both lives. I start to see that life can be beautiful either way.