Freshly aware of my flaws, I am not going to letanythinglimit me anymore. I’m going to do something for myself that I should have done a long time ago. Decades ago. I didn’t have the confidence then, I was scared of the answer. But I like my life now. I am secure in it. I can explore my options with the giant safety net that I have successfully created.
The people around me have been instrumental in this. Everyone seems to be making positive change. Kevin is now officially seeing Dan and that makes my heart so happy. Since their announcement in the woods the two have been playing dreamy starry-eyed lovers all over the house and it is so cute. But his change in relationship status is all because Kevin stopped being fearful; he took the gamble and risked everything I know he is deep-down scared of. I know how squishy and tender his heart is, I also know how easily it is damaged. Like so many of us, I guess. How hard it is for him to open up and take a chance.
And for all his outrageous hyperbole, ridiculous drama and peacock feathers I know how deeply he fears his parents finding out who he is, who he is most comfortable being. So by staying the course and doing Drag Factor when his parents are in the same city as him is huge. It’s showing a strength, a determination of purpose and a desire to live life the way that suits him. That I really admire.
Then of course there’s Angela. The strides forward she has been making have been inspirational. Angela and Kevin are making determined steps towards the future they want. The session material I have been writing for the girls at Jay’s youth group has further woken me up, made me realise I’m not really living my life with the courage and power I promote.
Everything Kevin has been saying to me for years has been right. That doctor I saw as a teen was probably just a miserable old misogynistic wanker and I need to go and find out more about my health. It is great that I have been able to lose the weight – I know the majority can’t, through no fault of their own – that I am fit, that I eat well, and it is horrid that I have a shitty intermittent cycle that incapacitates me when it turns up and affects my potential fertility.
I have always been genuinely happy in my fulfilled life, without children or the thought of children. But the last few weeks have reminded me that people can change, that exploring new options doesn’t mean you’re unhappy with your old ones. It’s just that sometimes we change our views, our desires, and that’s okay. In fact,notchanging as we grow is the concern.
So maybe it’s time to see if my lifestyle choices are based on fact and desire rather than fear and misinformation. Iamsecure enough to properly examine what my options are. It can do no harm to know for sure one way or another. Am I not always banging on about educating yourself, that fact-checking and making informed choices are all good things to do?
The time I got my diagnosis may have been a day of relief and understanding, that I wasn’t a freak that didn’t fit in for no reason. At eighteen I was a bit celebratory about the news that I couldn’t have children, that there was no danger of unplanned offspring if I went out in the world, explored my sexuality.
What I hadn’t realised was all my old beliefs about not being worthy weren’t resolved but had burrowed their way under my heart like a little mole digging and digging, heading determinedly to my core.
I have made decisions the whole of my adult life based on this belief that I can’t have kids and never once have I questioned it, researched further. I am a well-educated woman and am more than aware there are a myriad ways women can conceive outside of the norm.
Instead, I was happy accepting the word of some bitter arsehole and I failed to explore it further. But now I am ready to take a look at this. To check it out, find out what my options are for my future. Checking now before I am too old for the chance for children. Just find out for sure, see how I feel if I learn it’s not an impossibility.
I click on a website for a clinic only three streets away from my practice and begin to look at booking an initial consultation.
One of the things I do know is if there is ever a man out there for me, a man that I can see myself committing to, he needs to be there for me and me alone. Whether I can have children or not needs to be something he is happy to deal with. That he can live without the promise of biological children in his life.
Jay needs children, and I care too much to force him into a future where that compromise is a possibility.
I know and understand how important it is for people to have children, I do. It’s hard not to link the idea of sex equating childbirth when you have had a head teacher shriek in assembly – beard and spittle quivering with the fervour of his emotion as he screams across the hall – that fornication is solely for procreation. I reckon that’s why I’m an exponent of fornication for recreation.
But I also know the importance of valuing myself for who I am, how I am, and learning not to feel guilt that I may not be equipped the same way other women are. I’m also beginning to realise that a relationship might work for me. It’s worked for my mum and dad. It works for my sister and right now is working for Kevin. I have known and loved that man for ever and yet never have I seen him as happy as he is now.
Maybe I am worthy, maybe cuddling up with someone in my pyjamas, with no make-up on, high heels kicked off at the door and left there – you know, unless a certain mood strikes me – is something I might really like.
It is something I might really like with Jay. But I know even if I did decide I was up for – and able to have – kids, I am way too cowardy-custard to ever say that out loud. To anybody. A girl can’t get rid of all her insecurities in one fell swoop. And besides, I have messed that man around too much. If my bridges weren’t already smouldering beforehand, then my meltdown the other day has guaranteed they are thoroughly torched and now ashen. And even if I hadn’t, I can’t say no, change my mind and say yes, maybe, and then keep chopping and changing; which is more than probable.
Baby steps.
If I am considering breaking my binds to single girl life then I need to allow myself a little bit of slack. An acceptance that I may fall off the wagon a couple of times. I am not having Jay be that wagon.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jay
There is the sound of laughter, of Keith’s kids playing, of glasses being carried across the garden. Everything smells of summer and normally this is the good life. Shirts are off, music is on, I’m surrounded by people that I love but I am still struggling to shake off the blues.
Images of Lily and me constantly scroll through my mind. The day she first came to the youth centre and I made a fool of myself stumbling all over the place. The sight of her when she walked into Chrysalis and I was wearing my no-sex pants. The way she made me laugh up on the roof, the way she made me feel safe out on the ledge, the way she looked at me time after time after time. The way we created our very own bubble where we were just us.
But as I lay my head on my pillow at night, it is her scrunched up on The Downs, upwards foetal, I know it from the homes. Her skin pale as she bites her lip.It was a mistake. I knew I shouldn’t have slept with you.The tear in the corner of her eye at the very end.
‘Jay, Jay, man. Come on, come help.’ Luke has left Keith on the barbecue and is beckoning us up to help get food out from the kitchen.
I follow him through, behind Mo, who, on reaching the kitchen first, turns and passes me a bowl of slaw and some bread rolls.
‘So, did you get to talk to your girl?’ he asks, his voice low.
‘Yeah, we talked. She’s not my girl.’ It is the first time I have said it out loud but I think I’ve needed to. She’s not, it’s just the truth.
‘Shit, sorry, man. At least you said your piece.’
