It's the hope that kills

The thoughts in my head are haywire. 

My co-worker had a fourth baby last month. I got married a decade before her, yet I have none.

The baby's cries irritates me, but I don't get to complain. She tells me everything; too many details.

She asks me to borrow her money sometimes, not that I have much to spare, but I can't hold back or I'd be termed the hater. 

The baby is just a baby. I can't say if he's beautiful or not; I just get disgusted that she's having it easy.

There was another baby today; a little girl, I heard. I should've gone to say hello to the mother, but she's also just another young girl who shouldn't be having babies of her own; she's barely twenty. Yet someway, she had no problem conceiving when she didn't want a child. She should still be in school, but there she sits welcoming well-wishers with no thought as to how she intends to raise the thing she has just birth. 

I ask why I'm so unfortunate in this regard. It's been all of eight years since I said yes to forever to this man. We were young and full of energy, ready to start a family and give our children everything they want. Our children never came forth.

I've never heard a baby scare in my entire life. When my friends talk about how they had pregnancy scares and were glad to see their menstrual flow again, I zone out. My cycle has always been for twenty eight days and every single month, I bleed for four days. Every single month since I first started twenty years ago. 

About two years back, I tried to get a drug that would at least let the blood stop flowing. The guy with the blasting speakers at the T-junction gave me some white pills. They never worked and when I bled, it was like a red wedding.

 It's such a shame to me. I've come to dread it when my breasts get full and the cramps hit my lower abdomen. I face away from him and cry myself into daybreak. He used to pull me close and tell me to not bother, but since I pushed him off and told him to stop lying, he just stares away and says nothing. I miss when he told me we're in this together. I miss when he told me children don't matter. 

Now when I walk by, I can hear them speak about me and my barren womb. It's so loud sometimes and I nearly confronted that witch that stays down the road today. Save for my sister that pulled me away quickly, I wanted to show them I also know how to stand up for myself.

I won't let anyone shame me for not being able to give life to a fetus. I won't watch them relegate me as the unfortunate lady that is fast becoming the laughing stock of the community. Whatever it takes, I would do. If the hospitals won't find what's wrong with me and my husband insists that he is fine, then I'll do whatever I have to do to bring my mother-in-law the grandson she wails for. Whatever it takes.

I won't be infertile all my life. 

I'd have a son to call my own, and a daughter to braid her hair. I'll be respected once again and the name "àgàn" would never be repeated into my ears.

Image credit: Pinterest

Based on a true life story. I hope she finds what she desires soon.