Of the moment

A story about a timely matter.

30 June 2023

Sasha Nickels —

Six Weeks

Will I be alone forever? Dramatic question, yes. I will admit, it is a bit extra. This situation is extra.

I should be grateful. I had a choice. I was six weeks along, and I had a choice. I could decide not to be a mom. If not for the agency I felt, that I had, my desire to rise to the task of parenthood would have been undermined by the sheer weight of having no other fucking option.

Florida. Fuck fucking Florida.

Six weeks. They want us to know, to decide if we are ready to become a parent in six weeks, now.

I would have had no choice.

And I would have questioned myself at every turn because of it.

I’m too young, they say, for a hysterectomy.

I’m too old for celibacy.

Birth control makes the women in my family fat which could slow down the  chance of fucking but it would undoubtedly fuck up how I am treated. I know. I used to be a size two. I am a size two no longer. On all other accounts, I look the same. Yet. The increase in weight has bankrupted social currency I had amassed in dividends from my Flat-Belly-Babe stock days.

I have a daughter, the best gift, the best blessing, the best “wholly shit” I could have ever prayed, begged, borrowed for, and my life is enriched in so many ways but I am destitute in so many others. Balance is overrated.

I would not have made it this far without small miracles. I am grateful for the people who have shown us, my daughter and I, kindness. Stuck by our side when our cries competed for limited attention. At times, these merciful breaks were sufficient. Others–I am a mother. I cannot afford luck nor can I rely on it when someone else’s life relies on mine.

If I had the funds, the support, I could divide my time with another child. I am sure. Loving baby Sarah has shown me that I can love so much more than I ever thought possible. That is not the issue.

The issue is that I am single and I want to mingle and I want to make love without the risk of another egg fertilized as I realized so much shit about pregnancy during and after being pregnant. Experience is different. That disaster is repeated by people with a remarkable capacity to forget. I remember the horror of all of it and I will not do it again.

Cannot do it again.

I am black with a fifty-percent chance of costly complications costing me my life–my time with the one person I had risked it all for the first time.

I will not participate in a mistake.

But what do I say when the next person wants kids, and they “slip?” Or it breaks, the thing that should encase all of my deepest fears on their person when they slide out?

I, we, are being forced to let this state and its privileged decisions determine the intimate commitments made and how. Romantic love is not everything, no. Motherhood, to me, is. I can content myself through life, if I have to decide, with being a mommy.

But why does the prospect—no, the reality—of that hurt so damn much?

Why do I deserve to be lonely?

Sasha Nickels, a graduate of Human Services, writes about love and loneliness. She is terrified of social media and can be found hiding behind books. She has performed Spoken Word in Orlando since 2012 and has published 14 short stories on ReedsyPrompts, one of which, “Suffer to Sip,” was shortlisted.

Photo by Susan Cohen