I’m getting sterilized tomorrow.

I gave consent for either Essure or the classic tubal ligation, depending on my anatomy.  (Because I’ve never had children or been pregnant, my doctor could have difficulty performing the first procedure, which depends on access to my Fallopian tubes through my cervix.)

If I get Essure, I will be sterile after a sufficent amount of scar tissue builds up in my Fallopian tubes, creating physical blockages.  This usually occurs after three months, but can sometimes take up to six months.  Until this happens, I will have to use back-up birth control (of course, this is purely theoretical–I’m thinking condoms, should the opportunity for a romantic interlude present itself).  If I get a tubal ligation, I will be sterile immediately following the operation.

This means:  after over 20 years of being on the Pill (off and on–mostly on), I will no longer be on hormonal birth control.  I got my first prescription for Pill at the age of 15, exactly one month prior to losing my virginity.  I’m 37 now.  That’s a lot of artificial hormones–so much so that I haven’t menstruated since 2005. 

I may or may not start menstruating again once I’m off the Pill.  I actually look forward to menstruating, though I remember it as inconvenient and messy.  I remember enjoying the knowledge that I was sloughing off a month’s worth of cells, washing them away clean and giving my uterus a fresh start for the next month.  If I do start menstruating again, buying “feminine” products will probably feel like an exciting novelty, at least for the first month or so.  I remember them as being expensive. 

I haven’t gone down the “feminine” aisle in the drugstore or supermarket in a long, long time.  I remember lots of gushy pink and Georgia O’Keefe-style “mighty vulva” flower imagery–I wonder if that’s changed?  Wasn’t there a sanitary napkin with “wings” that folded around the cotton gusset of the wearer’s underwear, ostensibly to prevent staining? 

I’ll be starting from scratch.  I remember using–and liking–Instead cups, those little plastic diaphragm-like gadgets that you wedge behind your pubic bone that gently cup your cervix and hold half a day’s worth of blood before leaking.  I’ll probably buy those again.  I’m ambivalent about shoving my fingers up my own pussy again–will I remember how to do it?  I remember being really fast–I’d pull the Instead out, empty it, rinse it, and shove it back in with very little fanfare in the bathroom of the peep show on Westlake, all ready for my next private toy show.  Maybe I’ll get that fast and sure again.

How I feel about never having children:

Normal.  The same.  I’ve never felt particularly maternal; never felt the pull of any so-called biological clock.  I don’t like children or babies–I find them smelly and inscrutable, for the most part, and have never been particularly charmed by their various learning and socialization processes.  I don’t like cleaning up human shit, and I don’t like getting up early.  I struggle with depression and would not be able to consistently mother another individual without full-time help, and even with that, I’d feel a lot of guilt for passing along my faulty genes.  A tendency toward very poor vision, accumulation of adipose tissue, and crazypants major depression on both sides of the family?  Great.  Even with a college fund, that’s quite a handicap.  I wouldn’t wish it on another human being–how cruel to knowingly have a child that will suffer the same things I’ve suffered?  No amount of love or money in the world can make up for deliberately breeding someone who will almost certainly be tortured by her own brain chemistry.  I never asked to be born, and given the choice, I wouldn’t have been. 

Only once did I seriously consider having children with someone I loved, but ultimately, we couldn’t afford to marry and raise children.  He was unemployed and my income from writing was low and sporadic.  We didn’t have the money for a larger place to live, or for medical care for me during pregnancy.  A baby would have been the wrong thing entirely–a millstone around both our necks.  I still wonder what it would be like to have had his child, but that’s like wondering what my life would have been like had I been born wealthy or heterosexual or born-again Christian or any number of things I’m not.  It would have turned me into a completely different person, unrecognizable to the person I am now.  Sometimes I think about raising a beautiful daughter and both of us trying to protect her from the world with so little resources, and it almost breaks my heart to picture us losing that battle, which undoubtedly, we would.  The world is not set up to allow writers and artists to stay home and raise a child thoughtfully and well. 

This isn’t the world’s problem.  I accept that without complaint–it is what it is, and if that isn’t exactly what I’d like it to be, what choice do I have?  Insisting upon having a child and then being forced to give her to the ugly, racist, stupid bureaucrats that control state-run daycare and public school wouldn’t change anything–it would only change my child into yet another socialized tool.  It takes money, societal support, and leisure to raise a child morally, and I don’t have those things.  Why bother imagining what it would be like if everything were different?  Frankly, I’d rather daydream about traveling the world and being rich and famous.

So how I feel about my loss of potential motherhood is primarily, relieved.  I’ve never felt like a mother.  I’m not good with head lice, stomach flu, scraped knees, patience, and regular nutritious meals.  I like cocktails, travel, flexibility, creativity, spontaneity, and cultural immersion.  I like reading library books all day and having cookies for dinner.  I like going on dates with fascinating strangers.  I like my flat stomach the way it is.  I can’t imagine my intimate parts being wrenched apart by another human’s cranium.  I can’t imagine giving my life for someone else.  I’m not done with mine yet.

So tomorrow I’m getting sterilized, and I would like to celebrate somehow–maybe not tomorrow night because I might feel too tired and beat-up from the anesthesia, but sometime soon.  Maybe I’ll take myself out to a fancy dinner, even though I’m getting laid off and I shouldn’t spend that kind of money.  I’d like to buy myself something new to wear, or get a new tattoo, or maybe just get my hair done.  I’m not sure–but I want to celebrate this.  This is important–a once-in-a-lifetime decision; momentous.  This marks my change from potential mother to…something else.  I have never not been a potential mother.  But after tomorrow, I will be that new thing.

Good-bye, birth control pills!  Good-bye, imaginary baby!  Good-bye to any potential suitors whose idea of partnering includes reproduction!  Hello to the new thing–the never-mother, the never-been-pregnant, the just-one-thing body.  I am all I have or will ever be.  My body will never make another human being, though my writing might live past my own lifetime, if I’m lucky.  And that’s a totally okay thing.  A good thing.

Hello, new thing.

[EDIT:  This post is in no way a slam against people who have children, or people who want children, or children themselves (well, okay, I did call them stinky, and I stand by that).  Some of my dearest friends are mothers, and my own mother is incredibly precious to me. 

This isn't about me judging anyone else's choice--this is about me making my own.

You would think this goes without saying, but in the world of the Internet, strangely, it doesn't.]