North Star

39 | positive

2019

The test was positive. All three of them.

It felt like it was just yesterday that I was sitting with Kanani in the bathroom, worrying about whether she was pregnant. Never in a million years would I have expected to find myself in the same situation, let alone so soon after she had. If anything was going to scare me straight into making sure nothing like that happened to me, it should have been that whole ordeal. Instead, there I sat with three white sticks, all with two angry, red lines glaring up at me. Taunting me.

Or maybe I was just freaking the fuck out. Maybe they weren't angry at all. Maybe those annoying little sticks were actually happy for me, even though I didn't want this. That was what all of the commercials showed growing up. A bunch of happy people waiting to confirm they were about to welcome a baby into the world.

I had known for a long time that I never wanted children.

This limited and specific definition of what it meant to build a family had been engrained in me for so long that I thought, coming to that realization when I was young, that something was wrong with me. I contemplated the reasons why I might have felt that way, and most of my reasonings were just attacks directed at myself. I thought I wouldn't be a good mom. I would never be able to afford to. I was scared I would mess up. Having children would have ruined my life and all the hypothetical plans I had for myself. All of it was designed to make me feel as if I failed at life, and that was the singular reason why I didn't want kids.

The truth? I just didn't want them. Most of those weren't questions I couldn't answer in the first place, so worrying about them caused unnecessary stress over something I didn't need to. I didn't need any other reason than not wanting them and that was okay. That was something I finally let myself recognize and accept after a class debate about abortion during my sophomore year of high school.

What was most important was acknowledging that having a family and having children were not mutually exclusive. I knew deep down that I would always want a family, even if I wasn't sure if I would find that beyond the one I had been born into. But I would always have a family because of them. And if, somewhere down the line, I fell in love with someone and was ready to commit to spending my life with them, they would also become my family. Hell, if I wanted a fucking dog, that dog would be family, too. (The best kind of family.) (I would happily pick up dog poop over changing a diaper any day of the week.) And if I was my only immediate family, that was okay, too.

After pushing the tests aside, I took a deep breath.

"Everything will be okay," I said to myself. "It'll be okay." I might have said that exact phrase about five times since I locked myself in the bathroom. The more times I said it, the more likely I was to believe it.

It came as a surprise, even to me, how calm I was after having taken three pregnancy tests with all of them coming back positive. (I didn't want to know how much money our friends and family had spent on Sunny D this year.) (It had to be a new record for us.) Having a silent meltdown the other night at Nikau's apartment got most of it out of my system. At the time, I thought it was the worst place at which I could have realized what was happening, but it worked out in the end. His presence forced me to minimize my physical reaction, while also providing me with a chance to think about something else when we woke up the next morning and had breakfast before he drove me back home. I had even waited a day until I snuck down to a pharmacy and picked up the tests. I considered Nikau's calming presence as a great influence for that.

"I'll be okay." I dropped my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. "I'm going to be okay."

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