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Blue.
All I saw was blue.
It filled my constricted pupils, crashing through my retinas and flooding the crevices of my mind. Next, it attacked my lungs, restricting my air supply and rendering my body useless. I was sinking, drowning, in this blue of isolation.
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Today marked the end of the twelfth month since we first attempted to conceive. Statistics showed that most couples were ushered devoutly into the house of Success within the First Twelve. Evidently, we were not a part of Most Couples. Success had slammed her door shut as we hesitantly stepped onto the threshold, taking with her our last slivers of hope.
Red meant pregnant.
Blue meant failure.
I was the problem. I was infertile, my optimism too childish.
My sister would play with Megatron and Batman while I played with Cinderella and Barbie. At sixteen, she had all the guy friends when I had all the boyfriends. Her distinctive boxy trampling, burdened by her body’s stout and indelicate form, would attack at my perfection; at the genes that would encrypt an elegant strut, gnashing at my thoroughbred legs and mauling away my high cheekbones. She was the ugly duckling that graced her way into becoming an ugly swan. Carefree, she was the least expected to commit, playing the Shrew to my Bianca. For to her, marriage signalled the abnormal anchorage of two independent spirits, a parasitic leeching of all individuality like the God-forsaken male angler fish, whose entirety is lethally stolen away by its female counterpart; a living death. To her, the burdensome ring of commitment was just a mere excuse to be handed over like a recycled Christmas present; the first step to losing your name and identity.
“Without further ado, I now pronounce you a Mrs., a couple; no longer a self, but a part.”
And yet, she was the first to marry; the first to shake the stingy hands of Success. Her eyes were the first to set sights on the house keys, their gentle tinkling creating a sweet lullaby as they dangled within reach of her fingertips.
And oh, how she seized them.
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What is the role of a woman? Forget the physical; beyond flesh and bone. What is the underlying function of us children of Eve?
Exactly that, isn’t it? To walk in the footsteps of Eve, nurturing and mothering the seeds implanted in the Earth by Adam.
Knowing this, how can one such as myself have the heart to walk the streets of this pregnancy-praising society? Where trains hoard the varicose-stricken legs of women who rub their bellies in a fit of self-attention, arching their backs and thrusting out their triumphant swollen bellies as if taunting, jeering, “I win, I win.” Mere civilians parting as the red carpet rolls out: make way for the mother-to-be, praise the mother-to-be, long live the mother-to-be.
I will never experience that praise, that speculation. I will never fall under the scrutinising eyes of society as they debate through columns and columns if what they see is a baby bump or the results of a midnight feast. I will never resemble Eve, I will never harvest Adam’s seeds; I will never possess this fundamental aspect that labels a woman as a woman.
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Life is brutal. There is no justice. The guilty are free to discover the boundaries of nature whilst I, so innocent and pure, dwell in a synthetic caging of the mind. My sister is not exempt from these wicked; unfairly acquitted and left unaccountable for her actions. She celebrates, drowning herself in toxic alcohol shots, breast-stroking through martini swill and indulging on caffeine cocktails laden with nicotine hangovers. She is ignorant, not once thinking of the child within. Am I alone when I see her as what she is: a murderer of innocence?
She sees a world teeming, overflowing, with life as her salad-sisters cackle over the cooing newborns, prodding their delicate flesh with acetate-laminated manicures. This world she undeservingly roams around, the world surrounding me, is teeming with life.
And yet my world is stale.
I breathe in no air, my eyes witness no life and all I feel is frigid manacles clamping me down as I am unjustly condemned of Infertility. Awaiting me: a life sentence of biding my time so that eventually I can receive, yet again, nothing.
The world stares at me in reprimand. They see me as I am not: a criminal for defying Mother Nature, void of potential. But Mother Nature weeps with knowledge. The wrong sister has been convicted. I am left to watch the unworthy escorted to freedom as I become the favourite Aunt; the Only Aunt.
The Judge glares harshly at me. A life sentence is not enough. Instead, he sends a monthly Red as a reminder, a cruel taunt that signifies an endless cycle of defeat and failure. When once upon a long time, this Red signalled the validation of my steps into womanhood, it signified an inexpressible liberty from an unwanted pregnancy. I embraced this Red, just that once. I was eager, grateful and fatally ignorant of its duplicity.
Life has a brutal sense of humour.
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All I saw was blue.
That blue. The blue that ended my life.
I smothered the blue with my blanket, leaving it buried deep within the crevices of my mind. I stood shakily, closed the bedroom door behind me and wearily slumped my way down the stairs towards the dining table. Awaiting me was my husband’s delightful meal, lovingly prepared and served.
An age seemed to pass as I approached him.
A kiss on the neck, a squeeze of the hands, as I silently watched him pour the reddest of wines.
