Un-mother the Woman

In the beginning, she could smell the petals and describe their scents, knew how love felt like because she paragraphed about it until her pencil broke. Promises were made every hour with much joy and honesty because every word was sweet and memorable; you wouldn't take that away.

But time, that relentless thief, began to steal her joy, one hope at a time. The days when love was a sonnet whispered between the sheets turned into nights of silence, where the void between them grew wider, unspoken and unbearable. Each month brought with it the weight of anticipation, a heavy cloak she wore with increasing dread. And each time, when hope crumbled, it left her with shards of broken dreams, sharp and unforgiving.

Her husband’s words, once tender, now carried an edge. "Why can’t we have what others do so easily?" he would ask, as though she held the answer, as though it was a choice she had made. His gaze, once filled with admiration, now lingered on her with quiet disappointment. The warmth they once shared was replaced by a cold expectation, an unspoken demand that pressed down on her chest, making it hard to breathe.

She began to avoid the world outside, where mothers cradled infants and children’s laughter echoed in the wind. The sight of a stroller could bring tears to her eyes, tears she had no words to explain. Friends, well-meaning but intrusive, would ask when it would be her turn. She would smile, a small, tight curve of her lips, and say, "In time," though she no longer believed it herself.

Her body, once a source of pride, became a battleground. She treated it with disdain, each failure turning into self-loathing. She visited doctors, took pills, tried different herbs followed every whispered remedy. Each time, she returned home with hope tucked beneath her ribs, only for it to dissipate like smoke when the tests came back the same - negative, empty, barren.

And then, the pressure became too much. It seeped into their home, filled the spaces between their words, and tainted their love. Her husband’s frustration grew, his patience waned. "Are you even trying?" he asked one night, his voice sharp as a blade. The accusation stung, cutting deeper than any other pain she had known. For hadn’t she given everything she had? Her body, her spirit, her soul - all laid bare in the desperate hope of becoming what he so desperately wanted.

But still, she was not enough.

The days turned into a blur of tears and empty rooms, the silence broken only by the ticking of a clock that seemed to mock her with every second. She felt herself unraveling, a thread pulled loose from the fabric of who she once was. She had defined herself by this pursuit, this quest to give life, and in failing, she felt she had lost herself.

In the mirror, she no longer recognized the woman staring back. The light in her eyes had dimmed, her smile faded into a ghost of what it once was. She had become a shadow, a whisper of the vibrant woman who once wrote of love with a pencil until it broke.

One day, she found herself in the garden, where the flowers bloomed despite her neglect. She bent down, inhaling the scent of a single rose, and for the first time in months, she allowed herself to cry. Not for the child she never bore, but for the woman she had lost in the trying. She wept for the promises broken, for the love that had withered under the weight of expectation. And as she cried, she felt something within her shift, a release, a letting go.

She realized then that she had been carrying a burden too heavy to bear, one that had not been hers alone. The desire to become a mother had consumed her, leaving nothing but ashes where her joy once burned bright. And in that moment of clarity, she knew she had to un-mother the woman she had become, to reclaim the woman she was meant to be.

She would write again, not of love lost, but of love found - in herself again, in the garden, in the simple beauty of a flower blooming despite the odds. She would let the universe un-mother the woman and in doing so, she would find herself again.