People talk about baby fever, or feeling broody, or hearing their biological clock, and I have no idea what they are talking about. To me, it's like saying "There are times when I feel like having some oxygen, so I breathe in, inflate my lungs, then exhale carbon dioxide." If you said that to me, I'd think, "You only breathe once? You only need it every once in a while? I need to breathe all the time!"

My biological clock is not a mild tick, or even a loud, rhythmic booming, it's a constant screaming, like a car alarm, or like having tinnitus. It's so constant and unvarying, that I don't consciously hear it all the time, it's part of the sounds in my head, like hearing the blood pump through my body.

But sometimes I realize what I'm feeling, and that I'm feeling it all the time, and it brings me to my knees.

I'm going to be 38 years old in just over three weeks. And it's occurring to me that I might never have a baby at all. That was really hard to type, I sat there for about a minute, as if typing it might make it true, but whether I admit it or ignore it, it doesn't matter, it really might happen. And I don't know if I could stand it. The idea of never having a baby, of never having a child, of never having a teenager, of never having what my mother has, an adult child making obnoxious comments into the phone, fills me with absolute horror.

It seems that everyone in the online world is having babies or just had a baby or is thinking about babies, and I'm not jealous or anything, I eat up entries about swollen feet and sore nipples like chocolate covered cherries--I inhale anything anyone writes, I want to live inside these journals. Plum and Athena and Sherry and Lil and Carrie and and and...

And when I think that maybe I'll never have that, that it would take a miracle, really, for my life to change enough in the extremely short time-frame that I am looking at, I want to start screaming.

The other day, I was here at work, talking to The Raccoon and the payroll girl, who is about six months pregnant, and I was telling her something, getting confused and tripping over my tongue, and The Raccoon said, "Boy, when you get pregnant, you're going to have the worst case of pregnancy brain ever! You'll be walking into walls!" and I was over the moon with happiness and I didn't know why, until I realized that she had said, "When you get pregnant..." as though it was a sure thing, as though time wasn't getting away from me like the tide going out. She thinks that I'll have a baby! She knows I want to, and she assumes that I will! It made my day.

I have five years at the absolute most, more likely three. And I am no nearer my goal than I was five years ago, or ten, what makes me think that it's possible? It kind of isn't, but that doesn't mean that it won't happen. God, I hope so, because I have a pretty good feeling that even if the ship sails, that the screaming in my head will continue forever. I don't think it knows or cares about practicalities like fertility or marriage or circumstances, all it knows it what it wants, and what it needs and what it has to have.

Today's horoscope:
Lack of order in little things distracts you from larger, more important matters. Organize and make priorities.

One year ago today:
"Donna has an odd sense of humour. A very, very odd sense of humour, that is!"

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Last Updated Thurs 1 August 21:51:09 2002