Last Sunday night, with a very steady voice, he said it was okay if I wanted to wait until I finished my Ph.D. This I have heard within the first week of our marriage. At first, actually I had thought that I was definitely willing to try, as long as I had passed my qualification exam. But he said I couldn't handle that much. I remember vividly how he put his palm on my chest back then, gently saying that he knew I could barely cope with everything that stirred inside me.
Good idea, how brilliant, I thought. What a relief. Then came the comments. The snide remarks. Never from him, always from somebody else. And I can't help but feel hurt everytime a comment comes my way.
Sometime last week, I broke down and told him everything. How helpless I felt, how angry I was especially with several comments coming from his family. I wanted to be a man, I told him, I wanted to go early to the office and come home blissfully unaware of what happened at home. I wanted to be a man, I said, so that I would never grow painfully big with a baby inside, and burst myself open to let the baby out. I wanted to be like you, always able to walk out that door every morning minding your own work, never having to worry whether your underwear still fit, whether your breasts are leaking.
He said he was speechless. He got up, walked across the room, went back to sit next to me, got up again, and sat across of me.
I didn't pursue the conversation.
Last night however, wrapping me in his arms, he said in a steady voice that it was okay if I did not want to have any child, forever.
