I Heard It Through the Grapevine
I recently heard a rumour through the grapevine. One about Big Love. Someone told me that his current girlfriend was pregnant, so I immediately hopped on to Facebook and tapped his name in the search bar. Why? Because I’m stupid. It didn’t really matter though. It looks as though he’s deleted his Facebook page, along with a few of his other social accounts.
Not content with still having no answers, I decided to type her name into the search bar. I got my answer the moment I saw her profile picture. A side view of a very large bump.
Yep, she’s definitely pregnant.
It felt like a kick to my uterus. How is he heading into his second child and I still have no children? Zero. Nada. Nothing. She looked absolutely beautiful in that profile picture too, which of course made things even worse. Clearly pregnancy agrees with her.
I’m HPV+, have precancerous cells on my cervix that may or may not come back and/or develop into full-blown cancer and the ex-love of my life is having a baby. I’m losing this breakup battle FOR SURE.
Why does everyone else keep getting the big happy-ever-after that I keep trying to get my hands on? Why is everyone else finding their special someone, making babies, getting married, buying new houses, and posting happy and carefree shots of them all on Instagram? If one more person announces a pregnancy/new home/engagement/wedding on my Facebook, I’m going to close my account and go into social lockdown just like Big Love.
(Okay, so I probably won’t do that because then I won’t be able to punish myself by stalking ex-boyfriends but let’s just go with it, okay?)
It’s at times like this that I can’t help but look back over some of the decisions I’ve made in my life and wonder if I should have or could have done things differently. I’m seeing The Director right now and I’m relatively happy with him and his hot-headed ways, but I can’t help but think what-if. In fact, those what-ifs are all I can think about these days. I think it’s a thing I do when things aren’t right … Or is it a thing that everyone does?
I had a chat with The Fireman a while back, reminiscing over times gone by and wondering how different life would’ve been if my dad hadn’t started shagging his mum and spectacularly destroyed what was left of our fairly volatile but still very loving relationship.
“Would we have gotten married by now?” He asked me.
“Yeah, I reckon so. I’d have been annoyed if you hadn’t put a ring on my finger after all that time,” I laughed back. And we chit-chatted about how many kids we think we might have had, where we would have spent anniversaries … it was all quite strange really. Nice, though. But yeah, definitely strange.
And what if I’d stayed with The Hubby? Or Jock? Or Big Love? How differently would my life have gone? Where would I be now? What would I be doing? So many what-ifs and so little time, but it’s a pointless exercise anyway, isn’t it? I can’t go back and change anything, not a single decision. I wish I could. Right now, as my life seems to be spectacularly falling apart, the what-ifs are like an escape for me.
And that’s what happens when you find out that an ex of yours — one that actually means something to do you, still — starts procreating with some other woman: you start wondering how things would be if you were in her shoes. Well, I do, anyway. Despite the fact he spent all of my money, stole my belongings, kicked me out on the other side of the world, left me with absolutely nothing to my name, ready to start life all over again … for the SECOND time. (He wasn’t responsible for the first time, admittedly.)
But how is this fair? I’m a good person. I deserve happiness.
I wish them both happiness even though I am bitter and angry and jealous. I just hope he sticks around long enough to see this kid — his second kid — grow up. He’s already played the absent father role once in his life, it would be sorely disappointing to see him do all of that again.
But seriously though … where’s my happy-ever-after at?
Photo by William Iven on Unsplash
