Uncertainty

I’ve been sat on the edge of the bath for a good half hour now. My bum’s gone a bit numb. I think it’s slowing becoming grafted to the bath. The triangle of sunbeams has shifted its angle of glow from the basin to the space between the door and the towel cabinet.  At some point my brain will accept the information it’s been given. But right now I feel the need to mentally catalogue every inch of my bathroom – to see the good, the bad and the ugly of my hotchpotch bathroom. In it I see the story of my unsatisfactory life; the half formed relationships I lose interest in all too quickly (the shelf I started sanding but never got round to finishing), the family I always mean to stay in touch with (the cracked tile I’m always going to replace but never do).

My whole body feels a bit numb, as if my blood supply has shifted its directional flow and is focused on just one section of my body. And why am I trapped in my bathroom?

I’m trying to add up how many times in my short existence I’ve had to make life changing decisions. In life there are times when decisions must be made.  Not because we want to make them but because we must. Because we have no real choice in the matter. So we must decide – head or heart. And the head stumbles along with its logical arguments for and against. While the heart beats out its tattoo of go go go even if the choice it’s making will break it in two.

I found out today I’m pregnant. That inside of me, wallowing in amniotic fluid is a tiny little seed made up of me and you. Poor kid, what a gene pool to evolve from. It was one of those delightful little sticks you can buy over the counter that broke the news to me. I peed on it and just like magic, it told me.

I still haven’t thrown the stick in the bin. It presented me with such overwhelming news. I feel I should mount it or something. While I decide what should happen, it’s just sitting there on the bevelled top of the loo. Looking for all the world as if it’s a thermometer and wants to take someone’s temperature.

Finding out you’re pregnant can do that to a person. I feel as though I’ve lived my life. I feel as though I owe that little thermometer the life it’s given to me. I look at my belly and lay a hand across my navel. There is a life in me.

I unleash my bum from the bath, I take the little thermometer and look at it. I open the bin and drop it in. Uncertainty was in my make-up since I took the test. Certainty was how I would look at things. Certainty that I was going to tell my best friend. Certainty that I was going to have this baby.