Thirty-six.

It doesn’t seem like a big number, does it?

I guess it depends on what you’re counting. Thirty-six jelly beans? That’s a decent amount. Thirty-six grains of sand? Hardly anything. Thirty-six seconds? Probably already gone since you started reading this.

Time is a funny thing, you know. As I get older, I swear that it moves faster and yet each day itself feels like slogging through quicksand. I look at that number, that 36, and my mind denies it. It cannot be. It can’t be that long, can’t be that many. Thirty-six months.

Thirty-six months of hoping and then having each of those hopes shattered, one by one. How many times can a person have their hopes smashed before they themselves break? Before hope abandons them completely?

Thirty-six months of “trying to conceive.” That’s three whole years. Three quarters of ourmarried life.

In thirty-six months, not once has that damn pair of pink lines appeared. I am disappointed. I am angry. But mostly I feel despair. I feel like an idiot for getting my hopes up for two weeks every single month, only to have them dashed again and again.

My doctors remain positive. I’m still young – at least compared to many other women at the fertility clinic. I’m only thirty years old. The treatments are working, at least on paper. But not working well enough, because I’ve never conceived, not once in my life. “Close” only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

A few months ago, my psychiatrist asked me, “What does the future look like?”

I froze. He was asking me to peer right into a dark truth that I’d been avoiding with all my might. A dark truth that coats everything, blurs everything, muffles everything I do.

“That depends,” I managed to whisper, “on whether I ever get pregnant.”

“And if you don’t?” It was a gentle prompt, without malice or indifference.

“If I don’t… I don’t know.” That’s what I said. What I was thinking was: I can’t see that future. I don’t want to see that future, I refuse to look at it. My mind shies away from thinking about it.

What if it’s all been for nothing?