Do you ever start thinking about something and then stop because the thoughts are unbearable? I mean, sometimes you worry because your period hasn't shown up yet, provided you're a woman. You don't worry much if you haven't had sex in the last twenty-nine days especially since your previous period was on time. Perhaps you don't even worry much if you know that your period is often late, and especially not if you're still a virgin. But if you haven't been celibate in the past month, you know there's the possibility of unwanted pregnancy and so you have reason for much worry. Even if you always use contraception and none of the condoms broke, or you've taken the pill every day right on time, you may start to panic that it hasn't come yet.
You know how it was when you started your period and you hated it? You were at school and you were scared the back of your dress was stained, but you couldn't go off and check, because if you got up in the middle of the class everyone would watch you leave and, of course, look at the back of your dress and see you'd messed yourself because they were so bored and didn't feel like looking at the teacher's ugly face any more. So you hated your period and you wished either you'd been born a boy or that you could magically have your womb removed and that it wouldn't matter because if you someday wanted to have a baby it would grow back.
Now you're older and you have had sex with someone and you worry that you're pregnant, so you wish your period would come. You plead for it to come and you know you would confess your undying love for it if it came.
And then you start wondering what the hell you had sex for. It's hardly worth it if you now have an unwanted fetus growing within you.
Or is it like drinking yourself happy where you feel the hangover is worth the previous day's ecstasy? No, it's not the same, is it? A hangover doesn't cause your belly to grow and grow for nine months. Excessive drinking might give you that infamous beer-belly, but it won't directly create the kind of lifelong commitment pregnancy thrusts upon you.
Anyhow, you start thinking about what you would do if you seriously suspected you were pregnant, before thinking about what you would do if you knew that you definitely were. Going to the doctor to find out doesn't exactly produce a giggle of excitement, does it? Especially if you don't even have a doctor who knows that you are sexually active. And even more especially if you still live with your parents and the doctor is the family doctor. And who the hell believes in home pregnancy tests, anyway? So you wait another day.
No, nothing yet. Not a sign of it, although sometimes your tummy feels a little funny so you think it might have come and you rush to the toilet only to find that there's not a stain on your underwear that suggests you've begun bleeding. When you were young and innocent you groaned if you noticed you'd reddened your underwear, whereas now you would whoop for joy if you were alone in the house. What would the rest of the family think if you made ecstatic sounds from inside the toilet? Sometimes you just want to say in front of all of them that your period is late, just so that it doesn't come as so much of a shock later if you are pregnant. But no, you can't be. You always make sure that the semen doesn't come near your genital area apart from when it's inside the condom.
Well, what if the condom had a tiny hole in it? No, it can't have had. Anyway, what about all those people who have unprotected sex and don't fall pregnant even though they did it every day that way for a month? Lucky sods. They so openly tempt the stork to bring them a baby. But it doesn't happen to them, it happens to you, the safe sex fanatic.
Even though you don't know if you would be able to go through with an abortion, you know you couldn't sanely handle having a baby either. You have a boyfriend, but you're not planning on marriage. And anyway you have no intention of marrying because of a baby.
You hear echoing in your head that the safest sex is no sex at all. And you hate your hormones and you hate condoms because if it weren't for them, you wouldn't have had sex. And then you hate yourself for being fertile, not that you know you are. And you start wishing that your boyfriend was sterile, not that you know he isn't.
You know that he is probably nearly as anxious as you are. Yet you feel all alone anyway because you are the one who will have to go through physical changes of mutant proportions and you are the one who will have udders filled with a nutritional drink and you are the one who will have a large wriggling breathing organism pass through the place it is sometimes even slightly painful to insert a mini tampon.
Then you start fantasizing about pushing in a tampon and it's better than fantasizing about sex.
Sex again. Why are you finding a tampon sexually exciting when sex is the very thing that is tormenting you now? You suppose it's not really a sexually exciting thought. It's a pleasurable one and pleasure isn't always sexual. Chocolates are pleasurable to your taste buds, but you wouldn't call them sexually arousing.
You gaze back to the days you were naive and not turned on by the thought of sex. In fact you were horrified by the thought of having a penis enter you. You're not entirely sure why you thought sex was vile, but perhaps it didn't have the innocent appeal of a sweet kiss and a soft, warm hug. Why didn't you settle for those childhood fantasy hugs and kisses two weeks ago?
Well, because the thought of having him inside you is so incredible, right? Well now you can have another living being inside you for nine months. How about that?
It doesn't help thinking that your boyfriend would take responsibility either because it is not your aim in life to have a husband and children. It doesn't help that you're officially an adult who can sign all contracts without the help of your parents and who can bring a child into the world without too much scandal.
It only helps knowing that this dry period isn't a sure sign of pregnancy. So you cling to that thought because it doesn't even help to think that at least you don't have Cancer or Aids. Because perhaps you do. As if worrying about being pregnant isn't enough. At least it's not likely to be both pregnancy and a fatal disease.
A fertilised egg, you think. A curled-up fetus, a baby, your baby. Your child. My god, you know children are the future, but right now you do not want your future to be a child.
You are hit by hysterics and you tell the God you stopped believing in that you won't have pre-marital sex any more if only your periods would come. Since you don't worship the God so many other people do, you don't really care whether or not pre-marital sex is approved of or not, especially in a world where women are raped by their husbands, so it's all very ironic.
Okay, so all the panicking could be for nothing, but it makes you think, doesn't it? And I'll let you know what it makes you think once I get my periods. And I have to get them - because right now the thought of pregnancy is unbearable.
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