Nine Years

Nine years.

Nine years of watching other people’s dreams arrive while mine stayed stuck in the ether with nothing but trust to hold on to.

Nine years of smiling at baby showers, while a quiet grief pressed its hand against my ribs and pretended it wasn’t mine.

Nine years of being told, “Your time will come,” as if they understood what it feels like

to wait for something your soul was built for while your body keeps saying,

not yet… not yet… not yet.

Nine years of watching months turn into seasons and seasons turn into years and years turn into versions of me I don’t even recognise anymore.

I have lived a thousand lives inside those nine years.

Hopeful ones. Angry ones. Numb ones. Strong ones. Broken ones.

Versions of me that held faith like a weapon and versions of me that buried it

because believing hurt too much.

People don’t talk about this kind of grief, the grief that doesn’t have a funeral,

the grief that arrives quietly, every 31-33 days, tearing you open in a way no one sees.

The grief that makes you feel like your body is apologising for something it never meant to do.

They don’t talk about the shame. The guilt. The feeling of being left behind in a life you’re desperate to catch up to.

They don’t talk about the hope either, how its always present, how it still knocks

even after the door has slammed it a hundred times.

Nine years is enough time to rebuild a life from scratch.

Want to hear the irony? I am grateful now to not yet be a mother. To have a child with a boy in a man’s body. I survived his heartbreak, my illnesses, his betrayal, my surgery, my trauma, loss after loss after loss and still, this is the one thing my heart whispers about when the house is quiet and everyone thinks I’m sleeping.

A child.

The one I have loved

without ever meeting.

I don’t know when my pursuit to motherhood will finally shift.

I just know this:

I am not alone in this ache. There are women all over the world carrying invisible cradles, hiding their monthly heartbreak inside small talk and busy schedules, swallowing a pain that has no name and no cure except the very thing they’re praying for.

And if you’re one of them.

I see you.

I am you.

I know what it feels like to want something so much your body becomes a battlefield between hope and reality.

Nine years hasn’t broken me.

It has carved me and shaped me into a woman who knows how to survive the kind of longing that could have killed her softness but didn’t.

Nine years of not yet has taught me how to love a future I haven’t met.

How to hold space in my arms for something I can’t touch.

How to keep living when the dream that lights you up is also the dream that keeps breaking your heart.

I’m not giving up.

But I’m not pretending it’s easy.

This is grief, This is hope, and the war between them.

This is what it looks like to want a child more than you’ve ever wanted anything in your life.

Today, all I can say is:

Nine years. I’m still here. Still wanting. Still waiting. Still believing, even when it hurts.

And that alone is its own kind of courage.