I was 19. She was 18. We were in love, and the whole world was ours.
Immediately, I began talking of our first child. How I wanted a little girl. How I wanted to be a daddy. How I thought she would make an excellent mother. Penny was disappointingly silent on the topic, preferring to talk of jobs, and cars, and eventual house payments. But I didn’t care about those things. I wanted to be a father.
Eventually, Penny saw it my way. We began trying for our first child.
We tried.
And tried.
And tried.
After two years, we told each other that these things take time.
After three years, we talked of how some couples experience trouble having a child, but the ones who stick it out eventually get their wish.
Our friends who wanted kids were all having them. Some were on their second child.
It had been more almost four years.
I was reluctant to consult a physician about our struggles. I was sure that eventually we would conceive on our own, but Penny was becoming progressively more frustrated with me. She insisted that we visit a fertility specialist. I expressed to her that my greatest fear was being told it was my fault, and hating myself for it, or knowing it was her fault and resenting her for not being able to give me what I so badly wanted.
We agreed that if we couldn’t conceive on our own after five years of trying, we would see a doctor. I made her promise that if they wanted to test us for fertility, and one of us was infertile, that we would not be told who it was. “Either we are,” I had said, “or we are not capable of having a child. It doesn’t matter which of us it is. If we can’t as a couple then we can’t.” Penny said that we could always adopt if we could not have a child of our own. I agreed, but it didn’t feel the same to me.
Five years came.
The doctor gave us her thoughts.
We were tested.
The doctor said that the chance of us having a child were so slim that we shouldn’t bother preparing for the possibility.
I was crushed.
All I wanted in life was a spouse who loved me and a child who adored me. There was no worse news in existence than what had just been shared.
I would never be a daddy.
The topic of children stopped completely. Then mention of adoption became forbidden. My life seemed to crawl forward from that day as a slow march until death. I loved my wife, but without the possibility of fulfilling my life’s purpose, my existence became mechanical.
I got up.
I prepared.
I went to my job.
I worked.
I came home.
I slept.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
For the next ten years, all I did was exist. Penny had me in counseling. She had me on antidepressants. She tried to find me hobbies and distractions and entertainment. She bought a dog. She bought me an old fixer-upper car. She signed us up for photography classes.
And I accepted all of these things. I played with the dog. I worked on my car. I took pictures. But all the while, I was dead inside. The smiles meant nothing. The laughs were hollow. The joy was faked. I was a walking corpse. I was as close to a zombie as anyone would ever see on this planet.
Penny tried to distract me with pleasure. She bought a sex swing. And toys. She presented herself as open to everything, and proved good to every claim. Anything I wanted to try and more, we did it all. Tie-ups. Masks. Feathers. Video. She came home with a southern piercing. We had sex in public. Discreet sex, yes, but no less public. Penny told me that I could try it all, as long as I didn’t ask for another woman. And for those moments, I was blissfully distracted. But as soon as the curtains were pulled back and the sun shone upon my life again, I was reminded of who I really was: I was a failure of a man, who could never have a child.
At twenty-nine years old, just weeks before my thirtieth birthday and a month before our eleventh anniversary, I attempted suicide. I tried to overdose on medication. The website where I got my information was wrong though, and all I accomplished was getting horribly sick and breaking trust with my wife. She had never felt so betrayed in all her life. Penny did not feel at all responsible for what I had done, like so many spouses in her shoes had. Instead, she gave me the lecture of my life.
“You think I’ll stick around with a guy who goes and tries to kill himself?” she had asked, face red with frustration and hurt. “You think I will waste another ten years on a guy who I just might find in the bathtub because he finally figured out how to do it right? Fuck. You. I can’t handle that. Shit! I can’t handle this! I have babied you, and nursed you, and fucked you more times than I can remember. And this is what you do to me! Fuck! You!”
I remember sitting there, numb to the world, as she railed on, breaking my alarm clock and throwing the contents of my dresser on the floor. In the end, when my reaction never came, she knelt before me and pleaded with me to never try that again. “I can’t live through this one more time,” she sobbed. “I need you. Please.”
And something within me clicked. I may never be a father, but I was a
