If last night was crying (and crying it was), today is cleansing. I’m going through stacks of papers, sorting through work to be done, taking inventory of my home and my life. I’m beginning to remember that I was a whole person before I met D., and I will be a whole person long after he’s gone from my life (which looms sooner with each passing day). I am a strong woman — a strong woman who, inevitably, will cry herself to sleep again many more times before she dies, a fact that depresses less than it heartens.

Today, the magical thinking begins. I am pondering the list of reasons I don’t have to and my (perhaps delusional) optimism is worrisome. In this state of mind, there are no (good) reasons I can’t have a baby: surely the financial, emotional, and physical factors (not to mention the shaky state of my relationship with D.) are incidental, irrelevant facts, fragments of information not necessary when weighing my options.

And, of course, when I mention to D. that perhaps we need to reconsider, he doesn’t argue. What does this all mean? I wonder. I’m notorious for accepting jobs, responsibilities, projects, that I then push aside because I’ve overestimated my ability to handle them (in addition to my regular work, children, etc.). But a baby isn’t a freelance job I can drop at the last minute. How, exactly, can I think about this at all rationally? I feel as though I am working through the stages of grief in my decision-making process: Denial? Check. Anger? Check. Bargaining? Well, wouldn’t you know it…I’m right there.