You can't always get what you want.

There is this incredible ache inside me. I feel it without acknowledging it most days, because that acknowledgement leads to mourning for something I can't lose, because it's something I don't have. My entire life I have had a love/hate relationship with the idea of being a mom. Now it's something I think about constantly...it's the knot in the bottom of my throat that, no matter how many times I swallow, just won't go away. In the quiet moments, when I let myself acknowledge this unfulfilled desire, I feel the hot burn of tears filled with regret as they slide down my cheeks. I work in an office surrounded by children all day. I am one of the few women there that doesn't have a child. I see young mothers with their children, overwhelmed and stressed. I see new parents beaming and giddy and scared as they hold their infant gingerly and with awe. I venture out of my office cautiously in order to maintain my blinders, continuing on in self-induced ignorance. Perhaps, though, the most difficult to ignore, are the neglected kids with parents who can't appreciate how rare that little life is, and knowing there are so many people who want children but don't have them. People who would give up everything just to hold a child and call him their own. People like me. 

Ignoring these thoughts is the safest route for me. Because I can avoid the self-loathing that comes from being single and in no place remotely close to having children. The irony of it all really is incredible. I spent so many years believing that I truly didn't want a family. And here I am, time far from on my side, and that's what I want more than anything. 

My social media accounts are filled with families parading their happiness across the Internet. So I removed Facebook from my phone. It is dangerous to pine. I scroll quickly past photos of family and friends with their kids in tow, smiling faces peering up and captured in a precious moment on the screen. I avoid small talk in the elevator with families, an infant car seat in tow and tiny little hands clinging to parents' coats. I don't make eye contact with the babies in the carts in line next to me at the store. I look down when I pass parents and kids out for a walk at the lake.

My sister is here visiting with her husband and children. And I wrecklessly snuggle my little nieces and nephew, soaking up their innocence and youth with every ounce of my soul. But the closer I get, the more quickly I must remind myself that I can't love them for too long without my heart whispering my wish that they were mine. So I can only love them as distantly as possible. I am in self-preservation mode. Because my heart is so fragile that the slightest touch from a pudgy, dimpled toddler could burst this dam and break this mask and cripple me. 

What if I won't get the chance? What if it's too late? What if I spent my time being too afraid and too preoccupied with everything else that I missed it? Is that why this aching won't go away? Because in the quiet moments when I acknowledge this truth, I can't help but wonder how I let myself get here. And then turn to face the realization that time doesn't stop moving forward. And it's in those moments that I have to shut off and shut down. You can't lose what you never had. But you sure as hell can miss it. And I do. Every. Single. Day.