postpartum depression

Someone I know just had her first baby.

I say "someone I know" because if you were a friend of mine and became pregnant or had kids, or maybe I knew you once and you looked me up on Friendster and sent me a cheery "Hi!" with the picture of you glowingly expectant, or making faces at the camera with your roundfaced kid(s).... chances are that I sorta kinda drifted away. Or fell off the face of the earth. Or became distracted, busy, or "just not into the same things" as you. It's not you, it's me.

I realize it's unhealthy, unproductive and completely unfair to compare oneself to others. I'm usually the supportive person who helps others realize this. But, as with most things with me, knowing doesn't help.

I look at friends, former friends, people I know or used to know, strangers on the street, and I eat my heart out. By my age, my mom and my older sister were both done with having kids (5, and four respectively). And here I am, 27 years old, happily married for five years, still holding out for "someday".

Patrick does not want kids. It's the impenetrable wall in our marriage, the conflicting expectations we didn't realize we had. He really does not want kids: so much so that, when we talk quietly and seriously about it, he will sometimes tell me reluctantly that I might want to think about finding someone else. Someone who wants to raise kids, and a family. Because he's not that guy.

I don't pray. But sometimes, when I want something badly, a burning wish finds it way out of my heart and into the universe, hoping for an answer. And I wish, if I am not meant to have kids with Patrick, that the desire to have them leaves me. I do not want to be this person. I do not want to feel like this. I feel barren and needy, evil and guilty, selfish and pushy, for wanting what I always felt was the most natural thing in the world to have.