For the very first time in my life, I wanted the night to be very long. Not that I didn’t want that before, of course everybody prefers longer nights and shorter days which sometimes made me wonder if our large loud clock hanging in our living room cooperated with the rotation of the earth because somehow the clock tends to slow down it’s pace in order to tag along with the longer nights and shorter days and vice versa. I couldn’t sleep and even when I managed to sleep, it didnt last. I woke up severally that night. I wasn’t thinking straight, alot of what ifs were going through my head, I was mentally tired and couldn’t even talk to anyone about it, not even him, at least not yet. I wanted the day to break so fast and at the same time I wanted it slow so I won’t find out what I wanted to know. My mind was already playing games with me, I was conscious of every single thing I did, everything seemed like a sign. Yesterday, I ate four times without thinking until the fourth plate, then a question popped into my mind, could it be that I was?????. I dropped the plate and rushed to the mirror to check the size of my stomach, it looked normal but i just thought it was usually flatter on a normal day.
Then I got irritated by eating the food, so I spat thrice before trying to convince myself that the pepper was not enough that was why i was irritated and spiting out. So I added pepper and a little salt and took two spoons to see if it will be better, there was a little change but not enough to stop me from feeling irritated and spitting, so I added more pepper. No change still but I kept adding pepper till I had a running nose and teary eyes, then I stopped.
Those were the only two signs I could think of, so I decided to ask google for few more but google overdid it’s work that day. I saw one that had to do with the breast getting heavier and dense. But thought that happens whenever I was ovulating. I quickly pulled off the loose shirt I was putting on and unhooked my bra. I carefully checked the weight of my breast by using my two hands to hold each breast and lifting them up and down, at the same time, trying to compare the weight of my breast at that point in time to the weight of my breast on a normal day. It wasn’t working so well for me because I had never checked the weight of my breast for no reason so I couldn’t really compare even though I thought that it seemed heavier than normal. I stood at the front of the mirror trying to convince myself that it was just my mind playing tricks on me. So I stopped the breast exercise and decided to check for other symptoms.
I stumbled upon one that said production of urine in my body was going to be high due to the pressure on my bladder, I sat up on my bed when I realize that I’ve actually been urinating alot these past few days. I was slowly ticking all the approval boxes of what I dreaded. I just had to do one more verification that was going to draw the conclusion line.
So I just laid on my bed throughout the night, waiting and waiting for morning. For some reason I wasn’t comfortable lying on my stomach so I sat down at some point even if I didn’t want to because I thought it was going to make me think alot and it did. I thought about alot of things. I thought of how my world will crumble depending on the result I see in the morning and then I thought of how I was going to be strong for the both of us but at the same time I thought of starving myself to get rid of it, and then I thought of how inhumane that was and how foolish I was to have gotten myself in this situation in the first place.
My alarm woke me up by 4am, I stood up forcefully from the chair on which I dozed off almost breaking it, immediately tried to hold it still so I don’t wake anyone in the house. I walked quietly to my wardrobe where I had kept it tied in a black nylon and also a clean dry plate that I wasn’t using anymore. I tried to open the door as quietly as I could and I tiptoed to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet sit breathing really hard, one would think I had just finished running a 100 meters race.
As I untied the black nylon, I remembered the expression on the woman’s face that was at the pharmacy when I got there and told her what I wanted. She wasn’t suprised, she looked at me with disgust written all over her face, I thought I heard her hiss and mutter somethings when she went to get what I asked for, I gave her the money and she almost threw it at me and immediately started attending to another customer. I couldn’t care at that point so I just collected it and hurriedly left the shop.
I bent down to urinate into the plate, it lasted longer than normal, I wondered if that was a sign too or it was just my mind playing its tricks again. I dipped it into the urine making sure I didn’t cross the line I was instructed not to. Once I saw the reddish colour travel through it, I removed it from my urine. I can swear that I heard my heart beating, I waited patiently as it travelled slowly. The first line was drawn, I couldn’t bear to look so I faced down and waited for some seconds while my hands shook. I looked up and I didn’t see a second line. I checked the instructions written on the packet again to make sure I wasn’t making a mistake, but I wasn’t, I was actually very correct, I wasn’t pregnant for him or for anybody. I didn’t know how to feel, I can’t say I was happy but I can say I was free, so free. I felt free.
I discarded all my equipments, tiptoed back into my room and stood in front of my mirror for some minutes. My mind was good at this game. I totally believed it. The mind is like a pathetic liar that disappears once you find out the truth because all the signs disappeared. My breast didn’t feel heavy again and my stomach looked flatter. I dropped my shirt and into my bed, landing on my bed with my stomach, the same stomach that I didn’t feel comfortable lying on. I slept off this daybreak.