Yes, I am married.

It’s been four years now.

No, I do not have children yet.

Sure, go ahead and lecture me all about the joys of motherhood,  how meaningless life is without children and how I shouldn’t be carried away by my ambitions and career because one day I will snap out of it and realize how I wasted the golden years of conception and motherhood.

No, I am not cold-hearted and no, I am not a career-blinded woman who never smiled or crushed over a cute little baby because I was too busy planning my future.

Yes, I do want children.

Yes, I realize it gets more difficult to conceive the older I get.

Yes, I do also realize I am in my late twenties.

Yes, I know I would have more energy now for a baby than I would ever have in my late thirties.

No, I am not too lazy or irresponsible to contemplate motherhood.

I would probably want two children, yes.

I do realize if I want two children I should be getting my first now.

No, I do not want the age gap between my children and I to be a wide one.

Yes, I am seeing a doctor.

No,  I really do not want to go to your gyno, I like mine just fine.

No, I really do not care to hear the story of your distant cousin’s neighbor’s daughter who went to your gyno and got pregnant after seven years of trying.

Thank you for the care, but no, please do not book me any appointments with anyone you think is brilliant.

Yes, I am aware of the tests, treatments and everything that follows.

Oh, please do enlighten me with the very little you know about this because of course I didn’t scour the internet and interrogate my doctor for everything I might ever need to know about this.

And yes, go ahead and tell me all the various meaningless tips you know about conception and pregnancy and then make me feel guilty for so much as getting off my butt and walking to the kitchen to grab my own glass of water because god forbid I act like a normal human being if I ever want to be a mother.

Tell me all about the foods I should be gobbling down and how my not eating chicken and meat must be harming my body and any potential babies.

No, no, why should I be offended by your utter lack of respect to my privacy or the limits one should set with a total stranger?

And no, why should I be offended when you insinuate that because I have defied god’s will and postponed pregnancy for a few years until I settle, I am now doomed to an eternal life of never succeeding in conceiving? No, no, it serves me right for planning my life as I see fit and not getting children before I am ready to raise them well.

Now, do you bother to know my full name? What I do for a living? And do you bother knowing what—besides getting two children—my hopes and ambitions are? Are you interested in my abilities? You know, other than my abilities to conceive. Do you even know if I am even smart enough to raise children? Do you care to know me a little before you so bluntly inquire about my private life and how my body functions?

Or if it’s not about conception it’s just none of your business?

Sorry, I forgot that if I am single, it’s my uttermost and primary and secondary and every other mission I should ever be interested in to get married. My mission, my one and only mission, after hitching the one is to pop babies out and now I am four years late doing that—that is potentially four babies I could have had now and so selfishly and irresponsibly didn’t.

Don’t panic. Don’t crucify me. Don’t try to convert me. I do want children, trust me, I do. But I apologize I keep thinking of myself as a well-rounded human being, you know, with hopes and ambitions and aspects other than my uterus and forget my sole mission in life. Ever.