Like all useful information, I found it on the Internet.

“Well, look at that,” I thought. I can’t be pregnant on these drugs I’ve just swallowed without reading the warning label, and I may not be able to get pregnant with the disease I’ve just been told I have.

This was not discussed during the diagnosis. My doctor, a kindly chap with hearing aids and patience for the times I’ve since asked about the weight I’ll lose or gain when he *adjusts my dosage, needed barely 20 minutes to declare Grave’s Disease. “The staring quality of your eyes – I noticed it as soon as you stood up in the lobby.” I was wired that first day. I was damp, I was uncomfortable and I was shaking my foot the entire physical exam.  “I just need to know what’s wrong so I can go back to work,” I explained in the little room they take you in to ask boring questions. I jiggled my knee in rhythm with my pulse. He shuffled around the room doing bizarre little things -measuring protrusion of orbital structures, stenciling goiter onto paper.

You mean this staring quality?

**Disclaimer #1** I have gained exactly 1lb since beginning drug therapy for Grave’s Disease.

I hadn’t been able to sit at my desk, but I figured as soon as I knew what was wrong, I’d be able to go in and sit down, finally. Like a normal person. I am so over this sweaty bullshit, I thought, flipping hair off my face.

It was mid-August, the sun as unforgiving as the thumping in my chest.

**Trouble conceiving was not mentioned during the diagnosis. And why would it be? I’m single. I say “omg” in texts. The idea of coming home at the end of the workday and something requiring more attention than what I give to the coffee grounds I spilled on my way out that morning is unimaginable. No one said that if I wanted to get pregnant over the next year, the drugs I’d put into my body occasionally cause fetuses to develop without nipples. No one said anything about the miscarriage rate in Grave’s women post medication. No one suggested I reconsider family planning, period.

**Disclaimer # 2** I am not trying to get pregnant right now.

But. Oh yes, and with this shit, you can say you won’t go there, but yes you will – What. If. What if I were ready? What if I weren’t single, and didn’t live in New York and had more than $14 dollars in my “savings” account? What if I didn’t want to dedicate my life exclusively to the pursuit of my career goals?

Guess which of the above is not like the other.

I lived in Chile for a good while, and used to look up places I wanted to live and jobs I could do – separate from the job I had and place was living. Sometime in between that second and third year in Santiago, a coworker and I were chatting about the occasional strangeness of our lives, and that from time to time we forgot we were the ones who’d chosen to live them this way.

He said, ” I want to escape a lot and run away, but then I remember I already am away.” The look on his face when he said it – there we were, longing for anything else right smack in the middle of what we used to look for.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hot after my own agenda.  I’m lucky to have a job I like to do, in a city I want to do it. I’m glad it came after years of restlessness and navel-gazing 20s wallowing and wandering. I’m thrilled I indulged a bunch of peculiar, reckless (sorry, Mom) curious ideas when I could afford the luxury. It’s not that I’ve lost the urge to travel or try new things, it’s that I’ve given up on the idea that a particular adventure will make sense of who I am. I’ve been here the entire time.

I used to think that if I made it into a relationship, it said something positive about me – that I’d overcome pre-existing deficiencies in character, childhood. It used to be why I feared but also clung to the idea of a partnership, of motherhood – the inevitability of being tied to something you couldn’t control, but that it was somehow right or better to be part of someone else’s story. See above re: 20s wallowing.

Fortunately, I let that nonsense go.

For my what ifs, I presently have 0/100th of the answers, which suits fine in Month 3 of medication.

But I sure can and will stare at you.