The search for Mr. March kept me on-ask and focused for weeks. I spent all of my downtime reading and examining profiles, making lists of pros and cons, and daydreaming about what my child might look like in combination with the reddish-brown hair and green eyes of donor number 12498, or the sweetheart mouth of donor 13026. I inadvertently imagined myself having a little boy because I was constantly flipping through childhood pictures of the little-boy donors, but occasionally I remembered to envision life with a little girl and I knew she would make me just as happy.

It did not escape me that I had once done this same kind of fantasizing with my lovers—with Josh, with Noah, with Omar. But those imaginings happened over time, as relationships bloomed and grew—I’d drift off to sleep in his arms (whichever “his” I was on at the time) wondering, what will our children look like? What I was doing now with the donors was the very same thing in fast-forward, double-time, only without the hormones and deliciousness of love. It felt almost promiscuous. I was reminded, in those rare moments when I paused long enough to acknowledge it, of just how bizarre this process of choosing a donor really is. And when it was finally over, when my choice was made, when I was no longer distracted by this thing I needed to do, I found myself suddenly flooded with grief.

Now, before I go on to throw myself a pity party, or rather, tell you about the pity party I already threw, I want to remind you (and myself) that I know what I’m about to tell you is not my whole truth. In fact, it may not even be real at all, but it was a very real place I had to get to, a movie I had to cast myself in, in order to set myself free from convention.

I believe deep down that I’m a strong woman, a beautiful person, very capable of giving love, and very much worthy of receiving it. I have some faith in the idea that I haven’t found it yet because I’m not meant to, that I still have work to do in this world on my own, and on my self. There is a reason I keep choosing poorly, even if I don’t know what that reason is. Hell, maybe it’s because I’m supposed to write this book? Or maybe that’s just a load of hippie horseshit, and I drew the short straw in the romance department, plain and simple. I don’t know. What I do know is that I do not walk through this world every day embodying “woe is me” because I don’t have romantic love. But sometimes, like that moment when you realize that you’ve just had to choose the father of your child out of a catalogue because no man in 25 years of your dating life has ever loved you well-enough to want to have a child with you, you just have to give in to the pain.

The pain is very real, even if the story isn’t.

So I did. I gave in.

I cried. I cried so hard that girl-dog, Kenai, ran and hid under the bed in the guest room at the opposite end of the house (even though only her head could fit), and boy-dog, Bubba, snuggled in on the living room rug next to me and licked at my tears and snot with his stinky fish-breath tongue. I cried so hard that I imagined my little Craftsman bungalow filling to its rafters with my tears, spilling me out the window into the streets and cascading me down to the bay, then out to sea through the Golden Gate, alone and adrift for all of eternity.

I cried until I fell asleep right there on the floor in the middle of the afternoon and dreamed of schoolgirls jumping rope on a playground, chanting, “Dana-and-(someone)-sittin’-in a-tree-K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First-comes-love, then-comes-marriage, then-comes-baby-in-the-baby-carriage.” I kept leaning in, moving closer, straining to find out who I was supposed to be “sittin’ in a tree” with, until I got caught up in the rope and bloodied my knees.

Game over.

I woke up on the rug in the dark—with hiccups, and more than just a vague sense that I had just spent my entire adult life trying to live up to a childhood playground song, a myth, albeit a powerful one. What happens when love doesn’t come first?

This happens:

You feel pain. You dive into it. You cry. You wake up. You realize it was someone else’s story you were trying to fit into, and it doesn’t need to be yours. You stand up. You brush the dog hair off your jeans and sweater. You blow your nose. You pour yourself a glass of wine. And you sit down at your computer, take a deep breath, and begin to write a story greater than the myth.