The strangest things hit me in the strangest ways.

POP! The First Male Pregnancy is a "net art" project created by Virgil Wong, in connection with several other explorations into biotechnology and biology. The site contains a reasonably medically solid, if laymanesque, explanation of how a male could carry a child to term.

I didn't realize, when a friend first pointed out the site to me, that it was actually someone's idea of art. My first reaction was something like, "No, surely I would've heard something more than just that. It would have been a headline somewhere, wouldn't it?" On the other hand, I don't watch television any more because I can't get a decent reception in my apartment and I refuse to pay for cable. I don't read newspapers or follow much in the way of online news sources. My mother probably would've told me if she'd heard anything, but she's going for her doctorate right now and could easily have not heard.

I guess in short, I should've known and even did know from the get-go that it was a hoax, but when I found out for sure, I still started crying.

Becoming a mother is one of my biggest dreams, one that I hope one day I'll have the chance to fulfill. I know that the options of adoption and foster children are always open, and I plan on looking into them once I feel that I could be the sort of parent that any child deserves to have, but my deepest dream is to bear my own children one day.

Right now, that's simply medically impossible. After all is said and done, I will have the appearance I desire, but I won't have the internal structure to compliment it. At the moment, there's just no way to get it, either. My friends have told me that the technology isn't in the too-distant future to allow for it, but it isn't here yet and I have to accept the possibility that it may not happen within my lifetime.

I'm torn between saying that it should be such a little thing, and saying that I know better. Part of me doesn't care, that what truly matters is having things so that they feel right when I make love, that being able to look in the mirror and see the person I know I want to be looking back at me is the crucial factor. Part of me still doesn't know how to accept the fact that, when all is said and done, I won't be a "real woman", that I won't menstruate, can't bear children and will never truly know what it means to be female.

Is "female" truly my goal, though? I said when I started that to be female was the wrong approach, that my drive should be to become myself, and that I should do everything in my power to stop wearing masks and be who I
wanted to be. It just happens that part of who I want to be is a mother, and that's something I can only do through the help of others. 

I know what I want, and I know that I can't have it immediately, but I also know that if I wait, I may get it, so I'm waiting. I've waited this long; I can wait longer.