It all started on January 26, 2016, a date forever etched in my memory. That was the day my dreams, as I knew them, ended and my life, as it is now, began. The morning was quiet, unassuming, but significant in a way I couldn’t have imagined. My partner and I had been undergoing treatment to get pregnant for months. It had been a journey of hope, fear, and countless appointments. That day, I was scheduled for a procedure to check if my fallopian tubes were open.

Up until then, I had never gone alone, my partner always came with me. But this time, he had to work and cancelling the appointment wasn’t an option, I just wanted to get it over with. So, I dropped him off at work, reassured myself that I could handle this, and headed to the doctor’s office alone. The doctor had forgotten to prescribe the medication I was supposed to take before the procedure, so I rushed to the pharmacy to get the pills just in time. It didn’t feel like a big deal, until I was on the examination table.

It was just the doctor, the nurse, and me. He explained the procedure, warned me it might be painful, and started. I thought I was prepared. After all, by that point, I was used to invasive treatments and scans. But this pain was unlike anything I’d experienced before. I groaned and cried, clutching the nurse’s hand as she tried to comfort me. She whispered words of reassurance, but I could barely hear her over the doctor’s voice. “I can’t get through,” he said. Those words pierced through me, deeper than the physical pain.

He tried again. And again. Each attempt only confirmed what I already knew deep down: this wasn’t going to be the good news I had wanted to hear. The pain was unbearable, not only the physical pain, but also the emotional pain as I slowly started to realize what it meant. When it was over, I shakily got dressed and joined the doctor in the consult room. My body ached, and my mind was already racing. He spoke in long, measured sentences, but all I could hear was this: my fallopian tubes were closed. He estimated I had a 5% chance of getting pregnant naturally and offered to repeat the procedure to confirm, but I couldn’t think beyond the devastation of that moment.

I sat there, tears streaming down my face, as the weight of his words sunk in. This was likely caused by untreated chlamydia, a revelation that only added to the emotional toll. When I left, I vaguely remember the nurse offering words of sympathy, but all I wanted was to escape. I stumbled out of the office, broken in ways I didn’t yet fully understand. I picked up my partner from work, unable to stop the sobs that escaped as he got in the car. He didn’t need to ask; he knew. That was the moment my dreams died. The vision of the life I had imagined for us was gone, replaced by an overwhelming void. To survive the unbearable, I did what many of us do: I shut down. I built a wall around my heart and disconnected from the world.

It’s taken years to revisit this day with clarity and courage. While my dreams changed that day, my story didn’t end. Pain has a way of transforming us and it’s okay to let that pain shape a new path forward.