“Cele hugged her softly, grabbed her hand, and whispered in her ear, ‘You don’t have to worry about Elliot. I promise to take care of your boy as if he were mine.”
‘We needed a surrogate and she was 60 years old. My mother-in-law said, ‘Oh, I love being pregnant!’ We laughed at the unrealistic gesture. She couldn’t have a baby, could she?’
‘I was told, ‘This will jumpstart your desire for women!’ Being gay was NOT an option. It was a ticket to hell.’
“I closed the blinds of my home, stopped answering my phone, and resigned from my position. Two weeks later, I sat in my dining room table with a close friend. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I hoped it would be the last time.”
‘I was sick of being a secret as if it was wrong or dirty, as if our love wasn’t acceptable. After she told them, her dad turned up at our home.’
“Zaynah reassured me everything was OK, that it was friends messing around, having fun. I guess at 15-years-old I didn’t have a clue what or who I was. Nobody knew about us, what was there to know? We were two girls having fun or so we thought.”
‘He told me he didn’t feel attached to our baby, and he didn’t love me anymore. I secretly hoped I would die in childbirth. My life as I knew it, was completely dismantled.’
“I decided to clean out her bedroom. It was a virtual cesspool. As I was clearing away the reminders of her unwell state, I found her suicide note.”
‘When people ask me why I would ever do something like this, I have a simple answer – ‘I have a uterus, it works, I’m not using it, so why not let someone else who doesn’t have that same ability?’
“I was supposed to be the one to bring them fertility, and yet here we were, almost a year later and nothing.”