Only Child

I am an only child, and I have always been proud of that. Maybe proud isn't the right word, but it's the closest I can come up with. I have accepted this. More then accepted. When I tell people I'm an only child, I invariably get one of two responses: either 1) "You're so lucky!" or 2) "Don't you get lonely." And my response has always been, "Yes, I guess I'm lucky." I've never wanted a brother or sister. Not that having one would be a bad thing necessarily, but it's just not the way my world is. This is my world. It's a good place, it's not bad.
But my world isn't my parents' world. Even though I never felt the need for a brother or sister, I guess my parents wanted another child. Really, really, passionately, desperately wanting.
But I'm an only child. I still don't really know what this means for me, there are so many ways my life would be different.What if I had another sibling, the way my parents wanted? What if I was an older sister? What if I was a babysitter all the time, instead of every so often? What if my room was one of the two or three children's' rooms in the house.
Those are the what-if questions. The easy ones, the one the imagination can give answers to. My parents wanted another child. I know my parents still bear a lot of grief over my mother's multiple miscarriages. I am not good enough? Did they want a child who would be better then me? In what way did I leave room for unhappiness?
I've known this for at least two years now. I've managed to put it behind me, to not think or wonder or doubt. But the question comes back up now. Instead of a midterm for my American Government class, we have to have a mock Congress session. The topic is abortion. I spent all last weekend on Planned Parenthood, NARAL, WHO and other websites finding as many statistics as possible. But today I went on the American Pregnancy site and saw a fact I hadn't seen or known before: miscarriage is a made-up term. The proper name is spontaneous abortion. I'm not trying to bring up political views or anything and I hope that isn't how this is interpreted, but that fact just seems ironic. Anyone can have an abortion if they don't want a baby. My mom couldn't have another child even though that was what she wanted.
And so I'm an only child.