I'm still child-free, bitches!

I don't have to help a kid with homework unless I volunteer to help someone else's kid, and even then it won't be in math. I don't have to quell meltdowns in the toy department. I don't have to save for someone else's college. I'll never get stuck car pooling a bunch of rugrats to soccer games.

That's right, never.

Ever.

No one will ever call me "mama." I'll never proudly watch my own kid graduate knowing that all that homework help got them through. I shan't send out holiday cards with pictures of my happy nuclear family. When I'm in the hospital recovering from something in 20 years, I won't have a kid to take care of me.

Those are kind of selfish reasons to want to have a kid.  Yet now I can only think of those selfish reasons. How could I have benefited from being a mom? Who's going to take care of me when I'm old and gray?  Will I ever let my gray hair show? 

I no longer yearn for the job of mom. It's really amazing how that transformation is happening. I think it's biological, no? Even though I'm still, as my therapist says, healing.

Oh, don't think I don't cry myself to sleep once in a while thinking of how I fucked up nature's life cycle. Please, bitches. Regrets, I've had a few. Don't think I'm not crying as I write this.

But, I counted my friends. Not all those Facebook friends but people I can actually call on. I have just as many child-free friends as I do breeder friends. I didn't try to find that balance, it just happened that way. I'd love it to stay that way because both bring me joy and hope.

Maybe it's nature's plan that I not have kids, anyway. The important thing now is to finish grieving and live on.

Comments

[Jen_Savasta]

Is it possible that a person can sit down and write a blog knowing there is someone out there that really needed to read it on that same day? Probably not but thanks because I needed to read this today.

I struggle daily with the question of do I want to be a mom? Hell, I shocked my own family at Christmas when asked the envitable question, "when are you getting married" with the response, "maybe never."

I always say I'm far too selfish to take on either one of those roles. Having just turned 30, I may change my mind. Maybe not. But you know what? It's my life and my regrets to deal with. Again, thanks for this. I applaud your brutal honesty and share most of the exact same sentiments.

Jennifer

[blaugra]

Jennifer, thanks so much for your comment.

When I was 30 I had the same thoughts as you do even though I had just gotten married. My family expected me to have kids soon after but I kept putting everything else first, and I kept feeling undecided, and my husband kept saying he didn't want to be a father. All those things (and nature too,with pregnancies that failed)led to where I am.

[blaugra]

One of my parental friends said to me off-line, in response to this post, "You can call me 'bitch' and I'll call you 'mama'!"

Kinda funny. I loved that.

[lg]

(Deep breath)

I don't even know what to say except that I admire you and your honesty more than you'll ever know. I am not even that honest with myself let alone friends/ readers/ lurkers/ strangers. Goes to show you that having kids does not make you a grown-up. I have a lot of growing up to do, clearly.

BTW, yesterday we were reading one of the books you got the girls once (because there's been more than one time) and it was autographed by the author. I though to myself, "Who does that?" . . . "Who takes the time to get a book personally signed by an author for a little kid?"

Then I remembered.

Aunt Laura.

Who's more of a Mama bear than she'll ever know.

[blaugra]

lg, you're very sweet. Thank you.