Today's Check-In (Tuesday): Where am I Going and Why am I in a Handbasket?

[jadxia]

Must be that I've upped the new meds and my brain just can't seem to function through it, because I'm just spacing out today. Woke up early, 0630 (when I didn't have to be up until 0900) and couldn't get back to sleep despite being dragged out tired.

Comprehensive List of Tasks

• strength exercises = so I did the pushups and squats, but got

Comments

From Misty Moonlight

[jadxia]

"I wanted kids for my own selfish enjoyment/self-fulfillment and I love the little morpions, deal with it. That I can respect. I can respect a little selfishness and would rather see that over self-delusion any day."

Why the hell else would you have kids?? - nobody gives birth to lower their carbon footprint. Giving birth is a right of passage for a woman and the the deapest connection she will ever have to any other being ever, I don't care how in love you get with anyone - ever.

I, for one, wish that I had been born just a few years later and had known that I had a choice in the matter. I think it's great that people can choose now to not have kids - if you did it in my era, you must have some low egg count or something. I don't know if I would have had children or not - I just wish I had a choice.

Plus - Asbergers and self centered go hand in hand. You don't have to come up with reasons for that one - it's just you. ;)

"autism (n.) 1912, from Ger. Autismus, coined 1912 by Swiss psychiatrist Paul Bleuler (1857-1939) from comb. form of Gk. autos- "self" (see auto-) + -ismos suffix of action or of state. The notion is of "morbid self-absorption."

Re: From Misty Moonlight

[jadxia]

Most of the time I don't feel like I have that much of a choice. There's really a ton of pressure. My family has this notion (subconscious, but still there) that a woman's worth is tied up in her mother-ness.

I remember coming out as gay and my dad telling me, "you're just wasting your life." (I first came out gay, then bisexual.)

And being with a boyfriend, everyone asks me "so when are you having kids?" Heck, people ask me that even if they don't know I have a boyfriend. When I explain I don't want any, they always tell me, "you'll change your mind in a few years" which pisses me off to no end. Pul-ease, you read minds and the future now?

Sometimes the societal pressure is so great, and it WOULD be nice to teach the next generation, etc, that I actually consider the matter. I pick up on the wistfulness and nostalgia of everyone else. Then I get around a child. I DON'T LIKE THEM. I think babies are nasty little creatures. Everyone tells me "it's different when it's your own" but all the ladies I know are ooh-goo-gaga whenever they see a baby, except me. I don't want to hold it, or touch it, or make stupid faces at it. I've learned to vaguely smile or wave hi-bye because that is what is expected. I think they are gross, like cockroaches, they are ugly, and they smell terrible. (My sister says she loves the smell of babies; I personally think they smell like baby powder, shit, and sour milk -- all things I could arrange to have without a baby if I thought it smelled all that good.)

Kids are only tolerable when they are potty-trained and start talking. It's when they have an opinion that I start noticing them as worthwhile, even though I still don't know what to do with them. I'm not good at 'play'. I've thought about having foster-kids, older ones, like preteens or teens. And then I just think I'll write, because this is another way to share things I've learned and it doesn't require constant supervision.

Re: From Misty Moonlight

[jadxia]

And despite what people tell me, I don't actually think I would be any different if it was my own child.

I can't think of anything worse than having a child you don't want or love.

Re: From Misty Moonlight

[misty_moonlight]

Well, children can be the greatest love or the greatest heartache - sometimes both at the same time. The moment that sticks out most to me about the societal pressure happened in a woman's studies class which was about feminism. We got to the talk asbout child birth and I said something similar that I said to you and then soemone else said their sister had chosen not to have kids, and the VERY NEXT comment was "I bet they found out they can't have kids and are just saying that."

It's a huge pressure and stuns me that it's still that way. I don't like children either - I had 5 of them, but I could have done without. Sometimes they seem like the biggest gifts in my life and sometimes i'm full of guilt because i'm not a good enough mother, and sometimes I feel like they're holding me back from living. For the most part I love and adore my kids, but I really loath other people's children. This is not the house where kids come over to play - I don't like tham and they know it.

Re: From Misty Moonlight

[jadxia]

That's really common among moms, vague resentment at times that their kids hold them back... but most don't have the guts to come out and say it. (Way to be honest! I love honesty.) It's the pressure on moms to love their children, but just because you love them doesn't mean you have to LIKE them every second of every day. I mean, some days I wanted to cook my house rabbit, but I loved the little bugger.

Same with the boyfriend. I love him to pieces, but he was a lazy slob when we met and he's still lazy, but just because I don't LIKE him from time to time doesn't mean I don't LOVE him. I think folks get that confused, as if love has to be peaches and roses, or at least some melodrama. It's okay for love to be BORING sometimes; it's a relationship, not an amusement park.

You're not missing anything by having a family; every now and again I get the feeling I'm missing out by NOT. And as for not being a good-enough mom, who is? There will always be a supermom that shows you up, just like there is always someone smarter, better looking, etc. As long as you do what you can, that's good enough. It sounds like you are doing a heck of a lot better than I would be!

Though I get what you are saying about wanting the CHOICE. One day, it really will be a choice but it isn't yet. Oh sure, there is this FANTASY of a choice, but when it really comes down to how people act toward me... it's just assumed that all women want children. I hate that. The only times I've ever considered even having them is for someone else, or because someone has tried to glorify it. And then I remember what helping my sister with my nieces/nephews was like and I snap out of that, even though my niece is the spitting copy of me. As much as I love her, I'm still glad she ain't mine.

Just like when my ex told me I'd love venison if I only had it the way he made it, and how so many people who hated venison liked it when he cooked it. He talked me up so much I finally tried it again and guess what? I DON'T LIKE VENISON. I can't imagine not liking something my whole life and then magically liking it. The few people I've considered having children for, I've stated that they best have a nanny until the kid is school aged, because I have a feeling it would be the same. People talk up motherhood, how much I'd enjoy it when it's MY child, and then the little morpion would pop out and WHAM, I'd realize I STILL DON'T LIKE THE KID. And wouldn't that be a tragedy?

I wouldn't love my child just for being genetically related to me. For one, I'd be reminded of my shitty family; I think I'd love an adopted child MORE. I dislike my mom and only love one of the three siblings. I don't hate the others. I'm ambivalent. Of the six genetic nieces and nephews, I definitely love three, I'm iffy on two, with one left I don't care about either way.

It sounds mean, because I'm supposed to love my family. I just don't; they feel like folks I have a societal obligation toward, same as coworkers. I do what I feel obligated to do (my sense of fairness, justice, and obligation is pretty epic). We have nothing in common; what's there to like just because of genetics and the fact we have history? I have history with a ton of folks I flat out dislike, history means nothing.

The same folks who tell me I will certainly love my children are the ones who act horrified when I say I don't love my mother. I don't love her, I don't like her, sometimes I feel pity but mostly I just want to avoid her. She was a wretched mother and she's a fucked up crazy person, so sometimes I feel pity. "But she GAVE BIRTH to you" they say, and my response is "yeah, and she didn't do me any favors there either." As a child, I used to hate her, but as I've gotten older I've grown out of that into ambivalent dislike. She's not important enough for me to hate. I did vow to piss on her grave after she died, and I mean to keep that vow, but not because I hate her... just that same sense of obligation to keep the promises I make. It works both ways.