A boring entry
This entire thing was sparked by my mother yesterday on our camping trip. Jason and I arrived and everyone was sitting around the fire when my mom goes; "You guys are gonna jump down my throat but, I was sitting here thinking...what would my life be like if I had never had kids? It would be so empty and boring."
Everyone who knows me knows that I am adamantly childfree. I am 99% sure that I don't want kids. But those who know me very well know that that 1% causes me a ton of gnawing doubt and anxiety. Anxiety that keeps me awake at night and gives me such stress that I often think about going back to my awesome therapist to talk to her about it. What it boils down to - I am terrified of having children, but I am even more terrified of being alone.
What I mean by this - my parents are in their sixties. They have three children, myself and my brother and sister. They are homebodies who don't do a lot with their friends. If they hadn't had us, what would their lives consist of? They would work and watch tv at night. Their vacations would just be themselves. Every 'family' gathering would be just the two of them at their huge table. But because they had us, they now have three amazing grandchildren who absolutely light up their lives. Because they had us, they have 39 years of amazing memories (my sister turns 40 this year! mindfuck!). Because of us, their house is always full of people and laughter. My mom cooks epic feasts and routinely has family gatherings where there are usually twenty plus people in their house. All of those people there are a result of my siblings and I. When the unthinkable happens and my parents are very elderly and perhaps have to go into care, their lives will be as enriched by us and their grandchildren as possible. They will have the best care available, and will be visited all the time.
I am -terrified- of being alone. I am terrified of being that elderly person in a shitty home wasting away in my room where no one visits me because I never had children. I see so many of those people when I visit my aunt with my mother - people who have their books and their TV and that is literally their life. Nobody visits them because all their friends and family are dead and they never had children. How fucking depressing and scary is that? My aunts room is full of drawings from her grand kids and photos all over the walls. That is a comfort and a blessing.
If I don't have children, I will have my brother and my sister and my nieces and nephews. When I am in MY sixties, they will be in their seventies. They are twelve years older than me. They will die long before me. Who knows where they will live. Most realistically we will live thousands of miles apart by that time. Perhaps even provinces apart. Who knows if my partner will outlive me. I say now that I will have dogs and cats until I die, but that depends entirely on my health. Not every elderly person has the luxury of good health and their wits about them. I could get dementia. I could get any number of diseases that prevent me from even having my own home.
But if I had children...
I would have weekly visitors. I would have the safety net of knowing I wouldn't be forgotten about and shoved away in some horrible old folks home. I would get the care I needed from them. And I would have many, many more memories to look back on. Thousands more. When I looked through my photo albums, they would be filled with many people and so much love. Not just myself and my pets and my partner.
Now, here is the flip side.
I really don't like children. The only children I like in this world are my two nieces and my nephew and a select few friends' children, because they are raised to have respect and discipline and they have hilarious personalities. When I am uptown and I hear babies crying, or see kids having tantrums, I want to get the fuck out of there. I cringe and think; "Thank GOD that isn't my life." I see haggard, exhausted mothers with screaming kids hanging off of them and I want to run. I see snot and diapers and sticky fingers and I want to barf. I have absolutely zero mothering instinct. I can watch Red Cross commercials without much of any emotion (but show me an ASPCA commercial and I'm a hysterical mess).
I am selfish, impatient and easily frustrated. Those are not good parent qualities. I have little tolerance for things that bother me. If someone pisses me off I am not afraid to say it to their face or make a deal out of it. I very much value and enjoy my 'Me' time and the thought of not having my me time is about as appealing as a root canal. I love the luxury of being able to do what I want, say what I want, and go where I want whenever I damn well feel like it. If I want to take a three hour nap, or a two hour bath, or read all day or putter in my PJ's and do jack shit, I'm going to. I love sleep. On my days off, I sleep easily until noon. I get extremely cranky when I am woken up before I want to be (unless it's for work obvs). When you have children you cannot do that. When you have children, they become your ENTIRE LIFE for the next 18 years until you say "Ok, GTFO". The thought of some little demanding person taking away my internet, my gaming, my reading, and my 'doing absolutely nothing' time makes me freak out. Besides that, I am quick to anger...which is a trait about myself that I really hate and try constantly to work on. I am extremely personable and friendly, but I get frustrated and stressed out VERY easily. I don't handle stress well at ALL. I am on two different prescription medications for stress and anxiety and have been since I was fourteen. I think parenthood can be summed up in two words 'Stress and Exhaustion'. Do I really need the stress of being pregnant and raising a child? Could I even handle it? I can't handle it when a baby screams. My friend Amy has a two month old and she was over here the other day and it screamed and screamed and screamed and I just wanted her to leave. It gave me SUCH killer anxiety.
I worry that I would be a bad mother. I am a caring person with a huge heart, and I know I am a GOOD person, but I think you need to have a certain something in your genetic makeup to be a good parent and I worry that I don't have whatever it is. I am scared that I would be a mean mom always yelling at my kids. I am scared that I would resent my children. I am scared that I would THINK I want them, have them, and then be like "Oh, fuck. What have I done?" because you can't exactly return a kid. You can't find out you hate them and then go; "Oh well, I'll post them on Craigslist!". People who do that with animals make me fucking sick. A child is a lot worse.
I worry that I want a child for the wrong reasons. An extreme fear of not being alone isn't the right reason to have a child. Wanting another photography subject isn't the right reason. Wanting people to dote on me when I'm pregnant and then dote on my baby isn't the right reason. Wanting to buy awesome toys and accessories for my child isn't the right reason. The only reason ANYONE should want a child is because they want to love them and dote on them and are excited as hell about raising them. They should WANT to devote hours of their day to only their child. They should WANT to make messes and sing songs and act like a child themselves. I...don't like doing that. I feel awkward around kids, even though I am naturally great with them. I worked at a Daycare for four years (go figure) and I was constantly praised by my coworkers and my boss about my 'natural way' with the toddlers and the infants. Kids flock to me. Kids LOVE me. I don't know how to play with kids and when I have to, all I find myself doing is looking for a way out or looking at the clock.
Does any of this sound like someone who should have a child?
And yet...there is that TINY, TINY part of me that sometimes whispers "I want a baby. I really want a baby." when I see my sister right now, with her beautiful big belly and her glow and the way Fred touches her and their secret smiles...this weird part of me deep inside twists. When I hang out with my two awesome nieces (who are seven) and hear their hilarious stories and watch them growing and playing, I want that. I want a little miniature Dana (oh dear god Lol). I want to hold a warm tiny helpless body against me and see myself and my partner in it's features. I want to watch it grow up and see the way that it is like me and like it's father. I want to see its personality grow. I want to know what that love is like, a Mothers Love. They say it trumps any other love in the world. That even if you hate kids, when you have your own, it's so completely different and amazing.
Most of all, I'm scared that I will never figure this out. Or that by the time I do it will be too late.