SHUT UP, BRAIN and let me be happy. So that's something I'm working on. (I'm now going to update y'all on my life now, but the real meat of the post is farther down, in case you want to skip it. Or whatever. I don't tell you what to do.)
I'm really enjoying my job. It's only-just-above-minimum-wage at Starbucks, but I'm getting 2 raises in the coming months (one for being there 6 months and one because everybody at Starbucks is getting a raise in January - people are rumbling about raising the minimum wage, so I imagine they're trying to get ahead of that so it's not such a blow when it does happen. Good for them. Good for me). I think that some of the enjoyment comes from just being an employee again - I know exactly what is expected of me at all times, there are no ambiguous social situations to navigate, and I don't have to be in charge of anyone. It's much less stressful.
My last job pretty much required a codependent attitude in order to survive. I was basically on-call every day - if they needed help, I was the only person who could come in. It's kind of nice to be so desperately needed, but you can never really relax when you know that a call could come in at any hour and you'd be needed - and you can't really say no. Part of this is because we were such a small unit that we couldn't really afford to hire any more people, part of it was some issues with "upper management." But seriously - I'm not an EMT, I was working in a college cafeteria. Ain't nobody got time to cut years off their life with the stress from that bull. Beyond that, I feel like there was so much time there when I wasn't sure what was expected of me moment to moment, and we didn't get regular reviews, so it was hard to tell if you were doing good, bad, or indifferent. You were fine until suddenly everything you did was terrible, then you'd get ignored for another 5 months. It was weird, and stressful, again, to never know when the hammer would come down. So between that and being "on-call," just every minute of on and off time was filled with anxiety. Yuck.
Starbucks is working out great so far. I can ask for days off! I work with only nice people (who can ever say that? Me! Right now!) I am good at this stuff. I can relax when I'm home - be home at home and work at work. Plus, free lattes ;) And tips! And healthcare!
But anyway, the point of this post right now is to talk about my "biological clock" and how it needs to shut itself right the hell up. (Not a Sparrow Falls...you might not want to proceed).
Pretty much the SECOND I got married, my brain or body or whatever started asking me, "Do you want to have kids? Now? How about now? How about now? Right now? Is now the time? How about now?" - for a year and a half.
I am in no way emotionally, financially, spiritually, geographically, or temporally ready for kids. Not even a little.
I want to sleep until whenever on the weekends. I want to HAVE weekends. I want to be able to play videogames for as long as I want. I want to have loud sex on the kitchen floor at 2 in the afternoon. (Well, maybe not that last one. The kitchen floor is hard and cold and also we don't have curtains on that window. BUT WHATEVER.) I want to have books on all of my shelves (not just the high up ones). I want to have a day every once in a while, where I don't have to think about another human's needs. I want to walk around my house naked. I want to go for a week without sweeping and not worry that my kid will choke himself to death on a clump of cat hair he found...
Husband is still job seeking, and I work for peanuts right now. We're on food stamps. We live in a 550 sq ft house - not exaggerating, that is literally a 2-car garage. I mean, where would I put it?
I want to go to grad school, which will take another few years at least. Sociologists say marriages do beter when there's at least 2 years between a marriage and the first kid.
So why won't my brain shut up? "How about now? Now do you want them? How about now? Are we there yet?"
I want to go to grad school, which will take another few years at least. Sociologists say marriages do beter when there's at least 2 years between a marriage and the first kid.
So why won't my brain shut up? "How about now? Now do you want them? How about now? Are we there yet?"
I'm worrying about it - because obviously my brain has to be worrying about something, even when it's feeling pretty well put-together thankyouverymuch. I worry that I'll never want kids - like, if I don't want them now, maybe I never will and my husband and whole family will be sad. I worry that I'll miss my window (even though I really want to adopt anyway, so although I'd like one of my own, it's ok and I can go the other way, sure). My physical health has never been that great and it ain't getting any better. (I can only think of 2 reasons to have a physical body - food and sex. Other than that, it's largely an inconvenience for me.) I worry that by the time I'm emotionally ready to have kids, I'll be tired. I worry that if I pursue the lifestyle I want, it'll be hard to have kids - academia is punishing and many female profs skip families for the sake of their jobs (though that's changing). I worry that by the time I'm ready, all my friends will have had kids and moved on without me, like it's some kind of "race" that I could "lose." "How about now? Now are you ready? What if you're never ready? How about now?"
It's not even as if a ton of my friends are having kids - (within my age group) there's 3? I think?
I honestly don't think it's an issue of my social group. I think it's an issue of my inability to not worry, combined with "society, man." This anxiety didn't crop up until I got married. Then "the knot," which I had used to help keep organized during wedding planning, automatically started sending me information about "the bump." People started (jokingly) asking when we were going to have a baby. Even though they were joking, and nobody in our life means to pressure us, it adds to the tension. You become an adult, you get married, you have kids, then your kids have kids, then you die. This is the meaning of life. "How about now? Is it time yet? It's your duty to the human race, right? How about now?"
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| From Sociological Images - the stages of life, and how you're too fat at every one. |
I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be in this emotional/mental place. I'm a feminist (not a very good one yet - but I'm working on it!) I don't believe (and wasn't [really] raised to believe) that a woman's highest calling is to get married and have babies (for Jesus?) But I wanted to get married (mostly), and I want to have babies (maybe...eventually...probably). But being liberated (and on birth control) means I can do it whenever the hell I please (sort of - obviously, if God wants me to have a baby, I'm darn well going to have one).
"How about now? Are you ready now? How will you know when you're ready? Now?"
It's not just society, of course. I've always been in a big damn hurry about life. I've never been satisfied with where I am, and I rush on to the next stage as fast as possible. Perhaps part of my cognitive dissonance comes from the fact that I am, more or less, happy with this stage. I could go on like this for a while - if I didn't know that it gets harder to take the GRE/get into grad school after you've been out a few years - if I wasn't worried about my biological clock. Now, I'm NOT in a hurry to get to the next stage, but I'm worried that if I enjoy my time here too much, I will miss out on it. There's hell to pay! The devil gets his due! It took me 7 years to get out of undergrad - I graduated at 25! There's no time anymore! Life is going to pass me by, and I'll be childless and working at Starbucks when I wake up and I'm suddenly 40 and can't have kids and missed out on grad school and have no marketable skills and then my life is over because by then you're WAY too old to adopt or go back to school or enjoy your life ever, right?
I'm kidding, of course. Some of the funnest people I know are in their 50s and they're doing just fine - kids or not, in a career or going back to school, enjoying an empty nest or adopting a kid now or spending all their childlessness money on vacations and marriage retreats. I'm actually looking forward to my 50s - when I won't have these anxieties and I'll know what I'm doing with my life, right?
LOL, as if THAT could ever happen.
The thing is, life is life. It's life now, and it will be life when I'm 40 and 60 and 90 (if I take after my dad's side and live forever - they do that). I'm never going to be anxiety-free (though hopefully my therapist and I can bring the levels down some). I'm never going to have it all figured out - I'm always going to feel like I'm making it up as I go along. You know how I know? I have a couple friends in their 50s. I have a few in their 60s. Nobody has any damn clue what's going on. Any perception of mine that these people have it all figured out is as silly as my perception at 8 that by 20 I'd have it figured out. (I spent most of my childhood wishing I was 20 and in college - and it SUCKED! 20 year olds are stupid! Why didn't anyone tell me this?) Even if they do think they have it all figured out, they could get hit by a bus any second. A tree could fall on their house. They could get laid off. You never, never know.
"How about now? What if your husband is ready before you? What if your mom dies before you give her grandchildren? Are you ready now? Now? How about now?"
So let's all just calm down for a second.
Let's breathe.
Let's try to appreciate where we are. Lets know that when we're ready for something, we will know.
I used to get frustrated by married couples who, when asked 'how they knew,' replied, "you just know." Now that I've passed that gate, I know that it's true - I just knew. I imagine having kids is like that, too. Maybe you just know. Or maybe God throws you a curveball and you figure it out. In either case, why worry about it now?
I am NOT ready to have kids. I might be ready in the future. I might not. That's ok. It's ok to have kids and it's ok not to.
I'm hoping that Husband and I are in a place, when the time does come, that he can stay at home with them. That would take a lot of the pressure off me with my job. If not, we'll figure it out. Like we do.
God has his own plans. I'm going to calm down, enjoy what God has planned for me now, and wait patiently for his timing
- yeah, right.
I'm going to try.
Then, I'm going to play video games until 3 a.m. while drunk.
Because I CAN.
"But how about now?"
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