...No? No cheering?
That's okay. I don't deserve it, anyway.
School's been busy. I've still been blogging, but for blogs affiliated with schoolish things. Por ejemplo, I've sort-of-half-way been blogging for Sappho at Yale. And some other stuff that's sort of secret. I'm trying to work up the nerve to talk to Dodson and Ross to blog for them. Wouldn't that be awesome? Yes? I'm glad we agree.
No updates, really. Well, sure. There's plenty. But they're all college-y and pretty predictable. I mean, maybe you're shocked that I'm involved in slam poetry and have been fundraising to help the trans community in Uganda. I'm kind of having the stereotypical college experience of the bleeding-heart liberal, but I am enjoying it thoroughly.
None of this, however, has anything at all to do with what I want to talk about today. What I would like to talk to you lovely people about today is *cue the drumroll, maestro*:
BABIES.
Please. Do not be deceived by my penchant for cheesy Anne Geddes photos. Or even the fact that I do love babies.
I'm embarrassingly ridiculous around kids. I wave at them in public, and they usually wave back and giggle. I love playing games with kids. I love babysitting. Kids are adorable. They're too adorable.
I think this is their tactic, and I will not allow myself to be deceived.
You see, I do not want to have children. I've known this since I first started thinking about kids and realized at about age 15 or 16 how many girls around me were dropping out to have kids. When I was a little girl, I was never one to fantacize about getting married or having kids. When I realized that other girls did, well, I thought, "Maybe I should give this some thought."
The result was that I scared myself shitless about both matrimony and motherhood.
Dear God. No desire for either one of these. I don't know if that is going to change any time soon, but at the age of 19, they are the farthest farthest things from my mind. And when they're not the farthest things from my mind, I'm usually thinking about them in a panicky, please-Mommy-hide-me kind of way.
Matrimony is a separate issue that I shall talk about, y'know, separately. I'd like to focus on parenthood here. Now, I'm not knocking anyone that wants to have kids. Jesus, I find that damn noble of you. You want to squeeze a baby out of where? You're okay with staying up how late to try to get it to stop crying? You mean you wouldn't drop the f-bomb in the most creative ways when it spit up on your favorite Led Zeppelin t-shirt?
The main reason that I don't want to have kids, folks, is because I'd be an awful mother. I mean, truly awful. I was talking to my boyfriend recently about things that I would do to my kids, and that conversation went something like this:
"They're probably not going to be vegan like I plan to be, at least while they're growing. But I'll offer that as a preferable choice when they're, oh, 13 or so. But they won't be allowed to eat anything processed. No preservatives. And no beef or pork, and limited amounts of meat. If they eat anything that's not organic, I'll have a motherly cow. If it's a boy and anyone even tries to mention circumcision, I'mma kill somebody. They're not going to be raised in church. They're going to come out of the womb open-minded and liberal, dammit. No TV. For Godssakes, no TV. And no annoying toys that have bright colors and flash and honestly make my baby seem dumb. And they're going to be able to speak at least three languages by the time they start school. At least. No Barbies. No GI Joes. No toy guns or swords or weapons in general. And no Twilight."
Boyfriend listened patiently, and then I asked, "They're going to hate me, aren't they?"
"Probably," he said.
The thing is, I would get so frustrated as a mother raising them like that. And it would be mostly for selfish motivations. I mean, yes, that would be mostly for their own good (I think). But I'm not going to lie. I'm basically putting the lifestyle on them that I wish I had had when I was a kid. That I wish I had now.
Also, I don't really want kids because, frankly, I still feel like a kid.
"Oh, that's great. Never grow up. Never." Yeah, I hear you, you Peter Pan freaks.
(It's okay. I love Peter Pan, too.)
But the fact of the matter is this: Kids love me because I think they realize that, internally, I'm a kid, too. I love Sour Patch Kids and watching cartoons in my pajamas. I make sound effects when I push buttons. I have a penchant for bright colors. And no, I never intend on growing up.
Therefore, I love babysitting. I love playing with kids. But the issue that always comes up is this:
DISCIPLINE.
Jesus Christ on a cracker. I'm horrible at discipline. And not in the pushover kind of way. Oh, no. I'm no pushover. But the issue arises that any showdown between me and a little kid is less like something between an adult and a kid and more like something between two kids at recess on the playground.
I can usually get around this whilst babysitting. I just tickle the hell out of the kid until I can pick them up and play with them a bit until they forget that they were being a little snot in the first place. But something tells me that this isn't the best tactic for 24/7 motherhood.
Okay, so those are my less-shallow-more-reasonable reasons against motherhood.
I have more, folks. Good God, I have more.
Being pregnant doesn't really scare me. The thought of the after-effects on my body don't scare me. Hell, the birthing process itself? Mildly terrifying, but the pain itself is no big deal.
What does scare me is one word: episiotomy.
In other words, you wanna cut me WHERE?!
Oh. Okay. It's to prevent vaginal tearing. So, you're going to cut me to prevent tearing of my vag. You're going to CUT me.
As my mother cheerfully says whenever I think of this, "From stem to stern."
Really. Just say the word "episiotomy," and you have me cringing. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't really want to be pushing something out of myself that's so massive that my poor, poor birth canal is going to have to look like a scene from a horror movie. NO. NO NO NO.
"But none of that matters when you're holding your little bundle of joy."
Bull. SHIT. MY POOR VAGINA.
"So, have a C-section."
Okay, great. So I either have to choose between episiotomy *shudder* or vaginal tearing *shuuuudder* or reenacting the chestburster scene from Alien, only about 12 inches downwards.
All of this in mind, I'm pretty sure I'm going to become the old cat lady on the corner lot that hands out raisins on Halloween. But that's okay. I'll still be watching cartoons in my pajamas and eating Sour Patch Kids, all with my vag intact.
Do you have any phobias of social customs that seem to be expected of you?
No comments:
Post a Comment