DELVING BETWEEN THE TOES OF LIFE....I AM TOEJAM


2004-05-15 - 6:55 a.m.

Yesterday Eric�s uncle told me that he had a perfect name for the first child Eric and I have. I immediately said, �We are not having children.� To which he replied, �Well, whatever you say�you can name the kid Sigh.�

People always completely disregard me when I say I am not having children. It was, in fact, a decision I made about a year before I started dating Eric. This decision was indeed directly related to something Eric had said�but I made that decision on my own not even thinking at that time that I would ever be in a relationship with him. At that time he was just my really wise friend that I wrote e-mails back and forth to. There are many reasons I am not having children. The number one reason is that I don�t need to. Yes, there are voids in my life, but I understand that those voids will never be filled by having a child. I need to fill them on my own, with the right things. Another reason is that it hurts. I hurt from loving things and I can�t stand it. I hate the feeling I have every single day when I come home and as I am pulling around the corner to my house I start hoping like mad that nothing happened while I was gone and that my cats are all alive. Every time I hear a siren I freak out thinking something happened to my mother or my brother. I panic when I can�t get someone on the phone, thinking something happened to them. I hate it. I hate it. Imagine how I would be if I had a child. I am already such a fear brimmed person. Everything scares the shit out of me. Wind, storms, flying, driving on snow, going new places, even driving to work in the morning is a test of my bravery. Every single morning I am sure that I will not make it to work. And, another reason, of course, we don�t NEED any more children on this earth right now. China and India are going to take care of all the population needs we will ever have. And�I like doing whatever I want, whenever I want. I am a sleeper; I will sleep whenever the mood strikes me. If I want to take a nap at noon�.than I am going to take a nap at noon. If I want to sleep for fifteen hours than darn it, I am going to.

Besides the natural instinct we have to procreate, I think most children, families, are born because people want to connect. It is an attempt at something stable. Having children is a total connection. I sometimes see a kid with his/her dad and my mind automatically thinks about Eric being a father to a child of ours. Sometimes I see a family walking down the road, all hands grasping one another�s in a chain of family and I suddenly REALLY want to have a child with him. But I realize that it is because it would be a melding, it would be he and I totally connected within another being. It is the closest I could possibly come to crawling within his skin (as I so often have the urge to do), I want to be as close to him as possible. I often hear women cry when their marriages aren�t working, �I want this to work, I have a CHILD with him,� and I know that what they mean is that they have this CONNECTION with him, they have melded their being into their husbands, they have gotten as close as possible. It must be hard to let that go.

As much as I don�t want to have a child, I also know that if I did somehow end up pregnant I would be happy. I know that our child would be some kind of superhuman. I know that we would be good, no, great parents. I know that I would be completely awed by a child, I would love them well and give them every single last foundation to be a good human that there is. And, I would have that super connection people have with the person they had a child with. There is no one on earth I would rather have that sort of connection with.

But that connection, that need for connection is the wrong reason to choose to have a child. There is, in fact, no really right reason to have a child. Any decision to have a child is selfish at its core. Think about it�.why do you want to have a child? You might say that you want to put on this earth a being that will make a difference�but you could adopt, you could adopt a baby and teach it what you know. Why aren�t you doing that? Because you want that connection. Because you want to carry on your bloodline.

I have much more to say on the issue, but right now I have to go to work. This is another reason I don�t want a child. I am a waitress. I don�t really plan to be anything else. Yes, my life partner has a great job and feasibly I wouldn�t have to even work at all. But that is not what I am about. What if something ever happened to him? My child and I would be left on a waitress salary and my child would only know life amounting to a waitress. Which isn�t so bad, but I would want my child to have things, to have opportunities, to see that there are a lot of different ways life can take you. And I can�t provide those things.

I am a nullipara. I am a woman who has never borne a child and I plan to stay that way�.even if the name Sigh is pretty cool.

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