Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Grace was telling me some local gossip today and the subject matter boiled down to another case of amazingly poor parenting. This coincided with my reading a blog post from one of my favorite writers that was a letter to her six-month-old son. It was so heart-crushingly beautiful as to cause me and all the other people who commented to tell her she made us cry at work.

Here's the thing about us being childless. It's not just that I'm jealous of people with kids, when I find out yet another friend I grew up with is pregnant, getting pictures emailed to me from my sister and all of my cousins of their beautiful babies, hearing stories about the milestones they're achieving. Because oh hell yes, of course I'm jealous of all of that. But it's not your typical jealousy, like "Man, must be nice to drive/live/look/ like that," - it goes so much deeper than that.

To the point of sometimes I feel actual panic at the thought of maybe never being parents. Never getting to see what a child of ours would look like, never getting to meet our child. Not having our marriage go to that deepest level of creating and raising another human being. Missing out on so much. Stuff that most people take for granted: grow up, get married, have kids. I've seen my husband hold babies and the feeling that produces in me is indescribable. There are times the sadness of this is almost incapacitating to me and it takes a little while to recover; usually alone in my room with a book or my journal. It's not a fun time.
And then you know, of course it passes and I think of what an asshole I am to feel sorry for myself. There are many many people out there who have it so much worse and would probably punch me in the face if they read that. Which is how I sometimes feel when I hear or read about a parent who mistreats his child. Except really, punching in the face is not what I'm fantasizing about doing. Let's just keep it at that.

So! I bet you're glad you stopped by to read this, huh. Sorry. It's my blog and I'll bitch if I want to.

And other than existential angst over things I have absolutely no control over, I'm doing pretty good today. Tonight is cooking, packing and grooming for what's shaping up to be a long and fun-filled family weekend. I hope everybody's end-of-summer holiday rocks the fuckin' casbah.

2 comments:

Swistle said...

Ug, the people-who-mistreat-children thing. I get this RUSH of gaggy anger, like if I was standing next to the mistreater with a weapon it would feel WONDERFUL to use it on them.

Kim said...

I can't even listen to some of the stories people try and tell me.