#NerdsUnite: I met my husband on @PlentyOfFish (The Baby Fever)
<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Jessica. She and I met through this loverly site, and by her reaching out to me asking if she could write for us. Really rad chickie, she provided a lot of insight into my childhood for me (something you don't get every day from someone!!) - andddddd she has quite the life story. Like did you know she moved cross country for love? ORRRR that she found out her ex cheated on her by reading it on Facebook? ANNNNDDDD she even married a guy she met off of Plenty of Fish! Yep, true story! This is life as told through her eyes, and through the keyword of the nerd. HIT IT JESSICA!!! </editorsnote>
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @ItsJessWeaver
Uh oh, you guys. I have a confession to make. I had the worst case of baby fever last weekend that I’ve ever had in my life.
I used to tell my parents anyone who would listen when I was 12ish that I would never get married (oops, did that this year) and I would never have kids. In fact, I planned to move to a remote wilderness cabin and live alone when I became an adult. That didn’t happen though, partially because it is hard to make a living when you don’t live near any towns, partially because I really didn’t understand how much I would like the convenience of Starbucks and shopping malls, and lastly because I stopped hating other people (mainly myself) so much and I just didn’t want to be that alone. I was pretty serious about not having kids, though.
I had my reasons why I didn’t think I would be a good parent. I’m terribly selfish, I’d probably say horrible (if true) things out loud to them and scar them for life, and I’d probably transfer all my neuroses to them by attempting quite vigorously to do just the opposite, in an effort to not be the terrible parent I’d envision myself as. I also had this problem with love—see, I really didn’t think I was good at it. Fact is, I thought I was terrible at loving people. I always seemed to be doing terrible things to people I Ioved: disappointing them, saying thoughtlessly rude things, forgetting important stuff, and otherwise being awful at having friends and being related to people. Thus, having my own children seemed to be the height of selfishness—make little replicas of myself (like a do-over!!) that I can then ruin and shatter to pieces emotionally? No way, not for me.
Water under the bridge has a way of carrying away the crap people throw over the railing, though, you know? Time went by. I went my own way. I removed some influences from my life that were hurting me, and I realized that a lot of the time when it seemed like I was disappointing someone I loved, the disappointment had more to do with their ridiculous expectations than my actual failures. How I learned this was actually letting people in, and watching them fail to meet my expectations, and learning to recognize when those expectations were unrealistic. Or when they weren’t— and when I had every right to expect something better, and take steps to get it. Watching other people fail and learning to let go of that helped me to learn how my failures are never as absolute as I think they are.
Still, I fail. I understand that this happens and I am a lot more zen about it now. I’ve expanded my horizons and met a lot of people in the last 5 years. Some of those people have been adversaries; some of them have been kindred spirits. I’ve been lucky enough to have added people in my life who have taught me some lessons about how much a person can love. As I have learned those lessons and watched some people I know who are very good at loving, I have started to feel the chill in my heart (the part where I said I would never have kids of my own) begin to thaw. It’s a spring melt, if you want to know the truth. I’m flash-flooding over here. It is freaking me the hell out, how it is changing me.
I want to have my own child, at the same time that I fear it. My heart and my head are engaged in daily arguments over the possibility, the eventuality, no—the inevitability—of pregnancy and motherhood. I stop short of begging my husband (he wants a more stable income before we do something crazy like take on the responsibility of another human life—geez, he’s talking sense, here) but a few crazy moments have come and gone where the longing was almost palpable, and I wondered, when it was over, who had possessed me for those hours. Could it just be that I’ve changed? Could it be that living with someone who genuinely loves me has started to re-wire my brain for reproduction? I’m still scared shitless at everything being a parent means, but I’ve stopped letting that fear convince me that all the pain and uncertainty isn’t somehow totally worth it.
It took me almost the whole weekend to get it out of my system, and every time the baby fever comes it gets worse. The fever is always followed by some relief and a lot of self-talk—the message being, “it is totally ok that you don’t have a kid. You don’t need this right now, you really don’t.”
But damn, I think I do. Maybe not right now. Right now I’m working on my career. Right now I’m thinking I need that Nook tablet that’s under the Christmas tree. Right now I need to enjoy my husband and cat and the freedom we have. ‘Cause one of these days, push is going to come to shove. Someday soon, my brain is going to run out of arguments, and guess what?
My heart is going to win.
#kthxbye
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