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| Me and my food baby... |
If I showed up at my parents' home pregnant and told them an angel came to me after I read the results off the stick and said, "It's okay, Bruce. Your child is going to make a huge impact in this world," I'm pretty sure my parents wouldn't buy it...and I haven't been a teenager in quite a while. They'd be more concerned that I wasn't married. That nobody loves me. That I would suddenly become another statistic (even though I have two degrees; am balancing a mortgage and student loans; and am a pretty good bowler when I want to be). But statistics are all what you make of them.
I have spent my whole life being responsible because I never wanted to ever have any excuses (namely children) for not fulfilling my goals, the way I often thought the great women who came before me and raised me did. I never wanted my child to be raised by someone incomplete. And now that a milestone birthday is rapidly approaching, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever have a child at all. I've turned into a statistic I hate more than being a teenage mom - the successful woman who has no one with whom to really share it.
When this house seems small, I'm grateful for my solitude, but it ain't small all the time. Sometimes its suffocatingly large and quiet...and cold...and I wonder if I'll ever really be somebody who matters.
And this is the real point of the often-told Christmas story to me - you have to understand what really matters. Mary was not a dumb, young girl, but even if she was, she was the mother of Jesus. And even people who don't believe in Jesus can admit that's kind of a big deal. Did it matter that she wasn't married? Nope. Did it matter that people were probably skeptical of the whole "no-really-it-is God's-baby fiasco? We're still celebrating Christmas, right? All that mattered is that her baby didn't stay a baby. He became a legend. Bet the haters never saw that coming!
At night, I put head to pillow and it really doesn't matter how smart I am. The dreams of a genius (which I'm not) and the dreams of an idiot (which I'm also not) probably bare a striking resemblance, but because a person can't be both at once...who knows? It also doesn't matter that I've tried to be a good person or that I have tried to treat people better than they have treated me. What's a "good person" anyway? That term is just as subjective as everything else. And though I've helped some students in my 8 years of teaching, I've done it at my own expense. I've looked at children all day long for so long that I've realized they are the ugliest part of society because they honestly reflect all the BS their parents put into them or don't try hard enough to drive out. And while it's true that I try to prepare them for the world at large, I get nothing in return...not even the feeling that I'll be a good mother when I have my own.
In addition, I've found that every man who has ever said he loved me (romanitcally) only meant it temporarily, and as I've found ways to move past this disappointment, I've had nothing to hold on to but my stupid sense of responsibility for being "the bigger person." That well has long run dry.
In short...NOTHING I HAVE DONE UP UNTIL THIS POINT IN MY LIFE HAS REALLY MATTERED...not much to me, anyway. SO NOW WHAT? Honesty.
I hope the next year brings me some clear answers because this time next year, I hope to be living my life instead of volunteering in the lives of others. I mean...I don't expect to birth the second coming or anything, but I do hope I won't continue to be the unsavory statistic I am now. I want to matter...
