Bridget Callahan is Your Best Friend

The conversation is motherhood tonight sweeties...for various odds and ends of reasons.

1. I talked to my mother today about my impending doo...birthday.

2. Some girl I don't know on LJ wondered if she was pregnant.

3. Another girl I do know is trying to get pregnant, and all these other women are trying to comfort her by telling her how fucking long it takes to get pregnant. Whereas I am pretty sure I've used up all the "old condom" chances I have, and I'm getting knocked up as soon as I even think about it, which is why I might never have sex again.

4. I watched a rerun of Bones that included a dead newborn and lots of dialogue about how not all women want children, and the requisite line of "having a baby makes you feel whole" followed by "It's an increase in serotonin levels necessary for the propagation of the species". You know what would make that show cooler? If Booth was a killer vampire with a soul. Who hunted demons.


So is there going to come a magic point in my life where I suddenly realize I have to have a kid or I'll regret it forever? I'm not one of those girls who's been walking around thinking "later". I walk around thinking "never". Especially when looking at emo boys. If this magic moment exists, it probably already happened and was quickly nixxed by watching the Jonas Brothers Camp Rock.

But when you break it down, I don't really have a problem with kids. If I was independently wealthy and didn't have to work at all, I would probably enjoy having one. I'm incredibly vain in my own weird fat way, and my kid would be incredibly smart and charming, and also very attractive if I can figure out how to have a kid with only my DNA. What I can't stand is the idea of being attached to one guy for the rest of my life, and even more so the task of having to raise a kid WITH someone. If I'm ever having a baby, it's growing up the way I say it should grow up, and once again, let me stress the importance of me having a lot of money for that to happen. You need lots of money to buy a private island and start manufacturing clones of yourself, while paying for first class education, music lessons, tours of Asia, and ponies.

So it's not that I'm against me procreating, it's just that I know I will never be in the right situation for me to have a kid. Not in the next ten years anyway. Which, by the way, 10 years from now will be 39. FUCKED UP. Ten years ago was 19, EVEN MORE FUCKED UP. Time is going by REALLY SLOWLY. I feel like I've been alive forever. And yes, I do also feel like I will live forever, and yes that's probably cause I'm young. But to use a very tired cliche, if I lived 200 years ago, I'd be a great grandmother and have no teeth and also be dead. Of smallpox.

I feel incredibly bad for the girl I know who wants to get knocked up. I mean, here's the ideal person who should get a baby as soon as she wants it. She's beautiful, has her Ph.D in something I can't begin to understand, is kind and sweet and generous to everyone she meets, has terrific culturally sensibilities, revels in the joy of childlike things herself, and keeps her house clean, her husband inspired, her cats happy. She's fiscally responsible, ambitious, imaginative. I have no idea how my friend got lucky enough to meet her and get her to marry him, and I'm guessing most days he doesn't either. It actually makes one feel bad for all the babies who will not be her babies, because the child she has will be a fucking boon to the human race. And yes, sweety, you will eventually get pregnant. Lots of women do it every day, and lots of them wait a couple years.

Look at that amazing wonder list above. I am NONE of those things. Not only am I none of those things? I don't even LIKE people. I can't swallow the idea of being with one guy forever because I am a very selfish, easily irritated person who's idea of the perfect day is listening to myself talk aloud alone, and not putting clothes on. I feel like there should be an option to trade away my fertility, to make some bargain where I never get pregnant in exchange for her getting pregnant.

So I've been talking about getting a dog, since I'm almost thirty, I have a backyard, I need to walk more. It's funny, cause I've mentioned it to a few people, and all of them have tried to talk me out of it. Some more actively than others. Remember when you were little and you wanted a dog, and your parents talked to you about how much responsibility it is and how it's a lot of work? I swear, my friends do not think I'm grown up enough for a dog.

"You'd have to walk it every day"
"It's hard to date when you have to come home every night"
"It's expensive, how would you afford it?"
"They're not like cats, you can't stay out all night"

First of all, my friends obviously think I have some very exciting life that I hide from them.
Second, my friends think I'm a whore. Still. A whole six years later.
Third, the only person who reacted to the idea with any excitement and no words of wisdom was my mother. Which is a little heartening, even though its probably just cause she wants another dog and Dad won't let her get one.

I bring this up because I've been wondering if I'm channeling my latent need for motherhood into the need for a dog. The sad part of that is that my friends warnings are creating doubts, and deep in my heart I know they're right. I wouldn't be good yet for a dog. I wouldn't take it out enough, I wouldn't be home enough. I already have a major guilt complex about leaving my cat alone all day.

So the conclusion to this thinking is that I'm 29, and I'm not good enough for a dog yet. The only way I'll get a dog at this rate is by accident, like finding a stray or being asked by someone to dogsit and then they get run over by a train and I have to adopt it. Or if I just swallow the fear of responsibility and get one anyway, and then am forced to be a good parent. For all the crap I've gone through over the last six years, turns out I'm terrified of committing to something I can't get out of, and I don't know how to fix that, or even if I want to fix it, because quite frankly it seems like pretty sound instinct at this point.

I know, it's a little sadder than you were thinking when you started reading this, huh?