I've been thinking some things for awhile and had nowhere to put them.
And then I remembered my blog!
Oh firstly, do you want to know where I've been?
In my very last post I said that I had a crush on a guy in my wider circle of friends, a real crush.
Well he had a crush on me too, and we fell madly in love. That is not just an over-used adjective. We fell MADLY in love. When he kissed me my vision went blurry and the world swooned around me so that I was liable to lose my balance, that's not just poetry, that really happened.
My body wanted out of my skin around him, and him me. My temperature rose, my heart raced and raced. I wrote songs about him. He gave me big beautiful expensive presents, and pulled me into his embrace without notice, many times a day.
Me him and him me, the whole lot. Two people head over heels in love. It was the single most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, while it was.
And then it started to scratch a little bit like wool does sometimes.
And then the neck started to feel too tight, and you'd pull it away from your throat and think, aha, that is what's buggin me today.
And then someone, hard to say who, washed it on hot and it shrunk, so the sleeves wouldn't reach the wrists, and the hem didn't cover your back, so that the cold came in.
That damn cold, so hard to ignore.
It didn't happen all at once, The Ruining of Your Perfect, Favourite Jumper.
It happened in tiny little wafer thin slithers, so that you'd think, oh well, and keep going.
Until finally there I was standing in the doorway with no jumper at all.
And there is so much empty space.
There is much more of a beautiful, sad story that could be told about that, but that's not what I've been thinking, per se.
I've been thinking and had nowhere to say it, that I hate that all my friends have had babies.
I hate it in so many ways, and I think it is abhorrent and terrible.
When you are growing up, as girls, into women, having the times of your lives together, bonding, drinking, dancing freely to loud music, being in love with each other, sharing clothes, helping each other decide on hairstyles, getting your periods, having crushes, no one ever mentions to you, not even once, that one day it will all STOP.
You're dearest, beautiful, talented, incredible, free, sexy, wild, dancing, crying with you, understanding you, laughing friend is going to die. All of them. One by one. Die to you.
No one talks about it.
When your women friends have children, they no longer listen to you.
You have spent years, often decades, trusting that those women will listen to your stories, listen to you recount everything from your love affairs to your ingrown hairs, and then suddenly, they don't.
They look like the same person, very much.
But mid way through every sentence you will ever say from now on they will interrupt you by acknowledging something about their new child. The child is usually present, and the thing being acknowledged ranges from how amazing/beautiful/funny/cute/creative/talented their child is, to just some plain story about their childs doings, or to just 'look at him/her'. And you are expected to also shift every ounce of your attention to the child and be... awed? Interested? Appreciative.
What's more, they don't know that they're interrupting you. In any normal circumstance to continually cut someone off and talk only about yourself is considered rude. But women who have new children, they don't see how much it hurts you. How much you desperately need them to be present with you. And how painful it is that it never comes. There is an unsaid agreement, that you never agreed to, that you would Take The Back Seat, now and forever, to their lives, with their new child.
They don't come to you.
You go to them.
Their time tables are so busy. No. No. Not busy like how the childless 'think' they're busy, (this is exactly how it was described to me) they're really REALLY busy. And you wouldn't understand. And with a sweep of the dish cloth, whatever is going on in your life is marginalised to a mere inconvenience in the face of the mountain of Real Stress and Responsibility that they have.
You are expected to find their children incredible.
Even, even the women who when they were your childless girlfriends agreed that other people's kids were hell on earth and to be avoided at all costs, even those women get amnesia, and fully expect you to find their children's every snot bubble and tiny digit, incredible.
Let me tell you a story on this matter. Several years ago I ran a stop sign and hit a moving car going 100km an hour. Both cars flipped and spun out of control, the other car coming to a stop by hitting a bus stop. Both cars were written off and all of us were jarred and emotionally scarred. Remarkably, no one was harmed. But as you can imagine, it took quite a large psychological toll on my life and was a significant life event that changed the shape of my being.
Because I was embarrassed, for making such a terrible mistake, I took my time telling people.
I was on the phone to one of my best, and my oldest women friends, and I said, I have something to tell you, something big has happened. And as the words "I crashed my car" trailed out my mouth, she interrupted me with a squeal of delight to tell me her two year old daughter had just blown a spit bubble.
I didn't tell her about the crash. I gave up. I asked her about the spit bubble. Her babies spit bubble, had become more important than my life.
Women with children tell you flippantly not to have children if you don't really like or want them, which I don't.
But we all know that a person with children can smugly discuss the abstract concept of not having children with all the arm waving philosophy they like, in the comfortable knowing that they have already reproduced, done the deed, sealed their fate, continued their line.
Women on my end of the stick however, who have neither a good relationship, nor any prospect of one, nor any real affection for children, have to take that decision like a very bitter little pill, ever day of their lives, never knowing if it is going to be the medicine that allows them to fly, like they hope to god it is, or, unfortunately a poison that damns them to a life of searing, alcoholic regret.
I am not a person who believes that children are miracles.
The process of creating one, cell by cell, is rather miraculous yes.
But the children themselves, they are not miracles. A miracle implies something wondrous, awesome, other-wordly. Children are destructive, irrational, sometimes violent, selfish, unpredictable, conniving, manipulative little devils on speed that suck the energy out of their carers, drain their money, erode their brains and consume consume consume.
And I believe that most people have children to assuage their existential emptiness, to have 'purpose', to have someone who will forever (or until their thirties) need them, someone who will love them and be unable to leave them.
People have children just because it's 'the done thing'.
People have children to have something to shape, walking, talking play dough with their eyes.
People have children to feel important, to get attention, to feel special, to be loved.
I don't think these are good reasons to bring an entire person into being.
And it really annoys me that society reveres this choice, makes of it something so sacred and untouchable that nowhere are we allowed to say 'bad idea homie'.
And lastly, I do not like what the children take away from my friends: all their possibilities.
I have an exceedingly smart, talented bunch of women friends who now spend all their mental and physical energy being the cleaner, the pumpkin masher, the table wiper, the driver and singing inane, repetitive nursery rhymes over and over and over.
No one tells you it will be like this.
In the sad true words of that soppy misogynist loving songstress Lana del Ray: the world was built for two, only worth loving if somebody is loving you. So sign up. Join The Club. Put spermatozoa to ovum and create your very own, genetically personalised greatest show of all... come one, come all, to witness and be awed... just don't expect a part in the show, you're hear to bear witness, not to be heard. Can the childless all please take their seats... the show is about to begin.
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