Tears, tears and more tears...

Once again, the comments to my last post really made me feel better - THANK YOU! It's nice to know that some people can really relate, and know exactly how I feel and what I'm going through.

The other night, we watched Cheaper By The Dozen 2 - and when Piper Perabo has her baby, I literally sobbed. I tried to stifle it so that I was just this pathetic, wimpering, shaking mass of pent-up frustration, pain and despair.

All day long, I see all these women - mothers - who couldn't represent a more diverse group: tall, short, skinny, fat, pretty, ugly, smart, stupid, kind, mean, well-mannered, rude...You name it, they're all there. And I KNOW how shallow it is of me to think this, but sometimes I see someone and I can't help wondering: HOW THE HELL DID SHE END UP WITH A KID??? Today was one of those times...ALL! DAMN! DAY!!! When I went to the post office, I saw this woman who was what I always think should be the picture next to the dictionary of (female) couch potato: she looked unkempt, unwashed, was quite overweight and made no bones about it in her crappy, ill-fitting clothes. So she gets out of the car, and as I'm looking her over from a safe distance and thinking to myself, good grief woman!, another thought sneaks into my head: 20 bucks says SHE has a baby. And sure enough, bulging pants and nasty tshirt, greasy hair and all, she opens the trunk of her minivan and takes out a stroller. I actually felt nauseous - and there was a part of me that just wanted to SCREAM.
Then there was the woman - two kids in a stroller - who was so skinny, even her jeans made her look anorexic. I started thinking that she was probably one of those women who breastfed because they say that it burns extra calories (so I've read somewhere, a long time ago).

I HATE MYSELF FOR THINKING BADLY OF OTHERS!!

Don't get me wrong - in many instances I feel that my judgment is, while perhaps snide and mean, nonetheless correct and appropriate. When I see a baby in a car seat being stuffed with Burger King, there's a part of me that wants to yank the child away from the person fueling childhood obesity and a host of other developmental crap.

Everywhere I look, people have kids - dads absorbed in tickling a too-cute-for-words infant, mothers scolding (or, more often than not, failing to do so with bratty kids), sometimes yelling for no apparent reason. And it hurts. All of it.

I found myself in the car today, driving without really paying attention to anything around me - when a sudden realization hit me. I can't live this life without children - I can't give it up. For such a long time I kept thinking, maybe it's not that big of a deal. Maybe I don't NEED to have kids - maybe I can just deal with that not being part of my life. I kept thinking, do I really want to get pregnant - with all the discomfort, pain, potential risks etc that come with it? Do I really want to deal with sleepless nights, poopy diapers, potential medical conditions etc? And I kept thinking, no - I'm not ready. No, it's not that big of a deal - I don't think this would work for me anyway. But today, it hit me like a brick. I started thinking about living the rest of my life without ever having children, without grandchildren, without cute little smiles as the world's greatest reward there ever was or could me, without tears of joy and tears of pain, without MOTHERHOOD. And the thought breaks my heart - and I think that, if it turns out that there's no way for us to ever have kids, it'll break my spirit in a way that I'll never be able to fully recover from.

People make it look so easy - women have kids all the time. Sometimes back to back, sometimes multiple births - regardless of social class, education, weight, age...It happens all the time. In fact, sometimes it seems to me that the ease with which some women have kids is directly proportionate to how UNsuitable they are as mothers. I mean, teenage moms? Or women who push a stroller with one hand and puff a cigarette with the other?

I often think about writing a post, and then don't - because I feel like I'm going in circles, like I'm always just saying the same thing, over and over: that I hurt, that I'm sad, that I'm scared, that I don't know what to do or how to handle this at all. I have days where I feel like I'm on autopilot because I just can't get through the day any other way. This is one of the most lonely things that could possibly happen to anyone...