Loss

Kids...I love 'em...they're great...especially in small doses and when you get to send them back home with their parents.

Growing up, I figured I'd have three or four children filling up my days by now. For some reason, it never seemed like there was any other choice but to be a mommy...it's what women do, right? I dunno, do they? When we got married, we agreed to be married for five years before diving into the whole kid discussion. By the time the five years passed, it was pretty clear that having our own kids wasn't going to be our path. Cool, then. I moved on to other things.

Or so I thought.

Impossible as it was for me to believe, there really is such a cursed thing as a biological clock; and, apparently, its role here is to confuse the @#%* heck out of me. For some reason, I was convinced that once I made the "no babies" choice then the body would listen and that would be all there was to it. In no way was I prepared for the surprise attacks of yearning to be pregnant, the daydreaming about telling my mom the big news, and even imagining what it would be like to give birth. In no way did I ever expect commercials with cute and cuddly infants to launch fits of tears and secret longing. In no way did I know this difficult choice is one I must make on a continual basis.

These occasional hormonal fits don't tend to last very long, though. I've observed that this baby fever of mine only seems to include the pregnancy and birthing bits. Never does it venture into the territory of poopy diapers or the terrible twos, and it certainly doesn't take me so far as to imagine the school years. Which leads me to believe that my rational mind must still be correct in its assessment that raising kids isn't what I want in this life. I'm in college, after all, I'm sharp enough to realize that desire for the immediate gratification of the one thing does not equate desire for what the one thing turns into after the first few months of gratification. My logic may be dizzying, but it's logical nonetheless.

Still, though, I experience deep loss over this choice, this profound sacrifice. It's far more challenging than I suspected not to follow the biological and social norms. The questions keep coming up: if I'm not going to be a parent, then what am I going to be? What else could I get up to that might give my life that feeling of worth, purpose, place? What am I going to do with all this love and nurturing I have to offer?

I don't know the complete answers yet...still searching, still settling into who I am trying to be. One thing I do know for sure: I love, love, LOVE being the aunt to my eight nieces and nephews who never forgets a birthday.