Babies > Late Nights at Bars or Late Nights at Bars > Babies? Right Now, I'm Going to have to Say the Latter...

Thursday night, I was at the Center for Hope and Healing’s annual holiday dinner. A baby was also in attendance. Towards the end of the evening, the baby left, and people commented on how cute it was. I leaned over to the friend and fellow volunteer sitting next to me. “I don’t like babies," I said, a few glasses of wine in, “but that one really is pretty cute.” “That was too loud," she said. “Go to the bathroom. Now.”

I don’t really like babies.

I feel like on the list of my not necessarily being a naturally good person this ranks just below not liking dogs and not liking Harry Potter, but… I just don’t.

I think they kind of look like monkeys, they cry too much, and they lack interesting personality. (I wish I could show you a picture of myself as a baby; my eyes are all squinty and it's somewhat amusing.) I’m not actually a bad person, I promise, I do like kids (sometimes), just more so if they're teenagers. Maybe it’s blameable on my changing my first diaper around the age of nine or ten and thus realizing the reality of constant child-responsibility, or maybe it just points to the possibility of my not having a soul.

Also, read this. 27 reasons why kids are actually the worst.

Friday I had the best day I've had at work so far, as I spoke to hundreds of teenagers about suicide prevention, one on one and in groups. The question I got passed on a notecard to me multiple times that day caught me off guard, however- instead of the anticipated “I struggle with this, is there hope, etc” notes, I repeatedly received the following question: “Why does it matter? Why do you think suicide is always bad?” Yikes.

I can only speak of loss and hope, of how glad I am to be alive every day, and, philosophy and religion excluded, how valuable they are. When I do this, I always think that if my story gives even one kid hope, the struggles of my job and the struggles of these past months have been totally worth it. This is when I think being bad at math might make me better at my job… I can never understand the idea of measuring lives logically; I could never sacrifice one person for the greater value of a group.

You matter so much. Let me tell you again and again and again, and please fight for yourself. Silly kids. This may be part of the reason teenagers have my heart. They’re so smart, but so dumb.

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s actually baby season. So many of my friends my age on facebook, many who were married right when I was also supposed to be married (that’s a whole other story) are now pregnant. I’m happy for them, but to be honest… I’m also a little confused.

That’s not to say that I’m not interested in pushing a child out of my own vagina one day, because I am, but honestly I’m more interested in the pregnancy itself than the actual resulting human- which I think is a bad sign regarding potential motherhood. I’m highly confident in my own fertility (that word always makes women sound like a field to me…), and was very recently told I have “wide hips, good for birthing” by a Harvard medical student, so it does seem like a shame to leave all of that to waste. In my mind, I’ll be totally hardcore, having my child in a birthing center with relaxing music playing in the background and a total absence of pain medication coursing through my body, all deep breaths and calm strength. This may also be a strong indicator that I’m not ready to have children.

In the good ‘ole south, it’s not weird to have children and a family at such a young age, although it would be up here. Subconsciously, I always thought I would be a young wife as well, raising children and settling down. I kind of feel like a rebel, running away to explore and focus on my career and education and planning to hyphenate my last name if I ever do get married. I feel kind of weird not being ready to settle down- maybe I’m still just too selfish at this point in my life, maybe I don’t want to live with any regrets, or maybe I’m just stupid enough to walk away from a good thing when I have it.

I still stay up irresponsibly late at night, I leave my kitchen dirty for days at a time, and as I've mentioned before, I’m trying to manage some basic skills of what I consider adulthood.  It’s healthier for me, admittedly, to do things like avoid being out late at night and do downward dog-type pilates poses  before falling asleep, it just still seems a little boring. I recently did some investigation into why I still have the face of a fifteen year old at almost twenty-three, and the list of natural remedies I found I found was full of things I fail at doing, like eating vegetables and going to bed early. Boo.

I'm getting better at cooking, though- look at what I found on my desk this morning!

I do kind of wonder if I’m missing out, though. Being on your own team is hard. Is it weird that that’s what I miss most about a long-term, committed relationship? Always having someone on your team? While this whole living alone independence thing can be somewhat empowering, I also wish I had someone to tell everything to at the end of the day, to come home to dinner too, to share hopes and dreams and fears with, to love and be loved by unconditionally. Maybe it’s not so black and white, maybe you can have both, but after growing up in a culture where women largely stay home and cook and clean for their families while their husband is the “head of their household”, I’m just like… ewww. No thank you.

The idea of an unfettered, self-reliant, no real binding obligations to others sounds just lovely at this point in my life, but other than the times I was absolutely psychotically crazy, it’s also been the worst period of my life thus far. Living fast and fancy free sounds like the best of a coming of age novel, but after a regular attempt at it in not terribly recent previous months, I’m not sure it’s always that great. It’s all fun and games until you can’t get out of bed, you never feel on top of anything in your life, and you realize how flat-out jerky people can be.

I really don’t want to fall into what I sometimes perceive to be the black vortex of marriage and children yet, however, from which no one ever hears from you again. What’s the right balance of stability, anyway?

I feel like many people in their twenties can be stereotypically and unfairly blanketly placed in two extremist groups. There’s the young hipsters, all about freedom and travel, high on life and who knows what else, living for the day with no future plans. Then there’s the ‘adults”, settling into careers and committed relationships. I want to fit in between, I suppose. To have nights I feel 22 (obligatory Taylor Swift reference) and to also have enough routine to function at my best.

Maybe there’s more people in this category than I think. Those of us still discovering who we are, but also wanting to focus on careers. To have the freedom to travel (although not necessarily the money to do so) and also enough structure day to day to feel well balanced.  

Or maybe not. Maybe it's just me.