reflections

I have gotten so tired of watching people around me get married and have babies. I grew up listening to my older sister get sick and cry from a solid night of drinking each night, and now that I am at that age everyone around me is buying a home and filling a crib. I went to grade school with some of these people. We had detention together. We wrote our names on the desktops of junior high classrooms. One of them was my first kiss and my first meaningless, horomone injected "I love you". I've been conditioned to view marriage and parenthood as the end of self and it makes me sad to see everyone flinging themselves into it. I even loathe myself a little bit for being engaged at nineteen, like all of these other smalltown girls with small dreams to match. My fiance, speaking of, was out having a drink at the local family restaurant with an old friend. He and HIS fiance (who is my age) are two months pregnant. He texted me and my stomach actually rolled with anxiety FOR THEM. I sometimes get heart palpitations thinking of what it would be like to be expecting a baby right now. To be picking out bibs with little teddy bears on them instead of new clothes for the summer. To never again be able to spend a day alone in your pajamas with no one else to consider. I'm really scared that I won't ever want kids, actually. I know I would love them in smothering doses once they were here, but to be on the cusp of motherhood and think of everything you're giving up--I am absolutely terrified to feel that. I'm worried it would be horrible enough to prevent me from going through with it.