Itās such a short-term responsibility, in the long run too. Like, I fucking hate that itās socially conditioned to believe that a womanās crowning achievement is squeezing a few kids out and she should be content with subsuming her every desire in the care and feeding of said kids, and never once complain how difficult kids can be, because women are mothers and mothers should love their children no matter what.
Fuck that noise. I love my kids. I have four of them. Iām one of those super-fertile bitches who gets pregnant from having the mate so much as twitch in her direction. I got pregnant on the pill, on Depo, and using condoms. I lost a fifth kid because of getting pregnant on Depo. I have four orchids and a closed flower bud tattooed on my right forearm to represent the five of them. Theyāre literally so important to me that I inked them indelibly into my flesh.
The only reason I havenāt cooked them in a stewpot and consumed them like Baba fucking Yaga is because I have a life outside of them. Kids are fucking monsters, man, and it is not healthy or sane to structure my entire fucking life around them. They canāt help being monsters, because until theyāre in the ballpark of 10, they simply donāt have the neural development to truly recognize that other people are valid, and are basically ravenous id-beasts with the worldās most critical problems at all times, and fuck what youāre doing, they need you to fix things NOW.
The nature of children. It takes time for tiny human brains to mature. Itās not their fault, but knowing that doesnāt make it not real.
And you know something else? They donāt always have to come first. Their needs must always be met, and I do my damnedest to be a good mom, but I have shit to do too. They can wait on the juice until Iām off the phone. They can hang the fuck on while Iām writing to tell me about their book for five minutes so I can finish my sentence.
Procreating didnāt require I turn in all my needs and desires to become a passive, doting brood mare whoās just supposed to sit there until a childās demands for cookies or to ramble on for thirty minutes with every thought running through their heads like Matthew McConnaghey or Morgan Freeman free-associating their surroundings with stream-of-thought narration validates her existence again.
Women get to put themselves ahead of their spouses and kids sometimes. Iām sick of society telling us we canāt.
And if all of this I just put out there revolts you, makes you question my ability as an appropriate parent, makes you think that Iām a horrible mother who should never have had kids, I want to examine that reaction deeply, because parenting is fucking *hard*, and you get angry and you get frustrated and youāre utterly fucking alone, because the second you suggest children are less than perfect angels who are the sole star in your heavens, gosh theyāre just the best I canāt think of anything else Iād rather do with my life, the SECOND you do that, you are shamed and guilted and shunned and gossiped about as a terrible person and a horrible mother.
And if you examine all that and still think Iām a terrible mother for having the temerity to speak the truth instead of putting on my best starry-eyed smile and dying a little more inside by passively assisting in my own erasure, fuck you. You donāt validate me any more than my kids do.
