My blogging style has changed a lot over the past five or six years. For those of you who only know me as Dainty Kitty, I used to be Sushi “Here is Every Detail of My Life” Chick. I miss her a little bit but my life isn’t like that anymore and change is good. I haven’t quite found my niche here on Typepad yet, though. I want to be somewhat personal but I also want this to be something that I would feel comfortable having my brother read (because he does). I’m trying to find balance.
So beyond my forays into torture porn I’ve kept it pretty low key. Sure the marriage stuff was kind of personal but not too personal. But now I have something I need to think about, to write about and have decided to hash it out a bit here.
Children are vile, horrible creatures.
Okay, not really. I wish I believed this, though; life would be so much easier right now if I did.
Fact One: I’ve felt a strong urge to have children since I was seventeen. My dream was to fall in love with a man who made good money, spend a couple years of wedded bliss and then start having kids - as many as we could afford. When someone asked what I would do if I could have any job in the world I’d say I wanted to be a stay at home mom.
Fact Two: My boyfriend does not want to have children. And, I will point out for his sake, he was up front about it from the very beginning.
Now you’d think that maybe this wouldn’t be such a big deal considering that we’ve only been together for four months…not true. We’ve already mentioned it a couple of times and it’s usually glossed over faster than my throat can close up and tears can burn in my eyes. Yesterday, though, after he said something that I took offense to, something that really wasn’t all that offensive, I showered angry and confused and hurt and I realized, very simply, that I’m looking for an out. Every little thing that shouldn’t bother me at all is bothering me on a grand scale. Give me a reason to get the fuck out of this great relationship now because it’s just going to have to end eventually anyway. I’ve been sabotaging myself for weeks (my weeks of hormonal outrage, though, had nothing to do with this) – not realizing that it was just a manifestation of the thing that’s bothering me more and more. The thing that’s moved up in my mind.
I mean, unless we discover some miraculous solution – like Paul McCartney showing up on my doorstep with a marriage proposal - it’s really doomed. We’re like the nativity scene meets Romeo and Juliet or something…doomed, doomed I say. I mean, I’m thirty-two years old – I have no time to waste in a relationship just because we really like each other. Not when we disagree on such an important topic. Sure, women are having kids much later in life now and you can do anything you want if you really put your heart into it but I also have to be realistic. My clock is ticking a bit slower – or would it be faster? - than it was five or six years ago.
So why keep seeing one another? And why continue to ignore this gigantic, smelly elephant in the room? I confessed what I had come to discover and he said that he’d been thinking about it a lot, too. We talked about it a little bit as we got ready to go to the Cityfolk Festival for food, music and fireworks but, honestly, what’s there to talk about? I want This and he wants That. This and That in big, bold capital letters, really.
Sure, it’d be easy if one of us could bend but that would only eventually lead to resentment. The only conclusion we can come to right now is to break up. In an email today he said, “On the one hand, I feel like our dealing with this right now and breaking up would be the wisest, most adult act of my entire life. On the other hand, I feel like it would be one of the most foolish.” I have nothing to say to that. I mean, it’s true but that doesn’t make it any easier or something I want to do. It made me feel sick and I would have cried had I not been sitting at my desk at work (mind you, I had to fight off tears).
I can’t imagine tomorrow without him. No emails, no phone calls at five o’clock, no cuddles on the couch, no click, no spark (Click & Spark was the headline of my ad that he responded to on craigslist). No Jake. No nothing. Starting over. And the starting over isn’t what gets me down – it’s not, “Man, I’m back out there again” – it’s that things are so great that I don’t want to be out there again because I’m immensely happy with what I have, thank you.
And I have no idea what to do. He says there has to be a solution. But what the hell can that be? I’ll decide not to have kids? Not gonna happen. He’ll decide that having at least one is okay? That’s not going to happen and even if it did, it’s no solution. Break up? Yeah, that’s no solution, either.
It’s frustrating. No, wait, not frustrating because that just doesn’t convey how I feel. I almost have to make up a new word for how I feel because it’s really bad.
The only good thing about this predicament is that we can both understand how the other feels. See? That’s how good we are together.
