On Motherhood

An article caught my interest this morning as I distracted myself from finishing a paper at the ass-crack of dawn:

http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/mother-declares-her-children-biggest-regret-her-life-153000908.html

And then I came across the original article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2303588/The-mother-says-having-children-biggest-regret-life.html#ixzz2PuPJefdS

Essentially, this woman’s greatest regret in life is having children, and I’m so glad she was honest about her lack of desire both before and after having kids.

For the record, I’ve never wanted kids myself.  I do not like children, I find them all annoying and way more trouble than they’re worth.  When my sister was pregnant, she would tell me all about feeling the baby move.  I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what it would feel like to have a living being moving inside of me, really trying to imagine the beauty of those moments.

I was quickly grossed out.

I could never handle feeling a living being, this alien, using my body as living space, crawling, kicking, creating waste, pushing, demanding…  And then, after it rips its way out of me, I could never imagine having to see it, feed it, and take care of it every day.  Nope.  Not for me.

I’ve known kids weren’t for me since I was little. There is no mother instinct in me, and 9 times out of 10 I am more irked at children than enamored with them.

Still, I have conversations all the time in which I’m told that it’s only a matter of time before I change my mind. Don’t worry, you say that now, but when you get to be 35 or 40, you’ll be desperate for one!

I have had even more conversations about the apparent unbelievably that I, A WOMAN, don’t want kids. It’s just so out of this world, not even in the realm of possibility. Why am I so cold?

So here’s the deal: just because I have the parts does not mean I have any desire to use them for this purpose.  Also, I am not the only one (see above article).  We are not rare, we just choose not speak. I, for one, get tired of having asinine talks about my lack of desire for children and my certainty about never having any.  I’m tired of not being taken at my word, for being dismissed and being told that, essentially, I have no clue what I’m really saying and that, someday, I’ll feel that motherly desire inside of myself and give birth to a baseball team.

No, actually.  I won’t.

The closest thing I felt to ‘motherly instinct’ was when I began to feel like Angel’s dog was mine.  When he was alive, he was my son.  I even wanted to get a puppy so that we could have a bigger family.  We never got the puppy, sadly.

The way I felt about Tower? I’ve never felt anything close to that about children.

I know that Angel wants kids, and we’ve had plenty of discussion. He thinks I’ll be a great mom, and I think that even if that were the case it doesn’t mean that I WANT to be.

Thing is, I was thinking along the lines of this woman: maybe I should give him kids because I don’t want to deny him his right to be a father. But I don’t want to be stuck with a lifetime of taking care of someone else and a lifetime of regret.

I told him a long time ago that if he ever got to the point that he was ready to start a family and I was still adamantly against it, he should leave me because that would be better than staying with me and resenting me later on for keeping him from being happy. He got mad at that, and whenever I tell people they think I’m awful.

What’s so awful about a) wanting your spouse to be happy, b) not wanting kids, and c) being realistic?

We’ll see how it plays out, I guess. And this woman gets a golf clap from me for speaking her mind on the issue and for showing that no, not all women want to be or enjoy being mommies.

End rant.

Odds and Ends. And Wisconsin.

I wrote this on March 23rd, and only just realized I never published it. Because I’m a jerk.

H’okay.  So a certain person came back into Angel’s life recently. Remember the infamous MD?  The one who I made out with thus causing me to question my sexuality and ultimately accept that I am bisexual?  Yeah.  MD.  She’s back, much to my dismay.

She contacted Angel a little more than a week ago, on a day in which both Angel and I were experiencing a ton of chaos in other areas of our life.  Trying to plan Wisconsin, me with midterms, Angel with his parents, etc.  It was one of those days.

And then she texted him.

She asked if he was free because she wanted to hang out with him for a bit.  And hang out they did later that afternoon.  From what I understand, they did a lot of catching up, and she briefly brought up everything that happened last year.  She apologized and said she hoped that Angel and I would forgive her (she accidentally got Angel accused of sexual harassment, and he was close to getting fired), and also mentioned that she was planning on catching up with me too, etc.

All of this was random on her part, but it was fine.  They’ve been in touch on and off since then, which annoys me for various reasons.  But yesterday, she texted him asking for someone else’s contact information, and managed to also sneak in the following: “And if Ariela’s there, can you pretend to bite her for me?”

No.

No, no, no.

This is a loaded text.  She bit me when we made out in the middle of a party last year, and it was something that I complained about (jokingly) when we were all sober again.  It was something the three of us laughed about constantly after that, but definitely in a sexual context.  To me, joking in this manner now after everything that happened (her freaking out because she thought we were “falling in love” with her, Angel almost losing his job, her losing contact with us, etc) is so inappropriate.  I don’t want to go here again.

When I talked to Angel about it, he wasn’t bothered.  He said that he doesn’t expect much from people, and so this is all just part of human stupidity.  So I guess he’s gonna just tolerate it.  He responded to her telling her he’d go ahead and bite me.

Okay.  People are stupid.  I get that.  But that doesn’t mean that you have to stand for people’s stupidity, either.

I get so angry when people cross lines and Angel doesn’t step up and tell them to stop (or at least ask them why).  This happens over and over again.  He remains friends with people who have done the worst things to him, who have been nasty to him, who have gotten him in serious trouble, and who have caused problems between the two of us (asian persuasion, anyone?).  And when I ask him why, it’s always some lame excuse.  I just don’t get it, I guess.

Anyhoo.  So this MD thing is annoying.  And we’re somehow dealing with something similar to what we dealt with this time last year: someone who will not speak to me directly, and who prefers instead to send messages through my husband to me.

I don’t think she should get to do this again.  But it’s not my decision, and as long as Angel responds to her like there’s no issue, it’ll continue to be my problem despite my lack of say.

Just like many, many, many things in my life. Like things in my life I feel I SHOULD have control over, but I don’t.  Ugh.

In other news, this time tomorrow I’ll be on a plane with Angel.  We’re flying into Milwaukee and then driving (DRIVING!!) to Lawrence University which is 2 hours away.  Angel has his license (I only have a permit – failed my driver’s test TWICE) so he’ll be doing all the driving.  He’s nervous because he doesn’t have a lot of driving experience and hasn’t driven in a couple of years.  But frankly, I think it’ll be super fun.  And we’ll be free.

We’ll be in Wisconsin until the middle of the week.  We’ll fly back here, I’ll sleep a few hours, then I’ll be heading out the door again to travel to Massachusetts to see Clark University.

I really hope that Lawrence is everything I’ve dreamed it to be.

In a few hours, I’ll be auditioning actors for the five-minute film I’m shooting for my production class.  I’ll be calling them from my hotel tomorrow evening to let them know if they’ve gotten the part and what the next steps will be.  Hopefully, we’re shooting by next Saturday.

In other words, while I’m on Spring Break starting today, there’s really no “Break” in the equation.  It’s just Spring.  Which is fine, too.

I should probably hurry up and finish the script for my film, right?  I’m gonna go do that.  I’ll post pictures/blogs during my adventures this week.  It’s exciting times!

Why I Will Never Be Religious

I went to a friend’s house on Sunday.  Her family does not celebrate Easter, but they DO celebrate Passover.  Maybe it’s because I’m not religious, but this doesn’t make much sense to me.  It seems the two “holidays” go hand-in-hand.  But it probably isn’t for me to judge or understand.

My friend’s family is part of a very small and, in my belief, very radical subsection of Christianity, although they would say they are not Christians.  Again, makes no sense since the believe in Christ.  But okay.  I take it for what it is.

Anyhoo, as part of their practice they observe very strict dietary laws.  They generally cannot eat things like pork or turkey (pork is dirty, turkeys are in the same family as vultures and eat dead things).  During Passover, they cannot eat leavened bread.

A year or two ago, we were at their house around the same time of the year, and they made unleavened bread for themselves.  Angel went to take a piece of the bread, and my best friend’s mom smacked his hand away.  That was their bread, we could not have any.

How kind.

This year, we ended up buying food at Subway because we hadn’t eaten lunch yet, and we brought it over to their house.  My best friend’s mom got upset because we bought leavened bread into the house, and in her words she didn’t “want to be dammed.”  So we were forced to hang out sandwiches out the window until sundown, when we were allowed bring our food back in.

Okay then.

This is crazy to me.  So we cannot eat their special bread, and we cannot eat our own bread.  I fail to see why God would care so much about whether or not you eat yeast during a specific week of the year.  Seems he would have more important things to worry about.  Also, seems to me that, based on Christian teachings, he’d be more upset about the lack of charity shown a few years ago than the following of this very specific dietary rule.  Oh yeah, and you did not eat the bread, so what difference does it make that a non-believer brought it into the house.

And I felt the most insulting thing of all was that she was more worried about her own soul than ours.  I am not saying that she should have tried to force her religion on us; I’m just saying that she panicked about an item of food which she was not going to eat, and so there technically was no mark on her soul to begin with.

Why will I never be religious?

1) Religious people tend to be hypocrites.  Why keep food from someone?  Isn’t Christianity teach us to love one another, to share what we have with others, etc?

2) Religion makes no sense.  What is the logic behind these things?  All of these rules and laws have been explained to me, but all I can see is a bunch of red tape that serves no purpose for anyone except the most powerful people in the institution, who use the rules and laws to control others.  Oh, and I fail to see how you are not Christian if you believe that Christ died for your sins.

3) Religion teaches selfishness.  In this case, my best friend’s mom was way more worried about her own soul than anyone else’s.

I think there are many more reasons that I could add to this list.  I refuse to be controlled by an institution which claims to have all the answers and can never show proof of this knowledge.  I refuse to be part of an institution which forces its rules, traditions, and beliefs on others, because each person is here on their own journey, and it’s not for me to tell them what’s right and what’s wrong.  Also, I could never have the audacity to believe that I belong to the one “true” faith, believing that anyone who doesn’t belong to this faith is going to hell.  I personally find it disgusting that the type of person i just described could then turn around and be friends with a non-believer, thinking the whole time that their friends will all be going to hell.

If you want religion, i you feel you need religion, then go ahead and have it.  Just leave me out of it.

Wisconsin Days Two and Three: The Better Days

Our second day in Wisconsin went much better than our first.  For one thing, we didn’t get into any accidents.  I made sure we left an hour early to make a 15 minute drive to the college so that Angel could take his time and not feel rushed.  It worked out nicely.

So we went to the college early to walk around before auditing our classes.  We entered a music store off campus where the salespeople were super friendly and super helpful.  Angel asked one question and the salesman had an entire conversation with him.  And it wasn’t even the traditional sales pitch either.  He just offered friendly advice.

Angel audited a pre-modern Japanese Literature class, while I sat in on an Intro to Religious Studies class.  My mind was blown.  My Spring Break is actually the beginning of their Spring term, so both classes I audited were in for their first days and I got to see the syllabi and hear the “welcome to my class” spiel.

The Intro to Religious Studies professor gave a speech that started with explaining what a thesis is.  It went from there and he started to talk about how we are sometimes undermined by the very educational system that’s meant to help us grow.

It starts to become less about what you learn and more about your grade and about pleasing the professor, he said. But this is YOUR education.  So when you write your thesis, you can write whatever you want.  You can even write about motorcycles.  Can motorcycles be religion?  I think they can, I love motorcycles.  Of course, you want to stay in the realm of what we’re studying, but you can and should follow whatever interests you.  You are free to explore.

I wanted to cry during the lecture.  Everything he said sounds like the way I’ve always wanted to learn, and the way I thought college would work the very first time I attended.

After leaving our classes, we grabbed lunch in the cafeteria.  The place was HUGE, and we didn’t have to pay because the admissions counselors gave us meal vouchers.  It was all you can eat, and they had a pasta station, a grill station, a pizza station, a salad bar, dessert trays, drinks, and so much more.  It was amazing, and the food tasted so fresh.  We later found out that 37% of the food they use is locally sourced, and that there’s no set menu so they make what they make based on what they have for the day.  They even use produce from student-run garden across the street.  It’s an incredible operation.

We noticed that every student left their bag and coat on the stairs before entering the cafeteria.  We thought this was bizarre and figured out that everyone was just that trusting.  I’m from New York City, I don’t play that shit, and my bag stayed with me the whole time.  But it made me think that there must be something wrong with us instead of with them.

After this, Angel and I met up with one of the admissions counselors who took us around to look at apartments in the area.  Larry U. owns some apartments just off of campus, and we got to see them.  They were super small and kind of dingy, but you can’t beat a 2 bedroom apartment for $365 a month which INCLUDES all heat, hot water, electricity, gas, cable, internet, and a parking space, as well as a laundry facility and storage space in the basement.

Just sayin’.

He then drove us around the general area, showing us where the good housing was if we didn’t want to move into the “blue box” apartments, and giving us some of the history of the town.  After this, we drove back to the hotel and ordered dinner.

Day 3 was the busy day.  We got up, had breakfast, drove to the school, and then waited for Angel to be able to meet the general manager of the school cafeteria.  This was also arranged by the admissions department because they wanted Angel to get a sense of the employment in the area.  Angel impressed the general manager so much that she had him speak with the head chef, who offered him a job for the fall.

After this, we went on a campus tour.  The tour was personalized; in fact, Angel and I were the only people on the tour.  We got to ask a ton of questions, take detours to things that interested us, etc.  We then had lunch with the transfer admissions counselor, who gave me the low-down on transfer credits and the like.

Then we sat in on two more classes.  Angel did Intro to Philosophy, and I did Fictions of Africa.  My class was an upper level course (in the 500′s), and there were only 5 students in the class.  The professor took half an hour after class to speak with me about the anthropology major (one of the majors that I’m considering) and the college in general.  She was super helpful, and her philosophy about education reminded me a lot of the Intro to Religion professor.

Our last event for the day was a dinner with three Lawrence students (one freshmen, one transfer, and one non-traditional), and we sat with them for about an hour and a half discussing their experiences with the university as well as the area in general.  We drove to the hotel, packed, slept, and got up at 5am to travel back to NYC.

This was a hugely helpful trip, and I was sad when I left because I felt like I would probably never see the place again.  I have no business attending a school that great.

I’m waiting on so much information: acceptances from other schools, financial aid info, housing info for the schools that offer non-traditional housing, etc.  I really hope Larry U. comes up with a good package for me.  I’d love to go, and I think Angel would love to live there.  He’s even thinking of applying himself, so we’ll see how that goes.

Side note: we got back to NYC on Wednesday night, and I was up at 4am on Thursday to travel to Massachusetts to visit another school.  I compared that school with Lawrence every step of the way, and I felt like they didn’t compare at all.  I think I know where I want to go.  As crazy at it sounds, this city chick is now POSITIVE that she wants to go to Wisconsin for a few years.

We’ll see how well that works out.

 

Wisconsin Day One: The Snafu

This will be a quick one… I’m tired and a little traumatized.

We flew into Wisconsin this morning.  Milwaukee, to be exact.  The flight was delayed by an hour, which sucked but was not all together horrible.  We actually had a nice conversation with a man who was also delayed and trying to get home.  Nothing too deep, just nice.

We got to Milwaukee an hour behind schedule, but that was okay.  We immediately jumped into a rented car and began the two hour drive to Appleton.

Angel’s the one with the license.  I only have a permit.  So he was the driver, and he was nervous.  He’s not experienced, only having driven once since getting his license.  Today was the second time.

In hindsight, I think I asked for too much.

He started off really nervous, but as we got on the freeway he got more and more comfortable.  The first hour and a half was extremely uneventful, and very nice.  We just kept chugging along, and we made good time.

It was when we got off the freeway that we had a bit of a problem.  I was on GPS detail, telling Angel where to go.  I told him we needed to turn on a certain street, but neither of us saw the sign and we missed it.

To me, this was no big deal.  I’ve been on enough trips to know that GPS would just redirect us and that Angel needed to just keep driving.  But he got frustrated because he felt lost, and then he started to panic a bit.

I told him not to worry, and I talked him through the streets we needed to turn on.  Well, we got just a few blocks from our hotel when Angel tried to make a left turn.  I think he let his frustration get the best of him.  He lost control of the car, and we skidded off the road and hit a pole.

Luckily, the pole was made of plastic, and once Angel hit that he also hit the brakes really hard.  We were actually pretty close to hitting a tree.  He tried to put us in reverse, and we got stuck in the mud.

Not a great first day in Wisconsin.

The people we met actually made the day better.  We had two cars stop for us (cars that hadn’t seen the crash) to see if we were okay and ask us how they could help.  I was so surprised.  Then we flagged down a cop, who stayed with us until another cop in our jurisdiction came.  He filled out an accident report and called a tow truck for us.  We didn’t get in trouble and he was super understanding.

I don’t know what I was expecting from other people, but it definitely wasn’t this.  Especially as a minority, I was terrified that we would find the most racist of the racist in our way.  Instead, every person we’ve come across thus far has been super respectful, super friendly, and super willing to help.

Angel doesn’t want to take the car out tomorrow.  But he has to.  I cannot rely on him to take us back to Milwaukee on Wednesday if he can’t drive the 15 minutes from our hotel to the school we’re visiting.  There is no time for fear.  He has to get back on the horse.

In hindsight, I think I rushed him too early.  As soon as we were off the plane, we got the car and started going.  Maybe we needed to sit for a minute first so that his nerves weren’t on edge.  Perhaps that’s what we’ll do tomorrow.

But first, we have to clean the car.  It is beyond dirty at this point.

Tomorrow will be better.  It has to be.

Fear.

I haven’t written in quite a while… I’m sorry to anyone who reads this for not having been consistent.  In case you were wondering, I’m just fine.

It’s been a good semester thus far.  My last semester in community college.  It’s bittersweet.  I’m ready to move on, but I’m going to miss my school, the place where I experienced so much personal and academic growth.

In many ways, I am completely out of my comfort zone.  I’m in an advanced conversational Spanish class in which I can’t (don’t) participate because I don’t speak well, I don’t have a good vocabulary, I’m afraid of my accent, etc.  I’m in lab science class (enough said).  I’m also taking a film production class (what the hell was I thinking?!?!) and an intro to sociology class which is going very well but is taught by someone I’m sure is younger than me since he wears braces.

My college professor wears braces.

Not feeling insecure about my age at all

Okay, that last line was a joke.  I actually feel quite young.  But I also feel like a fish out of water.  This semester has been quite different from all of my others in that every single thing I’m learning is something I didn’t know before. Usually, I have a class or two that I’m strong in and that I have a good grasp of because of my prior experiences.  I never structured it that way on purpose; these classes have all been part of my curriculum.  Seriously, this is the first time since 2004 that I feel like I’m really in school.  And I’m afraid of failing.  I’m nowhere near that point, I’m doing really well in all of my classes so far.  But still.

I’m especially afraid of failing this film production class.  I must create a five-minute film.  Really CREATE it.  Write it, storyboard it, produce it, cast it, and shoot it.  Editing won’t be up to me, thank Jebus.  But yeah.  It’s not the amount of work that terrifies me.  I’ve just never done ANY of this before, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

My feelings this class are the same feelings I have in my science and Spanish classes, and all of this mirrors how I feel about every part of my life.  What the hell am I doing?

Someone asked me yesterday what I was good at, what my hidden talent is.  I just sighed and told him that anything I was good at happened a long time ago.  I’m not good at anything now.  I’m not special, I don’t have a hidden talent.  I’m just here.

And that’s the truth.  In trying to get this script together, I’ve realized that my creative muscle has seriously atrophied.  I’m also taking another English class through my scholarship, and my papers have been coming back MARKED UP.  Seriously marked up.  I’ve NEVER had a paper of mine come back to me so scarred, and my English tutor told me that he was so confused because my writing’s never been this disorganized before.

Me too, English tutor dude.

I feel like I’ve lost everything in myself.

All of this has me thinking… when was it that I became so afraid of trying things?  When did I become the kind of person who never takes risks, who always wants to play it safe?  When did I become afraid of a challenge?  None of these things is part of my true nature, and it’s really not working out in my favor right now.

In other news, I got my first college acceptance letter on Friday.  It came from Lawrence University in Wisconsin, which is my first choice of schools.  Still waiting on 9 others, so I can’t make any decisions yet, but I’ll be visiting the school in a couple of weeks.  Hopefully, Angel will be able to come with me.  We’ll see.

I’m keeping this news as quiet as possible (I say as I type the news on a public blog).  I don’t want anyone to know.  It seems that whenever I go public with good news lately I am met with lots and lots of bad news.  I don’t feel like I can celebrate because the minute I start, someone will tell me they have cancer or that someone died or that someone needs a kidney or something.

As much as I want to shout the news from the rooftops, and as victorious as I feel, I don’t think I can.

Blah.

Sooooo what’s this “Down Syndrome” thing?

Here’s the definition of Down Syndrome according to dictionary.com:

a genetic disorder, associated with the presence of an extra chromosome 21, characterized by mild to severe mental impairment, weak muscle tone, shorter stature, and a flattened facial profile.

Straightforward, right?

So how come nobody gets it?

My niece is a month and a half old.  Here’s a picture of her.  She’s doing well, getting bigger every day, and her legs are in casts to correct them slowly.

This kid is amazing, she’s a fighter, and she’s already changed my sister in so many positive ways.

She’s powerful.

So I’m really proud of her already, and she’s not even out of the hospital yet!  That’s why it hurts when I show her off to other people, and I get reactions like this:

Oh, so they confirmed that she has Down Syndrome?  But she looks healthy.

She got bigger.  But she looks like she still has that Down Syndrome?  How come?  Does it run in the family?

Wow, her legs are really bad.  Maybe she didn’t have enough room in the womb to grow?

She’s so cute.  So does she still have (whisper) doooown syndrooome?

So here’s the deal:

1) Down Syndrome is a genetic disorder which exists when one has an extra chromosome.  There are no genes that make extra copies of the 21st chromosome on purpose.  Therefore, it does NOT run on either side of Marilyn’s family.  It is not my sister’s fault, and it is not the baby daddy’s fault.  It just happened.  It was random.  That’s life.

2) She IS healthy.  She happens to have a disorder which will make it harder for her to do things that the rest of us “normal” people do easily.  But she is not sick.

3) The condition of her legs is NOT my sister’s fault.  My sister did not crush her kid.  The issue with her legs is a side effect of the weaker muscle tone that Marilyn has.  However, the issue can be easily corrected, and it is being corrected as we speak.  Again, there is nothing wrong with her, and there is nothing my sister could’ve done to make things easier for her.  Except, of course, maybe abortion.

4) Down Syndrome is nothing to be embarrassed about.  When talking to me, there is no reason to whisper it so other people can’t hear.  Yes, my niece has Down Syndrome.  I will never hide it, my sister will never hide it, and Marilyn will never hide it.  Marilyn is perfect as she is.

5) Down Syndrome is NOT a death sentence.  It does NOT mean that she will be dumber than dirt, it does NOT mean she will never function or have a life, it does NOT mean that all hope is lost.  Marilyn is a person.  She will function.  And no one can predict how smart she will be.  Even if she is severely mentally impaired, that does not make her a lost cause.  She has a whole life ahead of her, and with any luck it’ll be a really good one.

As the weeks have passed, I’ve started to understand my role as an aunt.  I don’t see my niece often, and I don’t talk to my sister every day, but I am ALWAYS there for them.  I will have to support them both in any and every way that I can.

However, I must also be their strongest defender.  I must be strong, remain positive, and always be willing to put people in their place when they make ignorant comments like the ones above.

My sister has made a ton of mistakes in her life.  These mistakes have angered me, saddened me, and torn me apart.

Marilyn is NOT one of those mistakes.

Marilyn is the best thing my sister has ever done.

Despite everything that has stood in that kid’s way, she is here.  She is doing great.

And Down Syndrome does not define her.