With a Sense of Poise and Rationality

March 2010 September 2010 November 2010 December 2010 January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011

Part of Dexter’s ending monologue in season five (no spoilers, K, you can… you know, not kill me for ruining it for you for the millionth time!) goes:

“They make it so easy, connecting with another human being. It’s like no one told them it’s the hardest thing in the world.”

I can actually empathize with that. Whether I have attachment issues, or I’m just very selective over who I’ll get emotionally invested on due to how powerful those selected few attachments are, I’ve realized something over these past 20 days.

I’ve learned quite a few things, actually, but that’ll be devided into different posts.

I just don’t want children for myself. I’ve flirted with the idea, I’ve let it just sit and marinate, and while I understand I’m only a certain age, and my bio clock hasn’t quite hit that ‘ohmygoshalliwanttodointheworldisbeamommy’ phase, it’s been as it always has been, in the sense that I feel no empathy towards kids.

My mother says I’ve always had this; I’ve never even remotely liked children. I never met them with that ‘aaaaw, so cute!’ reaction, and whenever I did, I was just going through the motions the same way Dex will go through the motions just to seem normal.

While I’ve always been vaguely aware of my reaction towards kids, I assumed I’d grow out of it, or just generally didn’t attribute it a lot of importance.

These last four days, however, have marked another relevant moment in my life in terms of realizing who I am, who I want to be, and how I want to live my life.

We went to an orphanage K’s volunteered for for years, and just seeing how she handled the children and how the children responded to her just triggered this very ‘this is not natural’ reaction in me.

As horrible as it sounds, I felt no empathy towards the children, no connection, if anything I shrunk back when they sought to establish any sort of physical, social or emotional contact, and even when I pushed myself to go through the motions, it was like being in an alien planet dealing with aliens.

I have no mothering instincts, no mothering nature, no mothering nurture when it comes to children. I see them as things, as ‘case studies’ in human behavior. In a way, lower than animals, because even though I’m a fan of analyzing animal behavior and how they socially interact among each other, at least animals I empathize with, and feel a connection and this instant bond and need to love and nurture.

That’s something my mother pointed out— how amusing it was that I can’t even begin to deal with children, but I’m a natural with animals.

I have a couple theories about it, revolving around projection, and connecting on a very basic emotional level I can’t with kids, but that’s not the point.

The point is, some people are meant to be parents. Some are not. I fall into the latter.

All the women I talk to have this vulnerability when it comes to babies and children and being mothers. I instead, get this instinctive feeling of revulsion and panic at the sheer thought of it.

At the face of a pregnancy scare, my thoughts weren’t ‘Oh, I can work with this. Familial humiliation and social repercussions of pregnancy out of wedlock aside, I can re-frame and I will be a wonderful mother knowing all I know about parenting and child development. I will be the best mother I can possibly be.’

No, it was ‘Even if I was thirty, had accomplished all I wanted to accomplish in life, was self-sufficient, financially stable, and had the ideal partner to co-parent, I do not want this.’

So it seems I’m just one of those people who are just better mothers to fur-babies, than to their own kind. Which is fine with me, really.

I pick up my adopted feline child in a month, and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t get the best mommy he can get.