At this point, I've read most of the books out there on the subject of becoming a single mother by choice and one theme that comes up pretty consistently is about grieving the childhood dream of marriage, then baby. It can be tough to grow up being fed those fairy tales about how love works and then have to let that go. I kind of wish someone had said to me growing up, "you know, not everyone meets someone and that can be ok too." Maybe it would have saved some grief. Of course my "dream" evolved into the lesbian version awhile ago. You know, the one with the perfect softball playing lover, a Subaru, and a bunch of cats. Luckily, I can probably still have the Subaru one day and I already have the cats.
Anyway, I am proud to say that after a lot of hard work, I have reached a point where I am really ok with being single and with the idea of being a single mom. Don't get me wrong, I have my moments, but it's like those moments are growing further apart and are less intense. If I wanted to, I could probably spend a lot more time and energy trying to meet someone, but I'm not going to do that and here's why:
Like I was saying in my last post, time is of the essence. If I met someone tomorrow, it could postpone having a baby for at least a few years. I know that taking a relationship slow is the right, healthy thing to do. I don't want to get into some lesbian u-haul situation. However, I don't feel like I have that kind of time. I certainly don't have the patience. There have been a couple times in the past few years where I found myself feeling sort of "interested" in the occasional woman. We would starting "hanging out," "getting to know each other," and then I would start thinking...."how long is this going to take?" Realistically, this is not fair to the other person. Even though I never said it out loud, I'm pretty sure that's what killed it each time. Also, if I did meet someone and then waited to have a baby and then had difficulty conceiving, there's a chance I could end up resenting them and who wants that?
I also just don't have a lot of experience in relationships. I've never really had a long-term relationship. There are no ex-girlfriends in my past or ex-boyfriends for that matter. There are just, what I like to call- "ex-situations." Basically, brief, dramatic relationships of sorts, mostly from the college years. Wow, that probably makes it sound like something's wrong with me, but I've thought it about it a lot and I don't think it's me. I think it's women. So, it's actually really hard for me to imagine how I would take care of myself, take care of a baby, and attend to an adult relationship. I mean, I know that people do it all the time. I just cannot imagine how.
Then, there's the risk of having a baby with someone and breaking up. Again, I know... people do it all the time, but I don't know... it's hard to want a child so much and then think about the possibility of having to split custody with someone else and what an ugly side of me that could bring out.
One could argue that this is all rather selfish and that a child is better off with two parents and maybe that's true. Another mother would certainly be another role model, another set of hands, another paycheck, but somehow... I just don't see a partnered version of myself being the best mother I can be. There are all different kinds of families now, so hopefully this one will be good enough for my child.
I suspect that I will have some occasional lapses from time-to-time, where all of sudden I find myself being like "whhhhhyyyyyy am I aloooooooone!!!!!!!!" In the privacy of my own home of course. This can easily be triggered a TV show. (See the episode of Parenthood where Crosby and Jasmine get back together). So, like my last post, I guess I am writing this to reference when I have these momentary lapses.
I still hope I'll meet someone someday, but maybe it just needs to be more of a second-half-of life thing. If I never meet someone, I know I'll find a way to be ok with that. I'm just not sure how I'll ok with never having had a child.
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