Waking Up

It's hard to love someone, to care for them in the blackest hours.
The songs and the poems and the flowers and the pink hearts... they're all symbolic of the romanticism of love. I mean the rougher parts of love, the tooth and nail of it.
It's genuinely hard.

It's difficult to watch someone you care about go through something tough. When their health fails them and despite all the therapists and the medication and the professional teams, in the end you feel like you are the only person keeping them alive simply from the fierceness of your love for them.

It's terrifying to watch them peer over the edge into the void, the chasm calling them in. You tug at their sleeve and lose your cool for a moment even at their lowest ebb because you are simply petrified that this is the end, so close you can breathe it in.

It's hard to watch them suffer. You are helpless against the hopelessness. All-consuming as your love for them may be, you know you are both but a tiny coal in the hurricane. One gust too hard or squall too quenching and the fire fizzles.

It's exhausting to love someone.

Then, without warning, my lady is given back to me from the brink. She looks at me with eyes that are finally focussed and clear, her features are once again full and warm with joy where they had been dull and slack.

I realise I am staring into her eyes and she is actually there.
"Oh!" I exclaim in surprise. I stupidly add "Hello!"
She giggles. She hasn't giggled in weeks.
"Hello!"

My heart dissolves in my chest. I am drowned in relief and grief. I weep like she had died and was resurrected. I pull her to me and hold her tight and whisper to her that I missed her. We kiss like it's our first kiss again.

"Are you back to stay?" I ask, willing myself not to hope too much. "Or is this.... just a visit?"
She smiles weakly and tells me honestly, "I don't know."

Later, she tells me it is as though she had been asleep. I tell her that in truth it was much, much worse than that. Her being asleep all this time would have been easier.
She apologises. I wipe the words away from her lips with my fingertips. I tell her it's not her fault, and that truthfully I don't care, I'm just so happy to have her returned to me.
She holds me and I feel strength in her embrace again.

I empty my tears into her chest until I exhaust myself. She listens and runs her fingers through my hair. The gesture is so gentle and caring and full of everything I had mourned the loss of that I break again and cry a reserve of tears I didn't know I had. She makes pitying noises as she kisses my hot forehead.

Some mornings later we tentatively decide to celebrate her waking up. We spend almost all day with our hands and fingers interlocked, we tell each other we love each other, with forgotten sincerity and intensity. We talk and I spend some time filling in the gaps of the weeks she missed. There are days she has no memory of, conversations that are deleted from history. I slowly and gently bring her up to speed. My patience is lengthened.

The hard part is over for now. Until another storm hits we walk through foggy, dreamy swirls of the easier parts of love, like the end credits of a fantasy film.
I reflect on what I've learnt, and tell myself to try to remember it all: The night's rainfall can be weathered, with strength. I wish myself strength, because this is the part that's worth it:
Waking up.

.

30 (and counting) and childless

Precious Gemstone indeed :)

Even as a little girl, I was asked about children. Did I want any? How many? What genders and how many of each?
Ever since I can remember, I've always replied that I didn't want children. It's something I've always known; it's a thought that pre-dates my awareness of my sexuality.

My mum used to always say "Oh you say that now, but one day you'll meet someone and want to have their babies" (edited pronouns to accommodate the spanning of Mum's understanding of my sexuality over the years). I used to joke that the more she said that, with the 'I know what will happen, wait and see' air to it, that I would deliberately stick to my guns on the matter.
But the truth is, it was easy to stick to my guns, because the maternal urges just never rose in me as I got older.

More than once have there been times in my adult life that I have sat down and seriously asked myself if I would have children. Even after the long, private chats with myself, the answer is still no.
Only once have I ever thought that I may amend that decision, because I was blindly in love with a girl who did want children. I thought 'if you wanted to have kids, then okay I will be their other parent.'

But in hindsight, I'm glad that never came to be. Even as a non-biological parent, I don't think I'd do right by those children. And really, that truth is betrayed in my wording:
 'if you wanted to have kids, then okay I will be their other parent.'
Okay. Like I'm giving in to a small disagreement. If I really wanted that, I would have been something like 'I can't wait to start a family with you' or similar, surely?

A friend shared great mini-article here from Abby who sums up pretty precisely why I choose not to have kids.

I have seen too many children who are in this world who probably shouldn't be - at least, not to the parents that bore them. Procreating these days is a choice, and it's mine to not do so.

Sure, when I hold the babies of my friends and my family (pictured), I love them. I appreciate them, I kiss their foreheads and call them little angels just like any would-be-mum would do. But I'm happy to hand them back knowing that I will not have one of my own.

I don't want to have kids just because I'm made to feel or am told that I should, or because others say I'd be a good mum, or even because I'm getting older and my timeframe to make a family is shrinking.

I would like to think that in a perfect world, all kids are wanted and fought for. But the sad truth is, a lot aren't. Some are on this earth due to many many reasons that I won't list here, as the combinations of factors are so numerous. My point is, whatever would lead me to having and keeping (writing from the perspective of pro-choice) a baby, would not be enough to convince me that this is indeed what I had always wanted.

The flat truth is, it just isn't.
And no kid should ever be the mistake their parents made.
I'd never call my child a mistake, or treat them badly, or take it out on them that this wasn't the life I wanted, but despite all that, I would be unhappy. At roots-level, this would still affect them.

If I had children, I wouldn't be the parent they deserved, and what does that make me then?
"Yay, you finally had kids... but... you're a lousy mum."

Only recently I went out to a birthday lunch accompanying a friend, and we sat with a few ladies who had children. The contrast between two mums in particular was astounding.

One was quite obviously not happy with her status as a mother, or the presence of her two (yeah, two) children in the world. And this was indeed reflected by the behaviour of the kids themselves. They messed around, undisciplined, because their mother wasn't (and probably hardly has been) paying them any positive attention, simply throwing a half-hearted 'don't do that!' when they got rowdy.

You may think me, the childless lesbian, a bit judgemental here, and making assumptions... but believe me, reader, when this lady picked up her younger offspring (who had spent most of the lunch face buried in a mobile phone playing games because what else is there to do?) onto her lap to stop her fussing. And she sighed to my friend and the table, aloud, without hush and very audible to her child on her lap: "Don't ever have kids! They will ruin your life."

'What kind of person says that??' said my brain. 'In front of her children, no less!'

While my friend and I left the restaurant later and drove home, we shared our disbelief at such a horrible thing to say... to someone you've never met before but also within earshot of your child. We also found that both of us had the same impression that the chidrens' behaviour/interactions (or lack thereof) was an effect of being spoken to/of in this way. It made me sad for them. I feel sad for any child that I see not appreciated by their parents for the gift they are (adults included), even when their behaviour is challenging at times.

It's a shame, especially when there are so many genuine couples out there who would treat a child like a precious gemstone if they could have one. And believe me, I've had my share of guilt over having a perfectly operational reproductive system and letting it go to waste when so many struggle. I've even been prepared to donate ova to a friend if they'd needed it.

The answer to my brain's question 'what kind of person says that?' is simply:
Someone who isn't ready to have had children now, if at all.

And this is kind of how I feel.

Sure, I wouldn't ever say that to/around my kids if I ever had them, but I know in my heart that I would probably feel this way nonetheless: This isn't me.

Why? Because I simply have no desire to ever be a mum.  It really is as simple as that.

I know it's hard for some people to understand, but it's kinda like sexuality that way: Just because you don't like kissing that gender, doesn't mean the people who do enjoy kissing them are beyond understanding or should be ridiculed/treated as freaks... we just all have different wants. If I don't really want to kiss a boy or have a baby, think of it this way: I'm leaving all the more boys and babies for the rest of those folk who do want them.

I like kids. I get along really well with kids. Hell, I work with kids and my success in that role lays heavily on my great ability to relate to them and understand them. But that doesn't make one automatic mum-material.

I'll settle for being the cool aunt to the kids in my honorary family.
Why? Because that's the role I'm always happy to play, the one I know I feel comfortable in.

Here, everyone is happy. I'm true to myself, those kids have one more person to love and care for them, and the world is spared of my share of offspring that I may have spawned simply out of pressure, not of love.

The upside is, being a same-sex attracted female, my risk of accidentally conceiving is highly reduced. Something to ponder on the Marriage Equality debate, same-sex marriages will produce less unwanted children... as they are harder work to acquire.

I'll leave you to your own thoughts on the matter.