This is What it Must Mean to be a Woman

I am pregnant. I am having a child. This fact is still in some ways still more of a concept than a reality to me. I have seen a blurry picture of a blob and I have heard the wet cadence of a heartbeat. I have this resolute validation that what is happening inside my body is indeed happening inside my body and I am not watching a movie. But there is further proof, beyond what my body and Obstetrician tell me.

Everyone has a comment to make. Everyone wants to remind me what a burden I am undertaking, and how it shouldn't be taken lightly. Everyone wants to piss all over my parade. I forgot that creating new life out of nothing but love is considered taboo. It's no longer a miracle. It's a chore. Everyone tells me how much money it will cost and how drastically my life will change, how horrible it is to be up every 3 hours to feed my infant will be. No one ever talks about holding your baby in your arms for the first time. Or seeing something you made learn something you taught it.

No one talks about the miracle anymore. You can't sell happiness, but you can sell fear and pathos and neurosis.

Furthermore, no one wants to talk about what being a mother means. If my life was a cartoon, a tight bun would be placed on the nape of my neck as would loose fitting clothes and a chain for my glasses. The word "Matronly" even sounds depressing.  No one mentions the intensity of the word. A baby isn't a thing that decorates someones life and home. I don't know what it means yet. I hope that I am not supposed to. I feel very fragile and mortal. I don't feel like an invincible 20-something with the world before me. I feel like a protector in a frightening world against overwhelming odds and it scares the fucking shit out of me. I don't know anything about legacy or anything like that. I don't care how society views young mothers. I just know I have never felt more mortal than I do knowing what I am creating.

People treat me different, too. A pregnant lady on the cusp of a giant life change, doesn't exactly fit into the self satisfying bar scene. It seems ridiculous now. Spending all my money at some hole in the wall bar, getting pitchers of shitty overpriced beer, smoking all my smokes and essentially ending up with a very expensive hangover. It seems especially stupid considering I can achieve the same toilet hugging results for free. This was my weekly routine...at what end? For what reason? The Vincennes bar scene is a horrible substitution for culture. Not to say I wont go out and get drunk after the baby gets here, I will just have something a little more worthwhile to go home to than an empty bed and an empty life.

I know I am rambling, a bit. My thoughts are kind of everywhere. It's just so strange how something so small changes everything and everyone around you. It seems to polarize people. I stuck by Chelsea's side when she had Dominic because she's my best friend and I love her like none other. And now she's pregnant again. And so am I. We are both back in the dirty GC with a bunch of old people from the gang. It's supposed to be this way. My time in away from home was supposed to be my ticket out. In the end, it turned out to be a means to my end. I wouldn't have married Matt. I wouldn't be making a family. I wouldn't be leaving.

I would be sitting at a shitty bar, talking about all the cool stuff I was going to do one day.