Time will tell…

 

 

Sorry for the cryptic nature of my previous entry. I sat down wanting to write more, but I have just been too drained to do much of anything.

 

So to clarify:

–         yes, I am pregnant

–         yes, congratulations are in order for the most part

–         no, I have not told Marco yet… still

–         and I have no idea why…

 

…well… that’s not entirely true. I do have a few theories about why, most of them revolving around my own constantly changing feelings about the situation.

 

There is this feeling that the door to my actual life is being closed more and more. Say what you will about what I am about to write – I am aware of how terrible it sounds and all I can say is that I truly don’t mean it in a bad way – but there has never been one moment in my life where I wanted to be only a mother. I have always wanted something else. In reality, I often pictured my life the other way around, where I had the job and not the kids. It wasn’t the dream, but it was fine. And here I am, nearly 25, and I have a grand total of 4 months of professional work experience. Every month, every week, every day I don’t get a real job, the chances of me getting one slip farther and farther out of reach. I am already so far behind everyone I know; there are people who I know for a fact that I am much smarter and more talented than (and let’s not forget how little intelligence and talent I think I actually have), and these people are doing amazing things. They are covering the election for national websites and traveling to Europe for business… I am grocery shopping and doing Pilates.

 

I know it is 2008, and motherhood and career are not mutually exclusive, but I know also that it is selfish to want to work when I don’t need the money and my son is still so young. I mentioned working to my grandmother and she said "Thank god, you won’t have to do that. It was always important to me to be there for my kids, just as it was for your mother." In a similar conversation with Andrew’s parents two weeks and 150 miles away, his mother decried daycare as the equivalent to leaving a child in a car in July with the windows rolled up for 8 hours a day. "At least you haven’t neglected this child in that way, Lia," she said. In the world of Andrew’s mother post Aug. 31, 2006, that is the closest one could ever hope to come to a compliment. And I get it, I have to make decisions for Kalen first. That doesn’t make me long less for the days when I had potential. Marco has said that I should do whatever I want and we’ll work it out, but in the next breath shared some story about how his parents were noticeably absent from his childhood due to work and/or work-related excuses. Even still, I had devised a sort-of plan for maybe getting to interact with people who knew sentences with more than three words in them. It involved some freelance work now, part-time work for me/school for Kalen and then when he starts kindergarten, I would start a real job.

 

This new development obviously puts a damper on that plan…

 

And then there is the other side of the situation, my coconspirator in this creation… Marco. I am pretty sure I know what his reaction will be. He will be thrilled, he will say all the right things. There is still a small chance that he WON’T take it well, though. Maybe he’ll be angry? There is no way that he doesn’t look at his life at some point and think "this isn’t what I wanted."

 

He will also most likely try to bring up marriage again, and all my arguments against it are completely undermined by this baby. I could go into all of them, but they are mostly crazy, and I am well aware of that so let’s just save that for another time…

 

i really have to tell him soon though… really really soon…