Are you a parent who struggles to find joy in raising their children?
Well, come on over here and sit by me. The coffee’s hot and as black as my soul.
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When I got pregnant at 22, I didn’t want to have a baby.
I hadn’t wanted to get pregnant at all, ever.
I have a sister who is twelve years younger than me, so I saw everything that went into caring for an infant and raising a small child before I moved out of the house when she was only six, and I told myself constantly that I wanted nothing to do with that lifestyle.
I never wanted to have children.
But for a while, I was a drunk.
I went down what I consider now to be the wrong path.
I spent my early twenties working the third shift at IHOP, doing nothing else with my time but party and get laid.
A lot.
Then, one April Fool’s Day, I invited a co-worker to a party at my best friend’s house.
It wasn’t because I liked him.
I mean, I didn’t even really know him that much, but that didn’t stop me from taking him home and having sex with him.
I knew I was pregnant exactly 26 days later.
At that time in my life, you could practically set a watch by my period, and when I didn’t wake up bleeding that Wednesday morning, I just knew.
In fact, I had joked to one of my patrons at the diner where I worked that if I didn’t come in on Wednesday afternoon, it meant I was pregnant.
I called my best friend Marie, and she drove over to my house after picking me up a pregnancy test at the pharmacy.
The test was positive, natch.
The first thing I did was smoke a cigarette, and then some pot, and then more cigarettes on the way to Planned Parenthood because I wasn’t willing to accept the results of a store-bought test nor give up my vices without real proof.
When the woman at the clinic told me that I was pregnant I started crying.
“But I’m on birth control!” I wailed to her.
In the gentlest way possible, she essentially said:
“You do know what 99% effective means, right?”
Well, shucks.
Here’s where I’ll try to explain myself the best I can but probably fail:
I didn’t want to have a baby, but I didn’t want to have an abortion either, and adoption was totally out of the question.
As much as I had spent my life considering how much I didn’t want a child, I had never considered how much I wouldn’t want an abortion, either.
Part of it was knowing that I was an accident — that my mother didn’t want to get pregnant with me, but she had me anyway, and that I wouldn’t be here if she had made the other choice.
Part of it was knowing that for better or worse, having a baby would completely change my life.
Being pregnant would force me to stop partying and sleeping around. It would force me to get sober, save my money, and maybe even go to college so I could find a career to help support my family, even if it were only a family of two.
It would force me to become a completely different person to support someone else’s life.
And… abortion just didn’t feel right.
I’m as pro-choice as they come, but when it came down to the wire, it wasn’t the choice I could make for me at the time.
AT THE TIME.
So, I had the baby.
She turned eighteen on Christmas.
Do you want to know the hard truth about why I’m so pro-choice?
It’s because there are still days I wish I’d chosen the abortion.
If I got pregnant now, I would run, not walk, immediately to my nearest abortion clinic and beg them to take my money and with it, the clump of cells multiplying in my womb.
If I’d known then what I know now about having a child — not to mention a disabled child — I would have had the abortion.
I realize that may make me seem like a horrible person, but it’s a judgment I’m willing to live with because I think it’s important to admit and talk about.
Because the thing is, I really don’t think I’m the only parent out there who feels this way.
Hear me out:
Even at the best of times, parenting still sucks just a little bit, doesn’t it?
While babies are innocent and adorable and smell delicious most of the time, the other part of the time they’re screaming, shitting themselves, and inconveniencing you as an autonomous adult in every way imaginable.
When little kids aren’t questioning the world with wonderous curiosity, and saying the silliest things for the first time as they’re figuring everything out, they’re screaming “NO!” as loud as they can before throwing themselves on the floor to writhe and holler through their tantrum.
When they’re teenagers and you’re hoping you’ll finally have the chance to get to know the person your child is becoming, they will shut you out, reject you, or ignore you — and those may be the days you end up hoping for.
Because on every other day, they will be willfully disobedient. They’ll be skipping school to hang out with kids you think are bad influences, they’ll be pushing the boundaries of curse words and curfews, and if you tell them something about how things were when you were in high school, they’ll do everything in their power to be as not like their parent as possible.
Let’s face it, okay? For the most part, kids are just dicks.
They’re bullies, they’re completely self-centered, and they act like they know everything when they haven’t even experienced just the tip of the bullshit life has in store for them.
When it’s my choice, I almost always choose not to hang out with children. Not mine, or anyone else’s.
For much of my kid’s childhood, I counted down the years until she graduated from high school and was old enough to move out on her own and start her own life, away from me.
That isn’t a bad thing.
Isn’t it what every parent hopes for their child, that they’re one day able to have their own fulfilling life of their choosing?
Shouldn’t it be?
As a person who ended up parenting with reluctance, I admit I was devastated to learn that my daughter may never be able to move out and live on her own.
We know she will never drive, and it doesn’t seem like she’ll ever be able to have a job that requires understanding money, math, planning, or time.
Years after learning this, I’m still trying to accept and live with this situation, but the thing is, it’s hard and it sucks and I often feel very alone in feeling so… sad about my choice to become a parent.
Like I said before, I don’t think I’m the only parent out there, nor the only parent writing on Medium who feels this way but may or may not want to share their truth in a relatively safe space.
The last time I spoke with a therapist about this, about deeply loving my daughter but secretly wishing I hadn’t chosen to become a parent to any child at all, it was mostly to complain about how alone I felt and how there didn’t seem to be anyone I could talk to who wouldn’t be judgmental.
“I wish I had a support group for people who hate parenting.”
“If you can’t find one, you should make your own,” she said.
So, I have.
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