The right to choose

I had a very, well, interesting day. It started off in a panic, and then took a dip south for a while, and then made me laugh and believe in karma after all. Unfortunately, I can't write about any of the above scenerios, for various reasons that I won't go into here.

So, instead, I'll write about a dream I had on Sunday night. I dreamt that I was pregnant.

I've actually had this dream before, usually where I'll realize somewhere around the fifth or sixth month that I've been carrying a baby in my belly for two entire trimesters, and what on earth was I thinking? I'm not ready to have a kid! All the usual thoughts run through my head - I'm too young, I love my life, I have no boyfriend, etc. and panic ensues until I wake up in a cold sweat.

On Sunday night though, the dream was different. I was six weeks along, and I was SO happy. I was Rachel Green in that episode when you just know she wants the baby, regardless of who the father was. In my dream, I knew who the father was but I had no intention of telling him or getting him involved. I was ready to raise the baby on my own, as if I were Rachel herself.

But suddenly, the panic set in. I was not financially secure! I loved my life as it was! I didn't want a baby! But I DID want that baby, the baby I felt so wholly in my body that when I realized that I was going to have to abort it, I cried with devastation. I felt such loss, such sadness, over what was going to be taken from me, when I already loved it so much.

And then the sadness turned to anger. Anger that I was almost 31 and still single, that I may never actually have the option of giving birth to a child. That, because I had no one to raise it with, I had to choose between the baby's life and my own as I knew it. I had to decide the lesser of two evils, even though I truly believed I deserved to have it all.

I woke up overwhelmed with an emotional hangover, which eventually just turned into a plain old bad mood. The rainy Monday morning didn't help. I've always been told that I have unusually vivid dreams; this one was so real, had I any reason to believe I might actually be pregnant, I would have bought a First Response that morning.

Was my body trying to tell me something, I thought? I suppose the timeline is right, if you believe in the biological clock.

But, then, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I had just watched that episode of Friends the night before, the one where Phoebe finds the test in the trash and everyone assumes it's Monica's, but the audience gets that it's SO Rachel's. (OMG Season Cliffhanger!!!)

As I was writing my post on Sunday night, I kept thinking to myself, somewhat smugly, How do people with kids do it? They would never have this much free time! I thought how nice it was to be able to complain about being responsible, when all I really had to look after was myself. That is all I can handle for now. Happily. And I think therein lies my ambivalence.

I'm nearly 31 years old, and I am quite happy sans children. I don't really get excited about other people's kids the way most of my girlfriends do, and I am pretty content just concentrating on my social life for a while. But I never imagined I would grow old that way; I've always assumed kids would be in my future. I WANT kids in my future. I think.

Am I just hyper-aware of this looming deadline, thinking ahead "responsibly" so I don't end up SOOL in the baby department?

It's not that I want kids now, or next year, and probably not even the year after that. I am just so afraid of not ever having the option.