The other day, someone commented on my current lack of
children and said that when I do get pregnant, perhaps I will have twins to
make up for the lost time. And I guess she meant that I’ve lost time somehow
because I should have started having children at a younger age or because I won’t
have enough childbearing years left to have a whole houseful of children (which
I really don’t want anyways). But this implies somehow that if I’m not using my
time to have children when I should (I guess in my twenties instead of in my
thirties), then I must be wasting my time. I’ll turn thirty this year, and I
will reach this milestone without ever having conceived a child. (And don’t
worry, we haven’t started trying yet. We’re not infertile as far as we know.)
But I really don’t see my time as having been wasted at all.
Did I often wish that I had children throughout the last ten years of my life?
Absolutely. Sometimes desperately. But when you’re in a relationship, making
the decision to have kids is kind of a two person job, and it’s not the right
time unless it’s right for both of us. I wished for children and hoped for
children and daydreamed about children, but I’m also really glad that I haven’t
had them yet. Sometimes what we wish for and desire most is not what we’re supposed
to have at the moment. Sometimes it’s something we’re supposed to wait for.
There are so many other wonderful things that I filled that
time with that I wouldn’t have had if I had been having babies instead.
Like spending the last seven years married to my husband,
just him and me. Just him and me and no one else. Time to bond. Time to
snuggle. Time to figure out how to have a more functional and graceful
relationship with each other. Time to grow up and decide what we really
want from life. Time to make goals and change goals and achieve goals without
having to worry about how to take care of a kid at the same time. This time
with my husband all to myself has been precious, and I wouldn’t go back and
trade it for having kids earlier.
I feel like all too often we feel this pressure externally
or internally about how and when and where every important thing in our life should
happen. It’s like there’s a set of unwritten rules about what life looks like,
and if you don’t follow those rules, you must be failing. If you’re not married
at the right time, or having kids at the right time, or making the right
decisions about your education and career, if you don’t do your life like
everyone else seems to be doing their lives, then there must be something wrong
with you.
Except, I just don’t buy that. Because if I’m doing my life
based on other people’s expectations or examples, then I’m not doing my life; I’m
doing someone else’s life instead. There’s only one of me, and I am not my
parents, I am not my friends, I am not some statistical average. I am an
individual on a path that was set out just for me. I have to trust that my path
is good and will take me where I need to go.
My path so far has been amazing. It’s been beautiful,
breathtaking, challenging, surprising. But it has certainly not been a waste of
my time. My path, my life, so far has been time well spent, and I’m excited to
see what comes next.
