Truth is- I never wanted to have a baby. I never actually wanted to get married. I grew up in a home about as broken as you can get. With family legacies like addiction, metal illness, and abuse leaving me with an ACE score of 10; I never envisioned anything remotely normal or extraordinary for my life.
I worked really hard to break down that metal barrier. I worked two jobs (and finished a semester of school at the same time) for four months to pay to study abroad for three months. I graduated with two AA's, then went on to Davis for a Bachelor's. I lead volunteer groups, learned to organize against injustice, learned the ropes in non-profits, taught myself to eat healthy, live without a car and still go really far, and formed myself into my own hero. Nothing was impossible if you're willing to work for it and I learned that the only person who had to give myself permission to act was me. My life and future were my own. Simple as that sounds, it was a powerful revelation for me.
Then I met Tarra. She stole my heart when I wasn't looking. She slipped past all the barriers I had thrown up against love and trust because she was so pure and unthreatening. Even today, I still do things I think might make her mad, things that I got screamed at until three in the morning for, only stopping when the neighbors called the police and they would threaten to kick us out of the city for being a "nuisance", I pause after I do it, cringe internally and wait, and she never yells. It doesn't even register for her. I think sometimes she's God's apology for the life I lived before I left home. She pets my head when I have panic attacks, hold me tight when I have PTSD flashbacks, orders food for me and makes phone calls pretending to be me so I can feel safe with my agoraphobia and social anxiety, and pushes me when I need it to heal all these wounds. She helps me be stronger all the time, and I love her so much for it.
After I freed myself to be the master of my own life, and Tarra helped me soften my heart, I was free to believe that I could have a normal life. We might buy a house, we have owned a business, we live quietly with compassion and love, we go on vacation, we got married, we have dinner parties, we go to the museum, the ballet... and we might have babies soon. For someone who was once a homeless runaway sleeping in the park, this white picket fence deal seemed like a castle in the sky.
The baby thing snuck up on me. We were in Ikea three years ago shopping for this house we just started renting. We were nesting. We were walking through one of those model home displays, trying to envision our little nest, and what we needed to build it. We rounded a corner to the "kid's room". I had this blindsiding vision of a toddler and myself playing under the loft bunk, building a fort, pillow fighting, and rough housing until we were tired and fell asleep together in the mass of pillows and inside the fort we had built to have Tarra come home from work to find us. It happened so quickly, that whole scenario was a quick few second blip. But it was so intense, vivid, lucid- I was also shocked that I had imagined myself as a stay at home Mom and felt so warm, melty good about it.
I just started sobbing. Like snotty gasping sobs. Poor Tarra had no idea. She kept asking what was wrong. All I could do is squeal through slobbery lips, "I want a baby." She pet my head and tried to quiet me, telling me I was upsetting everyone around us. They all probably thought I had just lost a child. I swear to god now every time I even hear a baby, my ovaries sparkle. Tarra says she can hear them explode when we wander into the baby section of a store.
I had it. Not baby fever, that's mutable, manageable. I had baby rabies. Illogical, dangerous, and unpredictable. I had always wanted a big family. I mean, I had always wanted a good family, one that was warm, gentle, kind, loving, safe, supportive. For me, that meant building my own. Fortunately for me I have the most warm, gentle, kind, loving, safe, supportive partner in the world to build this family with. I'm excited, I'm nervous, and I can't wait.
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