As I approach the of my 26th year of life, I'm starting to think more about marriage and kids. If you've been keeping up with the blog posts, or know me in real life, you'll know that I have MAJOR trust and commitment issues. But that doesn't mean I'm not on the look out for potential love.
I go back and forth everyday with the idea of starting a family. On one hand, most of my friends are in some form or relationship, and I'm at the age where it's prime time to start settling down. I get lonely from time to time. It's not that I don't want a boyfriend/future husband, but that's where the other side of it comes in...the trust and commitment issues.
I've talked about it many times before. I don't go on dates, because I've been scarred one too many times. I'm scared that the next guy is going to trample all over my heart and emotions again, like the last, and I'll be left to ponder what could've gone wrong or why I'm "not good enough". Not that I need the approval of anyone else to know I'm enough, but it would be nice to know that I'm worthy of someone's attention.
So then we have the matter of kids in the future. Aside from my family harping on the fact that they want grandkids, when they already have them, I really don't know if I want kids. Most days I think that it would be cool to be a mom and raise kids with my DNA and get to influence how they grow up. Or I think about how cute it would be to have a pregnancy bump and shop for baby clothes for my own child and not someone else's. But then I think about the pain of having to ACTUALLY give birth, or the screaming baby/toddler phases, and I think "nah! not my scene."
Then, there's the matter of my family. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE MY FAMILY. But sometimes I look at how, dare I say, disfunctional my family is, and I think about trying to explain the whole mess to somebody else. I'm not ashamed, but that's adding one more person into an already difficult equation that is my family.
Overall, I'm conflicted on the issue of dating, marriage, and kids. And on top of that, I can barely keep up with my own life. How can I introduce someone into my chaos if I can't get my own life straightened out?! Would that throw a wrench in things? Would it ease the tension and stress by having someone to lean on? And how would that affect my friendships? Would it affect anything? And not to mention, I've never been on a real date. How does one date? What do I wear? What's a good date look like? What's "normal" date behavior? So many questions!
It's not that I haven't tried. I've written about the "major" love fails, and heartbreaks. But I've tried just about every dating site, which either gets too weird, one of us ghosts the other, or someone gets too curious and I freak out and delete the app (Tinder, Bumble, OkCupid, etc.). I've tried church, where everyone is either too young, too old, already taken, or not my type. I've tried work, but that complicates things too much, or one of the above happens, on top of they might also not be into women. Nothing has really clicked yet.
The closest thing right now is that I'm talking to someone who is "an old friend" from high school, but I don't know what the situation. Part of me wonders what it would be like to just go for it. But the other half is wondering if we were meant to be just friends, and I'm only thinking I'm catching feels because he's something sort of familiar and safe. But it's been years, and part of me is terrified that if he sees me in real life after all these years, I won't live up to his expectation of me online. So we're back at square one.
To answer the initial question of if I want marriage and kids, I think for now the answer is yes. The hard part is figuring out how to acheive that goal without retreating into my bubble. I realize that I only doubt my desire to be a wife and mother someday whenever I start getting too in my head. I get scared that there's no one out there for me. I get in the mindset that I'm not gonna find that person who will fight for me and challenge me to not give up on myself and others. I just need someone to complicate my life so much that I can't go on without them in it to disrupt whatever the curent balance is. Only then will it be possible for me to truly know become a wife and mother one day. And I think that desire grows stronger the older I get and the more I see my friends getting to experience these things.
Maybe it'll happen one day. Until then, I know that I don't need a man or kids to define me. I can do me just fine on my own. I've made it almost 27 more, and it hasn't slowed me down yet. I just need to find someone to keep up with me. Maybe someday. :)
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