What I Want...

I have dreams about having babies. I have dreams about nannying for babies. I have dreams about kidnapping babies. Something I never thought would happen at 21 is happening - I can hear the deafening tick tock of my biological clock.

You must understand that I don't want to HAVE a baby. Not now. I have no permanent job. I'm still in school. I have no life partner. I have no real home besides rented student digs I share with other 20-somethings who would resent their pre-drinks and study sessions being interrupted by an unwed mother's baby's cries. I can't have a baby. If I got pregnant today, I surely WOULDN'T have the baby, but I want to hold a baby in my arms. I want to caress a chubby, soft, gorgeously flawed cheek. I want to have a baby; I just don't want to HAVE a baby, and how does one reconcile that?

I have recently started having baby themes in my dreams. I hold a baby in my arms (it doesn't have to be mine) and I suddenly can't let it go. People try to take it away from me, and in response, I sob and I run away. I do anything to keep holding the little blob of life in my arms. I cling to it so fiercely it scares me, and when I wake up and realize there's no baby (I'm holding the air), I feel like crying for hours after it is revealed the baby I loved so dearly and wanted to die for was only a dream.

I walk around the streets, and I hate mothers with babies. I see them and resent them. They make me sad. I want one so badly and I can't have one right now and who says I'll ever be able to? Who says the time will ever be right? Who says a baby will ever be mine? But these lucky women with their infants in snugglies or toddlers in $20 grocery store strollers have had the joy of holding a baby in their arms. They needn't doubt whether they'll ever have a baby in their lives, and I hate them for their joy and my uncertainty, my absolute, crippling insecurity. What if I never find a partner who wants me and a child? What if I can't conceive and adoption fails? What if, as a single woman, I find it too hard to adopt and can't reconcile myself to the mysery sperm at donar clinics? What if, what if? What if I never have a baby to love, is what it all comes down to....
I am not really that great with kids. They don't all automatically love me, and I could never have the patience to be a teacher, dealing with 30 shouting children at a time. And yet, I need to nurture. I need something to protect. I wonder if this need makes my desire for children selfish, and whether that means I am disqualified from ever being a truly good mother and should not attempt to have children? I fear my reasons for wanting children as much as I fear the possibility that I will never have them. I fear screwing up new life and I fear the idea that I may never participate in shaping it. I fear so much, and yet, there are so many people in this world. I wonder, must every parent have the same fears? Or is parenting meant to be done on instinct. Is over-analysing one's motivation ill-advised? Although, the irony is, no one over-analyses more than the girl who wonders if she's over-analysing something.

For the sake of simplicity, I'll say what I need to say because I need to let myself hear it: I want children. Plain and simple. That's me. I hope I'm worthy of wanting somethign so big and special.