Truth Behind the Lady
By Amber, from Unladylike Behavior
All my life I’ve always known that I’ve wanted to be a mother. The youngest of two, I grew up wishing, praying, and hoping for a little brother. Alas, my wish was never granted. I resorted to dressing up the dog and playing with the neighbor’s daughter, 5 years my junior. When I reached puberty I began to pimp myself out as the town’s most well-known babysitter. I was a damn good babysitter, and I made a hell of a lot of money at it. Each night I spent tucking these precious children into their beds I wondered when I would be singing the bed-bite song to one of my own.
It’s not that I am or ever was desperate for children. I’ve never tried to rush it. I simply knew that when the time came it’s something that would bring even more happiness into an already contented life.
It’s what I’m meant to do, right?
Do you want to know the truth? I’m terrified. I’m a fucking mess, how am I ever going to be capable enough to raise a child? When my dog wakes me at 3am to go to the bathroom I can barely muster ‘lay back down, it’s too early’ before my eyes are closed again. And dinner? How do people do it? When I make it home from work my first stop is for a glass of wine then I mull over the contents of my mostly-empty fridge. In the end I’ll probably decide that eating cookies for dinner really isn’t that bad, so long as they’re oatmeal chocolate chip. Hey, if I can have it for breakfast, who’s to say I can’t have it for dinner? God knows you can’t feed a child dessert for dinner. I think they cover that in Child Rearing 101.
I know I’m young, I know everyone is scared, I know blah blah blah. Still, none of that does anything for this voice in the back of my head that says ‘you’ll never be a good enough mother’.
How do you do it?
