Some days it feels like we just embarked on this parenting journey. But then I remember that really, we started this whole thing around the time I started this blog… which was quite a while ago.
Now, we are well on our way. Not to say that we don’t still have doubts. I think we both have doubts pretty much constantly. But the weird thing is that they still feel pretty abstract… so they’re not super bothersome.
To be honest, I feel pretty detached from the whole process. We both do. And I think it could be easy to blame it on “adoption”, but it’s not that. Even when we were (briefly) considering biological “conception”, it never really felt real. I wonder if biological parents feel this way. Probably, but you never hear them talking about it. Other than the fact that our life is now filled with so. much. fucking. paperwork., nothing has really changed.
Sometimes it makes me feel like a robot. I have literally spent my entire life preparing for “how I would feel” about becoming a parent. I spent much of my professional training and now my day-to-day work life with parents, thinking about parents, dedicated to parenting. But… when it comes to planning our own family, I honestly feel…. nothing.
Not in a bad way– of course I feel dedicated and excited and I want to do this. But right now, it’s so abstract. Which to me, seems totally normal. Yet, what you hear about from basically any parents starting their family in any way is that it is so emotional. There are books, podcasts, blogs, and articles about it.
I spent a lot of time predicting how I would feel at each step of the way. Thinking about and planning for these overwhelming rushes of emotion. But… it hasn’t happened. I keep attributing it to the fact that we’re “not very far along” in the process. Which is potentially true. But again, reading/hearing all of this content, I hear other couples describe things we’ve gone through, which felt relatively minor to me, as intense or traumatic.
For example, it feels like it should have been more difficult/impactful to decide exactly what path we want to go down to form our family. And don’t get me wrong, it WAS difficult, but not in the way I thought. I kept expecting to feel something I didn’t feel– some grief about having to even consider “nontraditional” parenting, some strong drive for biological parentage, some jealousy of my pregnant friends…
But I just didn’t feel it.
I never felt any of those things. The strongest thing I felt was guilt and confusion for NOT feeling those things. And I felt deeply pragmatic. Which I guess should not be surprising, because that’s sort of how I approach everything. Still, should I really be approaching this most monumental of decisions with data analysis?
I don’t know; maybe I have a kind of parenting Aspergers or something. It makes me sound like an ass, but at the end of the day i just can’t force myself to get fired up about any of the pro-birth/anti-natural-birth/pro-breastfeeding/fed-is-best/IVF-insanity/PPD/pro-adoption/anti-adoption etc etc etc etc etc things on social media. In spite of the fact that I adore my mom friends and that their experience is important to me, the content-in-and-of-itself always feels like just… not that big of a deal. (And so help me, if anyone dares to tell me I ‘just don’t understand” or “it will be different when you have your own child” I will stab them). You know what is a big deal? Whatever is a big deal to YOU. For me, loving a child is a big deal. Being a honest, humble, and a good human is a big deal. So far, all of the rest is just details.
I think that everyone’s experiences and feelings are valid. (Some are more offensive than others, for example if you have orange hair and hate the american people, or if you had baby animals… just saying.) But as someone who grew up in this bizzaro-land social media culture, I’m still trying to make sense of this experience of pre-interpreting your feelings. We already PLAN how we’re going to feel. And whatever we do actually feel measures up against that, for better or for worse. It turns out, a lot of the internet is posturing. Probably, even this post is posturing, if I’m honest. I want people to see me the way I see myself, even if I’m not exactly sure what that is.
I joined this particular facebook group a while ago. It drives Sharon crazy in a lot of ways because I seriously spend way too much time on the group. It’s a “confessions” professional group, where people can post whatever they REALLY feel (within some limits, of course) about themselves and their profession. The motto/tagline is: Be Honest. Be Humble. Be Human. And okay, like everything else on social media, some of it is posturing. And appearances. But its also just transparency, and honesty, and humility. That’s why I love it so much. So many corners of the internet proclaim to be this. But how many people can say that they are a part of a social media group where people ACTUALLY admit their faults? And when they fuck up, rather than digging themselves deeper into a “I’m right and you’re an asshole” trap, they ACTUALLY apologize. That’s my group. Sixty percent of the time at least. 😉 (Which is better than the 20% you get on the rest of the internet.)
I want that for parenting. And family-ing. In any capacity. I want for all of us to be able to put ourselves out there and say, why don’t I have any feelings?? and I don’t want a “you’re-doing-so-awesome-you’re-so-amazing-you-said-the-same-thing-100000000-other-people-have-said-but-you-said-it-so-perfectly-#metoo” response. And on the opposite pole, I don’t want a “passive-aggressive-I’m-your-friend-but-this-is-a-little-confrontational-or-trolly-response-or-i’m-an-actual-troll-so-i’m-just-gonna-be-an-asshole” response. I want people to say real things to me, like they would say in person, whether “positive” or “negative”. Maybe that can’t really exist on the internet the way it is now, I don’t know.
If my revolutionary online group experience is any indication, plus the latest episode of Longest Shortest Time, Being Human is the next iteration of the internet. Being Human is the next iteration of families, not gender or biology. I’m okay with that. Being Human means that I can say I don’t feel how I’m supposed to feel about becoming a parent. I don’t feel how you feel.
I know you might feel compelled to praise this post, or dissent it, in an act of all-or-nothing social media pseudo-“democracy”. I’m okay with that, too.
But if I were going to misappropriate a quote of nebulous origin, I would say:
Some Supervision Required. 