Good and Uncomfortable

A year and a half ago I was a senior in college, which meant I spent most of my time on Pinterest when I should have been doing assignments.  

Anyway.  One day as I was procrastinating perusing Pinterest, I saw a link to a post called Why You Can't Read Twilight: A Letter to My Daughter from Carrots for Michaelmas.  If you're my friend and you're reading this, which you are because my friends are the only people who read this, you know I love me some Twilight-trashing.  Especially when it's rooted in good reasoning.  

After reading (and loving! and nodding in agreement!) the post, I did as one does and read all the "popular posts" that were featured on the page.  (I feel like that sounds creepy, but I now have a blog, albeit small, and I love when people find my old posts by clicking on the links on my sidebar.  It happens a lot.  So maybe it's not creepy.)  There were other book-related posts, and I enjoyed them because I work with kids and I'm always looking for ways to make them love learning.  But there was also this post: My Unplanned Pregnancy, or Why We Stopped Using Birth Control - For Good.  

To be honest, when I read it, I rolled my eyes a little.  I thought it was beautiful, but my pessimistic side was flaring up, all, "Yeah okay but really, if people don't want kids they shouldn't have any."  And I still believe that to be true, because being resented by parents kinda sucks, but the author of that post DID want kids, she and her husband had just wanted some more time before becoming parents.  So I probably shouldn't have reacted with an eye roll.  But I digress.  

After reading the most popular posts, I decided I liked the blog.  Who wouldn't like a blog that talks about Harry Potter so frequently?  I started reading it regularly, though I didn't subscribe to it because technology isn't usually my thing and I didn't know how to.  (Born in the wrong era.)  

Harry Potter related things aside, there are A LOT of posts about family and Catholicism on the blog.  At first I was somewhat reluctant to read those kind of posts, because I had been telling myself that family was overrated, God was basically an absentee parent, and all I needed to get through life was myself.  (Okay, fine, still often fall into parts of that mentality.  Work in progress.)  But over time, the posts started to change my mind.  And sometimes other bloggers were featured, which led me to blogs like House Unseen. Life Unscripted., Clan Donaldson, Camp Patton, and most recently, Daniel Bearman: Acts of Idiot Praise, not to mention websites like Catholic Exchange.  

I think I'm radically different now.  A year ago, I swore I'd have kids when I was, like, 40.  Because I'd be well established and I could send them to boarding school or something.  But that was only IF I had kids.  

I'm the oldest of eight kids.  I was born first, when my mom was 21 or 22.  My biological father wasn't in the picture.  My mom met my stepdad (I call him "dad," - this post will get confusing.) and when I was five, my first brother was born.  One of my earliest memories is from the hospital, when I was in a small waiting area as my family visited my brother, who was born three months early.  I had a plastic bag with Donald Duck's face on it, so I naturally put it over my head to pretend I was Donald Duck.  Because duh, what else would you do with that?  Anyway, a doctor or nurse yelled at me and then took the bag.  That's all I remember.  Nothing about the brother.  

Two years after that, my second brother came.  And then there was a period of no new babies.  

I guess I should preface this next part with a little information.  My family isn't a typical family.  I don't mean that in a quirky way.  I mean it in an "I understand that things like poverty, abuse, drug use, alcoholism, etc are cycles that are hard to break out of, but that doesn't quite justify certain actions, either" way.  

My uncle had a wife and two daughters.  They were around 7 and 2.  He went to jail (I don't remember what it was for that time).  His daughters spent some time directly after that alone.  They were hardly taken care of.  And one day, my aunt just dropped them off.  She didn't want them anymore.  So we then had five kids in the house.  

The sixth baby came a couple of years after that.  A girl.  Precious.  Then we moved, and baby seven was born.  Another boy.  When he was a few months old, my dad moved out.  He was always in and out anyway, so it wasn't a huge difference.  Sometimes he'd be gone for days, other times months.  Once he disappeared for around two years.  Occasionally it was because he was in jail, sometimes it was because he was doing more drugs than usual, other times he just preferred to be with his friends, who were equally irresponsible.  I don't remember ever being upset that my dad left so often.  At least not consciously.  I remember worrying that we'd find him dead.  But I was never sad that he wasn't around.  But the last time he left, it was for good.  

My mom found out that her high school friend lived nearby.  His family had moved after his dad died, and they didn't stay in touch.  Before my dad left left, this friend picked my mom up and they went out for a date.  When my dad left, he moved in.  And the eighth baby, a girl, was born nine months later.  And then my mom married my stepdad.  

Confusing?  Yeah, sorry.  

So there were eight of us.  I love all of my siblings.  I don't like all of them anymore - the oldest two are turning out to be really poor decision-makers, to put it lightly - but I love them.  I'd be lying, though, if I said I didn't spend a solid 18 years resenting the hell out of them.  Don't get me wrong, there were good times.  The babies first learning to crawl, making my youngest brother laugh that not-related-to-gas-but-actually-entertained laugh for the first time when he was a few months old, teaching them to swim.  But over all, it sucked.  And it took me a while to differentiate between THEM and the situation.  I don't blame them anymore.  

I remember dying to go outside as a kid, but having to stay inside to take care of the kids instead. Or cooking dinner instead of going to the movies during junior high.  Not being allowed to joke around.  Stressing - like, hardcore stressing that no eight year old should have to experience - about things like food, money (though obviously there was nothing I could do about it), and heat.  I stayed home from school sometimes, if one of the kids were sick and my mom didn't feel like dealing with it.  She, nor any of the other adults in the family, can't acknowledge this at all.  To them, things were not bad.  And I think I understand it now.  I think that they have all always lived in despair and know nothing else.  I'm not justifying things, but I can try to understand it.  

So as I got older and my friends and I started talking about future husbands and future babies and future houses, I was always on the fence.  After all, my mom and my dad had both told me AND others several times that "being the oldest of eight is really good birth control.  We'll never have to worry about her getting pregnant young!"  (I told you, not normal.  A four year old raising children isn't okay.)  For a while there, they were right.   

On the one hand, I was pissed and I hated kids, or at least kids that I knew I'd be responsible for all the time.  I loved kids that weren't mine, but hated the idea of having any.  I figured I had no childhood because I had to take care of kids, so I wasn't about to lose out on having a good life as an adult by having kids.  

On the other hand, and this is the one that still creeps up sometimes, I was terrified that I'd turn out like them.  It's no secret that kids born into poverty tend to stay there.  That kids who are abused are more likely to become parents who abuse their kids.  That kids of drug addicts become drug addicts themselves.  I didn't want to have kids and then not love them or take care of them.  Or call them names.  You know that saying, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree?"  I hate that saying, and the fear that it would be my reality totally consumed me for a long time.   And I told myself I'd be bad at it anyway.  My two brothers are teenagers (like, late teens) and are sooo not doing good things.  I blamed myself for it and wondered what I did to make them "turn out like that."  

I also maybe possibly have small, teeny tiny attachment and abandonment issues.  Like to the point where I'd think that someone "didn't love me anymore" if they cancelled plans or went too long without talking to me or what have you.  So to avoid dealing with that, I decided I'd just never get attached to people.  Preemptive tactic, George W style.   (I've had a few instances of weakness and failure in sticking to this wonderful plan, so I have some friends.  ugh. ;)  So, like, if you refuse to love people you kind of can't get married and have kids.  So.  There was also that.  

I also just held a sort of prejudice against big families.  I suppose I didn't realize that some families are intentionally large.  I also didn't realize that the way my family functioned wasn't the way all families function.  

And it's really hard to genuinely want kids when you know you were basically a huge burden. 

In come those blogs.  It sounds funny, I know, to say that a few blogs totally changed me and my entire perspective on essentially everything.  But it's true.  

The people behind these blogs have families.  They have struggles, but they don't leave each other when they're struggling.  Instead of seeing their kids as accidents or burdens, they see them as gifts, which comforts me.  It makes me think that if I have kids, I'm not going to, you know, hate them.  In fact, the people behind these blogs seem to LIKE their kids.  This is probably nothing monumental to most people, but when I first started reading them, that idea was crazy to me.  

I've read posts on these blogs that, though they admit that marriage and parenthood are hard, depict family and life in general as so so Good.  

I think I'm a better but slightly more insane person since reading these blogs.  I say more insane because reading about all this Good lead to trying to convince myself it was real and could be real for me, too.  Which meant I had to do uncomfortable things like... have feelings.  Ew.  I've had to admit to myself that I probably cannot deal with everything thrown at me by myself.  And that relationships are a thing I need to cultivate.  I'm not running around searching for a romantic relationship, but I've been trying to be a better person in all of my relationships, because if I can't do friendship I probably can't do romance.  So I've tried to open up and talk about things with my friends.  I've always been a good listener, but talking about those aforementioned pests called feelings was not my forte.  Still isn't always, but I'm working on it.  I've tried to be a little more vulnerable.  Ask for help more often.  (When I had surgery, I had to actually let my friend help me get dressed.  That would have never happened if 1. I wasn't trying to be better at asking for help and 2. I wasn't heavily drugged.)  

Don't get me wrong, I have a long ass way to go.  I don't share things as much or as often as I should.  I don't ask for help when I should, so I end up becoming incredibly overwhelmed.  I don't tell the people I love that I love them very often.  Or sometimes ever.  And when I do, it literally makes me feel sick.  But I'm getting there. 

I had also mentioned above that I was a little pissed at God for a while.  The way that these people on these blogs proclaim their faith has made me reevaluate my own faith - in a good way.  I won't lie and say I'm totally feelin' God's grace at every moment or that I never doubt or that when bad things happen - which they very often do - I don't question God.  And I would be lying if I said I feel the Holy Spirit, because I generally don't.  This might be because I don't let myself, I don't know.  And a long time ago I turned myself into someone who trusts no one and depends on no one.  I don't think that was a bad thing, I think it was necessary.  But probably I should continue to try changing that.  But the people on these blogs talk about God like an old friend.  They trust in Him no matter what.  That part is still hard for me, but I have started to see things in a different light.  Tried to look for good in everyone, since God has made everyone.  Started praying again (though I really suck at praying).  Started going to church again.  I do crazy things like cry at birth videos (though I never cry out of my own sadness.  Because issues).  It's made me more open to life, whether that means having kids or actually, truly living life.  

The blogs have made me more aware of the ways God and family are intertwined.  They've helped me to see family as a GOOD thing, not a horrible thing.  There are a few people in my life who have also helped me learn to trust and love and all that good stuff, but really, the testaments of God and of Good on these blogs have had a tremendous impact.  They've made me somewhat crazy because I now constantly question myself.  But I think crazy can be good sometimes.  I now think things like, hey, having a bunch of kids would be fun!  Not worrying about making a billion dollars is fine!   

I appreciate it and I think my friends appreciate the fact that I'm a little more human now.  

It's all very good and uncomfortable.   

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Charlotte