i will be first to admit, and with little remorse, that i am a savage and i speak like one too. last week, on a rant about useless pseudo-celebrities, i referred to kim kardashian and her sisters as walking, well-shaped holes who need to shut up and get fucked, and stay out of the public eye. because, well, let's face it, it's the truth. these past couple of weeks, i've been referring to our class as "those retards"- not the autistic kids i work with closely, but the other kids, the "normal" kids in our mainstream class who act like a.d.d.-addled monkeys. i'm on this fairly intense "hating children" kick, truth be told. they're all stupid and i can't believe i ever wanted one at any point. proof that i too am stupid.
well, so anyway, i am oviri and i fucking well like it like that.
judith warner's blog in the new york times today, titled "i feel it coming together" is about watching her kids come into their own and the passing of the flame. the flame of life, know what i mean? because she's forty-something, because her kids are hitting the teenage years, because she's... well, because she is a fucking idiot she sits around sniffling about how beautiful it is that she's done with longing and intensity and how sweetly nostalgic it is to see her daughter so full of potential, blah blah blah. seriously? is this what we aspire to as human beings? to have kids and drop out of the flow of things? to have kids and be done with longing? to have kids and "hit a plateau- not so bad after all that"- except it is bad! a plateau?? to stop growing and changing and wanting and fighting and raving and screaming and thinking and being conflicted and being exhilarated etc etc? never. never ever ever. i never ever ever want to be THAT person. sitting around, fat and content, waiting for the grave. not in way that denies aging- i will be old someday, someday not too far away, really, because our lives are short and our bodies deteriorate, whatever modern attitudes and science say about the matter- but i will never be old and decrepit and without longing in my head, where it matters. may i drop dead before that happens.
since i have known myself, i have been a conflicted, questioning, seeking, writhing mass of doubts and pieces that don't quite fit and passions that don't make sense, and yeah, sometimes i am unhappy. sometimes i have the luxury of being the unhappiest person IN THE WORLD. sometimes i am full of rage and i want to hit things and curse the universe at the top of my lungs and bleed. sometimes i am sadder beyond the depth of the ocean, hurt unto feeling it like physical pain. sometimes i am deathly afraid of the future and all the things i don't know and all the paths i might take that are wrong and stupid or right and stupid. sometimes, i feel like the stupidest, most worthless person in the world, and even when i am feeling at the top of the world, i know that i will feel that other way again and not too far off. since i have known myself, i have been the type of passionate person whose hackles are up in an instant at a whiff of injustice- a starving, beaten dog, a homeless person, war and famine in some distant part of the world- however cushy and sweet my own life may be at the moment, there's enough going on in this marvelously shitty world of ours to feel angry, discontent, driven about SOMETHING at any given point in time. does having kids mean not feeling this way, being this person anymore? i don't see why it has to, and yet it so often DOES.
having kids makes you conventional. having kids makes you boring, it makes you stupid, it makes you unhappy. having kids makes you OLD. like, in a bad way. because, ok, children are magical and fantastical and watching them grow is like, a miracle of nature and divinity, right? only like, not. maybe if they're your own. working with kids has made me feel that our species would be better off petering slowly into the void, but then i am a terrible over-reactor, so who knows. i mean, a lot of it is probably just that only stupid people are breeding, and no one seems to be big on actually parenting their offspring anymore, and half of the kids in the world are autistic because of vaccines or milk or the way we kill chickens, or whatever, but still. what if those people are only stupid because they had kids and not the other way around? nnnngh. i don't know. sometimes, like when i'm driving, i am convinced that 99% of the human race is retarded, while at other less harrowing times i think that i am just a conceited, self-centered shit and that by sheer strength of probability, most people are smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.
i guess what it comes down to is this, which may be naive, and it may be cliche, and it may also be the only true thing that i know: i don't want THAT. i don't want a normal life, i don't want to be a normal person, i don't want to grow up and get married and have kids and let that be that because whatever emerson may have said well, contributing a healthy child to the world is not the same pinnacle of achievement as a redeemed social condition or even a healthy garden patch. having a healthy child, especially nowadays, is a miracle unto itself, but it's also the most normal and mundane thing in the world, something that idiots do all the time BY ACCIDENT. while i am not one to deny my animal status and slavery to genetics and the machinations of nature and design, i also refuse to bow down and deny that everything about us that doesn't matter is precisely what is best about us and what i want to glorify with my entire life and not just my heated, chocolate-scented words. my children, should i ever have them, will not define me, will not be the end of what i contribute to the world, they won't be the best i contribute to the world, even, though maybe they'll tie with whatever else i do, because if i have kids, i will want them to be amazing and good people too.
i guess this is working up so much because i'm like, frustrated with life and myself, and also with what feels like pressure to do what i "should" do, even just a simple, "don't say that, who knows where you'll be in ten years, you may want kids before then" is like an icepick in my skull lately. having kids done right takes time, people, time i'd rather be using to figure out my own life first. have kids too young, you'll just fuck 'em all up is what i always say, and i know this from experience because my own mother was practically a child when i was born. because while i happen to like myself, mostly, i'm also aware that yeah, i'm kind of fucked up. that's alright though, i like having stuff to work on.
in any case, now that my heart rate has slowed a bit, i will admit too that the prospect of having kids is terrifying in a thousand different ways besides just making you a zombie. pregnancy? miraculous and GROSS and terrifying. childbirth? gag me, please, i love my vagina just the way it is now. will the kid have a tail? will he be... you know, healthy and sane and normal? will he look like my inbred-looking cousin (who talks and thinks like someone whose mom and dad were related, in addition to being hideous- though my parents assure me that i'm just an asshole and his parents were not, in fact, brother and sister)?? what if the little fucker gets all of my bad stuff and none of my good stuff and then i can't stand him despite the fact that i'll be compelled to love him because he came out of me? god, what if he's ANYTHING like those little fucking beasts i teach! perish the thought. it's unfortunate that i love babies so much, because babies grow into, you know, children and people and stuff. i think, though, that IF i ever decide to give in and do the damn thing, WHEN i have lived a lot more and feel prepared to balance everything and not be a boring zombie creature, BECAUSE i am a wild thing, i will make a damn fine mother, and be nothing at all like poopy judith warner and her pathetic, infuriating resignation in the face of life. life, i roar my terrible roar and gnash my terrible teeth in your fucking face.
