And the Scales Tip Yet Again

09.24.2010

I’ve been struggling lately with trusting my decisions because I tell myself that what I’ve decided isn’t perfect and it pisses me off how much of my childhood issues still creep up. I can’t help but wonder how much of these issues that are damaging to my own self-esteem would be transferred over to any child that I may have, thus, damaging theirs.

I logically understand that there’s no such thing as perfection but this is easier said than believing. I’ve forever battled a duality within me where one side wants to throw caution into the wind and the other recites the law and/or the Bible. The latter usually wins and, though I’m not complaining much by living on the straight and narrow, I often feel like I miss out on a lot of fun because I’m constantly trying to be perfect. We don’t learn about ourselves by being perfect, we learn by making mistakes. So why is it so difficult to accept these mistakes? I mean, one of my fears is making the mistake of having a child by “ruining” my life or “ruining” the child’s life because of something I did or didn’t do. I’m still sorting through traumatic childhood experiences and poor judgment on my mom’s part. How is this fair?

When I have such thoughts, it underscores that we pro-create not out of a desire to really have a kid but out of a selfish, biological necessity. Babies are cute because if they weren’t there’d be no drive to protect them. We didn’t know our great-grandparents personally and our great-grandchildren won’t know who we are; therefore, the fact that we have a child satisfies the immediate drive to pro-create, as well as an immediate emotional need to feel like we’re a part of something here and now.

Based on this, it’s hard to convince myself that having a child is “the right thing to do” when it’s more of an act of selfishness to have something I could ostensibly call “mine” during my lifetime because after that, only my kid(s) will have any memory of me and maybe my grandchildren.

Makes for a bleak picture, doesn’t it? Leave it to me.