Speaking my truth

I have spent most of the afternoon reading Penelope Trunk's blog.  So much of what she writes really resonates with me and I found myself clicking through to so many of her articles.  She's a work/career blogger but she writes about her marriage, divorce, abortion, miscarriage and how all of that relates to being a woman in the workforce.  It's truly fascinating and definitely worth a visit.

It got me thinking about where I am in the work/career/family/life continuum and I faced some truths about myself in this place that are unsettling sometimes, eye-opening in others.

Of course, I'm thinking non-stop about children and babies.  I really want to have children but only if I can keep the life I currently have.  I can't say that I'd be willing to go back to living in an unfurnished one-bedroom apartment, struggling to make rent if it meant that I could have kids.  I've lived like that and it's not fun and I'm not anxious to go back - furthermore, it's not fair to the child.  We have children for what we can offer them, not for what we expect them to give to us.  That's an unfair burden and I wouldn't choose that for them.  I know it's not as black and white as all that, and thank God for that!  It's just that I can't miss what I've never had.  Now, if I already had kids and I had to go back to living like that so I could keep them, that would be a different story.  But to bring them into a situation like that, I just couldn't in good conscience do that.

Realizing that then made me question whether or not my unwillingness to sacrifice like that meant that I didn't really want to have kids.  I really thought on it and for me, it doesn't.  I totally want children and I try not to think about a life without that potential because it breaks my heart.  But it's hard to measure what would break my heart more - never having them, or having them and looking into their eyes knowing that you don't have any money to put food in their little bellies.  I pray I don't have to experience either sensation.

Then I got to thinking about work and careers and how the workplace is so much different for women.  It's not new information to any working woman but having the babies puts a wrench in the climbing-the-corporate-ladder thing.  Drew would loooove it if I got a better job - let me say, a higher-paying job.  We get along financially, but if I made even $20,000 more a year things would be great.  Or so he thinks.  I just wonder if he's really thought of the implications that brings.  So what if I make more money?  For me, it's not as important to be as being present for my children.  I'm not okay with working some high-powered job and arriving home only to be able to kiss my kids on the forehead at ten o'clock at night and getting their school updates from the nanny.  That's not what I had in mind when I thought of becoming a mother.

Drew wanting me to get a better job is also not new information.  He has wanted me to do more professionally pretty much since we met.  Frankly, I think he wants me to be more like him.  I have tried as many ways as I know how to convey to him that that will probably never happen.  I don't think like he does, a career is not as important to me and that's not likely to change.  I would love to be on fire for something, have a job that is a passion to me, something where I'm just itching to blaze new trails and create new opportunities.  I haven't found it and I'm not that pressed about looking for it.  

For me, my life is more important than my paycheck and it always has been.  When I've had little, I learned to live on a little.  When I had more, I did more.  But I never needed to.  I never wished I was anywhere other than where I was, professionally speaking.  Sure, it would be nice to have a fatter paycheck, but I'm no fool - a bigger paycheck comes at a much higher personal price.  How many times have we heard that you can have it all, just not all at the same time?  That biological clock doesn't care in the slightest that now's not a good time for you.  Like Penelope says, your career will outlast your ovaries.

There are plenty of things I like doing, and plenty of jobs I could see myself having.  But none of them compel me.  I want to be on fire for something, I want to want something so badly that I can't help but go after it till I get it.  It's definitely scary to want things and to put yourself out there for rejection and failure but I want to want this thing, whatever it is so badly that not even that fear will stop me.  Right now, the only thing that fits that feeling is kids.  That's all I want that badly.  There are zero jobs that I know of that fit that bill for me.  Maybe there's something out there that I haven't heard of or don't know about but as they say, you don't know what you don't know.

When she was talking about her divorce, the mediator said that so many couples could avoid divorce if they just talked.  Drew and I talk, and I think we do pretty well but he takes things personally an awful lot and that often shuts down the most meaningful conversations.  He's also really smart and logical and can reason his way out of anything, especially if he's done something wrong.  He's a champion for saying "Well, I wouldn't have done X if you hadn't done Y, and actually it's BECAUSE you did Y that I HAD to do X therefore it's not really my fault and you should actually apologize to me."  It's. Infuriating.  When all I want in the world is "I was wrong and I'm sorry. Please forgive me,"  instead I get all the reasons why it's actually me with the problem.  It's almost like he thinks that apologizing makes him less of a man somehow and that is absolutely not an option so he has to figure out how to get out of it.  I wish he didn't see it that way.

How did I get on this?  Oh yeah, I'm speaking my truth.  Anyway, that blog just stirred up a lot of deep thoughts in me.  Kids, job, relationship - when it comes down to it, nothing else really matters.