Knowledge is power. It’s a facile statement that is not a trope, but it’s also true. I know not everyone feels that way, but I find comfort in information. The thing I regret from when I was younger was that I did not know that what I thought was wrong me wasn’t. I mean, it was wrong in the sense than it was different than the norm, but it wasn’t wrong as in I wasn’t broken. I certainly felt that way, but that was because others treated me as if I were broken.
One of the only real arguments K and I have had was about how mental health is more out in the open these days. We weren’t arguing about that–we both think that’s a good thing. She was just frustrated because she felt that it sometimes got in the way of getting shit done. On the daily, I mean. She said when we were kids, we dealt with it. That hit me the wrong way because some of us did not deal with it very well. I was passively suicidal for most of my life, and I hated being alive. I knew I was depressed and that I had anxiety, but not to what extent. And if I had any inkling taht I was neurodivergent, that would have made such a difference.
I spent my childhood/teen years being told that I was too sensitive, too much, just too too. I was too everything, and I needed to make myself smaller. This was in part because I was perceived as a woman, and my only value as a woman was to serve the men around me. And to have babies, but that was also in a way at the behest of the man who owned me. Er, married me. I can’t tell you how many times my mother pushed me to have children. She used all the tactics in her arsenal–guilt, manipulation, and persistence.
I don’t know how I resisted, but I did. this was the one thing I knew about myself to be true–I would have made a terrible mother. More to the point, I did not want children. At all. In fact, I was the opposite of wanting children–I did not want them with all my heart. I would have done anything to avoid having them, and it would have made my life a living hell to be pregnant/have children.
It’s not something I talked about much because it was such a taboo. It would have been a relief to be able to say it loud and proud, but even I knew better than that. Well, I did after I got a few very negative reactions to saying I did not want children.
By the way, I’m sad that this is still the case. Naively, when I was in my twenties, I thought things would be better for the next generation, but I’ve heard it hasn’t changed much. Young women are still pressured to have children, and the rise of trad wives is very depressing. Yeah, I’m just going to say it–it’s fucking sexist. And, no, I don’t think most women really want it. I’ve seen a few videos from trad wives who either snapped or had their husbands cheat on them. I have to admit that my internal response is, “What the fuck did you expect?”, but it’s so out of my experience.