Twenty-Five and Disappointing

Artist's representation of Richard and myself

If my life had gone according to plan, this situation never would have happened. I wasn’t exactly raised to deal with this situation and sometimes I feel completely lost. I always assumed that I’d finish graduate school, someone would ask me to marry them, we’d buy a house together, and kids would come along eventually. Obviously someone had different plans.

I don’t regret the way that my life turned out, but I worry a lot about being inadequate and disappointing my parents. I know they would have liked for me to follow the plan that I’d had. I knew that choosing to keep this baby would make life a lot more challenging, but having lost my job in the meantime adds a whole new level of stress to the picture.

I’m not sure exactly how to fight these feelings of being a failed adult and I often think, how am I going to be a good parent to this child when for the last twenty-five years I have been so reliant on my parents. I guess now is the time to really step up and decrease that reliance, but with no job and no current prospects, that task seems fairly difficult. Luckily I have paid most of my bills through the end of the month, but that doesn’t stop the sense of impending doom that I have as the end of the month nears and the date that we have to move rapidly approaches.

I worry how I will be able to support a child when right now I can barely support myself, and I also worry how starting a new job will be while being pregnant. I’m already so exhausted most of the time that it makes it difficult to function, but adding a job on top of that sometimes seems like an insurmountable task.

What happens when I have the baby? Since none of this is how I’d planned it, I also never believed that I’d be in the position where I might have to work immediately after my child was born. My mother was a stay at home mom for my early years and I really wanted to follow suit. Like a lame Aerosmith song, I don’t want to miss a thing. I can’t wait to see what he or she looks like and I can’t wait to find out what his or her personality is like.

Working after the baby is born also brings about the problem of childcare. You hear and see so many horror stories about inadequate supervision or far worse. Honestly, that’s a risk that I’m not willing to take. I want to do everything that I can to make sure that my child has a great life.

On top of that, I worry about how my parents feel about this situation. Are they still proud of me? Do they think that I have ruined my life? Are they disappointed that their only child is unmarried and having a child? Even if they were I don’t think they’d ever say anything to me about it and I’m certainly not asking them directly—honestly I’m a little afraid of the answers. I want my parents to be proud of me for what I have done and how I live my life, but I don’t see how they possibly could be right now.

I feel so far removed from this situation that at times I feel as though I’m living the life of someone else. Honestly if I weren’t uncomfortable a significant portion of the time I would probably forget that I was pregnant. Apparently my mind is taking just as long as my body to process these inevitable changes. I have always felt somewhat alone, but how can you feel alone when someone else is literally with you at all times? I'm not saying my friends and family aren't great, but with everything that has happened within the last few months, I feel more alone than ever regardless of the growing fetus inside me and the supportive boyfriend who lies beside me at night. 

I guess I just feel lost.