Children=lobotomy?

There haven't been posts in the past two days as I was away on another culinary-cultural-extravaganza. What a trip! I'm all cultured  out though for a while. I had no idea opera could last for 3,5 hours. Even James Cameron couldn't think of enough happening for 3,5 hours- he had to resort to getting Celine Dion to fill in!

I saw Carmen this time. Where a common tart finds love (where's mine? WHERE?). Ok, she does die too. Which seems to be a bit of a recurring theme here...

On the ferry there I was sitting next to a group of young, hip families with children. For an hour and a half I watched the men be... well, themselves. The women on the other hand... they were reduced to mummies. No, not the interesting, embalmed ancient rulers, but lobotomized excuses of people with a drooling kid hanging from each one of their designer-jeans-clad legs.

What happens to women? Do they push their personalities out along with the screaming kid covered in slime? All these women could talk about were their kids and how appalled they are that the nursery serves juice (yes, juice. Apparently juice is evil in a way that genocides can't even compete with). See, their kids are not used to it as they only drink water and milk except for the someone who only consumes oatmilk yada yada blaah blaah. An hour and a half, people!

I don't want kids. Never have. That was one of the things me and The Man always had in common. But I understand that there are people who do and they're free to do so. Even if it does mean that while I have to fight just to get an internship or a temporary contract, these women's jobs are safe while they're away on maternity leaves and child care leaves and then go on having another child and then stay home for yet another leave. But no, their jobs are safe and waiting for them when they decide they feel like coming back.

And then when they do, they are the ones staying home when the kids get sick (and let's face it- they do that a lot. They always have runny noses and head lice and God knows what they pick up from other kids at the nurseries that really seem like little more than petri dishes in a filthy Albanian lab) and they have to get off early to pick up the kids and then they have to go and attend someone's violin recital and organize their holidays around the kids' holidays... And all the while who's doing overtime and covering for their absence and making concessions and adjusting? The single women! ME!

They might have chosen to have the kids, but everyone around them ends up having to organize their lives around those kids.


(And anyway, kids hate me. The younger they are -and as such, incapable of actually verbally expressing their disdain- the more prone they are to just quietly staring at me disapprovingly. With such passion it borders on contempt. No, I'm not making this up.)

What really gets me though is not the fact that people are having kids. It's the fact that my friends are having them. I worry I'll lose them to that lobotomia too. That they will start hanging out exclusively with other couples with kids as we'll have nothing to share anymore.  That their lives take a turn that leaves no room for me anymore. 

Already now I feel I can't contribute to the conversations as I don't even have a job- another major conversation topic. I don't want to lose my friends. But if that is what happens to women... is there anything I can do?

Very soon the only friends I'll have left will be my football guys. Even if they did settle down one day, they're more likely to retain a non-parent-personality and be able/ willing to take some time off from the life revolving around nappies and potty-training and milk allergies and play dates.

Where will my life evolve? With whom will it evolve? This just can't be it.