The Biological Clock
There are days when I wake up and I think "what the hell am I doing with my life? Something's missing."
That's when it hits me that I'm missing children. There should be some children somewhere.
But I can't get over the fact that in my life nothing's been secure enough for children. I never wanted to bring anyone into this mess of life without being able to give that person a strong, solid foundation to build a very good life.
The life I've built is exciting to a degree. Unpredictable mostly, which is what adds to the excitement and creates anxiety. Anxiety, after all, is part and parcel with excitement.
Maybe it's not children all that much as it is stability. That's something I can say for certain that I'm lacking and would like...but I don't think I want to rely on one person to provide that stability (see sunday's entry on Fear of Cohabitation.) But I'm not sure I can provide my own stability at the moment, because career things are still growning.
Because there aren't any children to make me stop and think and slow me down just a bit and ground me (literally), the sky's pretty much the limit. How far can I get? How high up he intellectual/economic food chain can I go? (the social class food chain I'm not so sure--that's a "breeding" thing and while I'm sure I can converse with the like of John Zogby, I'm not so sure I'm ever going to be that low-boil whitebread Harvardian who's lack of passion projects Grace Kelly-like elegance and poise.)
I've noticed, though, that this whole children-thing started only after I started having the intermittent hot flash. Over the summer, I had a couple of "hot spells" where I got a tad warmer than I should be. I thought it was pretty funny at the time--didn't bother me at all because I realized it was only life. Nothing to really get bent about.
But as soon as the "hot spells" went away, the biological clock kicked in--the horrible "what ifs" and the heart-ache of not having a child around.
I began to develop a great deal of compassion for my younger counterparts, whose clocks go off sometime in their 30s and they get amazingly single-minded until they achieve their goal of pregnancy.
Don't ask me why that didn't happen when I was younger. That confuses me too. Maybe it was the Great Illness and the stresses of a Wrong Marriage that kept my biological clock frozen in time. Now, here I am staring down the barrel of 46 (my b-day's next saturday) and I'm feeling like a woman of 36 who thinks this is the last chance she might have to get pregnant.
But I'm not 36 and there's been other biological problems besides ageing that would make it a very bad choice to bear a child at this point in time.
The Celebrity Machine tells me I should take bioidenticals and chomp lots of soy (that I'm allergic to) and get some botox and lose a bunch of weight to appear youthful so that maybe I can attract a younger man who wants a family or an older man who might have children already who may need a stepmother.
And I think "how irrational"--remind myself that I'm not 36 but turning 46 and that my body's got it all wrong.
Amazing how the body and the brain can often be at odds with one another. Amazing how illness can put the brain in stasis while the body heals--and that once the body heals, the brain wakes up again but forgets what chronological year the body dwells in.
I've got the biologically clocked brain of a 36 year old in the slowing-down body of a 46 year old.
Criminey. what's a woman to do?
That's when it hits me that I'm missing children. There should be some children somewhere.
But I can't get over the fact that in my life nothing's been secure enough for children. I never wanted to bring anyone into this mess of life without being able to give that person a strong, solid foundation to build a very good life.
The life I've built is exciting to a degree. Unpredictable mostly, which is what adds to the excitement and creates anxiety. Anxiety, after all, is part and parcel with excitement.
Maybe it's not children all that much as it is stability. That's something I can say for certain that I'm lacking and would like...but I don't think I want to rely on one person to provide that stability (see sunday's entry on Fear of Cohabitation.) But I'm not sure I can provide my own stability at the moment, because career things are still growning.
Because there aren't any children to make me stop and think and slow me down just a bit and ground me (literally), the sky's pretty much the limit. How far can I get? How high up he intellectual/economic food chain can I go? (the social class food chain I'm not so sure--that's a "breeding" thing and while I'm sure I can converse with the like of John Zogby, I'm not so sure I'm ever going to be that low-boil whitebread Harvardian who's lack of passion projects Grace Kelly-like elegance and poise.)
I've noticed, though, that this whole children-thing started only after I started having the intermittent hot flash. Over the summer, I had a couple of "hot spells" where I got a tad warmer than I should be. I thought it was pretty funny at the time--didn't bother me at all because I realized it was only life. Nothing to really get bent about.
But as soon as the "hot spells" went away, the biological clock kicked in--the horrible "what ifs" and the heart-ache of not having a child around.
I began to develop a great deal of compassion for my younger counterparts, whose clocks go off sometime in their 30s and they get amazingly single-minded until they achieve their goal of pregnancy.
Don't ask me why that didn't happen when I was younger. That confuses me too. Maybe it was the Great Illness and the stresses of a Wrong Marriage that kept my biological clock frozen in time. Now, here I am staring down the barrel of 46 (my b-day's next saturday) and I'm feeling like a woman of 36 who thinks this is the last chance she might have to get pregnant.
But I'm not 36 and there's been other biological problems besides ageing that would make it a very bad choice to bear a child at this point in time.
The Celebrity Machine tells me I should take bioidenticals and chomp lots of soy (that I'm allergic to) and get some botox and lose a bunch of weight to appear youthful so that maybe I can attract a younger man who wants a family or an older man who might have children already who may need a stepmother.
And I think "how irrational"--remind myself that I'm not 36 but turning 46 and that my body's got it all wrong.
Amazing how the body and the brain can often be at odds with one another. Amazing how illness can put the brain in stasis while the body heals--and that once the body heals, the brain wakes up again but forgets what chronological year the body dwells in.
I've got the biologically clocked brain of a 36 year old in the slowing-down body of a 46 year old.
Criminey. what's a woman to do?
posted by Tish Grier at 9:01 AM
2 Comments:
It's gotta be something about the age. I'm 46 and menopausal, too, with kids 24 (getting married this weekend), 20 and 16 but all of a sudden I've got this powerful longing for another child.
I hope it goes away for both of us.
Hi Terry! Might I venture to say that when the first grandchild comes along things might change for you? Still, it stinks while it's going on...
hope you have wonderful weather for the wedding and everything goes well :-)
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