I’m one of those people who lives in seasons. Season of love; season of apathy; season of wanting kids; season of not wanting kids and right now I’m in the latter.
I don’t hate kids. I like them a lot and find myself pretty protective over them but one thing they have in common at the moment; they are not mine. That seems to make a lot easier to like them and forgive their mistakes. I have reiterated the fact for the last seven years that offspring will not come forth from my womb of my own will. Unless it’s surrogacy.
My family seems to think it’s all a joke, insisting time and again that I will indeed have children; a whole brood like me and my siblings. I have learned to smile and joke with them about it, knowing they will so be pitying me by dumping their own kids on me (who I will welcome) for visits when they realise I don’t have any in my forties. Their reasons for having said children in general are my reasons not to in specific.
My mother; bless her; and myself are the reasons for me not having children. Her child-rearing skills have scarred me and my subsequent handling of my issues have fortified my scars enough that I can acknowledge having children is a bad idea for me.
My mind has managed to keep in mind bad experiences such that I cannot for the life of me remember good experiences. Most of these bad experiences involve my mother and as such she was the villain of my life for most of it. Nowadays, I don’t regard her much beyond paying her back for spending energy on me and money too; unfortunately the situation on the latter can’t be addressed at the moment but the former entails a lot of energy from me which is fuelled by the bursts of resentment against her that still linger inside me. I don’t want someone else feeling the same way towards me as I do my mother; especially if that person is my child.
My mother was not a stable person when she had her first born, my eldest sister. According to my father, she suffered from post-partum and scared him because he’s a guy. Guys don’t know enough of what post-partum is now; much less thirty years ago and so he didn’t know how to handle her save for not aggravating her and helping her with my sister when he came home from work. The depression of post-partum aggravated my mother’s instability, making her worse of a candidate to be a mother but how can someone who doesn’t know they aren’t stable deal with their issues and understand their weaknesses? So she ended up having six children; most of whom didn’t find her rearing skills stellar but can attest that she was a pro in the discipline department.
I am instable just like; if not worse than; my mother. Mainly because of my nurture but also naturally. It’s in my genes to be uncommonly awkward and different from the norm. Supremely, I am not a naturally social person and being raised to not distrust everyone and not make connections really does a number on a socially awkward person’s capabilities. I was raised as such, thanks to my mother which has led to me struggling with something that over half the world’s population does naturally. I resent her for this as well.
It took a long while for me to realise my problems i.e. what made me unable to be a normal person at the basic state of humanity. In that long time I made a bunch of stupid, stupid actions and decisions whose memories have left serious scars on me. In trying therapy, I realised one of those scars in an irrevocable disdain of adults. Even being one myself, I hate the state. Adults in my life have been condescending, destructive people. Someone I am trying my best not to be but find myself falling into the traits unconsciously sometimes. In finding out about problems, I realised that being a mother would be the worst thing I could possibly do. Taking out my frustrations and problems and unconscious negativity on a child is wrong and doing it consciously should be a crime on the same calibre of murder if not worse because while murder takes away a life; destroying a child’s natural personality and mental psyche is in essence torture as a way of life is taken away while the person is living.
Thus, I don’t advocate for just any Thomasina, Erica and Harriet to have a child. In fact, I’m pretty much so adverse to some people getting kids that I do advocate for sterilisation because having a kid and raising one are two different things and while the former may all be fine and dandy; the latter is hard work and usually a fail. Kenyan society is enough of an example.
Parting shot; they say a woman should look to her mother to see who they’ll be when they are older. As such I am not all too sure that she is a good example of what kind of person I would be as a mother. And every time I look at my mother in such light, I feel my decision not to add to the country’s population is more than right.
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