Ranting At Ghosts

At my graduation party last month, I was shocked and insulted.

While opening all of the cards and presents that my family had given me, a cousin-in-law blurted out, "So when is the baby due?"

My first reaction was, "Huh?"

She repeated it.

Should I laugh it off, like I’m supposed to?

But I didn’t want to laugh it off.  I wanted to say, "Thanks for marring an otherwise perfect day with your stupid little joke."  I wanted to say whatever mean thing I could think of to shock and hurt her the way she had just shocked and hurt me.

I smiled weakly.

Because the thought chasing on the heels of my initial violently-pissed-off reaction was, she didn’t know that would hurt you, and if she did, she wouldn’t have said it.

Does that justify it?  I don’t know.  I don’t think it does.  And yet I know she is a good person with a good heart who has accepted me unconditionally as part of her family.  She has overlooked all of my quirks (and I would guess that a lot of my behavior qualifies as "quirky" to her).  It seems only fair that I do the same.

The line is fine.  On the one hand, my adult female life sometimes seems like one long string of telling others that I will never give birth if I can possibly prevent it and don’t want human children (I’m dying for some cat children) of my own, to which they invariably scoff or look smug.  On the other hand, how could she know that?

She wasn’t there when my father told me that, now that my older brother had denounced him, it was my responsibility to contribute the next generation (in the midst of him trying vainly to play matchmaker with every screwed up male – and some females – my age that he could find).  She wasn’t there the multitude of times since I was old enough to menstruate that I would firmly say I never wanted to have children when the response would always be a condescending, "You’ll change your mind."  She wasn’t there all those times when I had to forego all of the fun things I wanted to do as a teenager because my gender-essentialist step-mother had saddled me , the only girl-child, with the responsibility of babysitting my little brother.  I don’t believe that she even knows that I saw the birth process up close at 13 years old, and it was a very difficult, long birth.  She wasn’t there when a gynecologist answered my queries about a new outpatient sterilization procedure with a dismissive, "It’s dangerous.  Come back and see me when you want to have children."  She wasn’t there when I thought I was pregnant and became an obstacle to a man’s plans rather than a human being .  She wasn’t there when her parents gave me cards for Mother’s Day as if the presence of a uterus in my body and my nurturing instincts automatically placed me in that difficult and awesome position.  She doesn’t know that the reason I don’t want children is because I love them, but for only so long – and that’s a terrible situation to bring children into.  And she never got the talk from ManPants that his mother did that they were never to bring up me having children.

That’s all my baggage, baggage that I can carry into my blog and open up but that most people in my ordinary life would find overwhelming, and overwhelmingly bitter.  So I keep it hidden away, as much as I can.

Someday, maybe I’ll be able to pull her aside, swallow my rage, and say calmly that I don’t want children and don’t consider it a joke.

Because if I don’t, if I keep directing at her all the anger that has accumulated behind the issue in my lifetime, I am judging her by other people’s actions.  If there is one thing I’d like to do in my life, it is to be as fair and kind as possible to even those who are horrible to me (to live what some would call a godly life, what I call our human(e) responsibility).  I expect others to come to me as freshly as they can; I should be able to do the same.  I expect others to forgive me my mistakes and understand that they usually aren’t meant in malice; I should be able to do the same.

Yet I also can’t bear the thought that I’m not allowed to speak my true feelings lest others think I’m just being crazy.  I can’t bear the thought that my real-life voice, which never quite says the right things or in the right way or completely, is a bridge of understanding that I cannot build.  Nor can I help but think that there are plenty of other women out there like me who are sick of people talking about children like every woman wants at least one, who would perhaps benefit if I unleashed some of my righteous anger and told her to stop.

But anger keeps people out.  No one wants to approach a person who is angry, let alone try to comprehend why.  Can there truly be understanding if a person is ranting at the ghosts of previous mistreatment?

(Cross-posted at What If )