I Probably Am Not

I started crying tonight - suddenly, unexplicably, briefly - because I want a baby.

Moreso, I want a family. I want a husband to plan dinner for. Plan vacations with. To make love to at the end of the day. To fall asleep in a bed that is neither mine nor his but ours.

A friend of mine wrote me recently and talked about the beauty of having a family, of having her son. She said it's something I should definitely do, definitely try.

As if I had any control whatsoever about that. As if I could walk outside right now, at an insomnious 1 am, and grab the first fella I find and fall in love and get married and have babies.

So here I lay alone. Cartoons on in the other room and Star Wars pillow cases on my bed.

I'm not allowed to say these words in New York. For the most part, my friends don't even understand. We are sailing into our thirties and most of us still spend way too much money at the bar, have no long term goals, and are happy to fuck any tom, dick, or harry (or any hairy dicked tom) who comes our way. And I've been falling into this because it's easier to be distracted from the nagging pain and frustration of not being able to have what you want by getting what you can.

Good sex is exciting. It makes you feel momentarily special and beautiful. But obviously, I am not. Because here alone I lay.

Not to say that I do not love myself or that I am a bad person or am unloved by family and friend. I am well aware of my worth and my value. Most of the time.

But as I approach 30 the little farm girl I was for 22 years arm wrestles with the "sophisticated" New York City woman I've become over the past eight. The little girl kicks at an invisible stone, pouts with her lower lip. By thirty yes, I wanted a career and a book and to have had a luscious, beautiful life. But I also wanted love. THE love. And THE family. Things that to most seem like inevitiabilities. Things that to a sad, lonely, romantic, alienated little girl seem like salvation. The city woman tries to pretend this little girl doesn't exist. I can only speak of my biological clock in wry, sarcastic tones. In a way I need to reject everything I ever wanted -- in order to somehow get it. But maybe that isn't working. Fuck man. How do I go out into this world and say brightly and brazenly that I want to be loved, that I believe in life long committment, that I want children?

Maybe I have just been too afraid to stand tall with my desires. And maybe I have spent too long dating boys, not men, that have been too afraid to admit that they want these things too.

Or perhaps its' all a matter of timing and not fear. I want my fairy tale.

I probably am not any man's dream woman. And while the romantic in me demands no less than butterflies and explosions, the realist in me feels like a bird gathering sticks for an empty nest. If I build it, will it come?

Why is it that if I tell a man I want to be loved and to be a mother that I'm "crazy?"

Do I as a woman have to hide these things to "trick" a man? Why am I supposed to wear make up and sexy dresses that I don't every day? Why am I supposed to be on my best behavior? Why am I supposed to play a role that I am not? Why am I supposed to sit on dates that feel like job interviews? Why am I supposed to hide who I am, hide my past, hide my illness, hide my true and sparkling and beautiful self?

Then again maybe I haven't. And that's why I'm alone?

Sigh. I can't call it a quarter life crisis. I ain't living to 120. I refuse to call it a mid life crisis -- I hope to live past 60. Third life crisis perhaps.

I joke and tell my male friends at 33 I'm stealing their sperm and having their babies. And its' nights like this when it feels less like a joke!

At what point can I settle without feeling like I settled? At one point am I supposed to put away the romantic ideals of childhood and movies and settle for "clean hair, primal lust?"

I have the capacity to be an amazing mother and wife inside me. An amazing girlfriend. But.... how come I'm not?