Career options...

I'm 6 months pregnant with a feisty boy. I have been married a little over a year to the love of my eternity. I graduated college with a bachelor's degree in English.

And I have no dreams.

When I was single, my dreams were modest; become a professor at a southern Utah university, close to my family, and own a house before I was 30. I had a plan that involved renting-to-own a home and taking in roommates until the payments were complete, then dividing the payments between travel and renovation. My immediate family would consist of a few cats, dogs, and two pygmy goats. I've often talked about this dream before and it's no less valid now than it was when I first dreamed it. A small home, cozy, filled with bookshelves and good food... that's all I wanted.

Then I met my husband and we shared our ambitions with each other. He admired how I had my whole life planned out and the spark he felt in me as I wanted to own a bookstore, or at least work in one, as well as writing and editing on the side. I filled my life with jobs and material things in order to negate the necessity of human company. While he fell in love with the idea of marrying a corporate woman, I had already chosen a life without human companionship. I didn't even factor in a serious boyfriend; just a few romances here and there to occupy my time when writing became scarce or I needed someone to drag to family functions. Plans change. God works in mysterious ways. I got married to a man I barely knew and in 3 months, there will be a baby I don't know at all.

He's asked me about my dreams for the future, for my career, and what I want to have happen. Honestly, as soon as I got married, my dreams disappeared. Contrived as it sounds, my focus shifted from a life filled with material possessions to a life filled with my family. My dreams consist of supporting my husband, being there for my parents/siblings, helping raise my child. I want to take care of my own home, to be there when my husband comes home from work, and to 100% be committed to his dreams. I don't feel like I've lost my identity in being married; my dreams just changed.

And in this world where a woman must constantly be seeking career advancement in order to be seen as competent as a man, I stick out. Not just in my classes, where I was the only married person, but in my family where I have achieved so much more than my relatives academically. My parents saw me as the career woman because I pushed against the idea of marriage so much. I didn't want my dreams to fall under someone else's, and as an introvert, I had no desire for extended human company beyond spoiling my eventual nieces and nephews.

I feel like I'm disappointing the world by feeling this way. Everywhere I look, even amongst my friends with children, they juggle jobs and babies, dinners and brunches, meetings and laundry. I don't feel the need. Since I met my husband, the desire to create something from nothing has become a refined 'create order from chaos' instinct. I no longer want to write or teach college. I don't view this, and I don't feel, as if my dreams are being subsumed by those of my husband, but that my passion has changed. I've been so focused on THIS idea of myself that I gave little to no thought to the alternatives, such as marriage.

My husband feels I've lost my 'sparkle'. My parents expect my to get a doctorate. My siblings continue to look to me as the accomplished and intelligent one, the one treading down the snow in front of them to make an easier path.

If I stop, they'll stop. I feel as if I've reached the end of caring about life for myself and the beginning of loving others so much, their existence takes up my life. Martyr-like though it sounds, it's just a fact of life for me. I don't feel as if I've lost something by giving up my dreams in exchange for new ones. Much like store credit. I don't feel bad that I'm returning a pair of jeans that don't fit my bulging belly in exchange for comfortable leggings. One was suitable for a different stage of my life, and now this is my reality. There can be no resentment in the truth.

I feel secure in what I want, yet I lack the words to describe to others how I feel, that for the first time in over 20 years, I am a changed person, so completely that my past self would not recognize me now. I've stayed consistent throughout the years, much to the chagrin of my parents, and to change now...

To add to the lot stacked against me, my husband's family, not just immediate, is filled with success stories of people who have gone on professional, globally acclaimed, dance teams, doctors, those who bike across the world for charity and interior decorators for yachts. There are programmers and professors of math and science, engineers, artists, even athletes. Comparison plagues humanity, no less so when that comparison is drawn between yourself and your in-laws.

Bottom line? I don't want to be a writer. I don't want to edit or publish anything, I don't want to work in a bookstore or really do anything beyond being there for my family. I "just" want to be a wife and mother. Those are my dreams. I have never reached for something I viewed as unattainable because I'm a realist, and the reality remains that my dreams are different than 2 years ago, my ambitions have gone through a drastic overhaul, and if there is something wrong with me, then God needs to be more clear about His intentions for me. I don't believe I am 'settling' for a domestic life; for the first time, I am aiming for it. I want to stay at home and feed my babies, I want to can and grow things in the garden and fix things in my car/house, I want to make afghans and quilts and be domestic. My dream is to live the rest of my life happy and content, and however low-shooting and unambitious as that makes me appear, it's the truth. I'm not going to say, 'It's my truth!' like a lot of sappy people who are too ashamed to admit the absolute nature of their statement. My ambition to be a mother is not my truth, it is the truth.

And if anyone has any thoughts on that, you can take a number.

Serving 8 billion and counting.

Pressure

Today, I unfriended a lot of people on Facebook. It doesn't seem like a big deal until I tell you they were people I served my mission and went to high school with. Those are two really big social experiences in a person's life that should make them forever friends. Both of them can be terrible experiences, but it's the friends who make those days worthwhile, even while it's really hard.

I got out of high school and everybody tried to be my friend. Well, that's not a good way to start off this paragraph... People want to be my friend. I'm funny and sarcastic, I joke about everything and accept everyone. I try not to pick on people and am nice to everybody. I make self-deprecating jokes, or jokes about common topics that everyone finds funny. I simplify a lot of things. I'm smart, yet relaxed. All those qualities are why people want to be my friend.

Like everyone reading this blog, people have hurt me. Boyfriends, chick friends, parents, siblings, everyone. Everyone, at some point, has hurt someone. No exceptions. I don't like being hurt, so I avoid friends. In most cases, I go out of my way to get rid of them. If I haven't talked to someone in a long time, I unfriend them. I block them completely out of my life and I don't think about them anymore. This means the longest friend I've ever had is a guy I met in college.

And our friendship isn't the most functional. We met in math class and, since I had a boyfriend at the time, I didn't feel awkward trying to reach out. We hung out a few times and he became a regular at my apartment. I never wanted to date him; in fact, I set him up with one of the chicks who was hanging around our apartment at the time. They dated and they both came to me to fix their problems because I was a mutual friend and a good listener. Eventually they got married and, like most non-communicative couples, got a divorce. It was really hard since I got the news while I was far away and couldn't talk to them directly. He told me his version and admitted the things he did wrong. She sent me 1 letter, and I never heard from her again.

I came home and figured everything would blow over. I'd already abandoned most of the friends I had made that first year of college, so it was really shocking that he called me one day to talk. I tried giving him the cold shoulder since I wasn't interested in dating him or keeping him in the friend zone, but when I tried to explain that to him, he said that he knew I wouldn't like him, so he was fine in the friend zone. We've kept up a pretty tentative relationship since that point; I even introduced him to my husband.

But he's my oldest friend. 5 years of friendship. A few people have been on my Facebook friends list longer than he has, but he's one of the only people I consider a permanent friend. He's not my best friend, but I know he's going to be the one who sticks around... at least until he gets married. None of my roommates have been those kind of friends. I don't really talk to the same people I did in high school.

----Continuing-----

But I guess that's part of life. You move on and move up, sometimes together, often times not. It's hard to justify a relationship, but for some people, it's harder to justify ending one. My ex boyfriend contacted me a few months ago, out of the blue, asking if we could talk. I didn't want to and denied him. He said if I didn't want any further contact, to just say the word. "The Word"... whatever will make it so I never have to feel this awkward tension between two people who should be strangers for the rest of their lives, however two criminals feel after they accomplished something lowdown, however a pair of grave robbers, united by a common goal, interacts after the mission is complete. Whatever that level of communication is, I want it. I want to pass him on the street and pretend I didn't see him, I want to drive through his home state without feeling paranoid every time I look out my window. I did everything right in our breakup, from the 8 page letter of reasons why it was happening to the 6 hours of discussion that didn't go anywhere. I wrote letters until I couldn't handle it anymore. I became a shell of a person to make sure he understood how I felt, and I gave all I could give. I have nothing more in 'his' box. Nothing in my life belongs to him, there is not 1 experience I could justify in giving him. Everything I have, everything I am, is different and changed.  When he reaches across the void, there is nothing reaching back. Perhaps pieces of his life belong to me and those are his attempts to give them back, but honestly, he had his chance.

I felt the same way when my phone lit up last year with a phone call from my stalker. He left no voice mail and I didn't feel comfortable returning his call. I stared in mute terror until 30 seconds had passed, then I breathed a sigh of relief. I wanted nothing more than to run away screaming, and instead just finished blocking the numbers. I'm a new person with a new life, new friends, new husband, new baby (yeah, wow!) and no part of my life belongs to the past. I've said what I wanted to say to everyone and made the amends to people I felt deserved it. There is nothing else in my life for those who have remained in my past.

And while I believe that how it should be for everyone, I understand that others have a stronger emotional tie to people than I do. Congratulations on your way. It is different than mine, but I respect you for those differences so long as they do not hurt you or others. If you need to stay in contact with your exes, continue with no guilt or reproach. My personality is such that I need to leave situations I feel unpleasant and I'm not comfortable reestablishing relationships once they've been destroyed. If your way is different, then please continue and don't be offended because I am different.