I Have Always Said

I love my job (as much as you can love a job being a bean counter). I work hard (usually), and I think I am pretty good at what I do. I'm not the best, but good. I don't really have a lot of hobbies (does watching Law & Order count?). I dabble in some things, but I have no real passion. When I was younger, the fact that I didn't have a real passion was somewhat of a source of conflict for me. I tried - I really did - to become interested in playing a musical instrument, learning something new, schoolwork, languages, whatever. Nothing ever seemed to take. Not having something you're good at and something you love in your life is hard. My whole life has been based on mediocrity and being "good enough", and I just wanted ONE thing. ONE thing I loved to do, ONE thing I excelled at, ONE thing I could pour my heart into.

Then one day it hit me. My passion in life was to someday be someone's mother. I have pretty amazing parents, and I think this is their fault. I have always wanted the opportunity to care unconditionally for someone, to teach them new things, to watch them become impassioned about what matters to them. I have always wanted to be a mother. I think I even pretended to breast feed a plastic baby doll as a child*. After I came to this realization, I was much more at peace with the fact that I wasn't passionate about anything. Yet. I knew that one day, I would get there. And I would be great at it. And I didn't keep trying under-water basket weaving seeking out random activities to try to fill that void.

The Younger KP wasn't too worried about this. It would happen in time, and I wasn't in a rush to get married and knocked up. It just so happened that I met the Hubs in a bar (the good old fashioned way) when I was relatively young, and we fell in love and got married. Even then, having children wasn't at the top of our agenda because we were busy enjoying our life together. But it was definitely a dream for both of us.

Now that I am a bona-fide infertile, I am having some trouble watching that dream die, and it's been a struggle to find something in my life to be passionate about and find some meaning. I think that is the issue that I have been mindfucking to death lately. (I swear, I don't know why I pay all this money for acupuncture and counseling and everything else. I am my own therapist.)

*I don't think, I know. There is actual photographic proof of that moment, and NO, I am not going to share that with you. In my defense, I am the oldest of 4 children, so for the first 7 or 8 years of my life, my only interaction with my mother was while she was breastfeeding me or one of my brothers. What did I know?