a little more juju

I’ve been having kind of an existential crisis over the past couple of weeks, and part of it is due to the fact that I turn 40 in a few months. I know, I know, age is but a number, but 40? It’s kind of a big deal. Like … okay, the concept of being 40 isn’t; I don’t mind no longer being in my 20s which were admittedly pretty awful, and I prefer the decades of experience that has brought me to not give a single shit most of the time. I am, for the most part, comfortable in my own skin in a way that I could never have been even five years ago, and I expect it gets even better as the years creep on by. So in a way, I’m actually looking forward to leaving my thirties behind.

The thing that’s getting me at the moment is that I am child-free, and I’m not sure where I stand on this fact. Part of me is completely fine with the concept: I don’t ever have to plan my day around getting kids or making meals or everything else parents have to do. I can spend my money on what I want and need, as opposed to having to think about school clothes or extracurricular activities or day care. I can focus on my own enrichment, spiritually and otherwise, and become a better person with each passing day, hopefully making the world a better place than when I came into it. And you know what, I’m happy with how things are, fully prepared to be that super interesting woman on the subway who’s off to meet some random person they met in Brussels that one time.

But then the other part of me, the one that’s causing me this existential crisis in the first place, has me thinking that I’m useless if I don’t provide the world with at least one additional human being. Like … what’s even my point of existing in the first place? And is my possible desire to be a mom actually driven by my own mind or by some weird societal decree? I honestly don’t know, and therein lies the problem. My time to figure that out is kind of coming to an end, and it’s causing me some major distress. Like randomly-crying-in-public distress. Like I’m-crying-right-now-just-typing-this-out distress.

It also puts my current relationship into question, which is yet another form of stress that keeps me up at night. My boyfriend has two kids, one biological, and has no desire to have more, a completely understandable standpoint considering they’re both almost full adults; I’d be fine with it if I knew I was okay with not having a child. We have a great relationship, one built on trust and communication, and I can see myself living the rest of my days with him. But becoming a first-time mom is not going to happen with him. So do I break up with him and hope that I find someone who wants to have kids? Even though I’m not sure I want or can have them? Or do I stay with him and be a bonus mom to adult children? Provide my parents with grand-cats and grand-dogs? Neither situation is worse than the other, but I’m truly at a loss here.

I’ve talked with my friends and my sister about this, and I have yet to come to a decision on what exactly I should do. I don’t want to leave a wonderful relationship based on a dream that might not come true, but I also don’t want to waste my (and his) time, only to resent him later on because he and I didn’t want the exact same thing. Literally the only thing we really have any kind of major disagreement on, and it’s only a disagreement I have at specific times.

I guess it goes back to who I want to be and whether or not my identity is tied to something else other than myself. I have so many titles – daughter, girlfriend, sister, nurse, author, dog and cat mom, painter, world traveler (I’ll be going to Greece next year and am so excited about it), liberal, LGBTQIA+, etc. – so it’s not like I need another one, but is mother a label that I absolutely have to have to feel fulfilled and happy? Part of me says, “not even a little bit,” while the other says, “I think maybe?”

Maybe menopause will happen and biology will just make that decision for me. Or maybe I should just embrace this uncertainty and see where life takes me.