I woke up, again, with sweat drenching my back, gluing my night shirt close to my body. I had a nightmare, the same one I've had many a time: in the dream, I am sleeping in my bed, but when I look down to my toes, I can't see them, because I have a very bulging, very pregnant stomach. I gasp for air, panic, cry. Then I wake up. I'm not from another era- I know perfectly well how to avoid unexpected pregnancies. Yet this is a fear that has burrowed into my psyche and which springs up when my body is trying to rest. Perhaps the fear is not the pregnancy itself- it is the fear that I will never want a child. It is the fear of...babies. While other women my age already have this maternal instinct, a drive to squish chubby cheeks and fantasize about cribs, I am ambivalent about babies. I can't fathom what drives a woman to momentarily give up her body, to sacrifice a portion of her career, and to devote her life to a crying blob without a formed personality, without hopes or dreams. Just a bare frame of a human being, a little, fragile thing completely dependent on the mother. Women who have had babies talk during lunch. They bond over the pain of childbirth. How horrible and long it was, but how they could never, ever go back. How they want another baby. It's the best thing that has ever happened to them. Perhaps I am envious because I can't imagine loving another being more than I love myself. I am locked out of this feminine world, the world of baby bottles, diapers, complaints about stretch marks and sore nipples. It feels that, no matter how much I progress my career, all the friends I make, and places I travel to...my mission on earth will not be complete, my biological destiny to give birth will not be fulfilled. Everyone loves a pregnant woman. No one cat calls a woman with child on the street. She is respected. She has unlocked the secret of the feminine world, she is giving life to the future. At the same time, her body is reduced to its most primitive functions, the one we share with all mammals. For probably the next decade, I will continue being selfish. I do not want to wake up with a bulging belly. I don't want to be awakened by crying in the middle of the night. I do not want to take maternity leave, risking my future. But the fear persists, and the nightmares continue. The fear of being a mother, a completely different species. The fear of baby showers. The fear that I will always be weary of babies, even my own. The fear that one day people will ask me, "aww, what's her name?" instead of, "how are you?"
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