What I Didn't Know

My friend recently told me she was pregnant. 

I smiled and said: I’m so happy for you. 

What I wanted to say was, don’t. 

Don’t have a baby. 

If you do, you will be plagued with crippling anxiety every single day. 

You may lose the weight, but you will always be heavier. It will be as though overnight you grew new limbs with a mind of their own and they can slap or kick you, or just plain weigh you down, but you will always love them, no matter what. 

Also, it will be as though, while you were sleeping, someone who is a total sadist implanted a chip in your brain that causes alarms to go off in your head whenever your baby cries. Like an ambulance siren that will drive you steadily insane. 

Then, one day out of the blue, you will realize that not even death can be an escape, because if you die the kid remains motherless, and if the kid dies you remain child-less. The vacuum left in that particular “less”-ening is something you know will slowly kill you off piece by smaller piece, always leaving however small a piece to torture. 

You will understand that you can never get away; ever. Until the end of time. 

You will have to smell a LOT of poop. Like, a lot. Even when you are super nauseous and can’t handle it. 

You will do a lot of things you cannot handle. 

You will lose your youthful glow and your beauty. Well, this would happen anyway, but certainly not as fast. 

You will have very little sex. 

You will constantly have to remind yourself that you were different once, and it will seem like a dream, or another life. 

This life will be completely taken up by other people’s schedules, other people’s troubles and travails and fears and joys. You will be consumed by childish behaviors, and find yourself saying things you always used to make fun of, dread, look down on, or just plain hate. 

A cup of coffee will be like the nectar of the gods; your couch and your bed both more heavenly than that soft white sand you lay on, on that vacation you took once before you ever thought of kids. Now you’re so tired vacation sounds like a chore. You wouldn't go if someone paid you. 

You will be inexpressibly lonely, much lonelier than you ever were before, and the people you love the most will not want or be able to help you. Some of them will even be embarrassed by you. 

And it will be so fucking hard, and you will have to hide how hard it is all the fucking time. You will have to smile and speak calmly when all you feel like doing is setting the house on fire and putting it out with tears. You will have to fake so many positive emotions. 

Of course, there will always be an emotion you don’t have to fake. And that will be your only buoy on this fathomless sea of uncertainty. 

You will always have that buoy, even when you have lost yourself. In fact, you're chained to it.

That’s why, no matter what, even if you really want to, you will never drown.