It happened a few days ago. I was scrolling down my Facebook feed, bored, killing time online instead of living my life. I was half out of it — thumbing through monotonous selfies, Vine completions, and recipes I’d NEVER actually make – not paying much attention to anything passing by the screen in my hand. And then I saw it.
She was standing in the middle of the frame. A close childhood friend – someone I hadn’t seen in years. She was smiling ear to ear, her brown eyes wide. In her hands, thrust out in front of her, was a small picture. I didn’t even need to really look at it to know it was an ultrasound.
Shit. Another one.
First one was when I was in high school. Senior year. I didn’t know her well — just a friend of a friend. My best friend and I laughed when we saw her announcement. I messaged her on Facebook and offered her my 2-year-old brother’s hand-me-downs, but never gave them to her.
After that, it seemed to happen all the time. More and more as the years went on.
The older girl from my marching band.
The girl from my HS chorus class.
The brunette who sat behind me in bio.
The Goth girl I used to eat lunch with in high school.
My friend from color guard — married with two children.
The boy from elementary school.
The girl who sat across the room from me in photography.
One of my marching band students.
One of my color guard students.
The friend I used to laugh with in psychology.
The boy I had a crush on in middle school.
Many more. Too many to keep track of. When I list them off to people I’ve learned to just stop at 15.
Every time I find myself more surprised. And not in the excited sense. Surprised that anyone would want that life in their late teens or early 20s. And it wasn’t just with babies. I found myself shuddering in the same way at engagements and weddings of people knew. Two hands aren't enough to catalog the people I went to high school with who have pushed their youthful years away and traded them in for 2.5 kids or a white picket fence. Or both.
It seemed like every week I saw another ultrasound or another engagement ring. It was happening so often it seemed like an epidemic – like the way they explained teen pregnancy to us in high school when we were too young to question how being with child could be like a disease. And every time I got this feeling in my chest that made me want to scream. Every time I would grab my phone and text my old friend Rita: “You’ll never guess who’s (pregnant, married, engaged)…” or “Another one bites the dust.” We’d laugh about the strangeness of it all and make bets on how quickly they’d regret settling down so young. It was a pattern I started to look forward to.
Until this time.
Until the girl with the smile and the brown eyes.
Because this was our old friend. This was our best friend — the girl who’s house we used to ride our bikes to. The girl we had sleepovers with. The girl who we climbed to the top of storage containers with just to see the bay bridge in the distance.
Because I realized, as I thought of ridiculousness of it all, that maybe she wasn’t the one being stupid. No. Maybe that was me. Why was I judging these people so harshly? I can’t say that I understand what drives people to want this life at my age, but I can say why I don’t want it:
I’m not ready.
I am terrified of growing up.
And that’s OK.
Marissa, senior in college, no idea what she wants from her future can’t fathom settling down. But that doesn’t mean she can laugh when Becky from elementary school buys a house with her boyfriend.
It’s okay to think it’s weird that your friends are having kids and are moving on in their lives. It’s okay to not understand. It’s okay to feel freaked and fucked up about it. But in the same way that it’s normal for me to freak out when I see yet another gender reveal, it’s just as normal for that couple to be ready.
Because even if I’m not that doesn’t mean that these people aren’t.
And even if they aren’t (because is anyone ever?) that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
And maybe from the other side the girl sitting at her computer, texting her friend and freaking out over some near-stranger having a baby is more pathetic than anything else. Who’s to say?
