I am a teenage girl, fresh outta high school. Everyone has this idea implanted in their minds that at this age, I should go to school, start my career, find a husband, and have a family.

I don’t like that idea.

I don’t like having my future planned out for me like that.

I want to be in charge of my future. I want to be free. I want to do as I please.

I want to finish school, and start my career.

I want to spend quality time with my friends and family.

I want to travel and start crossing things off of my bucket list.

I don’t want to be held down for eighteen years.

I don’t want to be held back because I have to pick up and drop off my children at school and practices.

The things I have planned for myself do not have kids involved.

Now, don’t get me wrong, if the right person comes along and I am at a good spot in my life, then kids are always a possibility. If it happens, then it happens.

Kids are just not in my long term plan. I do not see them in my future. I just have other things that I would prefer to be doing then raising kids.

Many people have told me along the years that I will eventually change my mind. That it is just the stage of life that I am at that makes me think this way. That may or may not be true, but I still think that I have the right to my wants. I have to right to say what is going to happen in my future, and what isn’t.

Having people tell me over and over again that I will change my mind is just simply annoying. Maybe I truly do not want kids, maybe I seriously do not see children in my future.

If it is okay with me, then it should be okay with others.

Eighteen whole years of my life, taken up by another human being. That just doesn’t sound beneficial to the goals and dreams I have for myself.

I understand that to some people having kids is the highlight of their life. That in the end, it is so rewarding and amazing. I just do not fall under that category.

Don’t get me wrong, I love kids. I babysit all of the time, and work in a restaurant and love it when kids come in. My senior year of high school I worked in a first grade classroom, and loved every minute of it.

But, I do not want my own.

Now, I cannot wait for the day that all of my cousins and my brother start to have kids. I will be that awesome wine drinking aunt who spoils her nieces and nephews. I just have absolutely no desire to have my own children.

I want to have the freedom to come and go as I please. I want to be able to do the things I want to do, when I want to do them.

So for those people who don’t understand, that is okay, you don’t have to understand. It is totally my decision, not yours.

Sorry future kids, but you just aren’t in the plan.