All the lovers in the night, by Meiko Kawakami.
Sometimes I choose to read books about women who are alone and in their late twenties or thirties, where they are stuck in a dead-end job and are drab and awkward and have barely had any romantic interaction ever. They also always have just one friend who is generally more light-hearted, better looking and somewhat happier in comparison, who is always eager to know about them and they just halfheartedly reciprocate, unable to express their emotions in any way. When I start out reading such books, I always feel a sense of painful pity for these protagonists, upset that they are in this state of hopelessness, and frustration that they just don’t try harder. Try harder for what? A romantic relationship? A happy ending? I don’t know if I subconsciously perpetuate the very ideals that we are trying to renounce in our modern, feminist world.
The Worst Person in the World
Mady and I had a conversation very early in the year about the ending of the movie, and whether it had a positive portrayal of femininity or not. Mady said how by leaving her single and without children in the end, it seems to encourage this portrayal of a feminist or empowered woman as one who is single and chooses not to have children. On the other hand, I felt like it was the perfect ending for her because she clearly seemed unprepared to be a mother in any way; it wasn’t that she wanted to have kids with anyone besides her first boyfriend, but her very approach towards having her own children seemed to physically repulse her. The ending of her being alone and finally doing something she wanted seemed to be the perfect way to end the story.
But it was interesting that we had this conversation, because every now and then when the idea of children comes to my mind, it reminds me of this movie and this conversation. Why does it feel like there is always only two choices for a woman in life, being a mother and not being a mother? I think this might be similar to what Mady also said about how choosing to not have children is being shown as feminist in media, which is inherently problematic, but I think it’s more than just that. It feels like as a woman, this question of motherhood is always looming and you have to make a decision quickly before it is too late. Your biological clock (I know I’m only 20 right now, but 20 years passed by so quickly, what’s to say about the next 15 before I’m deemed too old for pregnancy?) is looming over your head, and you are getting closer and closer to the age that people start thinking of settling down and building a family. I always try and envision what I want my future to look like, but at the moment it seems like a blurry haze. I push down the panic that often builds up when I think about how I have no thoughts about my plans in the future, and leave it as a problem to solve later. I want to do work that I enjoy. I want to live in a beautiful place. I want to travel a lot. I might want a child, and if I have a child I want two so they keep each other company. But at the same time, I feel like I don’t want to deal with that; I am infatuated with the idea of being a mother and I know I would hate the actual grit and responsibility of it.
Work
I spent the first six months of the year being a Teaching Assistant (TA, very fancy and formal) of a Kindergarten 1 class, up until they graduated and went on to KG2 and I left and finally joined university to make something of myself. At work, I would feel like I never got my thoughts to myself, with the children in my class constantly calling after me. The noise was never-ending; it felt tiring to keep telling them all what to do and what not to do. Most of the time, I’d come home too exhausted to do anything, feeling drained and tired. I’d think how grateful I was that I didn’t have to keep them the whole day. I could come home to my empty bed and just crash.
I say this in such a heartless and uncaring way, but at the same time, I feel like I could have done and still could do anything for them. If I had to give up a kidney I would do so without even a single question. I had a favourite (I always have a favourite, no matter which class I’m ever working in) who was also very clingy with me, this adorable boy who I won’t name just because it seems wrong to do that. We would have such interesting conversations, and during playground time he would climb all over me and tell me about his life and his sister even though he could play with all his friends. My iCloud is struggling but I still don’t want to delete photos of him, but also just all my kids in general (“my kids”; corny…) After the summer break, when I came back to sub at school and bumped into some of them who were now a grade older and had different classes, I got mixed reactions; some of them initially had kind of forgotten me, or acted awkward and shy to suddenly see me out of nowhere. Others suddenly got so excited and would scream out my name from across corridors, and all the other teachers would turn and see who is this Ms Rhea they’re all yelling for. This excitement thankfully jolted some of the others’ memories and now they suddenly remembered my names and came over to hug me every time they saw me or just say hi. But this favourite kid of mine, the first time he saw me, seemed to react awkwardly and pretend I wasn’t there. I was honestly crushed, but also looking back, it was kind of amusing. I wondered why, and I also wondered do I wait for him to say hi or do I? (It seems like a weird juvenile crush, but it’s more because I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable if he genuinely did forget me, but at the same time, what if he thought I forgot him and was shy?) I never subbed in his new class, but there was once I was in the same classroom as him during his CCA, and I called him over. He came over awkwardly (I’m using this word a lot) and I asked him, do you remember who I am? He nodded shyly. Then why don’t you say hi? And then, awkward laughter which broke the ice and finally it was all over. Whenever I see him now, if he’s alone he’s all shy and awkward, but if he happens to be around one of his old KG1 classmates, he says loudly, do you see Ms Rhea over there? I don’t understand it but it is endearing all the same.
This isn’t as bad though. I worked briefly last year with KG2 kids, who then graduated and left and went to Elementary school, after which I’d not seen them at all. And then this year I finally got asked to sub in the Elementary school, in the exact grade that some of these children now were. It felt like an almost surreal experience; I saw these same children everywhere, looking almost exactly the same but slightly older. I was amazed that now they could all write and read clearly, they were counting, they were holding conversations about different things, which is obvious now that they’ve grown up, but it still felt jarring. But what was the most jarring was the fact that you look these children right in The Eye, you have whole conversations with them, the very children you had conversations with a little more than a year ago, and they look through you like you are a stranger. I struggled to come to terms with it; how were you able to have such a profound impact on me, to the point that I keep some notes and drawings you have made for me, and I think back to those interactions, but to you it is a forgotten memory? I was bitter and disappointed, but I couldn’t even blame them. I tried to retaliate and remember my own kindergarten teachers, not just the teachers but all the random people who we must have interacted with, in an almost rebellious attempt to compare and question their inability to remember, but I struggled to dredge up memories myself. I’m now nostalgic about my own kindergarten experience, having lived through it a second time through them. I see them growing up and mourn who they were, and in a sense mourn myself as well.
The conclusion of this that I’ve come to is one of gratitude. I think if given a choice, where either I remember them and they forget me, or they remember me and I forget them, I’d choose the former over and over again. I know that the KG1 class I was with for six months will eventually forget me once they graduate Kindergarten and go on to Elementary and even greater things in life, but I will always hold them close to my heart. They taught me a lot about myself that I couldn’t exchange for anything, and I think the price of being forgotten and the sadness that comes with letting go is a worthy one I have to pay.
Motherhood?
In general, I’ve been thinking a lot about children. I’d left my house to go to uni, struggling with the way the weight of my bag sat on my shoulders, when I passed a woman carrying her baby in one of those strappy things babies sit in. Her baby was facing outward, sleeping calmly and unaffected by the blazing sun, its face uneven with blueberry coloured rashes. In my head I immediately thought, how can I struggle with this bag when eventually I need to be able to carry a whole baby around? and then I thought if I were her, I’d face the baby towards myself, so I could look down at its face and see it asleep.
Sometimes if you ask me if I want children in the future, I say no, and other times I say yes, because most of the time I don’t know. I know it’s not an important thing to really think about right now, but I can’t not think about what could possibly happen in the near future. If I were to have kids, it would probably be early so I could keep up with them and have more energy to do exciting things with them. But it feels pressurising to meet someone early enough to have kids early enough to fulfil this condition. But also I would not want to have kids, mainly because I don’t want to traumatise the innocent with my absurd personality and behaviours and also because I have no patience and will be exhausted just thinking about them. Also if I were to ever have children, I’d probably go the adoption route, because pregnancy horror stories are enough to keep me up at night, and also why bring new lives into the world when there are so many lives out there who need the warmth of a family; but for that, i’d need to be able to afford adoption, and then also have enough left over to raise them, so it’s an endless cycle of will-they-won’t-they.
Working at a school also brings this thought up a lot. I am attached to some children more than the other, and I think things like, oh I hope my kid is like this, I hope I have conversations like this. I hope my kid’s handwriting also looks like this, I hope they make friends like these, I hope they play similar interesting games which challenge them and force them to grow. I would probably not pack a lot of junk food for their snack boxes, in fact I wouldn’t introduce unhealthy things until they’re older so they don’t get dependent on it. I wouldn’t buy things of a specific gender-oriented colour; I’d buy neutral bags and water bottles for them to use until they know what they want specifically. I’d drop them to school myself… but then it means I’d have to wake up early, would I be able to do that? I enjoyed sitting on school buses myself, so maybe they would too, but nothing compares to the feeling you get when your mother turns up to pick you up from school. And then I imagine them going to school and hyper fixating on some young, fresh-out-of-school teaching assistant who considers them her favourite and then I get insanely jealous, and think maybe I wouldn’t put them in school so I can have them all to myself. And then I realise I’m being completely insane and foolish to begin with, considering how I was initially just thankful I didn’t have to come home to children and now I’m being jealous of my hypothetical kid’s teacher.
Motherhood? Pt. II
Sometimes I rationalise it as hormones, the natural inclination towards motherhood as a manner to ensure continuation of the human species. I get a lot of tiktoks of lots of very young women, in their mid-twenties, with a young kid that they include in their daily vlogs and get-ready-with-me’s and just general life, and I feel a twang of envy. My current tiktok mom-and-kid duo hyper fixation is Natalie and her kid Lincoln, and they just seem to have very fun and peaceful and happy lives, one that is filled with a reciprocal adoration. I have to remind myself that it is social media and I’m not looking at all the tantrums, the sickness, the vomiting, the days that you can’t get out of bed aspect of it. I’m not seeing her watch her child grow up and grow out of her and leave her to prefer his friends and have his own life and interest, and watch him not need her anymore. It makes me think of my own relationship with my mother, which I don’t want to overshare for everyone (and her) to read on this blog, but I think about times when my mother comes to talk to me about my life or about her life or seek affection and I refuse it and shut her down for my own space. I think one day my kid will do that to me as well and it will hurt me the way it did when the kids who once adored me looked at me like I was nobody.
Therefore…
I think the real reason people want children is love, specifically to be loved. Not to sound tacky, but I think there’s a strong desperation within people to find love. Often that’s through a romantic sense, which honestly I am already pretty cynical about in general, but when it’s a relationship with a child, be it teacher-student, parent-child, or relative of any sort, there is a different, almost innocent nuance to it. There is just genuine affection through that interaction, which I think everyone craves in some way. I think people who don’t want children often feel fulfilled through other avenues, or just feel like the idea of having a child isn’t worth this emotion. I don’t judge them for it as its often something I’ve thought about myself because it just seems easier to live life the way you want. The idea of that sort of relationship and connection is also idealistic in itself; having a child just for the emotional satisfaction it gives you is selfish and also reduces that individual’s personhood to just being your child, or forces them to contribute to a relationship which they technically did not ask for. Searching for this affection in a child who will grow up and live their own lives feels wrong and egotistical, and also something bound for failure if you are unprepared for it. But maybe it is because I am projecting based off of my own life.
I still don’t know where I stand on this, but I think it is also because children is something so intertwined with a woman’s future; my own future is something I am completely unsure about at this point, so I cannot imagine whether I would be in a stable enough mental state or lifestyle to raise children well. I also feel, at this point, I just want to be the best version of myself first, and get somewhere and do something with myself, so I fulfil my own personhood instead of looking to someone else to fulfil it for me. I think this is the real issue which I’m not able to solve and come to terms with, and the children thing is in the very background of it. (Ah, the very basis of the Female Problem; get married and have a kid and everything will work out and you will find yourself.) Working at a school and studying a course like English Literature and Art History often brings up the question: are you going to be a teacher? And when I respond in the negative, they say, What are you planning on doing? And then I look at them helplessly and make some glib joke about the future of the arts and having to marry a rich man. Mainly, at the end of the day it just feels depressing to imagine yourself making the same choice that those protagonists have to constantly make about their jobs and lives and romantic partners and children. Everyone wants a happy ending.
I wrote bits of this post many months ago, and these thoughts just simmered and marinated in my brain, so now I feel like I am coming back and writing this with a fresher perspective. I realise I did not give any background to the first two forms of media I mentioned in this post, but hey, Google is free you guys. They were originally all meant to be different bits for individual posts, but I realised how they weirdly link to each other (or maybe they don’t and I am just delusional). Everything is just interconnected in its own way.
slayed and ate all the crumbs
Best 14 minutes I've ever spent