Choices and Chaos

‘I’m going to need you to answer a few questions before we can go through with this procedure, ok?’

I’m alone in the hospital waiting room, waiting patiently for my name to be called. A psychologist comes and sits next to me, clipboard in hand.

I shrug. Not like I had a choice.

‘Are you sure you want to do this? Have you spoken to your family members about it? Do you have anyone that could help you?’

I feel irritated more than anything else. No, I actually showed up completely on a whim. Yes, I have a super supportive environment, but I didn’t bother telling them because why be surrounded by supportive people who love you? Instead I just take a deep breath and give her a look. The look. The eyebrow/side-eye combo communicated much more than I could with words. With that look, I don’t need to communicate my fear or the desperation of my circumstances. As an added bonus, I quietly say, ‘My parents would kill me if they knew.’

The psychologist looks appropriately alarmed. Looking back, there was no way this was the first time she had heard this. They probably taught her that in the first week: how to look appropriately empathetic while understanding the cultural and emotional differences that come with each patient 101.

It suddenly makes me want to be truthful. No more snark; I want her to understand, not to judge. ‘How can I take care of a baby and still take care of my sister and keep my mom from taking pills and my dad from drinking too much and keep them from killing each other and us in the process? My grandma’s gone now. It’s just me. How am I supposed to do all of that with a baby?’

There are no more questions after that. I sign a form and am escorted to a room for the outpatient procedure. As I lay on the bed, a kind doctor and nurse explain the next steps. I then hear what sounds surprisingly like a vacuum cleaner.

My boyfriend is waiting for me when it’s all done, gift in hand. We both sigh with relief that it’s over; neither of us are ready to be a parent.

***

Years later, my friend Yasmina and I were talking about our futures. My past was a quiet secret that no one knew about.

‘I’m not sure if we’ll get married or not. I mean, I hope so. But I don’t want kids,’ Yasmina said.

‘Wait, does he know that?’ I asked.

‘Of course he does.’

‘But what if he wants kids? Will you change your mind?’

She and I were having dinner, catching up on what had been going on over the last few weeks – we were in our first year out of university, working our first career potential jobs, and every day was a new discovery. The salaries were shit, but we were adults now, damn it. It was exciting. Well, the work wasn’t, but the possibilities were. We were making the choices that would define the rest of our lives. I had my usual hot wings, and while I don’t remember what she had, I can guarantee it was something not nearly as tasty but much healthier. Probably a chicken salad or something similarly ridiculous.

I loved meeting up with Yasmina. She was a good friend, an old friend, a steady presence in my life for as long as I could remember. And yes, I was envious of her. She was gorgeous, smart, and had a great boyfriend: everything you were supposed to be and have when you’re in your mid-twenties. Everything I was not, but struggling to become. It would take me a good fifteen plus years to get even close to that, but I didn’t know that yet. At that point, I was where I was supposed to be, starting adulthood. Mirroring what Yasmina had already achieved was the obvious next step.

I knew she and her boyfriend would get married. We all did. They were the perfect couple. Of course they’d have a family. My last question was answered simply by a silent shake of the head. Looking back, I am ashamed I even asked it, or expected her to change her mind. I judged her for that choice, but secretly envied it so much. My viewpoint had been somehow tainted by the choice I had already made.

A few years later. Another dinner, another childhood friend. More wings, better wine. I’d been doing humanitarian work for a few years so I was still making shit money and living in a sublet flat filled with secondhand furniture. Ithira was on a very different track: she always knew exactly what she wanted, and I loved her for it.

‘You know Dave and I have been dating for a while now. We’re going to get married.’

‘Fantastic! Congratulations!’

I couldn’t believe she was in a stable relationship. I could barely commit to a pair of shoes at that age, let alone a person. Our lives had taken very different paths, but ever since we were four years old, she had always been my anchor, my first port of call whenever my ship docked home. Hearing this, I felt like my anchor had suddenly been ripped away. I was floating around, lost at sea with nothing but chicken wings and wine to keep me company.

‘I told him I wanted to have kids, and I’m getting older now, so I have to get started. I’m almost thirty you know! And I want to be done by the time I’m forty. He agreed, and so we’re getting married!’

Seemed logical. Smart. Organised. She knew what she wanted, and it looked like Dave wanted the same thing. I had no possible response to that. So I just ate more wings, drank more wine, and tried not to think about it. She never asked me to make a choice, or even asked the question at all. But it was hanging in the air anyway, and it did for a while. She knew me well enough not to ask: I had a mountain of shit to work through before I could even think about that.

If there is anything I hate more than Crocs on non-medical personnel or flip-flops being worn as footwear in non-beach-adjacent locations, it’s people telling me what my life is supposed to be. In fact, I can be so contrarian that I’ll make major life decisions based on doing the exact opposite of what people say I should be doing. So far, it’s worked out (mostly) well, but even I can admit that my own experiences were involved, working their way out in my inability to make a thought-out life decision without it turning into a brawl.

In the end, it was all about choices. What kind of life did I want? The problem was, I honestly didn’t know. All I knew was that deep down, I wanted to be free.

When my sister was born, my mother told me she had wanted an abortion, but I had convinced her not to have one, so my sister was my responsibility. At the ripe old age of ten, I carried that responsibility, as well as any pre-teen and teen could, until I could no longer handle it. Then I ran, breaking what was a loving relationship with my only sibling, probably irrevocably. Having an alcoholic father and a mother who couldn’t balance a chequebook but spent like she had Oprah’s income didn’t help. I was the one who had to call relatives and ask for money, who had to get in between the violent arguments and tell my parents to act rationally. The one who handed over paychecks and student loans and who couldn’t go away for university even if it was her dream because no one would be there to financially support the family. I was the one who was told that it was her responsibility to finish university and get a good job to support the family, along with their increasingly alarming spending habits.

At the age of twenty-five, I was told that because my mother went bankrupt after leaving her last job – under some seriously unceremonious circumstances – she somehow convinced the bank to get a mortgage under my name. That, along with obtaining a series of credit cards and utilities for her use, also under my name, and which I absolutely could not afford, reduced my life choices even further. I was drowning. I could not see three days in front of me, let alone the next ten years. How was I going to make that choice?

***

When asked the ever-pressing questions about settling down and having a family, I had all the right answers laid out:

• Of course I want to get married and have children – but not right now, I’m too busy doing aid work.
• I haven’t met the right person. You don’t want me to be a single mother, do you?
• I’ve thought it through, don’t worry. It’ll happen when the time is right.

The problem was, I hadn’t thought it through. Not at all. I hadn’t really thought through anything since the day my aunt paid off my student loans, effectively giving me my life back. The emotional burden of being responsible for my family was still there, but the financial burden wasn’t. The only choices I was making were the ones that would ensure that no one else could make choices for me. The chaos was my only means of asserting control over my life.

How was I supposed to make the decision to bring a life into this world when I had spent my entire life trying, and failing, to care for others? When I had a shot at doing it, I had immediately ended it. How the hell is a child supposed to raise their parents, anyway? I told my father he shouldn’t drink so much and I told my mother she shouldn’t spend so much. I got in the middle of their drama and was forced to take sides. In the end, everyone got hurt. So what was the point of it, of any of it?

Chaos was my only way out. All I could do was make choices that took me as far away from normality as possible, thus eliminating all possibility of following the life that was expected of me.

Oh, you mean you need someone in Darfur now? Of course I’m available.

Civil War in Liberia? Emergency intervention due to famine in Niger? Staff problems in Burundi? Financial issues in our programmes in Somalia? Sign me up.

Of course I believed in the work I was doing. I was proud of being able to give back to the world in some small way and make a difference. No, I wasn’t a surgeon on the front lines, but hey, my Excel sheets and pay slips were important too. The added bonus was that no one could go into too much detail and tell me what to do with my life because they were just too worried I wasn’t going to survive my own choices. There was always the ‘When are you going to get a real job?’ or ‘Aren’t you tired yet?’ But I could skirt around that by listing the virtues of the work and outlining, in great and graphic detail, what a shit world we live in. Why would I even think about settling down when there is just so much to do?

Unfortunately, one can only thrive on self-imposed chaos for so long. At some point, I longed for some peace, stability, and sanity. Did that finally mean I was ready to wear the bedazzled sari my mother had already bought and placed in my closet for when I got married? Not really. All it meant in my case was I was ready to find a nice guy who was educated and employed, liked the same nerdy shit I did, wasn’t a huge fan of people overall (and definitely not humanity in general), didn’t mind my independent spirit, and was ready to build some kind of life together.

Funny enough, when I did find that person, the thoughts crept back into my mind after having successfully pushed them aside for so long. Is it time to be a parent? Did I want to be a parent to children when I was still parenting my own parents? I honestly had no idea. Years into the relationship, dodging certain questions and being openly combative towards others (when it comes to fight or flight, flight has sadly never been in my vocabulary), I honestly had no idea what I wanted. There was no deep-seated yearning in my heart, and I wasn’t feeling a lack of anything in my life per se (except perhaps a house with a pool, a room for my books, and a garage filled with sufficiently fashionable footwear), and I walked that tightrope of chaos versus stability.

In fact, it took me actually trying to have children, not because I wanted them, but because I thought I should have them, that made me realise I really didn’t want them. At all. Ever. The thought of having to deal with all that responsibility again, and this time as an adult, made me feel like I was suffocating. It had suffocated me in the past to the point where I ran off to the proverbial ends of the Earth, courting the chaos that would help me avoid it, all while bearing the weight of all that had come before.

Ah, chaos, you have been such an elegant companion for so long.