Some Accident
My friend told me his girlfriend’s pregnant. Wasn’t planned—condom broke or she missed pills, one of those accidents. And hearing him describe it, caught between excitement and panic, I realized I don’t actually have an answer for myself. If that happened to me, would I keep it? Push for an abortion? Honestly, I have no fucking clue.
The theory is that you’re supposed to have figured this out by now. Right partner, right job, right savings account. But nobody I know has actually figured it out. People have kids at 22 and at 42. Some get abortions and move on. Some leave them with family. Some just get trapped and muddle through. I’m 27, which theoretically gives me time, but I can feel the clock underneath everything, ticking, reminding me that forever isn’t actually how time works.
What actually terrifies me is how completely it takes over. Kids consume everything—money obviously, but mostly just time. Your entire existence becomes about someone else for the next 18 years. Sleep becomes negotiable. Privacy disappears. The relationship becomes a management problem instead of something pleasurable. I have friends with kids and they look aged beyond their years, hollowed out by the sheer relentless weight of it.
Then there’s the partner thing. You’d have to want someone in your life that intensely, that permanently. Through the parts where you grow to hate each other, where the kid becomes a wedge instead of a bond. My parents had me and then got divorced. I remember understanding, even as a small kid, that I was part of what broke. Not the cause exactly, but a pressure point—the thing that made leaving harder than staying. Do I want to be that? Do I want to trap myself and someone else that way?
The mechanics are simple. You don’t use protection. She forgets her pill. Eventually someone’s pregnant. Nature doesn’t care about your career plans or your relationship timeline. But the actual decision—the real yes or no—I’m still sitting in the middle of that. Some nights it feels inevitable, like something I’m going to have to deal with. Other nights it feels like the worst possible trap. Most of the time I just try not to think about it.