I think you know you’re officially old when you age out of the breeding pool. I don’t meant that there aren’t women getting pregnant at my age, but it seems that waiting for children is something people in cities do. In the country, well, Denver is country in ways you city folk wouldn’t understand. In the country these guys are set up to breed as soon as the age of 23. There’s really nothing more horrifying to me than the idea of having a literal teenager in my house, and trying to start or adopt now is obviously out of the question. Luckily there is no accidental way for me to get pregnant since we are covered in every sense. Don, who tragically has suffered every insane conflict incited by a woman, has been snipped and I had my own little implanted mirena thing to ensure nothing ever latched on. Since we’re engaged, I realize it’s okay now to get this thing removed though I feel a little naked envisioning life without it. Not that his body is going to bridge the scar tissue and find a way over-but it’s the only thing that is definitively female about how I live my life. Being on birth control isn’t a kind of coming of age thing, but it’s definitely something normal that I worry about.

Lately I’ve been watching the gaggles of mothers out and about in my neighborhood. This hood is pretty full of the bright-eyed blond girls, former soccer stars every one of them, careening around sidewalks pushing their racecar/strollers in front. When they stand in pairs they seem to glare at the world around them, twirling in small circles throughout the conversation, playfully resting their hands on the shoulders of their friends when they want to be especially emphatic. I hate these women, almost every one. I know they probably observe me with the same suspicion, a girl who’s clearly not possessed by her children, no evidence of the trauma of childbirth anywhere around my person. Sometimes they limply say hello, usually unnerved by my greeting them out of their fog. They are all younger than me, though that’s not always evident. I gleefully observe the lines that seem to be drawn on their faces sometimes, emphasizing the battles they’ve fought, the nights of sleep that have escaped them. I am gleeful in some ways because really, I am at least honest about my jealousy-they can’t possibly have EVERYTHING, right? You’ve got the house the car, the renovations happening and the baby bouncing on your hip and have no wrinkles to show for it, bitch!

Money obviously didn’t skip their houses like it did mine when it came time to allocate experience. I got the whole plate of “You’re GOING TO DIE, FIGURE IT OUT” death before life experience while they got BMW’s and babies and LuluLemon to satiate their lives. I really wish I felt I had a home or maybe I just need a homing device for the green to make its way to us. Or maybe I need to just stop fighting fate. Clearly the easy money life isn’t mine to have. This last job had me working 80 hour weeks often, and when I had to leave, I felt pretty lifted because the weight of an entire store and the lives it supported was no longer on my shoulders. Right now I figure I’m really not DUE anything exactly in terms of earning anything. I have a job I’m starting in a few weeks doing what I was doing 9 years ago for the exact same starting salary. It’s enough to keep me suicidal. Yeah, yeah, yeah…I survived to do something greater, be bigger than I am right? Yeah, yeah. Too bad the whole SURVIVOR thing is a farce people like to mention when you feel badly about yourself, like it’s some fucking badge of courage you should be proud to display. What it really means is “I WAS SHIT ON BY LIFE AND I SURVIVED.” It doesn’t make me better or really any different than any other survivor. What it does do, being in this position, is lay your issues down in front of you so explicitly there is no ignoring your obstacles. I know what I need to overcome, and I have been dealing with the same walls in front of me my whole life now. The only thing that could potentially realistically happen is that things can get worse, or maybe a tiny bit better. I know, I know, self-fulfilling prophesy and all that. But truly-the idea that I am going to win the lottery and pay all of my problems away? Not going to happen. The idea that I am going to get a job paying more than $12 an hour? Not going to happen. The idea that Don and I will magically elevate ourselves out of the financial pit we are in without giving me a heart attack? Probably not going to happen and I know there are skeletons that we both are not strong enough to face. Taxes unpaid and unfiled, debts owed friends and businesses alike. We are literally unable to face our lives right now because it hurts too much to do it.

How on earth I drug someone else into my mess is something I probably shouldn’t have done. But fucking A, man. I can’t have normal shit, I might as well get someone to love my poverty ass so at least I don’t have to hate those women for having husbands who love them, too. Before Don proposed, I was literally trying to figure out a way to bribe someone into my corner. Life insurance policy one day babe, for doing without your whole life with me? Don’t you want a plane? I can’t give you any kids to care about after all. Bribery doesn’t work though. I’ve been praying to god or fate and hate long enough to know that promising anything when you’re dying to anyone or anything is a losing game.

And God? It’s like Don said once to me, “Never count on a dead person to do you any favors.” And it seems the only favor I was given was not dying. Not dying isn’t the same as truly living, and that’s the part that puts me very fucking far behind.