tristane

I have a confession to make.

It may come as a surprise to most of you, and to be honest I cant really say what spurred this incline myself, but over the last year this thought has been growing more and more inside of me until it has become so intense it is sometimes almost tangible.

Truth is, I want a baby.

I can't say why I would really want a baby, especially not now. Considering that I have been single for almost two years with no prospects of a change in my social status anytime soon the idea of having a baby is almost laughable. I don't even have a steady income, no real apartment and attending an education which doesn't allow pregnant women to attend due to the risks for the fetus. This is really not the time to start thinking about getting a baby. Still, I can't get the idea out of my head.
In fact, given the choice I could have gotten pregnant yesterday.

When I was younger the idea of getting pregnant scared me, just it would to any other in her early twenties woman without any real direction in her life. Then suddenly I turned twenty-four and something inside me snapped. When my cousin, some years younger than me, got pregnant last easter I spent the night in my bed crying in the dark, aching for the warm feeling of a presence in my tummy.

But now I have started to long for a family, longing so deeply for it some days I can hardly think of anything else. Someone falling asleep next to me in the evenings, one arm out of the bed and so warm you couldn't cuddle up next to him but had to fall asleep at an arms length with one outstretched hand against his tummy as the only touch, who whines about the morning paper editor at breakfast and who insists on playing Guitar Hero in his underwear. And a warm little loving creature, soft to the touch and sweet smelling, immensly irritable and completely unmanageable but with an unconditional love that melts your heart with every sudden smile.
I know it is no sunshine affair to have a child. I had three sisters, and I know I was hardly an angel myself. Still, I have never met anybody who regrets their child.
Not one.
I have often thought of how I would do if I ever happened to get in that situation unintentionally (because no matter how desperate I would become I would never make sure to deliberately get pregnant, that's just not the person I am), Would I take care of it? Would I keep it? What would I tell the dad? My booty call back in the village is only twenty-one, and he is too good of a guy to be able to handle such a situation very well.
Besides, I want a decent father to my child. That is the main thing holding me back right now. I don't want to have a child only to soon thereafter meet the guy I want to live the rest of my life with. It would be like cheating him for a bit of his happy family life.

I suspect this is in some way the reason why I have kept single for so long. I don't look for a boyfriend anymore - I look for a husband, and a father. Few people fit into that narrow line of criteria.
There are, as I might have mentioned before, two guys in the village that trully interests me. Ace, of course, but there is also this other guy, let's call him Ember.
Twenty-seven, a former firefighter, perhaps not particularly handsome but with a calm selfconfidence, smart yet humble, and with a subtle sense of humor that appeals to me. He is not the guy I would hook up with in the club. He is the kind of guy I could see myself living with.
Naturally, he also does not seem interested in me at all.

Still, out of all the guys in the village - should anything ever happen - he is in the most danger of them all.