A couple weeks ago, my mother commented that I was just going to have to suck it up and buckle down to get some things done. At the time, I thought, I just can’t. I’m not sure if I thought someone else really would swoop in here and wash my dishes, do my laundry, run my vacuum and rally my spirits, or just what.

But, none of that is going to happen. Also, a man isn’t going to suddenly want to be a father to his child. And I will still have to do my own grocery shopping, still have to lug my own bags up two flights of stairs. I will need to be more aggressive about finding a job that will complement motherhood. Turns out, no one is going to find that for me, either. Dammit.

What’s more, and this is a big one, no one who is heavily invested is going to think I’m a great mom. The only person who can really speak to that probably won’t really be able to judge whether I was a great mom for 25 or so years. I’m also not sure what I expected in that department. Billboards? And what’s kinda funny is that some friends have said they think I’m going to be a great mom–but for some reason I dwell on the silent ones and interpret their silence as disapproval. At dinner the week before last, Tom asked me if I’d seriously considered adoption. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but now I’m a little tee’d off, and intend to address this with him.

I have been conducting a lengthy pity party for myself. I realize I really was waiting for some kind of serendipitous intervention, divine or otherwise, that would save me and the kid from me. My mother was right. I need to suck it up. No one said this was going to be easy. In fact, someone said very specifically, this is going to be really hard and thankless. And the thing of it is, I had a choice. I still have a choice. And I choose this. I choose you, little stowaway, baby bean, tiny squirrel. I choose the colic (if you decide on that), the impending sleeplessness, the near poverty we will endure for a bit, the lifetime of sacrifices on my part to ensure a lifetime of opportunities for you. I choose your terrible twos. I choose the barely disguised disdain of your teenaged years. I choose to be who you blame for your absentee father (temporarily–I trust you’ll come to see reason eventually), and I choose your insufferable know-it-all college student self. I choose to do a lot of stuff I don’t want to do–except for Disneyworld. I’m holding fast on that. I haven’t decided about Disney movies yet, with the accompanying orgy of consumerism. I’ll let you know.