Dreams, Goals, Life

When you are a child it seems that so many people ask you what you want to do when you grow up.  You are constantly thinking about things in the sense of... "When I grow up I'm going to..." and it's all kinds of things.  Teach, have kids, marry someone, live in a particular spot or type of house, parent a certain way, clean your house(or not)... so many things!

What they don't tell you is... "I know you have {insert dream here} in your mind but just so you know, this may not be what happens.  Sure, shoot for it but understand that it can change, that life happens and things get in the way of what you want sometimes or other things come up that you want more than you thought you did."

I've been thinking recently about the dreams that I've had as a person, from when I was a child to the now.  My earliest dream that I can remember was to be a horse.  Obviously that's not gonna happen.  Then when I figured out that my initial dream couldn't happen I was going to ride horses.  But then the whole monetary thing figured in there, my parents just couldn't afford riding lessons or a horse in general. So sad for me.  Next I went to something about "I'm going to be a mom with 6 kids and live on a farm, and marry Zach."  Well... I didn't marry Zach, he is not anywhere near where I am in location and I think he's not interested in girls anymore... but I'm not entirely sure... it's kind of an odd thing to ask someone about.  After that and through my first year of college I wanted to be a Math teacher.  Then things kind of went south in the way of dreams... I no longer really had an image of myself in the future, I didn't know what I wanted to do or what I would be doing with myself.  I did end up falling in love with Paul, which helped things out considerably.  I knew where I would be... and that was wherever he was.  Then there was the whole "We'll have kids and I'll stay home and be a housewife dream." I wanted to have a home birth, I wanted to homeschool and probably have at least 3 children.  It's hard when your dream isn't matching up with your husbands though.  He wasn't even sure he wanted to be a father, let alone where he would be in a few years.

So obviously he decided he did want to be a dad.  We tried that and twice it hasn't worked out for us in the way we expected.  We had dreams and plans and thoughts of our children.

It's not that I don't still have dreams, plans and thoughts for our future children... it's just that I have no feeling of certainty anymore about it.  Sure I want to have kids, at least one.  But right now looking in the direction of kids is like this black hole... I could jump but I really don't know how deep the hole is and I am really not sure that I want to figure that out yet.

So for now I have a dream of finishing school.  I am excited and anxious for it to start.  It's been a few years since I failed at it before (yes I did fail my last semester in school), and I am ready now to succeed.  This is one thing that I am fairly certain that I can do.  I can finish my school, I can pass my classes, I can achieve what I'm setting myself for.

Cause as much as I want to believe that we will succeed in having kids, I really have no control over it and that's scary.  I say this a lot, but it's true... I don't know how I will handle another loss if we have one.  I'm not ready to face that scary reality, not yet ready to possibly endure another loss.  Don't know if I ever will be, but I'm fairly certain there will be a time where I will be better prepared for it.  And honestly if we don't ever have any kids, well it won't be the end of the world.  There's more to life than just bringing life into the world.  We contribute to the lives and well-beings of so many little ones, I wish I could have them around all the time, but we do have some around pretty often and that's really awesome.  There's always adopting or being teachers or just being awesome at our vocations.

Anyways, signed up for my first class... this summer.  Will be taking Economics... forget if it's Micro or Macro... one of the two.  *shrug* It should be fun.  Anyways.  That's all for now.  Going to bed now. :)