I fear and distrust my body. I know what it wants to do to me.
My favorite commercial involving motherhood was this New Jersey PSA for post-partum depression/psychosis, in which an adoring-new-mom asks an obviously-distracted-and-about-to-kill-her-offspring-new-mom something insipid like, "Oh, Darla, isn't being a mom wonderful?" and Darla goes into this rapid-fire, emotionless, deadpan, "Actually, no. All it does it cry. I don't want to touch it, I don't want to feed it. I just wish it would go away!" speech. And I know, I know. Crazy Darla is crazy. She needs help, and soothing new mom medicines that will turn her into the peppy infant-care provider she needs to be. But all I could think was, "Rock on! Buck that system! Leave the kid in the grocery store and go to Vegas!"
This is not meant to be a slam on moms, BTW. I know all you new mommas are not robot-people from the stars. Moreover, I am not a mom, and thus have stupid, uninformed opinions on motherhood. But one of the things that worries me about it is that I value the illusion of my free will a whole lot, and Mark tells me that pregnancy induces all kinds of joyous mom hormones that basically reconcile you to momtasticness. I don't want to be reconciled. If I go down that path, dude, I want to have made the choice and be boldly pursuing a course. But hormones, evolution, the materialism of the body, all that gives me the metaphysical willies. Eek!
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