(ab)normal life!

I always feel awkward when I bump into friends who are married and also have kids in tow!
Especially, I am at a loss on how to behave with their kids…..I usually tend to overdo the ‘oh so cute’ bit or swing the other way by totally ignoring the child.

And I have come to realize that I don’t really know how to behave.

As someone who has never been a mother and with the only children in my life being a 2 month old nephew who is in India, I am unfamiliar with young people and find myself acting unnaturally around them. I simply lack the instincts that parenthood brings along.

At the cost of annoying some parents, I use an analogy, because I love dogs and have had so many, I’m at home with them – when to pat, when not to, how to tickle and I think of nothing in flicking away some dirt on a stranger’s dog even. But it’s a different matter with children.

And by the way no I am not brooding about not having kids as yet.

But now its occurring to me that since I am not married (as yet) and obviously do not have kids as yet….my life’s experiences are obviously very different from those of the majority of ‘normal’ women go through.

Does that make me less of a woman? I am sometimes made to feel so…..(like just today I was told by someone very close to me that I need to step aside and analyze myself)……

Take my long lost friends that I am now seem to be connecting on the face book. The last time we were together, single like me and then in the interim have gotten married and also gotten several kids now.

My mind boggles at how eventful their lives would have been in the past 10 – 15 odd years – meeting a partner, preparing to get married, setting up a home, adapting to becoming a wife, have kids et all………while all this is still alien to me, it’s what ‘normal’ women apparently are supposed to go through! – Seemingly all part of a natural cycle of life.

My life on the other would seem unnaturally arrested.

Though the cares and concerns that I faced in my 20’s are not any different today, not that much has changed either.

And I am not complaining. As I have also maintained there are loads of things to cheer about being single….including the fact that most of my (married) friends commend me on my status and say how lucky and wise I am :)

But as age beckons and also because I am no longer so footloose and fancy free, I do wonder at times if I’ve missed out on the experiences that most ‘normal’ women go through, and am I less complete as a human being because of it (my mother would be most happy to hear this)

I see my friends around…..all so connected with their kids (and yet cribbing) that in my idle moments I am a wee bit curious on what would my life have been – more fulfilled? less self-centered? Frazzled? Guess, it’s the same not being a wife too!

Again I am not looking at couples enviously….it does not matter how I love my single life; it does not matter that I have all the personal space in the world; it also does not matter what I’ve achieved in my career…..but what matters is that I am not married as yet and what matters more is that I don’t have kids as yet!

It does not matter that being in a marriage also, one can be alone and lonely and it does not matter that marriage is not a binding contract or a guarantee of a ‘happily ever after’ life either (99 per cent of the time I am told its true!).

It does not matter how many boyfriends I’ve had or might have; it does not matter if there are men who care for my well being.

Maybe the fact remains that no one has been mad enough about me – and I for him – for us to have embarked on a journey together.

Then is something really wrong me? Is this all there is to life?
Am I not capable of being loved and loving – deeply and permanently?
Am I not good enough? Do I have bad karma? Am I too fussy?
Don’t I deserve more?
Have I failed as a human being?

These BIG facts apart ............ all this is still a little too Puzzling to me – about me!.
Hmmm – anyways these feelings came because I was told so today to analyze myself – step aside of myself and analyze….well if this the current script of my life, then why bother!

It is often said that life is what you make of it, so I am thankful to God for what I have – the alternative could have been worse!