honestly.

sidenote: i’m thinking about making these “honestly" posts a regular, if inconsistent, feature of this little blog. i often have these thoughts that i think i can’t really blog about for one reason or another - people will hate me! they won't understand me! they'll think i'm a bad person, send me nasty emails, stop reading my blog! but really, that's stupid. i should write about what it strikes me to write about, and people can certainly do with it what they will. at the very least, it’ll keep things interesting. hopefully.

ok, so. i don’t understand women who get pregnant.

(hackles up! got ‘em up? all right.)

i mean the above statement in two different ways. the first is that, yeah, i personally don’t understand women who get pregnant, period. i say “personally” because i do understand it in a logical sense, in a sociological sense, in a biological sense, etc. but on a personal level? i am flat-out flabbergasted by women who knowingly get pregnant.

why? here’s the thing. pregnancy, on a visceral level, grosses me out.* sometimes, when i see very pregnant women out in public, it turns my stomach. i’m not exaggerating. the idea of growing something inside you – very disturbing to me. and yes, pregnancy is a natural process, happens all the time, totally organic and blah blah blah. but i’m sorry, it’s weird to think about. i mean, if you had something growing inside you in any other context, you’d be wigged out. i’m not sure what makes a fetus any different. it is living inside your organs! it is (inflammatory but metaphorically fair language ahead) a parasite that lives off of you in order to survive! for nine months, you and the fetus attempt to share the resources of one human body – sometimes it works out fine, sometimes it doesn’t.

i know that millions of women choose this condition voluntarily, but i’ve just gotta say, i am mystified by that.

but do you want to know what i really don’t understand? (there’s more!)

women who get pregnant by accident.

now i’m not talking about women who are using some kind of birth control that fails (condom breakage, that unlucky winner of the 2% pill failure rate, etc). i guess it’s more women who, in this day and age, find themselves pregnant when they weren’t explicitly looking to get that way.

i must say, women who do this actually kinda fascinate me. it’s a little sick on my part, and entirely not my business, but i’m just dying to know how the hell it happened. (oh shut up, i know how it “happened,” all right.) i’m thinking, hey, have you heard? the 70s happened! margaret sanger happened! planned parenthood happened! widely available birth control, look into it!

there is one huge caveat here, and that is women who can’t afford birth control. before you come after me about not being class-conscious, these are not the women that i am talking about. lack of affordable birth control is one of the shames of this country, and if the anti-abortion folks actually cared about reducing the number of abortions in America, they would be advocating for free condoms on every street corner. but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

no, really, i’m referring to the women that i know can afford birth control (and there are real-life women, that i’ve known, who fall into this category – this is not even hypothetical) and yet somehow end up pregnant. and oh my god, i want nothing more than to ask them what the hell happened. what happened?? do people still get “caught up in the moment”? is that for real?? do you just play the odds (which, by the way, aren’t very good if you’re having unprotected sex and trying to remain unpregnant)? did you have a moment of amnesia, or involuntary hypnosis, or what?

i think, at bottom, it’s the level of nonchalance about it that i’ve witnessed that blows me away. women who unintentionally find themselves pregnant and then are like “well, i guess i’m pregnant.” what?? if you weren’t intending to get pregnant and then did, wouldn’t that raise your blood pressure a little? wouldn’t you be just a little freaked out? and if you’re so unsurprised by it, then wouldn’t that indicate that you were trying in the first place?

all of this rambling befuddlement stems, of course, from my earlier point that i just don’t understand wanting to be pregnant. so i sure as hell don’t understand a “que sera” attitude to accidentally landing in that state. but certainly, it is something that will continue to simultaneously horrify and intrigue me.

if anyone wants to share thoughts, stories, or sling verbal tomatoes, please do! i’m especially interested to hear about it if people know someone who got “accidentally” pregnant and also know the circumstances around it. because that’s like the freaking da vinci code to me - a mystery i’m desperate to crack, but assuredly never will.




*to those of you that want to say, “it’ll be different when it’s you/your pregnancy/your kid, i can’t wait ‘til you get pregnant and have to eat your words about this,” congrats. you are the 3,459th person to make this claim. i’m thinking about giving out a prize to the 5,000th commenter. a year’s supply of the Today sponge, or something.