My battle with clocks
I knew turning 25 would come with a lot of experiences but I never imagined that I would be forced to unlearn a lot of things I had been conditioned to accept and face some realities. It has been a hard pill to swallow and I’m still unsure of how I want to handle it.
I’ve always loved the possibility of being relevant in my career and also the possibility of being an amazing mother who could raise wonderful children to her preferred taste but now I’ve realised that it’s almost impossible to do both without compromising on one.
I’ve always taken the statement “motherhood is a full-time job” as a suggestion rather than a strong reality but now that the fog of childhood has completely cleared from my eyes I’ve begun to understand that I really can’t have it all. I can do both but it’s nearly impossible for me to achieve remarkable success at both and I’m not ready to pick which one to sacrifice at the moment.
At my current age, I’m more or less at the peak of my biological clock. This is the perfect time to start raising children and building them into the kind of kids I’ve always imagined I would have, however, this is also the time when I need to properly design the foundation of my career path, the peak of my career clock. Both require complete focus and my entire time.
I recently tried explaining this to my mother when she complained about my refusal to get married or grow into a career of her choosing. She didn’t quite understand me because her time was completely different. She had just one job and the few times she tried to improve herself while she had us, there was always some mayhem.
I have to admit that she did a lot of things right with us but I also remember her talking about her dream of becoming a lecturer that she never got to live because she needed to be available for us. It’s a tough decision to make but mothers always end up picking their kids and I fear I’ll do the same.
I’m still stuck at this cross-road and I don’t know exactly what to do but I guess like all things I’ll figure it out.