I'm still a child myself, so how could I raise one?

As a child, I wanted four kids, two boys and two girls so that everyone had the experience of having both a brother and sister. Mathematically that is the lowest number of children possible for that to work, and yes, as a child, I did the math. This want stemmed more from me being frustrated as a child, wanting a sister more than anything and wanting understanding and feminine companionship, than from actually wanting children, and four of them at that, not that I knew that then. 

Sometime later... was it high school or college? I decided I didn't want kids. No, that's too absolute. I never decided, I never had one coherent I don't want kids revolutionary light bulb. It was a gradual realization that came to me over years of dating unreliable and untrustworthy men, watching parents ruin children, watching this misogynist world ruin girls, and watching us all swirl ourselves and our planet into a garbage-heap of an oblivion. Not to mention not wanting to change my la-de-da ways and actually grow up. I can't remember the first time I thought the whole thought or said it out loud: I don't want children of my own, but there it is now.

It's a weird thought to have, so foreign to the way girls are raised, especially Southern girls, so bizarre. I should want kids. I should want to spread my love and my genes, mix them up with my husbands, shake them up and blow on them for luck, toss them out and hope for a seven. My brothers make me not trust genes, though, as the three of us, all so different, all came from the same place. 

And having a baby, a pod inside me, like a leech, an alien life form, sincerely grosses me out. I know you don't believe me. No one does. Everyone thinks that I'll change my mind, blah blah blah, that one day I'll want my own, that I'll wake up one day and suddenly think Holy crap, I have to fill my house with red and yellow plastic toys and sticky fingers and squealing RIGHT NOW. I'm ok with not having a free moment for an original thought for at least the next 5 years until this thing can take care of itself plus the 15 or so years on top of that of financial and emotional support of someone I might not even like.

I didn't suddenly decide not to have kids on a whim, even though most people think that's the case. It was a studied, deliberate conclusion to which I came after years of thought. I'm leaving the possibility open, in my agnostic trust-nothing believe-nothing way, but I'm about 90% sure I will remain childless, at least children of my own. Adoption is another story, another post.

It scares me, of course it scares me, to think that I'll be old and alone one day, if having lost my husband too early I have no where to go on Christmas because we never had kids. But I can't live my life based on what-ifs. What I know now is that I am happy with the way things are. Having this puppy in the house this week (I'm keeping my parent's new dog until they can get up here to pick her up Saturday) has shown me that. Running around chasing that thing, trying to keep it from picking on the cat, peeing on the carpet, eating my shoes, on and on, I hardly get any rest, forget the chores and work to be done. And that's just a dog. Kids have tons more accoutrement and requirements. The tv shows they watch alone is enough to make me babble. I'm set in my ways, and I'm selfish, but at least I can admit this.

When I turn thirty, in three years, we're reevaluating. I feel like adoption will be the answer, though. I wish there was a way I could convince my friends of this inevitable fact, and my parents... they're another story. My dad's opinion my adopting one day, well, I'm still too angry to post about that.