Different Worlds

Posted under Being RSG by Recovering Straight Girl

My kids are growing up. I now have talks with them about condom use and safer sex. There are girls who are pregnant in the high school. There are other ones who engage in oral sex without a condom because they don’t know you can get a STD from oral sex. The “Abstinence Only” sex education program that the school teaches doesn’t work. It never has worked and it never will.

I went to Target and bought a big box of condoms of different styles and flavors. My middle daughter asked what the flavored ones were for. I directed her to the conversation about oral sex. I hope she remembers this for the future and I hope that the future of that is far away. I told Mikayla to put the condoms in a safe place and if any of her friends need some, she should give them to him or her. I really want my kids to wait to engage in sex until they’re mature enough to handle it and take care of themselves. I know I can’t control that, I can only try to give them the information that they need.

I know these kids. These kids who are having oral sex and getting pregnant. I’ve known them since they were little. I don’t know how the time has gone by so fast. I feel like I need ten years back.

I saw a girl today in the grocery store who is taller than I am and has blue hair. I remember her when she was three and wearing a black velvet dress at a holiday party. Mikayla didn’t like her. She called her “the black one” because she was wearing a black dress and I always thought it was funny how Mikayla would identify people by the color they were wearing. The day of that party I discovered that Mikayla had the chicken pox while she was taking a nap. It was confirmed when I was getting her ready for bed. I told her that we were going to need to go to the doctor the next morning because I thought she was going to have the chicken pox. She looked at me and said, “But Mommy, I’ve already had dinner.”

I had to call the mother of “the black one” and tell her that her kid was exposed to the chicken pox. I also had to inform every other mother who was at that holiday party. Some of the mother’s were happy and hoped that their kids would get it. Others, like my friend Shari, were mad at me. Like it was my fault?

I socialize with women who were my age then. This is weird to me sometimes. It’s like I live in different worlds and have had different lives within my one life. They haven’t had their children yet. Some of them may not have any. Mine are growing up. I grew up. I am always a mom. I’m a mom even when the girls are with their father, but when they’re with their father, I have this other life. I have my wife and my friends. I go out to events, I go to parties, I have nice dinners in restaurants and drink Pinot Noir and martinis. I stay in bed until 10. Or 11. Sometimes I lay on the couch and watch old movies. I have sex in the middle of the day.

I don’t feel guilty about any of this. I feel lucky.

But it makes me realize how fragmented parts of my life are at times. Not fragmented in a bad way, just a bit fragmented.

I look in the mirror now and I see lines that weren’t there before. I’ve never been weird about my age but when I look at these girls who are ten years younger than I am, it reminds me that I am ten years older than they are. I don’t think any amount of Vitamin E oil will bring back those ten years. No amount of yoga or pilates will lift my boobs back to where they were in 1994. But even if given the choice, I wouldn’t go back to that world when I was 30. I like this world better.

Even if I live in a couple of them at a time.