vlada

“Whether I want kids is a secret I keep from myself—it is the greatest secret I keep from myself.”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood

“Living one way is not a criticism of every other way of living. Is that the threat of the woman without kids? Yet the woman without kids is not saying that no woman should have kids, or that you-woman with a stroller- have made the wrong choice. Her decision about her life is no statement about yours. One person's life is not a political or general statement about how all lives should be. Other lives should be able to exist alongside our own without any threat or judgment at all.”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood

“This afternoon, I went to my doctor. She did a check-up, then asked me questions about my life, including what sort of contraception Miles and I were using. I grew embarrassed, admitting the truth: pulling out. It was what I had used with almost every man. What if you get pregnant? Would you be okay with that? I tried to answer in an easy way, but soon my sentences got twisted up.

After the appointment, I walked in the streets and called Teresa. I brought up my worries over paths not taken, and she said everyone had those, but often when you looked back on your life, you saw that the choices you made and the paths you went down were the right ones. She said it wasn’t a matter of choosing one life over another, but being sensitive to the life that wants to be lived through you. You need tension in order to create something—the sand in the pearl. She said my questioning and doubts were the sand. She said they were good and forced me to live with integrity, to interrogate what was important to me, and so to live the meaning of my life, rather than resort to convention.

Then to try and discover and live my values, even if it may not seem like I’m moving forward in my life, while my friends appear to be moving forward in theirs—ticking off all the boxes. Ask only whether you are living your values, not whether the boxes are ticked.

After our call, I realized the thing I always do: I try to imagine different futures for myself, what I would most like to occur. I don’t know why I do this, when any of the things I’ve hoped for—whenever I have actually got them—are nothing like what I imagined they’d be. Then why don’t I spend time acclimating myself to what actually occurred? Why not make peace with the way things are, given what I know about life from actually living? Instead I spin fantasies, when the only happiness I have ever known has occurred without my design.”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood

“And I don’t want ‘not a mother’ to be part of who I am- for my identity to be the negative of someone else’s positive identity. Then maybe instead of being ‘not a mother’ I could be not ‘not a mother.’ I could be not not.
If I am not not, then I am what I am. The negative cancels out the negative and I simply am. I am what I positively am, for the not before the not shields me from being simply not a mother. And to those who would say, You’re not a mother, I would reply, ‘In fact, I am not not a mother.’ By which I mean I am not ‘not a mother.’ Yet someone who is called a mother could also say, ‘In fact, I am not not a mother.’ Which means she is a mother, for the not cancels our the not. To be not not is what the mothers can be, and what the women who are not mothers can be. This is the term we can share. In this way, we can be the same (157-58).”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood