Teen Mom

My son is my joy. He is my world. His well being is my well being. His accomplishments are my recognition of greatness in the world. His challenges are my worst nightmares or on a good day, my lessons.
I was a young mom with my son. I like to say that he was born when I was twenty because that sounds more appropriate but actually he was born two weeks before my 20th birthday. He was born when I was still 19. A shocking number, I admit. I was a teen mom. I hate to admit that for some reason. I hate the stigma that comes along with being a "teen mom". But there you have it. I was a teen mom. and all through my youth - early twenties that is - I fought the internal battle against recognizing that I was in fact a "teen mom". I thought - oh but I'm so different from the common understanding of teen moms. I wanted my son. I married a great man. We cared about our baby. We love him. We are not those strange breed of humans you see now on TV who don't know how to change diapers or know that breast feeding is better than formula. We hung dry our laundry instead of using our dryer, we sterilized everything. I mean for Christ sake, we lived in Vermont. surely we are not typical teen parents. It has taken me a very long time to understand that all of the other young parents, all of the other people who come from families without a lot of money, every one in my demographic thought the same thing. We all think we are unique or different or at least, don't fit the stereotype.
But once again you learn, that we are more the same than we are different.
For better or for worse.
I truly have seen a chasm between me and other people that have the same numbers as I do - sure we have the same ingredients but what comes out of the mold is different. And, of course, what came out in me is better than the rest of my group, even if we could appear on paper as the same.
 I AM BETTER THEN THEM. I"M MORE.

And then you live life for a while and you come to learn that "they" feel the same way.
They don't want to be part of your group either.
Everyone feels different. Everyone feels like some new product of their environment. Everyone grows up with that feeling that they are different and don't fit in entirely because of their special uniqueness. If you are poor, you are the first really smart, articulate poor person. If you are rich, you are the first rich person lacking a sense of entitlement. If you are in the middle, you are the first person in the middle to recognize your own privilege and decide to go into human services - most likely with an MSW. (Masters of Social Work)

We all need to think that there is something that sets us apart, makes us uniquely special, makes us not accounted for in the annual tabulations of societal norms.

And we are right. You are unique. I was unique. You are the first one to see things the way you see things. No one is just like you.
And we are wrong. We are not at all unique. Someone has thought it, someone has done it, someone is just like you.

As I age, I find myself more and more coming to the understanding, the belief, that I am so much more like my peers than I ever thought possible or ever wanted to believe. I see the younger generation asking the same questions I asked with the same arrogance, that they were the first ones to ask it. And now as I enter -what I've decided to call "the beginning of the end of my youth" - I find myself looking at things that I never thought about before unless it was a current topic in my social circle. I'm looking at our economy, I'm looking at our resources, I'm looking at our planet. And what I see feels as obvious to me now as teen moms seems to most everyone.
Something is amiss.
But does it seem in catastrophic proportion because I am only now looking at it and  would have the same appearance twenty years ago? Or is it more like the intended weddings that come from all of the bachelor shows - It is actually not going to work _ in the foreseeable future.

I feel a bit scared about what I see for Americans in the not to distant future. And I feel sad that something in our present leads us to want to separate ourselves from a herd that we can plainly see has gone awry.

And I worry about my now 20 year old son. I fear that he does not have the good fortune to devote twenty years to recognizing his own vulnerabilities and humanity. I fear that he must work much harder and faster just to figure out how to survive.
As for me, I will continue to wallow away in fantasies of small goat pastures and the day that all my more more accomplished friends show up to say "I'm so Thirsty, may we drink of your goats milk?"