Am I at fault?
I'm 29, so am I having a quarter life crisis? Or am I too old for that?
I know I'm not alone in my thoughts and worries but damn, do they feel isolating sometimes. There will be weeks when I don't think much about my future but then get hit with all the anxieties like a freight truck one day and have it stay with me for weeks after.
Right now I'm trying to process me and my partner's decision to not have kids until we're in a somewhat decent spot financially. Being young and dumb made us reckless with money and long story short, we're paying off large amounts of debt. I'm not even done with my degree so that's gonna be another huge pain in the ass for me in the future.
No, we're not waiting for our finances to be perfect before we try to be parents. However, with how shit the economy is, I don't even know if I'll be able to do anything with my accounting degree when I finish in the next 2.5 years. By then I'll be 32.
My feelings get tangled up when I think about how old I'll be by the time we manage to pay off a decent chunk of our debts. Even though older women can get pregnant, will I be fortunate enough to be one? Should we just go YOLO and have a kid right now anyway so we don't lose out on my biological capacity to have kids?
The more I think about it, the more grief I feel, because as much as I would love to be a parent right now, I REFUSE to give them a life similar to what I had growing up. I love my parents, they have come a long long way from poverty to where they're at now and I'm proud of them. But they don't have anything set up for retirement. No life insurance, no extra money besides what the government will give them at 65. They both have health problems that could add to everything.
I don't have any obligations to help them out, but I want to. They never asked us for money growing up, so I feel it's just fair for me to help them out in the future when they end up needing me to. But to me, this means I have to always set aside some space for them in case I need to help them. This also means if my life goes under from lack of money, I have nowhere to turn to.
If I were to become a parent, I don't want them to worry about me and my retirement. I don't want them to worry about getting money to help out because our fridge broke and everyone's paycheque to paycheque and nobody has extra money. I don't want them to worry about where to get the money if they get sick or when they die. I don't want to be the parent who can't afford to call in sick at work because they have bills to pay. It hurts as a child to see your parent sick but still have to take the transit to work in the middle of winter even though they're close to passing out.
I'm proud of how far my parents have come, and I acknowledge that I know a hell of a lot more now than they ever did. It's because I know better that I wish to be better. I don't strive for perfect but I want to accept that because of my choices, I have to accept the fact that I may lose out on time to have my own children.
Then again, I will never have 100% certainty. Life always works in mysterious ways and I'm open to see how my life can and will change.
This is just something weighing on me for the past few weeks. I may be looking at things the wrong way, or maybe I'm missing something but here's where I'm at in life. I'm hoping to find more clarity on this as the days pass by.