The inevitable fate of growing up

“Am I failing at life?”

The question that rings in my head over and over and over every time I get a bad score on a test or I skip class to loiter around the shopping centre or someone dares ask me the dreaded question; 

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I want to be an artist, that’s the real answer. I’ll either play my beloved stratocaster in an amateur post-hardcore band or make comics, hopefully both. But if I was honest and said that, I’d be met with all the condescension of “That’s cute” or “But how are you going to make money?” 

And the thing is I don’t want to make money! I don’t need a good salary! I’ll sleep on people’s floors and sell my used underwear online if I need to! I refuse to spend my life at some soul-crushing nine-to-five. You know how depressing it is seeing my mother come home from work exhausted and tired with no motivation to do anything? Completely drained from her job and taking care of her kids. She doesn’t have a single hobby. I love my mom more than anything, but I hate the thought of ending up like that.

And kids. My biggest fear is getting pregnant. Having a living being, a small copy of my own DNA growing inside of me like some disgusting, organic science experiment to be pushed out in unimaginable pain and made my responsibility for the next two decades of my life. But it seems like it’s inevitable, a leeching, crying toddler crawling towards me at all times like the immortal snail. Even my biggest idols all have children at one point. Feminist and empowering but in the end all mothers. How could a woman possibly have a fulfilling life without children? The question is stupid, outdated rhetoric but things like that don’t just get unlearned it ingrains itself in society, and out the mouths of right-wing public figures.

I want freedom, more than anything. Not to be chained down by a job or kids or marriage but those seem like the holy trinity of what everyone wants for me. Stability, safeness.