I don't want to be a "mom"

This sounds really fucking dumb coming from someone who knew what they were getting into when they decided to get pregnant. But I'm... scared?

I've always had a rough time with change and I'm no stranger to it, but I still worry. I don't want anyone to look at me and see a "mom".

I think I'm having a hard time realizing that I'm a parent now. I don't feel qualified and I don't match the job description.

I'm twenty, I still sleep with stuffed animals, I daydream, I read too many YA novels, and I love the life growing inside me so fiercely that I would kill anyone who looked at them wrong.

My brain just doesn't know how to not... decompartmentalize the person I've always been and this new me, the "mom".

What if I lose who I used to be or I can't be them anymore because that's not what "mothers" do?

I want to color with them. I want to sing and dance with them. I want to watch them walk for the first time. I want to have a mud fight with them. I want to be their mother but I also want to retain the little bits of myself that make me, "me".

I want to be their mom but not a "mom".

And the worst part is that it's me who has conceived this idea of what a "mom" is. I make being a mother a negative thing.

I think this child will mold me in ways I am not prepared for yet and I will be all the better for it, no matter how foreign the idea is now.