Questions of selfishness, selflessness, and growing a baby inside of you.

Since I learned how to walk, talk, get dressed and form an actual thought, my life has been consumed with a push-and-pull of deciding what I wanted to do versus what the world thought I should do.

Even this baby, who wasn't conceived with a pre-fabricated notion of what the world would think, is already riddled with my own self-consciousness (sorry, kid).

I am young. Not so young that I should be a candidate for 16 and Pregnant, but young enough that I feel as if I'm under scrutinity from peers who've managed to continue along a path that elicits nothing but praise.

This ^ is my home. Nashville. I think it's downright pretty. No, it's not New York, and I've lived there, too, but it's a city, one full of opportunity and diversity and loud noises and drunkards throwing bottles outside my window at night.

And this, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, is where I grew up. You've probably never heard of Murfreesboro, Internet. Spell check hasn't even heard of it.

And it's become a little mini-city, but without a lot of opportunity for someone who doesn't want to work in real estate or the construction industry and with about as much diversity as an episode of 7th Heaven--although it still does house its fair share of drunkards (mostly frat boys and veterans).

Murfreesboro is only about 30 minutes outside of Nashville, and it's home to my family, my fiance's family, and quite a few of my remaining friends (the ones who didn't run off to New York and Los Angeles to make more of their small-town upbringings).

With a baby on the way, our one bedroom, one bathroom, upstairs Nashville apartment will obviously have to go. We moved here six months ago so that I could find a job, and I did, working as an associate producer (a.k.a script writer and pun-creater) for a local news station.

The thing is, I hate my job. I can't wait to quit my job when my belly starts looking like it was hijacked by aliens, and affording a house in an area of Nashville without bars on the windows isn't such an easy feat.

After I told my fiance that, no, we weren't moving back to Murfreesboro, he went and found our dream house. And guess where it is. Three streets down from the house I grew up in.

I can't deny it. My hormonal but-I-don't-wanna tears don't change the fact that we can afford it, that it's beautiful, that it has a fenced in yard and three bedrooms and two bathrooms and wood floors and innumerable windows and a location 5 minutes away from all the babysitters we could ever ask for.

I wasn't ready to give up my selfish ways. I already gave up smoking. Drinking. Wearing high-waisted skirts. Not throwing up.

But I can't ignore the fact that this is what's best for a baby. Damnit.