The resonance abounded. There were the tears I held back as I worried about the safety of my wife working in a school. The continuing as if life was still normal, entangled with the struggle to continue as if life was still normal. The background hum, the vigilance, the strategic planning and timing of activities. We had been here before, it didn’t help prepare us.
There was the silence. There still is the silence. There isn’t a hashtag for us childless not by choice people - #TooManyMisscarriages&NoBabyButYeahWeHaveItEasierThanYou, somehow doesn’t have the same power as #mumof6 – somehow, we are the lucky ones not to be at home with the children we desired. As if somehow, we are the ones that made a choice and parents are the choiceless ones, entitlement, springs to mind. As if having children is not about creating a life from love, about joy, about growth, about being there during the difficult, as well as good times, but for someone else to pick up the pieces, to care for, to raise, to educate*. How I would love to have had to juggle my work with being with our children – what a privilege to have had that time together, whatever it entailed.
Don’t project a fantasy of a blissful lockdown onto me - no one enjoys being in a pandemic – my heart cracked, my brain couldn’t make sense of the choices made by governments as tens of thousands of people were dying. I felt useless, my plan b of a PhD became a struggle to focus, to produce, to enjoy. I found myself disconnecting again, just like when friends and brothers had their children. It was not bliss. I assume that being with children will not always have been joyful, I can only imagine what it must have been like to be with your children and your work. I am aware a part of me viewed lockdown with children through rose-tinted glasses of longing. I only ask that you try and understand what it is like to live without children, when that is what was wanted. It is shattering to live on high alert in a pro-natal and family centric society, to avoid adverts, tv shows, films, radio, news. The triggers are daily and everywhere. My system already primed, already once burnt out, didn’t help at all with dealing with a new set of triggers, a new vigilance.
I don’t want to make this into an us and them, the divide is difficult enough, so please don’t either. My first draft was full of anger, vitriol and alienation - It hurts not being able to have children, and it feels like failure. It hurts to be told we have it easier, to not be seen or have our losses witnessed. All of us childless people have had to soak up the comments about lockdown not being so tough and/or easy without children, and many of us are key workers, people we have all relied upon. Only because we can’t be referred to as a dad, as a mum, we are no less. This is a slippery road, how to speak out about an invisible position, without offending. What I do know is, whilst it was not as hard as not being able to have children, it was far from easy. In fact, it was lonely.
The resonance abounds.
*I am aware this isn’t the case for all, but it is there.
Andy Harrod