Anonymous
I don’t think that I have fully accepted that I am going to be childless. I still believe that there is a chance I might not be. But then I wonder if I’m just saying that because I’m in denial. I’m 38, single, ever aware of my ticking fertility clock, and so it’s unlikely, but I can’t accept that yet.
I find it so painful to think about that I try not to.
I feel like I have all this love to give and no one to give it to. I love my niece obsessively but then I feel guilty for my parents that they might only have one grandchild and I think that makes them sad, and I feel responsible for that.
I sometimes can’t even watch programmes where there are families. I don’t get to have all those things. I don’t get to mess it up. I don’t get to pour my love out.
I feel seen by people who are childless because they haven’t found someone. I feel jealous of people who know they can’t have children because at least they have someone to try with - I really feel like the bottom of the ladder.
I chose to leave my marriage age 33, and then Covid happened, and now I don’t know how to try and find someone to be with without the first thought in my mind being ‘would I want to have children with this person?’. It adds pressure before it’s even begun. And because I chose to leave my marriage it feels like it’s my fault that I am childless, and that I can’t then express my sadness about it to other people. Like it’s my fault I’m where I am now.
I don’t even know if I can have children. I might be infertile. I sometimes wonder about spending all my savings on a fertility check but I think it would add extra pressure on me to find someone… or it might make me realise I can’t have children and take that pressure off entirely. It might almost be a relief to know that. Then I wonder about egg freezing, but again, it’s money into the unknown. And what happens if I’m still single in five years time– do I use the eggs? I can’t afford to have a baby on my own and I live far away from any help. Being told ‘it’ll be hard but worth it’ is condescending.
Please don’t patronise me by suggesting egg freezing or doing it on my own. Don’t you think I’ve thought about that, weighed it up? Just listen to my thoughts and worries about it, don’t suggest things.
The most hurtful thing is when my friends with children forget that I have worth even though I am childless. I send cards, sit through slow meals, talk through children, and then when something happens for me, there’s very little back. I don’t want to talk to you through your children. Leave them with their other parent for once. I don’t care about their bedtime routine or how they learned to eat. If I haven’t asked, don’t tell me. I’m not interested. Unless they’re my niece or my godchildren.
I’m angry that people with children think they can take up more space in the world because of that. Physical space, emotional space, all the different spaces that there are, they feel more entitled to.
I know in reality that everything I think about parents and having children is probably not correct, and I look at it through rose tinted spectacles, but that’s also what you are led to believe and what society tells you.
I don’t feel ‘less than’ because I don’t have children or I’m not in a relationship. I feel whole, and I don’t think I need either of those things to complete me. I love being on my own, with my own routine and eating habits and my house how I like it. I’d rather be on my own than in a bad relationship. But that doesn’t mean you can’t want those things and feel sad that you don’t have them.
It is exhausting being childless in a society that is designed for families. And then if you add to that battle the pain that is there daily then it is overwhelming. And very few people understand or want to hear about it, so I hold it all in. I carry it. It aches and it hurts so much that sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe.
Sometimes I feel empty despite everything I have. And I know how lucky I am, I don’t need to be told that, but I’m also sad.
The groups and the people that understand; sometimes reading it is too overwhelming because I see my pain reflected in other people, and that acknowledges to myself how much I feel it.
I balance two things - hope and grief. Some days grief is heavier, sometimes hope. I think it will be like that forever, but while I’m at this current stage in my life, at this age, there’s pressure too.
I don’t even really want to talk about it with people because then I have to think about it. But my childlessness makes me sad, and I feel unhappy, and I don’t know how to not feel like that.
All of these thoughts come into my head on a daily basis, more than once. There’s anger in the middle, justification, but always sadness, fear, a feeling of being alone. Today I wrote them in this order, but sometimes they appear in others. My aloneness is something I think about from when I wake up, to when I go to bed. My childbearing years are being defined by the very thing that they are not.
Image by Anemone123 from Pixabay