Anonymous
I don’t want to be writing this now. It is 2:53am and again I cannot sleep, but I finally seem to have stopped crying for now, so I have to write this to try to get some peace as I have to vocalise how I feel, even if no-one ever reads it.
There are two people in the world who love me – my Mum and my Dad, but beyond that no one cares. You see I am one of the involuntary childless women too. Worse than that I am also single, never married, never engaged, never even permanently lived with anyone.
My first proper boyfriend, at the age of 24, gave me glandular fever so badly that I was off sick for 6 months and he wouldn’t even bother to talk to me. He would come around for the evening and hardly say a word, but still wanted to sleep with me; obviously I wasn’t worthy of talking to. Noone else has ever really been interested in me anyway, apart from a couple of brief affairs. Too boring, not trendy enough, not pretty enough and not prepared to sleep with any and everything that moved. My cousin was on the pill at 16 and had a different boyfriend every night of the week. I always wanted a little more security than that. And respectability. Turns out I was wrong.
The one man I really loved was married. He would have left his wife, but I couldn’t do that to his wife or young children, or him. I often think I should have just tried to get pregnant without telling him – he would never have needed to know. But somehow that just felt like an abuse of trust. Or maybe I was just not brave enough.
I don’t belong. If I meet new people I never tell them that I live with my parents as I have no one else to live with and would be really lonely on my own; we three are all we have so we stick together, look after each other. I never tell them that I have no children or am single. People usually presume you are married with kids until they ask. They then look surprised ‘Oh did you just not want kids, then?’ or if you say ‘no I never met the right person’, they will say ‘couldn’t you have had one on your own?’ What are you supposed to say ‘no I wasn’t brave enough’, or ‘I wanted respectability as well as children, being in a stable relationship – same as you did, not just a one-night stand or a nameless donor’. Or the truth ‘no I was never good enough for someone to want to be with permanently – I was always the reject left on the shelf who didn’t belong’. It is hard. Hard trying to hide the truth of not being with someone or being somebody’s mum. Hard trying to pretend you are as good as everyone else. Hard trying to pretend it’s all OK. People also assume you are LGBTIQA+ – I’m not but if you don’t mention your home life people tend to think you are and try to think of some platitudes to show they understand. In society now it almost feels it would be OK to be LGBTIQA+, it’s not OK to just be single and childless.
It’s hard when you are in a group of people and they all have a husband/partner, children, grandchildren or as it seems to be at the moment, at least 2 out of 3. Quite rightly everyone is proud of their children so naturally that is where the conversation is – other people’s children or what they did at the weekend with their partners or something sweet their grandchildren have just learnt/said/done, or how they are doing up their house, going on holiday. Together. All perfectly natural, wonderful things to talk about, but that I can never join in with. I’m happy to listen to their stories, their tales, their lives, their problems. Smile, and nod and encourage them and say the right thing. But whatever problems I have are never as bad as what they are going through. I haven’t earnt that right. It is hard when you don’t matter. Kindly allowed to listen, but not good enough to talk.
I just don’t belong. I know my parents love me, and I love them. I also know it really hurts them when I get upset about it as they think they have failed. My failure becomes their failure which is not fair as it really isn’t their fault. The rest of their families judge them. Their siblings all have grandchildren and some now have great grandchildren. My parents have nothing. Not only have I let them down by not having any children of my own – too late now as I am 49 – but I was born on a bank holiday and Mum had such a tough time and was so ill that I am an only child. Should have been born on time when there were proper staffing levels in the hospital and a decent midwife to help. If I had had siblings they may have had children even if I was a failure. My grandmother always warned me that I needed to have children to carry on the family line. Duty to my parents. Failed again. As some distant relative said to my Mum at my grandfather’s funeral ‘oh you only had a girl, what a pity’. She was shamed as well by not producing a boy. No son and heir to carry on the family name you see. Should have had more children to look after you in old age. My fault again for not being a boy and for preventing my parents having further children. It may sound illogical, but it is how I have always felt - guilty, never from my parents, but implied by my grandmother. A couple of my many cousins don’t have children. But they are all married – not a complete rejection by the human race, at least they’re respectable. Wouldn’t be so bad if I had had some wonderful career, but nothing my parents can talk about, mention in passing, put in a family letter at Christmas.
I gave up work because it was so stressful, I was completely alone with no help and no one to talk to. But I can’t tell anyone – it’s another thing I have failed at. No husband, no child, no house, no job, no friends. No hope. No future. If I disappeared tomorrow, apart from my parents, not a single person would care. And why should they? I went for a job interview once and when the chap phoned me up afterwards with the feedback he told me I was actually the best person for the job with the most experience, but they were giving it to a man as he had a family to support whereas I was single and lived at home so he needed the job more than I did. Hidden message was: he had children so was important, I didn’t so did not matter.
I recently joined an art class which is mostly women of around my age and older. They are all very nice, but all have husbands and children and most have grandchildren. So that is the topic of conversation every week. They were discussing the menopause the other day and how terrible they felt/had felt at the time, when one said ‘of course if you haven’t had children you don’t really notice it’. I have raging night sweats, my periods are all over the place, I get tired and so drained, (and probably bad tempered) but I have never given birth so obviously it doesn’t matter. However terrible I feel, mothers ‘must feel it worse’ so are obviously the only people whose symptoms matter. Before you get to the heartache that it is over, no chance of a baby now; the purpose of being a woman on the planet to produce a child ‘do my bit for England’ not fulfilled. Completely failed.
I will be there for Mum and Dad and look after them when they need me, but beyond that I cannot see a future and honestly don’t know what I will do. I have enough savings to live on for now, and let’s be honest who would I leave my money/possessions to anyway? I always think the saddest song ever written is Last Rose of Summer, it always makes me cry. Because it is true. And it is how I feel, completely left behind. And yes,‘who would inhabit this bleak world alone?’
