The sun is setting, casting long shadows on the deck. My nieces’ and nephews’ laughter makes the scene feel light and happy.

I, however, don’t feel that way. 

I’m not unhappy, though. I’m not sad. But I definitely don’t feel light and joyful, either.

The last three years or so have been challenging for this childless auntie.

I’ve always been close with these kids, my sister’s six little ones. The first was born on my thirtieth birthday, and we’ve all been having a ball ever since.

But in 2018, my sister’s sixth pregnancy came with some very bad news: her baby had severe heart defects that were so complicated, the doctors had no idea whether or not he would survive the first year of his life, let alone his birth.

Somehow, I ended up falling more in love with this child, Alex, than any that had come before. I’d never been so involved with any of the kids’ lives as I was with him. I went to his doctor’s appointments, dropped everything to care for him when he was sick, and I had the privilege of bottle feeding him, which only deepened our bond.

For a time, it felt like the universe had given me an extra special blessing. I didn’t get to have my own children, but I ended up with the most fulfilling maternal relationship I’d ever experienced with little Alex.

And then, in a terrible twist of fate, a pandemic hit, which kept me from spending time with Alex. And a few months later, he and his family moved two hundred miles away.

Alex and I still have a strong connection, but it’s not the same. I only get to see him a few times a year, which is a far cry from seeing him several times a week. And the other kids are growing up so fast, they don’t find Auntie quite as cool as they used to.

Somehow, everything feels like it has radically changed in the wake of this move.

I didn’t realize it before, but most of my life has revolved around the role of “Auntie” for the past decade and a half. At one time, it was the way I found an outlet for my maternal love while I waited to find a partner and have a family of my own. And when that partnership didn’t work out, aunthood was quite simply the only option left that allowed me to experience anything remotely like motherhood.

I’m sorry to say that at some point, I suspect it even came to define my value as a person. As the years went on, I felt more and more insecure about having not become a mother — which was likely exacerbated by the amount of people who kept expressing shock or disapproval over my “lifestyle.” Being the most dedicated auntie the world has ever seen somehow made me feel like I could make up for whatever it was that I apparently lacked — as if others might see me as worthy because I still gave selflessly to the children in my life, even if I didn’t have any of my own. 

And one day, all of a sudden, most of the way I experienced Auntie Life has been stripped away from me. I didn’t want that. In fact, I never would have chosen this path in a million years.

As it turns out, the choice was never mine to make. Much like, I suppose, the choice to become a mother. I didn’t get to decide that one, either.

For the last year or so, in the wake of these radical changes, I’ve had to ask myself who I am and what I want.

And as I sit here watching the little (and not so little) niblings swim and laugh and splash in the pool in the light of the setting sun, I realize that I still don’t know.

Do you ever feel like you fight and fight and fight to follow your dreams, to “make it happen,” to achieve all your goals, and in the end…none of it comes to pass? You wonder why you worked that hard, why you were endlessly patient with situations that made you miserable, why you were so goddamn determined when none of that effort or frustration brought your dreams into fruition?

It all seems so pointless, doesn’t it?

Sometimes, I imagine myself standing outside the house where I lived with my last significant partner, looking through the window into the room that I had imagined would one day be the baby’s room, and I want to run inside and take myself by the shoulders, yelling, “Don’t stay here another minute, waiting for him to be ready. He will never be ready! Not with you. Go! Forget about the wedding and the babies. Just go and be happy!”

Of course, I can’t do that. She’s not there anymore. (Thank god.)

Unfortunately, she went on to keep fighting a losing battle. I do admire my own determination, but looking back, I cringe a little to think of how much pain I allowed myself to endure in order to try to realize this dream of motherhood. I cringe to think of how much I gave up in order to try to become a mother. And I really cringe when I think about how much I bent myself into impossible shapes in order to try to make other people see that I really did have worth as a human being, even though I wasn’t a mom. Just look at me! I could prove to anyone how much I deserved their respect. All I had to do was give up just a little bit more of myself…

I think I reached the pinnacle of aunthood in the year of Alex’s infancy. Please forgive me if I sound arrogant, but I doubt anyone could say they out-auntied me after that. I was a goddamnmachine. And thanks to the regular bouts of bottle-feeding, I had all the proof I needed of my biological and emotional bond with that child: I was surging with oxytocin.

But falling so quickly from such a height is a pretty tough journey. It’s like saving your whole life to buy a mansion and then watching it burn to the ground in a freak accident.

Who has the time or energy to earn back all that money or rebuild the house?

I sure as hell don’t.

I’m tired. No really, I am exhausted.

I can’t do this anymore. I don’t have it in me to keep trying, to keep bending, to keep fighting. I can’t spend one more second hoping. One more second settling for crappy circumstances in the hopes that if I keep this space open, what I want will finally step into it. And I cannot spend another moment justifying my existence or my lifestyle to others. No. Sorry. Done.

Now that I know motherhood is not a part of my path — and that even aunthood isn’t going to be central to my identity anymore — I don’t yet know what to fill those spaces with.

But I do know what I’m going to let go of. I do know what I’m purposefully leaving behind. I do know what I refuse to strive for anymore.

I am not coupled. I am not a mother. This is who I am. I don’t need to change any of that. And I don’t need to convince other people that I don’t need to change it.

This is what moving forward feels like to me: simply embracing the freedom to exist in this life exactly as it is. Exactly as I am.

Yael Wolfe

Photo by name_ gravity on Unsplash