Claire
I love to write but I am struggling to write this.
Writing has been central to who I am for as long as I can remember. My escapism from hard times. A way of working through my emotions.
I wrote a book when I was 23. I was so proud of myself for completing it. My hope was to get myself an agent and then get it published but I only sent it to one before ‘real life’ took over. I re-read the book recently, thinking perhaps I could adapt it and self publish, but it was pretty bad. 90’s chicklit at its cheesiest. I designated it unsalvageable but there was one thing stood out to me. I didn’t give my protagonist your typical happy ending; the husband, the child, the beautiful house. She steps out of her comfort zone, leaves behind the man and goes in search of something more. In search of herself. A hopeful ending. Maybe, all those years ago, something in me knew that I wasn’t destined to have a family and wanted to believe that there was something beyond that. I don’t know. What I do know though, is that the deadline for submissions for WCW is in a few hours and although I’ve been making notes for weeks, I’m struggling to get this written. At this point I’ve no idea if I’ll make that deadline.
I live with a thief
One of the topics this year is chronic illness and disability. I so badly wanted to write a piece on the subject as chronic illness is central to why I am childless. I tried, and I tried, but I couldn’t find the words. It was too close. Too personal.
Chronic illness is a thief. It steals your health, it steals your friends, your hobbies, your career and, for me, it also stole my chance to have a family.
It’s stealthy. It strips away parts of you whilst everything looks normal to the outside world.
It’s relentless. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year, it attacks you. A hammer, knocking you into the ground until there is nowhere else to go. When you reach that point you cry for all that you have lost and all that you endure, then you pick yourself up as best you can, and the cycle starts again.
I don’t talk about being ill very much or share what’s going on, and that makes a simple question ‘how are you’ one that I dread. Maybe I hoped that if I could explain myself in writing it would help people to understand why I have been pretty much house bound for years and why I am no longer the friend that I want to be. I can’t physically be there for my friends when they need me. I can’t share in the important moments in their lives, big and small, celebrate their success with them in person or be a shoulder in the way that I used to. I grieve this part of me. The person who used to be dependable. Who could be there for others.
I’m no stranger to grief.
My dad died very suddenly when I was in my 30’s and it tore my world apart. I wasn’t sure how I could go a day without him in my world and now it’s been over a decade. My grief was raw; sometimes all I could do was tread water, trying to stay afloat as wave after wave tried to pull me under but slowly, very slowly, I navigated my way through those stormy seas.
I grieve for the life that chronic illness took from me.
When you are childless not through choice, having a plan B is everything. A way to make the most of a life that looks so different from what you hoped for. A lifeline. Illness stole my plan B. It took all the things that I could do in a life without the responsibility of having children. The places I could travel to, the spontaneity with which I could live, the adventures that I could go on. It stole them all. Being childless not through choice without a plan B is a form of grief in itself and it’s a grief I understand. What I don’t know how to do is to grieve for someone that never existed? For the baby that I never carried, for the child’s hand that I never got to hold. How do you grieve for someone that has only ever lived in your hopes and in your dreams and how do you explain that grief to someone else? How can you expect them to understand when you can’t even fully understand it yourself?
The occasions where you find joy, I find sadness.
The baby showers, the birthday parties. I was so grateful you included me. I went because I wanted to be there for you, but they were so hard.
‘I dressed my grief in courage, pretending to belong to celebrations that no longer reached my heart’ Iffet Hosseinni.
Christmas. I tried. I really did. For many reasons it became so hard but I learnt that you have to do what you have to do to get through the season, and if that means Christmas Day is spent curled up on the sofa with a book, that’s ok.
Sometimes I scroll past your photos on social media
It’s not because I’m not interested or that I don’t care. It’s not that I’m not happy for you. I love that these children that I held as babies are thriving in lives full of adventure, but sometimes it just hurts too much. In these pictures I see my loss, my emptiness, things that I will never experience, a mirror to all that I will never have. I don’t want to feel that way about the life that you have built so sometimes I just have to look away. I hope you understand.
I thought about being a solo parent
I didn’t just think about it, I researched it, read every article that I could find. I wanted to understand how children brought into the world by a solo parent by choice rather than due to a relationship breakdown felt about that choice their parent had made. I wanted to know how they would feel growing up without knowing who their other parent was.
Ultimately, I decided that I couldn’t do it. It felt selfish. That I’d be doing it just for me and I didn’t know how that might impact my future child. Did I make the right decision? I don’t know.
I’m tired.
‘You can’t be tired, you don’t have children.’ (If you know, you know!)
I haven’t had a decent nights sleep since before Wet Wet Wet spent 15 weeks at number one, but that’s not the sort of tiredness I’m talking about.
I’m tired of this community of amazing childless people, and no, that’s not an oxymoron despite what many on the internet believe, having to fight for fairnesses. Tired of having to justify why we matter just as much as any parent. Tired of childlessness being thrown about as an insult. Tired of being told that women with no children don’t contribute to society or have no purpose.
I spent 5 minutes on X today and this is a small selection of what I found.
‘Give married parents an extra vote for every child under 18 living in their home… their opinion should matter more.’
‘People with no kids are free riding onto society’s future.’
‘A childless woman just becomes a neurotic super-senior teenager pinballing around society causing issues.’
‘Ban the childless from voting, holding political office, or being corporate officers.’
‘The childless are a tremendous net drag on society and should be stigmatised’
It’s relentless and politicians and the media are driving it with talk of increasing taxes for people without children or incentivising parenting.
We all know that most people don’t have children out of an altruistic need to keep the population going. They have children because they want to be parents, because they want a family, and that’s great, but why is there this constant need to present those who don’t have children as a worthless, selfish drain on society whilst placing those with children on a pedestal? Why can we not just accept that all lives are different and try to understand each other?
I don’t understand why it’s so hard to understand.
September comes around. Young adults will be heading off to university for the first time. Newspapers, magazines, tv shows will all run pieces on the difficult season of life as an empty nester. I am not diminishing the emotional wrench that comes with the children you’ve spent 18 years nurturing stepping out into the world on their own, not at all, but more often than not they will be back, sometimes to live, sometimes just to visit, but they will be back, often with bags full of washing in tow. No one will ever walk through my front door, exhausted from too much partying and studying, wanting a home cooked meal, their washing done or a hug from their mum. I won’t ever get to hear about the people they’ve met, the adventures they’ve had or the deadlines they nearly missed.
The media have such empathy for this time in the life of a parent yet seem impervious to the reality of those whose nests have remained permanently empty. Why is that? Why don’t they see us? Why can’t they platform us and speak out in support of us instead of assuming that everyone without children chose that life for themselves?
I miss the way things were.
I miss the time in our lives when children were a distant hope for the future. When we were all moving at the same speed. When we would spend Friday or Saturday nights dancing until dawn. When we would talk on the phone for hours, no commitments, no real responsibilities. When that future was an open book, full of possibility.
My friends lives moved forward and mine stood still. Everything changed for me without anything in my life changing and maybe it’s selfish of me to miss those days, but I do.
My photos have nowhere to go.
The last time that I saw my Grandma before she died we went through her photo albums. She talked me through the people in the photos, told me what they meant to her, shared a lifetime of stories. It’s a day that I will always treasure.
Being a child of the 80’s we were all about the photos. We invented selfies before they were a thing. We waited days for our rolls of film to be developed, only to discover there were heads chopped off and blurry photo after blurry photo. Those rare good photos were something to treasure and they made their way into albums.
School. University. Holidays. Albums full of photos that hold so many memories. What do I do with those albums? I have no one to pass them to. No one to go through them with and share my stories like my grandma did with me. Do I burn them, let all those memories go up in smoke?
It’s not just about the photos. It’s what they represent. A person with no children, and no nieces and nephews, leaves no legacy, so I ask a favour of you. One day, maybe years from now, would you sit down with your adult children or grandchildren and go through your photo albums. Share your memories and your stories and if you come across a photo with a friend who will never get to do this, even if it was a friendship that faded as the years passed, please speak about them. Remember them fondly. Share a story about them so that, even just for a moment, a small part of them might get the chance to live on.
