I look around me, everywhere I look – Facebook, trains, stores, in the street and I see the evidence to support that I’m failing at life everywhere. In a massive way. In the most unnatural way in any species upon this earth:
I have no children.
Sometimes I look at mothers and I hate them – I hate them for having this little life that is “theirs”. Knowing that I’m not going to ever experience a life moving inside my womb or holding the life in my arms. I’m never going to watch a little person grow up into a big person. It saddens me.
The truth is though that I have never been sure if I want kids. But at the same time it’s something I always thought would happen, almost by itself. You meet someone, fall in love, romp a bit and Volia! a perfect new human being is added to the ever growing population.
But I’ve never really had that overpowering wish or need for an offspring. Maybe that’s my failing?
I had a little thing about wanting kids when I was in my late 20s but I realized afterwards that it was not about having children so much as about me wanting to have an identity – in this case that of mother. And yes I did spend my 35 birthday crying, inconsolable, just because my years of viable eggs were fast coming to an end. Having just ended a relationship of 5 years with someone who didn’t want kids but I wanted to have kids with and having reached my “scary” age so the realization that I wasn’t going to have children felt heartbreaking. Also, I was very, very drunk. Since then, there have been times when I’ve had unprotected sex with this one guy and I’ve secretly hoped afterwards that maybe I’d accidentally got knocked up.
But not having kids isn’t something that I feel is ruining (has ruined) my life in any way. I’m impossibly selfish and self-centred. Sure, that would probably change should I have children. And they would enrich my life, not ruin it.
What is most upsetting though is that the possibility and option to have a kid is quickly running out. I’m now in my early 40s so it’s not completely out of the question, but how many more years? And, seriously, would I want to meet someone and get pregnant pretty much at once?
But sometimes I wonder what I’d be like.
And. So. Yes. I’m a complete failure at life.