I've Joined the Club!

That morning, I sat scrolling through dozens of facebook posts as I usually do with my first cup of coffee. For some reason there were a few more touching than usual baby posts—a birthday of a ridiculously pretty three year old, the birth of a baby to a genuinely lovely, down to earth family. Some of these pictures of babies and young children were accompanied by a short message bursting at the seams to proclaim how amazing, awe-inspiring, life-changing, magical, maddening-and-frustrating-but-worth it, children are. I see dozens of these every time I log onto facebook and I believe them. I really do.

But the facebook status that stopped me in my tracks that day wasn’t a baby with a presumably sweet-smelling scalp or an adorable toddler saying adorably kooky things. It wasn’t even remotely child-related.

It was a fish.

Caught by my good friends who are currently living on the coast of Tunisia. They’d trekked through scorching heat to the deserted beach, put their line into the blue waves, and pulled out a big one, which they later fried and must surely have eaten with a bottle of wine as the surf pounded nearby.

I stared at the picture for a long time, marvelling at how jealous it made me feel and how whimsically it illustrated some of the reasons for a tough decision I made a couple of months ago to live a child-free existence.

There are, in fact,  several reasons it might be wonderful to have kids:

Jmaking this little creature that would be a mixture of me and the person I love most in the world

Jliving for something beyond myself

Jstrengthening the gene pool

Jpassing on the genetic code of the first people I loved most in the world

Jcreating a deeper bond with parents and relatives

Jgetting the good seats on buses

While I could intellectually realise all these great reasons, I just truly didn’t feel the desire to be a mother. I tried. I sat and meditated upon it, visualised it, thought of all the good things that could come from it. I willed myself to want it and occasionally a tug or two on the heartstrings and ovaries would happen, but usually washed away in a flood of relief each month. I just didn’t/couldn’t want it and had to ask S a thousand times, “Are we sure? Are you sure? Are we crazy? What’s wrong with us?”

And the feeling pervasively stuck between doubt and relief, was guilt. For the disappointment it would likely cause our families. For having one more thing that would keep me from connecting with others. For being so selfish and self-absorbed. For potentially robbing my husband of the chance of fatherhood should his feelings change down the line. For being able to (as far as I know) when so many other families cannot.

But that damn fish!!

Having children and having a hedonistic life of adventure are not mutually exclusive, I know. People I grew up with are scattered all over the world having amazing lives with offspring included. And let’s be honest, my current life of teaching during the day, cooking dinner at night and watching The Colbert Report isn’t exactly adventurous.

I could give several reasons (all true) about why I don’t want children: minimizing my carbon footprint; ending cycles of mental illness; etc, but it all boils down to one terrible, fundamental truth: If I wake up one day and want to catch a fish in the Mediterranean Sea and later cook it as the sun goes down, I want to be able to.

I went off the Pill for nearly a year, passing the buck on the decision-making to Fate, ready to take on the challenge of motherhood should Fate decide it so. But as each month passed, I started to realize I felt more dread and subsequent relief rather than disappointment and subsequent optimism. It occurred to me that it was absolutely idiotic to play this brand of Russian roulette.

And so, I popped a pill and joined the ranks of those who are Child-free, though I don’t feel a need to officially join any groups (they do exist) any more than I feel a need to join a group for people who don’t have pets. And now that I mention it, not being able to have a cat has been much harder to deal with than not having children. And there you have it.