Value-less?
Today I spent the day in a cafe pondering my worth. With the rain falling outside and a warm cup of soy chai warming my insides, I sat, and wrote, and thought. There is one niggling thing that keeps nagging at me. A little thought there. A small tug there. For the last two nights, its even interrupted my sleep by familiar characters crying for me in my dreams. The issue of not having a child. In one dream, my distraught niece was crying for me - “you should have a child, it isn’t fair.” I woke up feeling awful and for the past couple of days, a little emotional.
The truth is my child-free status isn’t out of choice. Whilst I embrace people’s decisions to not have kids or to choose to have kids, missing from the conversation is any talk about wanting kids yet not finding the right partner to have them with or not wishing to go at it alone and try to get pregnant through insemination.
I’ve had many people assume I don’t want kids, as by my age I ‘should’ have them. That I could’ve had them but chose not to, with all the agency that entails. The fact that I want something that I do not have seems too sad for them to consider. They prefer to think it is of choice, especially my younger girlfriends, too terrified to admit that it might happen to them too.
Truthfully, there was a previous partner that perhaps I could have had them with. I mean we were both in our late 30′s and wanting to settle down. But that was a terrible relationship. I never felt safe. Or that my needs were a priority. Or that we could healthily work through issues, though I felt like I tried. Looking back perhaps I could have done things differently. Tried harder. Done more. But at the time, I felt I did all that, and nevertheless, the relationship failed at my hand; ending the union to my own misery.
A more recent relationship ended at the 3-month mark when my paramour realised that all those too early promises he made about the future were actually expected to be carried out; he cut and ran so fast steam rose up to the skies in his wake.
Yes, I have considered insemination, and even had my eggs frozen; but the idea of going at it alone fills me with dread, not hope and excitement. And at this stage, is not something I wish to undertake.
Which leaves me in my current state; 40, child-free, and unattached. Which I am not ashamed about. Nor am I miserable about most of the time. But what bothers me most is the feeling that in societies eyes I have no value; unfortunately, I am internalising this thought, and it is making darker thoughts appear out of nowhere as heavy clouds on the horizon.
Perhaps it is my own conditioning that is making me feel this way. But when people realise my age and my status I feel their pity. In awkward glances. Lowered eyed. Bubbling diversions in conversions.
Despite the fact that many people are in truly miserable relationships. Are lonely. Are unloved. Are unhappy. Misery isn’t just the domain of the single; there is more than enough of it to go around. But somehow there is a certain worthlessness reserved for smart, sassy, single women of a certain age. It is because they chose their careers, they murmur. Too fussy, they say. Too smart. Too independent. Too manly. Too soft. Too nice. Too...
The alternative story is much harder to swallow. This smart, sassy, single woman is just like you. She went on the same dates with the same people. Went to same universities. Had the same jobs. Went to the same parties. Laughed at the same jokes. Smiled with the same twinkle in her eyes. She just didn’t find what worked for her.
She may have left bad relationships, where she was made to feel small, belittled, or that her needs were unimportant. She may have moved to Sydney when the person she should have met was in Melbourne. She may have got on the wrong train. Or taken the right job at the wrong time. Or turned left not right. Went this way instead of that. That’s all.
Her worth is not less than yours. Her heart no less deserving of love. Her loins not less in need of service. Her womb not less aching to give life.
So next time you meet a child-free woman out of choice or lack thereof, perhaps refrain from your cutting comments, assumptions, and at times arrogance, and know it could have been you too.
