This May will mark ten years since I went to the fertility clinic to freeze my sperm. I’m don’t think I will renew this year. The way I saw it, I had three options to conceive a child:
- Doing so with a partner
- Going solo with adoption
- Going solo with a friend as surrogate
The opportunity for the first has passed. I’m single, it would take me five years to be comfortable with a partner to consider having a child, and I don’t want to be fifty with a five year old. The second didn’t ever appear like an option: I could never afford a house and the middle-class appearance that was its entry requirement. The third was what I had my hopes for doing, and a friend had volunteered to be that surrogate. She was not going to be able to co-parent full-time and wanted to live away, so I would be the primary caregiver.
It took me years to be emotionally ready. When I finally was, I realized I couldn’t do it. I had watched those around me with young children: they were often two parents, with dual incomes, each’s own parents and grandparents helping with childcare. They barely held on in the early years. How could I pull off taking care of an infant alone while also working full-time to make ends meet without any meaningful support. A few single parents I knew were doing alright, but some were really suffering, even now that their kids were older. The same day I went to tell my friend who agreed to be a surrogate that I wouldn’t be able to do it, she was going to tell me that she also was no longer able to do so, as the country she had since moved to had outlawed it.
Part of this was self-inflicted. I came out of my youth with a fair amount of psychological maladaptations, which caused me to poison relationships, as well as made me enter relationships with emotionally underdeveloped individuals. I was both a cause of harm in my relationships with others, and accepted the harm others did to me. It’s only now, after years of therapy, conversations, and rock bottoms, that I’ve overcome most of these maladaptations. Had I been better adjusted younger, I would have maybe been in a long-term relationship by now, with a house, and who knows. Or not.
Whatever the case, time doesn’t pause, and now I’m here, in middle-age.
Being childless does open some doors: I can travel any time of year, anywhere. There’s no school or extracurricular schedule to work around, or child whose experience I’d want to prioritize. I can live anywhere – no need to move close to a school. Likewise, as I wouldn’t want to remove a child from their social network at school, I wouldn’t be tethered to that proximity to their school like I would be had I a child. I have much more time to pursue interests, and money to do it with – at least compared to single parents. So while I wish I could be a mom, I know that my friends who have children (and love them!) wish they could sometimes enjoy the long uninterrupted night’s sleep and spare time and freedom they once had. I can do that.
Not that I haven’t felt anger and envy – I have. But those are a manifestation of wanting a different outcome. When that’s no longer realistically possible, those feelings can become a crutch, and artificially make life more miserable. So I accept my circumstances, allow myself to feel that sorrow, and open myself to appreciating the unique opportunities I have. That is a recipe for a higher quality of life.
To those well-meaning people who want to offer platitudes that deny the reality of my circumstances, I won’t accept them. “There’s still time” – yeah sure, until I’m dead I suppose. But to me that sounds like keeping myself in an unrealized state for the emotional comfort of others who are uncomfortable with this “unhappy” ending. It doesn’t allow for acceptance, grief, and moving on.
