I feel like I’ve been reading a lot lately about women who are “childfree,” also known as “childless by choice.” It’s always presented as a progressive, feminist thing. In the past, people saw having kids as compulsory, even if they didn’t want kids or didn’t think they’d be a good parent. Historically, having kids has been seen as the main purpose of women’s lives. We have a long way to go, but it’s becoming more and more socially acceptable not to have or want kids.

And that’s great for those women.

Then there’s me.

I am not childfree. I am child-less.

I want kids more than anything in the world. Two kids, to be exact. As of right now, I cannot have them.

Not because I’m infertile. I’m not, as far as I know. In fact, I’ve had my hormones measured and they’re actually very good for someone my age (thirty-nine in July). I took out a loan when I was thirty-seven to have my eggs frozen and currently have thirteen ovum in a freezer somewhere.

I can’t have kids because I’m single.

This is a complete sentence. But people don’t seem to know what to do with me when I say it.

Most people, if a couple told them that they’re struggling with infertility, would know better than to say something like, “Well, why don’t you just adopt?” You likely cringed just reading that, thinking of how insensitive it is. I mean, how could someone say that? Adoption can be wonderful, but it’s expensive, complicated, and unpredictable and not at all the same thing as giving birth. No one “just” adopts.

So why don’t people have that same sensitivity towards women who are single and childless but NOT by choice?

Here are some of the things people feel have felt completely comfortable saying to me:

• “Are you going to have kids on your own?”
• “Do you think you’ll adopt?”
• “My friend/sister/coworker/acquaintance used a sperm donor/adopted kids on her own.”
• “Maybe you should volunteer with kids!”
• “Maybe you should get a job working with kids!”
• “Maybe you should just enjoy the kids of your friends and relatives! I mean, you get to return them at the end of the day, haha!”
• “You know, having kids isn’t like it looks on social media. Kids have tantrums and don’t sleep.”
• “Why are you so against being a single mom? You never know what’s going to happen. You might end up a single mom anyway!”
• “You should just do it on your own. Even if you’re married, you end up doing it all yourself anyway.”

*Deep Breath*

Okay. Point by point:

• I can’t afford to have kids on my own. Period, full stop. I live in a tiny studio apartment that’s barely big enough for me and is the ABSOLUTE LIMIT of what I can afford. Modern life is set up for dual-income couples. So I can’t afford a bigger apartment. I can’t afford day care. I can’t afford anything that would make life with a baby easier. For that matter, I can’t afford to adopt! Adoption is freaking expensive! I don’t know how much donor sperm costs, but I likely can’t afford that, either.
• Even if my financial circumstances were different, single mothers by choice need at least twice the amount of practical and emotional support that couples do. AT LEAST.
• There are a lot of parents who say they don’t like kids in general, but they love their own kids. Me, though? I LOVE kids, and always have. I greatly enjoy other people’s kids. But at the same time, being around kids makes me sad. Because they’re not my kids. BECAUSE I have to return them (not that I’m planning on kidnapping any, don’t read that the wrong way!). Other people’s kids are awesome. But they’re not mine.
• I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE THROW OUT THE “NOT LIKE IT LOOKS ON SOCIAL MEDIA” CARD. This is such an obnoxious cliche. Who, at this point, doesn’t know that people’s real lives are messier than what they put on socials? I know kids have tantrums! I know they don’t sleep! I WANT THE TANTRUMS! I WANT THE LACK OF SLEEP! Because you can’t get any of the good if you don’t put up with those moments! I’m never envious of people because of how their lives LOOK. I’m envious of the actual FACTS of their lives: if they have a generally happy marriage, if they have kids with no major health or behavioral issues, if they own a decent house. That’s what I envy. Not things that are perfect. Just things that exist.
• There is a huge, huge difference between deliberately choosing single motherhood versus becoming a single mother due to divorce or death. It means that your child or children only have one parent from day one. That’s very different from fully expecting to raise kids with a spouse and having plans change. It’s different from missing your kids’ other parent versus literally never having anything to miss. There’s no “other side” of the kids’ family, because “the other side” doesn’t exist. It’s not the same thing as being a divorced or widowed parent at all, and people shouldn’t act like it is.
• Also, if you’re married and feel like you’re doing all the parenting on your own, have a serious talk with your spouse. If that doesn’t work, your spouse just sucks. And for the love of God, don’t act like this is something all husbands do. Give them more credit than that.

The apps are barrent wastelands. Meeting a guy feels as likely right now as winning Powerball. But until I do? I CANNOT HAVE CHILDREN.

Mother’s Day is hard for me. There are plenty of women out there who desperately want kids but don’t have them. For many, it’s because of infertility, and I feel for all of them.

But don’t forget about the rest of us. Being childless because you’re single doesn’t mean that you don’t want kids enough to be willing to try to go it alone.

It just means that you can’t have kids because you’re single. Period, end of sentence.

Man. I held on longer than most. From September 2006 to February 2022, I blogged at least once a month (although towards the end, the posts got shorter and shorter, and some of them are actually unfinished). 15 years 5 months of blogging at least once a month. I miss when a lot of other people blogged, too, and it felt like a community. I mean, “blogosphere” was a word for a bit there. But now, if people want to write more long-form things, they do it on Medium or Subtack. Which is sort of like blogging, but sort of not? Anyway. I’m still here. I’m attached to this space even if I don’t update it often.

I meant to do this for National Poetry Month last year and never did, so here I am doing it on the LAST day of April. Yea procrastination! It’s just a list of 30 of my favorite poems, one for each day of the month. Enjoy!

1 Devotion, Robert Frost

2 Feared Drowned, Sharon Olds

3 Summer Rain, Richard Tillinghast

4 Sestina, Elizabeth Bishop

5 A Small Needful Fact, Ross Gay

6 Nothing Gold Can Stay, Robert Frost

7 The Summer Day, Mary Oliver

8 Risk, Anais Nin

9 the great advantage of being alive, e.e. cummings

10 Good Bones, Maggie Smith

11 Having a Coke with You, Frank O’Hara

12 Sonnet 43, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

13 Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare

14 Lyle, Gwendolyn Brooks

15 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

16 Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota, James Wright

17 I Wish I Could Live Through Something, Caitlin Conlon

18 To the Young Who Want to Die, Gwendolyn Brooks

19 What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade, Brad Aaron Modlin

20 To James, Frank Horne

21 Just Once, Anne Sexton

22 God’s World, Edna St. Vincent Millay

23 For the Sleepwalkers, Edward Hirsch

24 Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold

25 Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers, Adrienne Rich

26 All the Way Up I Took Myself, Alex Dimitrov

27 Home, Warsan Shire

28 Calvary, Marie Howe

29 Explaining to Alexa That I Am Afraid of the Dark, Micaela Walley

30 Sex Without Love, Sharon Olds

Random rant because it’s Valentine’s Day.

I hate the word “partner” when it’s used to describe a romantic relationship. Absolutely hate it. I get the need for a word that’s gender-neutral and marital status-neutral, but for that, “significant other” works perfectly well, or “s.o.” if you think “significant other” is too long. But “partner” just sounds so unromantic to me. The kid you get stuck doing a project with in middle school is your partner. The person you play doubles tennis with is your partner. The person you open a business with is your partner. And you’re going to use the same word for the love of your life? Maybe it’s because of that first example, but when I think “partner,” I never think “equal partner.” I think of one person giving a lot more than the other person. So…yeah. I really wish people would stop with “partner.”

I recently read an obituary for a woman who passed away recently, from cancer. She was only forty-eight. But she married her husband when she was forty and had two kids, a boy and a girl, in her early forties. This was on top of having a successful career.

I felt terrible for her family reading it, especially her young children. But I also thought…even though her life was short, she still managed to get married and have kids in her forties. And at this point in my life, when I’m less than six months from turning thirty-eight, I could only think…I would rather have her too short life, where she had a husband and kids who loved her, than live to be a hundred and remain alone.

I really would. The thought of living the rest of my life the way I’m living now is just absolutely terrifying.

When I look back at some of my old entries, I notice something in them that feels so foreign to me now: hope. Despite my depression, I am a natural optimist. But it feels more and more like I’m losing hope.

I just want this life, which I don’t enjoy at all, to get better. I want to find love. But every day that goes by, it feels more and more impossible.

Happy fucking new year.

At the end of 2020

I was going for goofy rather than scary, but I think it ended up kind of scary-looking anyway. 

Gray areas are tough. Now, with the Delta variant, I feel like I’m always confused about what to do. I stopped wearing a mask indoors for a bit, but now I’ve started again when I’m in stores, etc. Julie is getting married in about a month, and while she’d thought originally that they wouldn’t need masks, now they do. I’m trying to decide if I should go to theaters, concerts, etc. Maybe even New York. But I DON’T KNOW. It’s so hard to weigh the risks when so many idiots are still unvaccinated and kids under 12 can’t be vaxxed at all yet.

I think I fell into the trap of thinking that things would continually get better and didn’t factor in setbacks. So in life few things have linear progress, But of course, that’s easy to forget.