Regrets, In Theory

It’s funny. I suppose I wanted children back when I was a teenager. My parents fostered, mostly babies with a few toddlers, from when I was about 5 until I was in my mid-teens. I loved the kids, like little brothers and sisters (well, not all of them), and I wanted some of my own one day, like so many humans do…

But when I was thinking about my sexuality and what it implied, I thought I had to choose. Naively, or maybe not, I thought I could either be gay, or be straight and have children. No gay with children. I chose gay in the end – though with much hindsight and cultural contamination, I would err towards saying gay chose me…

In any case, as the years have passed, I have generally moved away from that feeling, to one of hating the idea of having that responsibility. My own children? I find it hard enough keeping up with my sister’s – a few days a year suffices, thankyou very much. But, on Facebook, my friends, and friends-of-friends have started posting pictures of their children, and I just had a pang of something. Regret? Only in the most general of ways. I don’t want children, but it is a huge thing to say, to have chosen. A whole section of the human experience, for want of a better term, that is forever alien to me. A whole life of decisions, expectations, understandings, that I will never have. I can never feel that pride, that fear, that disappointment…

Although, having never managed to secure a mate, I suppose in some ways it’s easier – I have no compulsion to rush into reproduce, no biological clock ticking (well, I do, but not the kind that will stop at any point before my death), so I am at some more liberty to choose. To be picky. I’m glad of that.

And I don’t want to reproduce. I don’t want to inflict my deficiencies, genetic and otherwise, on anyone else with no choice. If someone decided to spend part of their life with me, I’d rather they enetered into it as a sane, sober, and most of all free adult…