I haven’t talked much about children, because I don’t have any and I’m not fond of them in general. They poop in their pants and cry a lot. They can’t even speak in full sentences. Whenever I’m out in public, for whatever reason, they always stare at me. Always. It’s a little creepy.

I am nearing the age where I need to decide once and for all whether there will be any pitter-pattery feet, and I’m very much leaning towards hell fucking no.

I always said I would consider having children if I could afford the team of fifteen nannies they would need. That is obviously hyperbole, but it does have a nugget of truth to it.

I am not financially stable. I live from paycheck to paycheck and there’s no extra money for diapers. I have no savings. I have no health insurance. I have nothing of value. Lots of people manage to have children with even less than I have, but I am not one of those people. If I were to have kids, I would want them to have a stable home and not worry about having food on the table. I am not there, and honestly, I’m not sure I ever will be.

But, that’s really just a convenient excuse. If I really wanted children, I would find a way to make it work, so I guess I don’t really want children.

Male and I have talked about what kind of kids we’d have. They’d be tall, pale, smart, funny, have absolutely gorgeous eyes, and suffer from major depressive disorder, substance abuse issues, borderline personality or avoidant personality disorder, body or anxiety disorders. And, for shits and giggles, they might have color blindness, photophobia, migraines, diverticulitis or bad backs. We are not great genetic stock.

But, that’s really just a convenient excuse. If I really wanted children, I would find a way to make it work, so I guess I don’t really want children.

The real reason why neither Male nor I want kids is we’re afraid. Male comes from a broken home in two different states with a revolving door of stepmothers. “This year’s model” is the joke about his father’s house. Nobody ever stuck around long enough for him to get attached. I seriously cannot keep track of how many stepbrothers, stepsisters, half-brothers and half-sisters he has. It was like a demented game of musical chairs and he never had a chair of his own. Male has a tendency to be emotionally distant and he would not want to raise children that way.

I was sexually abused as a child. I lived my entire childhood with a grandmother who was verbally abusive and emotionally manipulative, and a mother who mimicked her. I have more issues than I can list. We are both so very broken. We’re working on it, but we are not capable of taking care of anyone else. We can barely take care of each other.

A few days ago, I wrote a post about Motivation Blindness at Behind The Mask of Abuse. In it, I said:

Some victims aren’t even trying to sort themselves out. They’re living in denial. They might even go on to become abusers themselves. I cannot abide that thought, so I have chosen not to have children. I would rather not have children at all than risk turning into an abuser myself. As irrational as that may be, it’s a choice I have made to protect the children I will never have.

That’s the real reason I won’t have kids. There is a very high possibility that I could turn into an abuser myself, whether I want to or not. That possibility is enough to keep me from even seriously considering it. I cannot bear the thought of bringing another generation of kids into the world who will suffer what we did or worse.

When he sexually abused me, Monster #1 stole my childhood, my innocence, my sense of trust, my self-esteem and any sense of who I am without abuse, my sexual development, and my ability to see red flags, but he also stole my motherhood. He made it so that I relate more to the little girl who was me, than the little girl that I might have. I seriously hate him for that, but who’s to say whether I would have wanted kids anyway.

I look at pictures of me as a kid and it’s right there on my face. It’s so clear. I see it instantly because that was me. I don’t want to be blind to that pain. I wouldn’t want to cause that pain or sweep it under a rug afterwards, like my family did to me, but I wouldn’t want a child to live with my pain either. I would be afraid that they could see it in my eyes. I don’t want to have that conversation. I don’t want to have to explain what happened to me. I don’t want to be a mother because of it.

If I was financially stable, if I was emotionally stable, if a lot of things, I might consider adopting, but I don’t want to have kids of my own. I don’t want my twisted bloodline to continue after me. I don’t want to risk it. I would rather not have children at all than end up like my mother, grandmother or Monster. It is the price I pay for not having to worry about it. It is the price I pay for peace of mind. It is a fair trade to me.