Child Free...by choice

I've never wanted to be a parent. I assumed when I was younger that, when I became older, my "biological clock" would start ticking and a longing for offspring would naturally follow. Needless to say, it never did. I was the oldest grandchild on both sides of my family and, although I loved being around my younger cousins very much, I never wanted a child of my own. So, child free I am. I prefer the term "child free" rather than "childless" because the latter connotes that I am missing something by not having children, or that I want to have kids but can't because of some physical reason.

I can pinpoint the night when I pretty much knew I would never be a mother. My aunt Vicki was sick with the flu and she asked me to stay the weekend with her to keep an eye on her oldest child (who was then a toddler). She lived in a trailer then and I was sleeping on the couch, which was right outside the baby's room. My aunt was in the far end of the trailer and was too sick to get out of bed.

About 2am, I awoke to my little cousin screaming at the top of his lungs. I slumped up off the sofa and opened the door to his room and that's when the stench hit me. "Great, a dirty diaper", I thought and flipped on the light. My cousin was standing up in his crib, shaking the side bars and shrieking. I was astounded to see that he was covered in shit; shit was dripping off his bed, it was on the walls, the ceiling....it was a world of baby shit.

I gingerly picked him up and took him to the bathroom, where I bathed him (gagging all the while), then quieted him down and put him down to sleep on the sofa. I then cleaned up all the crap (still gagging like there was no tomorrow), which took me 2 hours, after which I fell asleep exhausted in a chair in the living room. The seed was planted:
Do you want to do this on a regular basis, Lisa?..........errrrrrrr...NO.
Do you want to do this ever again, Lisa?..........errrrrrr.......NO.
You grew up poor, Lisa....do you want to have money to spend on yourself? .......
errrrrrrr.....YES.

Does that make me selfish? Probably. On the other hand, I've had mental health problems, physical health problems and I'm not a patient person. My family's genetics are not that great. Why would I want to pass any of that down to another person? Put all that with the fact that I don't really like children (I didn't like children even when I was a kid myself) and babies scare me and that's a pretty good recipe for disaster. I dread when two of my new co-workers give birth in the late summer. I'm sure they'll bring their babies to work and want me to hold them which always fills me with horror. Give me a kitten or puppy or any other type of baby animal to hold and I turn into a big, baby-talking pile of mush, but babies give me the heebie-jeebies. So does the thought of being pregnant. I was pregnant for a very short time a few years ago and I couldn't get to the clinic fast enough for an abortion.

I've been "bingoed" in the past, starting when I was only 16 years old:
"You'll feel differently about your own kids".
"Of course, you'll have kids. EVERYONE has kids".
"Only real women give birth. You'll never be a real woman". (I guess a working vagina and tits has nothing to do with being a "real woman"?)
"Who'll take care of you when you're old?"How is that argument not selfish; have kids so you won't be alone when you get old?
But after I turned 35, then 40, I guess people finally got the idea that it wasn't going to happen. That's a nice part of getting older. Now if menopause would get here, and I wouldn't have to worry about another unwanted pregnancy.....

I have no animosity toward children or babies, I just don't want one living with me, 24-7. I can even tolerate them in limited doses. I don't want to share my toys, literally and figuratively. Most of all, I don't want to have to clean shit off the walls.....