Maybe I’ll Never Have Children—and That’s Not a Tragedy

There’s a timeline I inherited—clear, rigid, and unforgiving.

Graduate college. → Get married. →Have children.

In that order. At the right age. Not too early, or I’d shame the family. Not too late, or I’d be a leftover.

Like Goldilocks, everything had to be “just right.”

By 30, I was supposed to be someone’s wife.By 32, I was supposed to be someone’s mother.But life, as it turns out, doesn’t run on inherited timelines.

When I was younger, I truly believed I’d follow that path. I wasn’t trying to rebel. I just wanted to make my parents proud. I didn’t know that doing so would nearly break me.

At 22, I thought I had it figured out. I had the boyfriend, the diploma, the imagined future. My siblings had hidden their relationships until after college, then got married a few years later. I assumed I’d follow suit. Why would my story be any different?

Then, on the night I graduated, I landed in the hospital. Not for a party injury or alcohol poisoning. But because the emotional toll of my toxic relationship finally imploded. While my classmates celebrated, I lay in a sterile room. Convincing the doctor not to put me on 24 hour hold. The Boyfriend didn’t like that most of my friends were male. He didn’t like that I had friends at all. He’d cut me off, slowly, until the only people left were his friends—people who didn’t care about me, my future, or the life I was trying to build.

And still, I stayed. Because I thought this was how the story had to go. I spent so much time focused on the end result, the timing, and the path, that I wasn’t aware of how wrong that relationship was for me.

After him, I dated someone kinder. Gentler. He didn’t yell. He didn’t control. But there was no ambition. No spark. No real sense of direction. The pendulum had swung too far in the other direction—calm, but stagnant.

Still, I stayed. Because after chaos, “safe” felt like relief. And I convinced myself that maybe stability was enough.

But it wasn’t stability. It was inertia. He slipped into a depression he couldn’t climb out of—and he pulled me down with him. I wasn’t his partner. I became his lifeline. And eventually, his crutch. We weren’t thriving. We weren’t growing. We were just surviving. I spent all my energy trying to take care of him, trying to keep the relationship afloat, hoping that if I poured in enough love, something would change. But it didn’t. And I lost pieces of myself in the process.

Looking back now, I can see the pattern.

I let people overtake me. Consume me. Not because I didn’t know better—but because I didn’t believe I was allowed to want better. I was following a script someone else had written for me. The problem was, I never stopped to ask if I liked the story.

The pressure to “get it right” followed me into every relationship—and especially into the question of children.

Have kids, but only after you’ve done the other two. Be a mother, but not an old one.  Make sure your life looks good on paper.

But here’s the truth: I am married now but. I don’t have children. And for the first time, that doesn’t feel like a tragedy.

I used to think motherhood was my destiny. I even wrote a whole book to a child I thought I’d one day have, My Dumpling. But life doesn’t always follow our letters. And by the time I got married the cards had shifted. The chapter had turned.

And now I ask myself: Do I want to go through the emotional toll of trying to have children, just to fulfill a story someone else wrote for me? Do I want to bring someone into this world if the foundation isn’t love—but obligation?

The answer, for now, is no.

I might never have children. And I’ve made peace with that.

Because I geniunely feel the pressure to reproduce was never really about me. It was about legacy. Status. Control. It was about making my parents proud. It was about performing perfection—on time and in order.

But I no longer live for that version of approval.

If I ever do become a mother, it will be because I chose it. Fully. Willingly. Not to complete a cycle, but to create something new.

And if I don’t?

That’s okay too.

Because I know now: My life doesn’t need to follow anyone else’s timeline. It just needs to feel like mine.