I’m a Woman Who Doesn’t Want Kids, and These Black-Eyed Children Should Respect That

I am a 28-year-old woman who doesn’t want kids, and the amount of emotional labor I have to do to defend my choices is exhausting.

By now, I’ve learned to accept nosy aunts or weepy phone calls with my mom.

What I refuse to accept, though, is the constant judgment from black-eyed children.

Black-eyed children are small specters, with black voids for eyes. These little creeps only want two things — to suck out your soul and leave you a husk and to make you reconsider having children.

These little goblins never miss an opportunity. They carve “FREEZE YOUR EGGS” on my car. They knock on my window at 3 AM, holding DVDs of Murphy Brown. They ambush me in ATM vestibules with macaroni jewelry. I am absolutely cursed.

But last week, when I found two of them stand eerily still on my doorstep (of the house I can afford, HAH!), I decided to stand up for myself.

Per usual, dread curled its fingers around me, filling my lungs with fear. Hiding his lifeless eyes, the older child whispered,

“We are cold and motherless, m’ am. Can you be our mother?”

For once, I wouldn’t respond with a scream. I had consulted three strip mall clairvoyants for this moment. I was ready.

“Ghost boys,” I said, “I know society says that women are just blobs of dough, destined to be squished into mom-shaped molds. But I refuse to live my life by these suffocating standards.”

I started to close the door.

Thud.

A gray hand wrapped its yellowing nails around the wood.

“Let us in,” the small one whispered. “We’re cold, and you’re selfishly not contributing to the next generation.”

“Well, I don’t believe in putting additional pressure on our dwindling resources,” I volleyed back, reaching for my ethically-sourced sage.

Snap. The children bore their eyes into mine, opening their mouths to scream.

But I was speaking. (#kamala2020)

“Equating motherhood with womanhood is frustratingly reductive,” I cried, sprinkling black salt around me as the boys begin to chant in Latin.

“I am whole without children,” I gurgled, taking a swig of Holy Water. A high pitched ringing suddenly filled the air.

“I’m an aunt to three wonderful girls,” I spat out, wrapping a rosary around my hand like a boxer. “But they taught me that I’m not cut out for parenthood!”

The ghostly boys’ eyes began to glow red.

“Go ahead! Nag me until the day I die,” I screamed, holding my sage like a crucifix. “I’ll never have kids!”

The boys unleashed an ear-shattering shriek, imploding into clouds of putrid smoke. I immediately hammered the door shut with coffin nails, courtesy of the strip mall clairvoyants. And of course, in the process I tweaked my bad shoulder.

I guess standing up for my bodily autonomy by banishing demons to the depths of Hell can’t just be emotional labor — it has to be physical labor, too.