Love in the Void at the End of the World
“That’s why I’m an antinatalist,” she said plainly.
I took a comically large bite of my hummus toast and leaned toward her across the table. Allison, a vegan anarchist from my dreadful calculus class, had not only explained to me why she was vegan — for the environment and because of animal cruelty — but she had also dropped the “having kids is wrong” card during the first hour of our first ever lunch together.
“But what about people like me who want kids?” I asked.
Sitting under the angrily yellow lighting of the university’s vegan cafe, this was the first time I had heard the word antinatalism. Even though I could logically figure out what antinatalism meant — something about being against childbirth? — the boldness of her statement forced me to pause. I remember feeling offended. I felt it in my chest. How could someone so adamantly reject childbearing when so many of us want it so badly? It would take me years to realize that my decision to have children was not actually a decision. It was a choice that I had been taught had one correct answer. I remember feeling activated, almost angry at her, for being so against people having children. You don’t have to have kids, but who are you to tell other people what to do with their bodies? Biology professor Guy McPherson’s prediction that we’d all be dead in 10 years hadn’t really hit me yet.
I think I wanted to be like her — at least, I wanted to have strong convictions like her. I had yet to find out which ones. The following years would lead me to learn that I was also an antinatalist and a wannabe vegan, but I wouldn’t connect my conversation with Allison to those beliefs in a pipeline until now. I felt some sort of shame associated with my non-veganness and my desire to raise kids that came from my body. I recall feeling like she was right to be vegan, to be an antinatalist, and yet I felt it in my body as an offense. The general narrative I’d been spoon-fed by society was that our value as women came from our maternal capacities. Allison was vehemently rejecting this.
University coursework in sociology taught me that decisions like this are commonly presented to us as prescriptions: you should be looking for your life partner, you should have children, you shouldn’t get an abortion, you shouldn’t sleep with other people. It wasn’t about having kids or not having kids. It was about the choice. I wanted kids, so why was I so angry about abortion bans? I had no idea how to be alone. Wouldn’t it be nice to have children to take care of me at the end of the world? Yes. But not only would I be suffering, but they would be suffering with me. Why subject anyone to this climate emergency? Then it hit me. That’s why Allison is an antinatalist.
When the United States started seriously limiting abortion access for people with uteruses in 2022, I was living in my van after a rock bottom depressive episode, an abusive relationship, and the deterioration of my sense of self into precious little shreds. I wrote for a living, and published whatever was on my mind on my personal blog in my free time. I started asking too many questions all at once, driving my mental health to a critical point where I posted a blog called “We Need to Talk About Abortion” and ended it with the threat of mounting the kneecaps of those who threaten my bodily autonomy to the dashboard of my camper van. Of course, I wasn’t actually planning on removing the kneecaps of pro-birth people, but I viscerally felt the government’s attempt to crack down on my bodily autonomy. I felt it in my throat, like I wanted to scream. I felt it in my gut, like it was being death gripped by the hand of an angry man. My rage that day was tangible, and it still lives near the top of my blog’s homepage — simmering, seething, waiting for someone to claim it and use it as fuel to light the White House on fire.
Before my partner was my partner, we laid in bed together, my arm draped over his chest, and I asked him — terrified — if he wanted kids. That question turned into a three hour philosophical debate in which he claimed having children was unethical and I spat back something about bodily autonomy. I was angry at him. (I fell in love with him anyway). He was right. I quickly realized that having kids without the consent of those children to be born was cruel, unethical. And to bring them into the world as it burns? Even worse. I joined him in his antinatalist beliefs, much to the surprise of my four-years-younger self who had resented Allison for believing the same thing.
How had I ended up here? I’ve always wanted kids! My questions didn’t have answers. I hated that fact. Looking at it now, though, it’s no small wonder that I rejected the imposition of life on another human being when just a year before, I was laying in bed, staring straight up at the ceiling, my eyes fully glazed over and my mouth half open and a box cutting knife laying next to me that just minutes ago, had been pressed against my wrist, unmoving. The room was spinning around me. Does anything actually matter? Fuck if I know.
My psychiatrist would tell you that I needed to be on stronger meds, that I was pondering the devastating reality of existence because I didn’t have enough serotonin. My mom would tell you that it was because I didn’t eat right and I needed to go outside more often. My friends would probably tell you that it was because I was quarantined during a global pandemic. Future me would tell you that it was because I was freshly out of an abusive relationship with my lover-turned-rapist and I was hurting and why would I ever want kids if I was nearly forced to?
I didn’t know how to be alone. I was addicted to drugs, existentially depressed, and still covered in invisible bruises from loving a narcissist.
Why is it so hard to be alone?
Why is existence unbearable?
How do I fix that?
I waffled over the answers to these questions for a year. I still do.
Do I actually want kids, or was I conditioned to believe that?
Is having kids my solution to my loneliness?
How dare I subject my kids to the suffering of this world?
If I, with all my privilege, am suffering so deeply, where will my kids be at my age?
At some point, I decided it was worth it to prevent any potential future suffering and protect them from burning along with the planet. My heart half-breaks knowing I will never carry a child, but I am an antinatalist because I believe in joy. For those of us who exist, we might as well love, and with vigor. And for those of us who don’t yet exist, for those who will never exist, enjoy the void. We made this choice because we love you.
And dearest reader, I will never tell you what to do with your body. You may have children and raise them with their toes in the dirt if you’d like. And I will look upon their childhood joy with nostalgia and jealousy and fear. But before you do, consider my words. Do you think there is more suffering or more joy in this world?
With love and rage,
Radical
