To you, whatever you are – possibility, probability, liability.

You barely exist. And yet you have the potential to cause so much pain. I didn’t want you or not want you. The idea of you is lovely, but, from experience the reality is so hard. It’s not that I don’t want you. Society doesn’t want you. And I’m not sure I’ve got what it takes to fight all the battles I’d need to fight to make your life worth living. The world is an unfriendly place, but it’s not in my nature to be unkind. I’m not a monster. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I know that, for a while at least, the person I’d be hurting most is me.

And Tom. He knows his mistimed things. And I’ve been seesawing on a wave of hormones for years, my body craving what my mind did not. And now I’ve got it. But in the interim since I first took the plunge, I’ve learned how the world works and I’m no longer so rosy-tinted. And Tom’s lost his optimism: that just by thinking things will be alright, they will be.

I’m tough enough on myself without bringing in another mewling ball of human misery into this god awful world. I haven’t got the patience. I haven’t got the time. I haven’t got the energy. Even making myself presentable these days takes long enough without a tiny creature who’ll demand every single thing I’ve got left. When I did it before, I didn’t have grey hairs or extra inches to worry about. Now I got both, and you’re not going to help me with those. Nor anything else for a long, long time.

I don’t love myself enough to love someone else that right now, is made mostly of myself. I don’t think I can do it.

But then, I don’t really know what else to do.