You wouldn't understand

"Do you have kids?" I'm asked.

"No", pausing reflecting on my mixed emotions of loss and relief, contemplating the circumstances, debating whether to elaborate.

These thoughts interrupted by the other party's statement "Oh. Well you wouldn't understand then..."

Incandescent anger rises.

"Don't project your pre-child lack of imagination on me.

"I imagine just fine.

"I imagine you could well imagine what it was like growing up in poverty, in a drug addicted family, with autism that was never diagnosed.

"Victim of child sexual abuse.

"Learning in your mid-twenties that a genetic disease ran in your family.

"Trying to bring your partner round to the idea of starting a family, being in the process of buying a family home when all plans are brought to an abrupt halt one Valentines Day.

"Diagnosed at 28 with that genetic disease you hoped you hadn't inherited.

"Health decimated by cancer treatment while trying to keep your partner and parents together in body and soul as they fail to cope with your diagnosis.

"Life changed.

"Being told by the consultant not to have children for 5 years.

"Finding out the night before your wedding that a parent was ill in hospital, too ill to come to the wedding.

"Terminally ill in fact.

"Watching your parent die slowly in terrible pain and anxiety from the genetic disease you also carry.

"Husband failing to cope, drinking himself into oblivion each evening, costing him his job.

"Watching him come out of rehab a broken, hesitant, self-doubting man.

"Being told you're the problem, the cause, and forced into divorce.

"Watching your long-term partner and husband leave you for the recovering cocaine addict he met at the rehab that cost you £13k.

"Getting demands to speed up the divorce.

"Being told, when you ask why, that his new partner is expecting.

"Cancer again at 36.

"Worse this time. It has spread. The treatment leaves you with a permanent disability.

"Repeated cancer treatments at a young age have accelerated your metabolic age decades beyond your physical years.

"Eventually submitting to the risk reduction surgeries. They remove the organs that you would need to be able to conceive and feed a baby.

"I imagine you could understand exactly what all of that has been like to live through, just as I can imagine and understand the profound changes having and raising children has had on your life and how it has affected the way you think."

I imagine, but don't actually say any of this.

I don't want to see the look of horror in the other's eyes. The look that melds into pity instead of empathy. I don't want to hear them clumsily attempt to express sympathy, not realising what they've actually conveyed is how glad they are that they're not me.   

Meanwhile other party burbles on about their 'insight' which they sincerely believe is only available to people like them - people who've made it through the board game of life, only ever rolling sixes, encountering only the ladders on the board, and never the snakes. Life lived in easy mode.

I don't say anything. 

Many many people roll ones in the game of life, enduring hardship and setbacks, tough choices, or no choices at all. I'm not unique, nor is my game mode dialled all the way to 'survival' which is the terrifying reality for many millions of people. 

Would I really want to live life in 'easy mode', facing no character building challenges, developing little or no true empathy, experiencing a boring bland life, conforming effortlessly to societal 'norms' ?

And so the rage fades to contemplation, and while the other's 'insight' has nothing new for me, their ignorance ironically has been a growth experience for me.