What if someone can't have children?

More about What if someone can't have children?

Since the spring, I've wanted to post this picture, but I couldn't find the right way to tell its story. What's in the picture is just one of the unpleasant situations I've experienced since having my dog. I've had him for 8 years now, and he was my life's dream. I waited 30 years for that dream to come true, and finally, I adopted a traumatised four-month-old puppy, a Border Collie and Labrador mix, with a white chest and a white front right paw as a mark. He is my soul, so intelligent, well-trained, and obedient that he's never caused any problems. Never. The only thing is, he is still scared and anxious. Just like me. He was found, still blind, with his two sisters next to a rubbish bin.

Putting aside the people who would do such a thing, the scene in the picture happened to me on a mountain near the city. So, it's not a park, not a street, but even if it was... it was on a mountain trail where people go to escape from everything and everyone to find some peace. As soon as this elderly woman and her husband saw me, she started telling me off for having a dog, asking why I wasn't walking with children instead. She was such a bitter and spiteful creature that she wouldn't leave me alone. What didn't cross my mind at that moment, but what a friend later pointed out to me, is the fact that some people can't have children. And who gives these spiteful people the right to say such things to someone who perhaps can't have children, whether male or female? It's a very painful subject for those who cannot have children.

My mother couldn't have children for 16 years, and while her sisters and my father's brothers and sisters were having kids, she was young and alone. Especially back in those days, when being a housewife and having children was an imperative. That was how things were. I have inherited a lot from my mother, including that problem. But even if that problem weren't there, you can't just have a child with anyone, simply to have a child. A child should be born out of love and with the hope that you won't pass on your own traumas and frustrations. Over the years, I have learned not to let such things affect me. But there are people who haven't.

I have friends who have been together for 11 years, married for 8, and still don't have a child. At the beginning, they got a dog to learn the responsibility of caring for another living being. Both are healthy in every way, have gone through all the tests, and even tried artificial insemination three times, all without success. Now, that dog is essentially their child. And then some random person comes up to you in the wilderness, or in a city park, or anywhere, and says to you: "You should be walking your children at your age; I even have grandchildren, and you're walking a mutt."
And that is quite often on Balkan. We can hear even worse.
Their opinions are often so ugly and mean.

These people have no idea how much their words can hurt someone. That's the worst part of it all.