Dear Tajani, I also don’t want children, but not because I am disabled

Dear Antonio Tajani, I am 29 years old and I don’t want children. Yes, I know it may seem early for such an important choice: on the other hand, “never” and “always” are words that don’t belong to me because only fools don’t change their minds. But right now, now that I’m writing to you, just today, I’m sure of what I’m saying. And now I’ll explain why, claiming that “The woman is fully realized only with motherhood”, she offended everyone. But let’s go in order.

My name is Iacopo Melio, I work as a “storyteller” and Regional Councilor for Tuscany, I’m addicted to mayonnaise, I can’t cook, I sleep on my side, I love De André, I often read before I fall asleep, one of my favorite colors is red and I don’t want to have sons.

So, one detail among others, neither more nor less important than the others. Yet, whenever I happen to talk about it, the thought on the other side is almost always the same: “Ah, why are you disabled and you think you can’t be an efficient father?” allows you to become a father? ».

Punctually, after my first instant correction (“They say” father “, Maremma plagued! Not father or father!”), I find myself in having to justify a sacrosanct choice, part of that self-determination that is not always guaranteed to those who just want to choose how to set up their life. And do you know why? Because we still have to hear, behind the pointed indexes, phrases like his: “A family without children does not exist.” Absurd in 2021, right? But let’s get back to us.

If I have decided not to have children it is because first of all I am a misfit. I say it with a smile but in the end it’s the truth: I know how to pay little or nothing to myselflet alone a baby. And no, my being comfortable in a wheelchair has nothing to do with it and I don’t even make it a question of reduced and limited movements of my body not really Adonis. I am simply someone who forgets to take a trivial tablet at the appointed time, never knows how to dress according to the weather, to make a medical appointment it takes an hour to find the right number, the sense of direction has lost it on the road … and I could go on and on, but I will try to save the remaining dignity.

In this regard, I’m pretty sure you would tell me that I could ask someone for help, such as parents, in-laws or a babysitter. But apart from the fact that not everyone can afford it, if they are alone or do not have a good salary (such as his as a Forza Italia MEP, for example), I decided not to have children because I think that everyone can and should be done as they see fit: Advancing in your career, cultivating new hobbies, traveling the world on holidays, enjoying old friendships, volunteering in your neighborhood or starting as missionaries in Africa. Any path, no matter what, as long as it makes you happy without hurting someone.

For example, I would like to continue to tell the stories of others, slip into their shoes and feelings, fabricate emotions to be circulated through words. I want to listen to people’s dreams, as well as the hardest problems and the most spiteful tripping, to try to find solutions or at least answers, alternatives, hopes. My profession will always be the North Star, my central commitment, a fixed nail on which to hang falls and starts. And if this is a fault, dear Antonio Tajani, I will be proud to be tried. But at least I will have made sense of what I can do best (which does not mean that I know how to do it well, but that it is the best I can make as a contribution in this land).

In addition to the priorities that everyone sets themselves, there is also a concept of couple, of romantic love, in which I have always basked. Here, Tajani, I don’t think your family is worth more than the one I would love to build, made up of me and someone who loves me to the point of wanting a life and future project for two, creating an “exclusive place” where one is ready to give himself for the other, sharing days, passions, feelings, houses-books-cars-travels-newspaper. In short, if I could I would like to spend more hours around a world without architectural and cultural barriers, hand in hand with those I love, or eyes inside eyes sitting at the table of a restaurant overlooking the sea, or on the sofa at home under a blanket for two. to break through with TV series and potato chips to grease one’s hearts, instead of changing diapers, help with homework, buy yet another pair of shoes of a larger size, contain tantrums and spite, beware of dangers … All wonderful things because they are full of life and beauty, but which do not belong to me at the moment and probably never will.

And now I know that you and someone else would like to tell me that a child is not “a nuisance”, “a third wheel”, “a nuisance”, and that it could very well be inserted into any couple’s business, making it richer and richer. lively. I know and I don’t discuss it, for heaven’s sake. The point is that seeking a child by force is fruit of a personal selfishness that doesn’t belong to me, because he would be disrespectful first of all to the child himself. Possible that even today we must come to admit that not everyone feels the parental instinct? That those who are not inclined to be a parent are not necessarily a worse or empty person than those who, on the other hand, feel complete with that specific form of love in their existence?

Dear Antonio Tajani, I do not want to have children and for this reason, having overcome the prejudices connected with disability, I am not immune to the following following clichés: “You will never understand the true meaning of life”, “You will always be a half person”, «Then you will grow old, it will be too late and you will have regrets», «So you lose true love», «Whoever is next to you will leave you sooner or later». And here too I could go on, again and again, but I interrupt myself because similar phrases do nothing but open wounds, sink weights or more simply bore: because we are fed up with a society that indicates us as “missing” in something for our free decision, peaceful and harmless, certainly not judgmental. We are tired of all the unsolicited, superfluous and bad considerations.

That’s why, dear Antonio Tajani, you have offended thousands of women, but also men and entire families that children do not have them by choice or cannot have them by compulsion, and that for this reason they feel mutilated by his judgment, the son of a retrograde culture. But she also offended those whose children brought them into the world, because ignorance hurts everyone, including girls and boys, girls and boys whom she has reduced to a mere tool of self-realization.

So no, he will never agree with me and never on his side. And if one day I change my mind by choosing to become a father (“father”, not father or father!), I hope at least to have learned enough to be able to, that then to teach you bitches like the one she gave birth is a moment, two are enough words, as anachronistic as they are harmful.