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young childless woman on a bench with teddybear

Letter to my Unborn Child

by
Alana Faller
Dear Unborn Child,

You will never exist, baby. I love you, and I want you, but this world will kill me before I ever have a chance to give you life. As it should, I suppose. Already the streets are flooded with people that have no place to go, no food to eat, and no water to drink. Already the earth has reached and exceeded carrying capacity, and now we must deal with the repercussions.
     I always dreamed of having a baby. All through my teens, my twenties, I collected stories for you, unborn child. I whispered about the brave, wide world that you would be born into, about the adventures you’d have and the wonders you’d see. I’d tell you stories of dragons and fairies, of knights, and princesses that didn’t need saving. I’d tell you tales of my own adventures, when I was young and wild, roaming across the globe. I dreamed of telling you of your father in a sappy whisper, the father I haven’t yet and never will meet. I could see you squirming as I described our love, half disgusted, half jealous. But I was young then. How quickly things change.
     By the time I was thirty, I was afraid. I saw the direction our species was going. But it seemed that the rest of the world was blind, living in blissful ignorance. I saw the rising oceans and the lack of rain. I saw the fires and the floods. And I changed the stories I told you. I could no longer whisper of fae and magic. It was too distant. Now it was wonders I took for granted that you would hear legends of. Child, it was when I realized I would tell you bedtime stories of trees, forests, and fish, that I knew you must never exist. Tales of massive marshes, now barren desert, replaced elf kingdoms. I would tell you about jogging on shaded paths, breathing clean, cool air, and that would be as unbelievable to you as mermaids were to me. I would tell you stories of the mountains, green and lush, and the wind singing through the ferns. I would tell you about hiking through the massive pines, accompanied by no sound but the burbling voice of a stream. I weave with words the flashes of tawny fur through the trees as the mule deer fled my footsteps, the sweet spotted fawn curled in the glen. I would have to tell you these things because you would never see them.
     When I wove images of the forests and mountains, we would be staring at the skeleton of the world. In my mind I see us, hand in hand, standing on the ridge, looking out at the bones of the my pine forest. The blackened husks of the trees would lie prone on the ground, ashes darkening the earth as the sun scorches down. The wind would raise up, screaming through the valley uninterrupted. We would be able to see its progress from our perch on the ridge, marked by the fine, useless dust that would billow up and roll towards us in a red cloud. And there we would be, unborn child, soft and exposed in a world that was no longer habitable for our kind. It is not there yet. But once I turned thirty, that future seemed probable.
     Like I said, we are not there yet. Looking out, perhaps you could still pretend that it is avoidable. After all, five degrees is the doomsday prediction, and we have only just reached two. There are people that still believe that it will stop at three, with no action from mankind. But they are in the minority. Mostly, it is agreed that if we do not take drastic action now, we will all die.
     Such a short sentence, but that, little baby, is why you do not exist. I don’t want to put a child, a little shard of my soul, into the world, only to watch it wither around you. We will all die. All men die, but dying of peaceful old age, tucked up in bed with the memories of a wellworn life about your chin is completely different than watching the rapid decay and extinction of your species. Five degrees, and the scientists say we will all die. How could I justify your existence, little one, knowing that the miserable quality of your life will be my fault? How can I look to a future where I tell my child stories of a world with fish, a world with clean water? I would have to tell you about the car I drove, pumping carbon emissions into the air—the same air that burns your lungs to breath. I would have to tell you about the water we used to pour on our lawns and golf courses, the water we sprayed on our cars. I would describe to you the way it looked, arching through the air, a rainbow of life-giving droplets splattering on the thirsty earth.
     I don’t want to have to tell you stories of water. But I live in Arizona, and we are running out. There is a hefty water tax now, which came hand-in-hand with the carbon tax. Too little, too late. It just served to trap people in this sand pit. There is a trickle that comes from the sink, but nothing more. Let me paint you a picture little baby. A picture of how this community used to be, and how it is now. Let’s not look to the future though—there is no future to look to. Only empty houses, slowly consumed by dust and bones bleaching in the sun.
     I grew up here. We had a ranch-style house with a three-car garage. My dad got a new car from his company every year because he traveled a lot—once he drove nearly ten thousand miles in a week. He was in construction management. We were a family of five, two little girls and a boy, so we also had an SUV. Our final car was my mom’s spotless Porsche Cayenne, which she often called her fourth child. The house had a tidy little yard, full of green, non-native grass, surrounded by a white picket fence.
     Our house was in a sprawling suburb of Phoenix. Once, as a little girl, I stood on the roof and looked out, hoping to see the mountains I knew existed. All I could see was an ocean of black roofs, green lawns, and white picket fences just like mine stretching into the distant heat haze. We took family vacations to a cabin in Colorado once or twice a year and spent nearly a month every summer hiking in the Rockies to escape the oppressive Arizona sun. The first time it hit seventy degrees, my family would close the windows and crank the air conditioner. Even in the winter, Phoenix was nearly always warmer than seventy degrees. I grew up in a world of artificial light and chill, and because of that, you would have the opposite.
     If you were born today (at the rate things are moving, I don’t feel secure speaking about nine months from now), and we looked out over the same suburb I grew up in, only empty shells of houses would remain. Society has collapsed inwards—the carbon tax prohibits driving, so people walk or ride bikes to work. It is a grim picture as, every morning and evening, a conga line of surgical mask wearing pedestrians begins to form on the cracked sidewalk. We scurry, heads down and eyes squinted against the dusty wind, across wide, empty boulevards and around rusting cars. The air will make your lungs ache if you breath it for too long, so we have taken to wearing masks, like doctors do when they know you are contagious. We know the world is infected, and we don’t want to catch it any more than we already have. There is twisted humor in this, baby, because if the world is sick, we are the disease.
     Everyone wears long sleeves and pants outdoors, even though it is rarely under a hundred degrees. The heat radiates off of the asphalt and melts the bottoms of our shoes, but we can’t expose any skin. This isn’t modesty—there is a terrible wind that screams through the streets. It carries a fine dust that will leave a dense rash of raised, red dots, even through thick canvas. On uncovered skin, it is enough to draw miniscule drops of blood, painting bare flesh a watery red.
     As soon as we are safely indoors, we shed layers. Companies can’t afford to run air conditioners anymore, so inside it is unbearably hot. We sit at our desks, sweating our thin shirts into transparency, and blow the dust off of our pens or the rare computer. Electricity is a premium, so anyone who can do without a computer uses a whiteboard.
     There is another thing I didn’t dream I’d have to tell tales of, yet here we are. Once upon a time, child, there was a thin, white, fabric-like sheet. We called it paper, and it was made of trees. It is long gone now, just like the forests we razed to produce it.
     Us professionals sit in our boxes all day, sweating and panting, dreaming of the days when breaks at the water cooler existed. It isn’t the break we long forÑit’s the water cooler. There is a hefty tax on water as well, so it is closely rationed by companies. Then, when we have finished our allotted time pretending to solve the world’s problems, we pack up, put on our layers, and venture home in the wind and dust.
     At my house, I sit in the heat and dark, unable to pay for air conditioning or electricity after night has fallen. I drink what water I can afford, then eat an uncooked, plant based meal. In this world, all but the very rich are vegetarian. With one pound of beef taking seven thousand liters of water, a hamburger is financially out of the question. I suppose I am closer to veganÑ dairy of any sort is too expensive, and eggs are a luxury. You would grow up on stories of hamburger joints. When did things become so bad that McDonald's became a place of legend? How did this happen?
     Perhaps you’d hear my stories and think to ask me these questions. And you’d have every right. How did we kill your world? It was an accident, I’d say. How did we accidently spoil everything beautiful and pure on the planet? I ask myself the same thing every day. Every moment of every stiflingly hot, dark, lonely day. The worst part of it is, I know the answer. I don’t understand it, but I know it. By the time I was twenty, I was aware of the numbers. I saw the carbon calculations, and I was smart enough to comprehend the predicted results. But I did nothing. Just like everyone else, I did nothing.
     I changed little things, riding my bike more, turning off the lights when I left a room, and I figured that someone smarter and braver than me would eventually solve the problem. I pretended for many years that, eventually, politicians would stop reversing the laws intended to protect the climate and start implementing ones that would save us all. I allowed myself to believe that humanity would unite, setting aside petty wars and squabbles in the face of the certain demise of our species. But I was wrong. Child, if anyone ever tells you that humans are smart, they are lying.
     I thought that people would start caring, would start acting before it was too late, and when the path to salvation was clear, I would follow the way. Everyone else was waiting for the same thing. And so we all sat around and watched the ecosystems, the biomes, the climate collapse around our ears. Now that the facts are unavoidable and the situation is critical, people are taking action. But it is too late. We are too late. There is no reversing the damage we have done. All we can do is slow the decay of our planet and pray. Perhaps we will not reach the five degree warming ceiling that would mean the end of humankind. Perhaps some brilliant person will invent something to save us. Perhaps we can terraform and flee to Mars.
     Sure. And perhaps our ancient alien ancestors will beam out of space and carry us away in their beautiful white spaceships. Equally likely at this point, sadly.
     I try to stay positive, but it isn’t easy. My life was once filled with greenery. I was smart, I had a bright future. I was going to be a doctor and save people’s lives. But that was before humanity realized it was better if more people died and fewer were born.
     Here in the United States, we still don’t have legal ramifications for exceeding the birth restrictions. The mockery we call a government “recommends” that couples have no more than two children, but there is no punishment for excess in this area. We pay for water, we pay for cold air, we pay for light. But not children. Why? It is not the reason you’d think (for I’m sure you, little child, would have come to the natural assumption that I came to—it is beyond foolish to have a baby in a world where problems are crawling out of every dark crevasse and solutions are rapidly becoming extinct). No, there are still couples with five, six children scurrying about in their hovels.
     On my way to work, I often walk past one such family. There are seven people crammed into their tiny shack. The kids are perpetually grimy, as they can’t afford the water to bathe, and stare at me as I go by, dark eyes red-rimmed and wide. They constantly cough, a deep, rasping hack that shakes their feeble frames and echoes through the empty streets. I’ve heard that they sleep three to a bed—an agony I can’t imagine in the hundred degree nights. Why would you choose to put not only one, but five children into this world? Why doesn’t the government legally enforce a decreasing population? A closer look at this snake-nest of a family provides the answer. They are devout Catholics. And our corrupt rulers didn’t want to impinge on freedom of religion by creating a single child system.
     I understand the vital role that faith plays—I do. How can I not? It is nearly impossible to face the future, to drag myself through my daily routine, haul myself out of bed, put on my face mask and layers, and trudge to work through the ankle deep dust. To look up at the red-orange orb of the sun searing through clouds of pollution and gaze over my city, once an oasis in a desert, now just another dune. I understand faith. There is very little but the promise that things will be better to encourage people to finish their life-sentence on this planet. But faith isn’t an excuse for intentional destruction of the highest degree. Faith doesn’t give permission to ignore reality and justify damaging the future because “everything will be fine in heaven”. We are simply permitting people to live in a state of intentional ignorance, and we will all suffer for it. You’d think we would have learned.
     Oh child, it is hard, so hard, to know that I will never see you. To know that I will never hear you laugh. You were, for so long, my heaven. You were going to be my contribution to the world. Once I realized that I wasn’t going to be the savior of the planet, the Einstein-Gandhi combination that would have been necessary, I thought perhaps you could be. I hoped that I could contribute to the pool of good, determined, focused people. I thought that, if I couldn’t save the world, maybe you could. But it is too late, baby. You will never have a chance.
     I don’t know what I could have done differently. I am a single grain of sand, a single drop in the rapidly rising ocean. Perhaps I am one of the drops that just consumed most of Florida, or Indonesia. It doesn’t matter; I don’t matter. It is too late to change my fate. All I could do was choose to spare you. So I shall suffer through each day in my scorching world alone, and I will die in the hot darkness of my apartment alone. For all you will ever be is my unborn child.
     Here’s to my final story. I wish I could give you a happy ending, but now the happiest ending is never beginning.

     Love eternally,

     Mum.




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