I have always professed to hate kids, don't want to be anywhere near them, see them, hear them. I get irritated in public when people let them run wild.

Because it hurts less than going with my feelings. When I was young, in college, or first working, I would from time to time talk about relationships and families with other men. Many looked forward to a time when they could be fathers, it made me feel so profoundly sad.

I worked so hard my entire life not to be the abusive brute my father was. So one big irony of my life is I think I could have been a terrific husband and father in the sense of "being there" for a family.

But, problems both real-world and self-imposed got in the way. Such as my feeling that anywhere I went with a relationship might end in the living hell that was my upbringing, even though I knew better. And frankly, the few women I has had relationships with have all been the walking wounded themselves.

I've had people, even my therapist, say it's not too late. But it is, almost 50 and trying to keep my life together after a breakdown, it wouldn't be fair.