I wanted children, it is all I ever wanted really. I'm 50, so it isn't going to happen now, I accepted that a while back, it still hurts though. I can see that I'm not fit to be a mum and I would never, ever want to risk passing on my depression to a child, either through genetics or bad parenting and the risk of both those things was unacceptably high.

Ultimately, I didn't actively decide not to have children, I just opted out of relationships and by default I opted out of having children too, as I didn't see myself as a single parent.

Frankly, I don't care about what other people think, I'm different in so many ways that my childlessness couldn't possibly make me stand out any more than I do anyway;