Selfish

I have a strange secret. I always feel sick when I see an infant’s face or imagine being with children. My first memory of it was when I was 6-year-old. I was watching TV with my family, and a boy was reciting a poem on the screen. A feeling of sickness attacked me. I tried to change the channel, but my family stopped me. So I had to run into my bedroom. My family laughed at me and thought I was jealous. After 20 years, I still feel sick when I see a baby, but I don’t tell others my feelings anymore. I have been used to hiding my sickness and keeping it my secret.

Psychologically, that irrational fear of babies and small children is called “pedophobia.” There are no definitive causes of pedophobia, and it’s hard to know exactly how many people have the phobia disorder since many people may keep this fear to themselves. It’s really difficult to let other people understand their feelings. For example, I told one of my best friends that I don’t like kids. She immediately agreed with me and said: I don’t like them either. They’re always screaming. But I knew she didn’t understand me. What I mean was I always feel nauseous when imagining being near children, no matter if they are screaming or well-behaved. But I wouldn’t continue the topic. When she showed me a “cute” baby dancing in TikTok videos, I would just say: so cute. It’s meaningless to offend them since this phobia is unacceptable for most people, even though it won’t hurt anyone except me. Luckily, my phobia symptoms aren’t severe, and I can disguise them with effort. I can live with it, but being a woman makes it more complicated. I can stay away from schools, playgrounds, and the toy aisle in grocery stores. But what if one day I find a baby inside of me? The question scared me.

Driven by this fear, I wrote a story about Chloe, a woman with pedophobia finding out she is pregnant. The situation is overwhelming for Chloe, and she doesn’t know what to do. She is scared because the thing in her belly makes her sick, but she doesn’t know if it’s reasonable enough to get an abortion just because of her “weird” mental issue. Chloe even doesn’t know why she has the problem. Meantime, people around Chloe are pushing her to keep the child. Chloe is from a traditional Chinese family that is looking forward to a newborn. She loves her family and her husband so much that she starts to consider if she should give birth to someone she wouldn’t love. I know one day I’ll face the same dilemma. Should I sacrifice my own feeling to make the people I love happy? Chloe finds an answer in the story. After going through a process to deal with her phobia, Chloe realizes it doesn’t matter why she can’t like babies. The love she thought she had was built on lies and possessiveness. She needs to respect her own feelings instead of forcing herself to please other people in her world. She decided to get an abortion before it was too late. It’s a journey for Chloe to find herself.

I want to tell a story that it’s okay for a woman to say she doesn’t want a baby, not because of health, career, or financial problems. Instead, it’s just because she doesn’t like it. By filming and screening the story, I hope to bring the message to the small group of women in the world who are also suffering from the weird phobia that: You’re not alone and it’s okay to be selfish.