Today's Challenge:
Emerson says: "Always do what you are afraid to do." What is 'too scary' to write about? Try doing it now.
Today's entry:
I think of myself as a pretty open person, so this was a tough one. I'm afraid of plenty of things, but it's rare that I'm afraid to talk about those fears.
Digging deep, I'm afraid to talk about some of my feelings since becoming a parent. Not the good stuff, of course – I love being a dad, and I'll brag about my daughter all day long. There's a darker aspect to parenting, though – a whole new set of irrational fears that suddenly appear fully formed the day you become completely responsible for another human being's life.
They warn the women about it – hormones will mess with your brain, and pregnancy is a Lollapalooza of hormones. It's more than, that, though, and it hits the guys, too. It's something primal – a corner of your mind that's been there since the first mammals had to protect their offspring from predators.
Even now that my daughter is almost 11 months old, I wake up at 2am and find myself wondering if she's still alive. Did she pull her shirt over her head and suffocate? Is she ready for a shirt that doesn't button to her crotch? Why did my wife buy such a death trap?!
I joke, but even that's because I can't quite face the full magnitude of the fear even in the light of day. At 2am, it's indescribable.
Of course, there's only one thing worse than the fear, and that's poking your head into your baby's room and accidentally waking her up at 2am. If a talking hyena had offered me a comfortable cot to just watch my daughter "for a minute" in the first 2 months of her life, I'd have probably given him my blessings and a $5 tip.
If you manage to open the door without waking your baby up, you're still not out of the woods. In the beginning, you have no idea what you're checking for – nothing about babies is normal. They make weird sounds and they randomly stop breathing, just to prove they can. I once completely freaked out when my daughter slept in for 45 minutes, because I was absolutely sure she wasn't moving.
Even now, I'm wondering if this is normal. Maybe it's a first-time parent thing. Maybe it's a dad thing. Just over a year before my daughter was born, my wife and I lost a pregnancy 3 months in, right after learning we were having a girl. Whatever calm I had left about parenthood poured out through the hole in my chest that day.
So, while my body is living in the 21st century, my mind is guarding the cave from wolves. Maybe that's buried in all of us. Sooner or later, the howling in the distance stops, and there's a moment of peace.
