The most difficult part of becoming a dad
Five and a half years ago I became a Dad.
When you ask people, they'll tell you it's the practical stuff. The late nights. The endless nappy changes.
Maybe someone will help out if you mention it? So people talk about it.
Or they'll mention the intensity of it. The deep lurch in your stomach every time her breathing pattern changes in the cot bed. The stress of the first bath. The horror of unexpected trips to the hospital. Important to get that stuff off your chest you see.
So people talk about it.
It's easy to think that's what life is about. The stuff people talk about.
And sure, it's hard.
For me there's one thing deeper than the rest. A creeping realisation beneath it all.
It started hitting from about when she was three months old.
I think.
Sheer existential terror.
T E R R O R
Gradual realisation that I was formed.
In my entirety.
In my mother's womb.
At her side. In her arms. Hearing her voice. Feeling her heart.
Believing her.
You can chart most things back to what was going on then.
I've checked myself.
I can see it now in my own daughter.
As her personality develops from her babyish traits.
As she blossoms.
People don't talk about that.
I don't think people can really cope with it.
I didn't.
I once read a book that claimed that people believe in religion to cope with a fear of death.
OK.
But how about coping with the fear of life!?
Do you know what it's like to hold a life in your hands? As if God?!
It is too much to bear.
And yet, not bearing it is worse.
For all involved.
Everything began forming in me while on my Mother's lap.
Have I ever perceived anything correctly?
Could I?
Has my mind ever contemplated something that was actually true?
Or was it all a by-product of the drive to separate from my parents? To spread out across the Earth?
So many memes passed between brothers and sisters. Stolen from competitors.
Clung to.
To better propagate Adam's seed.
Some things ignore what you thought you believed and drive you anyway.
It appears.
It would be easy to venerate "femaledom" because then I can pretend that all the hard existential stuff is "over there" somewhere and just serve Her and all will be well.
And yet I am drawn to venerate Christ.
Because I know that He is the only man I ever met that I didn't inadvertently influence.
That I couldn't influence.
Whose influence was always perfect. And always will be.
Perfect.
Not of Adam's seed.
Unlike the others.