The Price of Parenthood

My biggest fear used to be death. I'm not afraid of the afterlife. I'm just endlessly curious and didn't want my light to dim before I got the chance to explore to my heart's content. I don't want to die painfully, but I can't imagine that most people do. Ideally, I'll go quietly in my sleep after reading The Fairytales of Hermann Hesse for the umpteenth time.

Now, I worry about things happening to my kid. One of the scariest things about having a baby was knowing that I could no longer protect her once she was out of my body. She is now part of the world, and subject to all its beauty and its horror. Experience is a double edged sword, and a sharp one at that.

She is so sweet, so friendly, and also endlessly curious. She is smart. She is beautiful. A giddy little spitfire with soft, wide chocolate brown eyes. I know that all I can do is protect her while she's young and give her the skills to protect herself as she gets older. Teach her, then trust her.

She will get teased. Her heart will get broken. Grandparents and pets will pass away. She'll meet kids who've learned all the wrong things at home. As she matures, aggressive men will suggest too much, and she'll hit many bumps along the road to self-discovery.

I'm almost thirty and have been unravelling the messiness of broken hearts and broken promises for the past ten years. My pets and grandparents (save one, my mother's mother) died in my adulthood, all under traumatizing circumstances. Too many of my friends have been taken out by tragedy, mostly by their own hand. Aggressive men suggested too much, and I was too naïve to know that attention does not equate affection. So many of my poems are written with scorn for their subject. I've seen too much true crime for my own good, and I'm paranoid most of the time because of it.

I want to shield her from these things, but I don't want to rob her of the lessons she needs to become a well-rounded human. No one gets out unscathed and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I just don't want to have brought another life into this world only to lose her to its coldness.