Another reason I really didn't think I was going to have kids, as exemplified by the following things which would never happen again should we have a child:
-Fun
-Sex
-Traveling exotically (erotically?)
-Seeing movie premieres opening night
-Date nights/Spending time with just my wife.
-Exercise
-Sex
-Karate
-Performing
-Seeing friends
-Sex
-Sleep
-Spontaneity
-Cooking things other than mac & cheese
-Partying, drinking, carousing, and general rabble-rousing
In my head, I can hear parents tell me that "No no! You totally make it work!" and...that's fine. Except when you talk to the new parents who have that exhausted, radiating resentment. And that's the side I worried I was going to fall on.
I have a skin-care routine, for pities sake. And have you HEARD about how new parents sometimes go *days* without showering? I *like* showering, yo. If I'm going days without showering I'd better be in a post-apocalyptic world. (Which apparently the GOP, GA, MO, and AL are trying to hurl us toward, HEY!!!!) I still hadn't lost that last 30-40 lbs that would put me on the list of hot-husbands that other people covet but secretly have a shit ton of hang-ups (more on that on another post) Kids also meant no threesome with one of my wife's open-minded unicorn girlfriends- so HERE'S TO DASHED DREAMS!!!
Look- to me, it felt like I was going to be subverting and doing a 180 degree flip on things that felt so fundamentally "me". Things that I have been cultivating and changing about myself my entire life. Things that I was (often times) slow to catch up with the rest of society due to my hardcore need to be weird, silly, and non-conforming. I loved being a great husband. Now I was going to forced to be like everyone else.
Normal.
No dropping things at the drop of a hat and running away- I literally need to give this kid all of my focus, attention, and sresponsibility even if the world is falling around me because it's literally the only way I will be able to keep them alive. So yeah. It's fucking selfish. The sense of self-preservation just put me right back on the state of high-alert I was living in back when my mom's health turned for the worst. The amount of time and energy we put into taking care of her all those years just came rushing back into my life with 9 months worth of foreshadowing to imagine what you were going to lose by becoming a parent.
And that responsibility made me feel so goddamn isolated and alone.
So I'll leave it to the wise words of Randall up there, who I have partied and performed with. Who is an acquaintance who I've bullshitted about working out and theater and sex and food and martial arts. We ran into him at the State Fair around the time my wife and I started trying for a baby as he was working the AEA station over by the DFL building (always a fun game to watch MAGA hat wearing chodes try and argue the councilperson or representative du jour) Anyway, Randall just had a bambina of his own which my wife and I congratulated him on. It seemed weird seeing him dad up, so I asked him (wink wink) if he still parties.
"Oh yeah, man. It's cool. You just trade one kind of fun for another!"
My wife and I have used that as a mantra quite a bit over the last few months. My only other worry? Is how my "other" hang ups were going to royally fuck up our kid.
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