stuff and other stuff

Daniel's arrival has shown me an emotion exists that I didn't know existed before. It's not love, or at least, it's not what I thought love was. What I feel for him is...everything. I feel everything for him, and while that explains very little about how I feel for this little guy, it's the closest thing to an explanation I can think of. It's so intense, it hurts, and as much as I've loved before, and as much as I thought it was everything, it wasn't. It was either nothing in comparison to how my feelings for my son. or it was something else entirely, which means that what I thought was love, wasn't. I'd die for Daniel tomorrow. It's that simple. If I was asked to choose between my life or the life of any of the men I thought I loved...err, him. Duh. It always would have been. (and for anyone who'd literally (as there are shitloads of women who figuratively give up their lives for the men in their lives, but that's another entry entirely)(and probably not one written by me)(once maybe, but now my brain was taken over by hormones and an obsessive interest in my child) give up their lives for the Love Of Their Life *doof* <- that's a slap upside of the head. It's for you. Use it wisely and maybe try growing a brain. Thankyou ) I understand now too, why new parents can go on and on and on about their baby. Unfortunately I understand only too well that our obsession with the aforementioned baby bores the living shit out of the childless among us, so I feel guilty and incredibly boring everytime I open my mouth, because when I do, as much as I try to be all cool and exude an air of What Baby? I begin babbling about Daniel. Forgive me for I try to be interesting and nonchalant, I really do. All I think about, all I can think about, is him though. Hell, I'll be on the phone trying to gossip about a mutual friend or something, and the baby will do something that's in reality, probaby quite mundane but which, to me, is AMAZING, so suddenly I realise I've just rambled on AGAIN about The Baby - and I didn't even know I was doing it. Arrgh. Really and truly, it's out before I know it. I only realise I've done it after the event. I'm becoming a hermit because, like the tree falling in a forest with nobody hearing it, if nobody is bored to fucking tears by me raving about this kid, am I really boring? But I digress. The reason why new parents go on and on is because, if the rest of them are anything like me, nothing else matters, and all the blabbering on and showing of ridiculous amounts of photos happens without our permission. Our brains simply will not allow any other data in or out. It's our babies or it's nothing. Our babies might not be the brightest, most beautiful, most lovable babies in the world, but in our world, they are.

Which reminds me, you know that a large chunk of my time in therapy has been devoted to this expectation of perfection I grew up with? That I feel like if I'm not perfect, I've failed? Yeah well, my poor kid is going to be in therapy because he'll be all fucked up because I want him to know that mediocre is fine. He'll be all "my mother never encouraged me, waah" and I'll be all banging my head against wall and feeling like I failed. Again. Oy.

Which reminds me again, expecting perfection is all about expecting to fail, because perfection doesn't exist, now take two aspirin and call me in the morning. That'll be twenty bucks. Also, if I know that, why the hell am I still seeing a psychiatrist?

Now, back to this new parent compulsive thing: while I'm alienating anyone I know who hasn't bred, and so, removing myself rrom their world, not because I don't want to know them anymore, but because I don't want to bore them stupid any more than I have to, I feel like I've been given access to another world, one that runs parallel to this one. One that, while I was told it existed, didn't actually exist until I had the secret key in my possession. One that glitters even. The key is Daniel and that world is Motherhood. With a capital M.

Mothers, it would appear, stick together like shit sticks to a blanket. Mothers also allow other mothers to go nuts with the kid stories, even if we don't actually listen to each others' (or maybe because we don't?), so while this alienation thing is going on, I'm noticing and being noticed by a different group of people entirely. There's a sense of kinship between us, even if we're strangers to each other. I can't talk for the rest of then, but I'd hazard a guess and say that most feel as I do, that we can look at each other and without talking, know we have this everything in common. I'd say that none of us mean to be exclusionary, that's why we try and include you in this wonderful world we've found, and that's why we'll inevitably bore you to fucking tears. We want so much for you to experience what we're experiencing, because it's so amazing, that we forget that we needed the key before we could experience it.

Sorry about that.

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