What No One Prepares You For… (writes)

During my time living in Los Angeles, I lived with one of my best friends, Teddy, his wife, and their two kids, who were two and five years old. The first week with them, I remember going out with Teddy and the boys to grab lunch at Chick-fil-A. After we ordered, I watched Teddy sit with the boys, one in a fresh high chair, the other sitting down, as they both patiently waited for Teddy to prep their food. As I sat there, ignorantly eating my food, I watched Teddy help his two boys eat lunch. I finished my meal, sitting there conversing with Teddy, and watching the boys slowly munch away at their chicken nuggets and fries. After about 10-15 minutes passed, I noticed Teddy hadn’t touched his sandwich yet. I looked at Teddy and said, “Man, you haven’t even eaten your food yet.” Teddy replied, “You haven’t seen what I have been doing?!?” Between opening ketchup packets, ripping up chicken nuggets, and making sure French fries were not too big to choke on, it was completely lost on me Teddy was doing the dance all parents do, helping their children figure life out, at the cost of his meal on his time. It was the first time I had seen how his time and life weren’t his. Over the next 16 months, with Teddy, Krystle, and their family, I began to see, feel, and experience these moments by proxy. These moments were a subtle foreshadowing of some of what I would feel and experience seven years later.

Before I became a parent, I was inundated with clichés and advice from everywhere and anyone. All new parents have heard the hits, from “sleep when the baby sleeps” (previously: sleep now before you can’t sleep), to “let the baby cry it out” (insane, by the way). If it wasn’t advice devoid of empathy, it was the horror stories of breastfeeding or postpartum, which certainly helps make one excited to welcome in the new chapter of parenthood. With all the clichés, bad advice, or invasive questions about when the “next one is coming”, I found myself disingenuously smiling through the well-meaning, but pretty imprudent or callous advice my wife and I received over 9 months. Now, almost two months in, nearing the end of the “new-born stage” of parenthood, I’m curious about some of the things people failed to actually tell me.

First and foremost: My time is not my own. While I had been warned about this before the arrival of our little one, and something I partially experienced living with Teddy and Krystle, no one told me about the sense of urgency you gain. Baby bottles and dishes get cleaned quicker, the diaper genie and trash get taken out with fervor, but more impressively, I never knew how quickly I would start a load of laundry, eat dinner, and use the bathroom all in seemingly five minutes. I have long despised any sense of structure since I was a child, but interestingly enough, the structure of not knowing whether I’m living through a 10-minute baby nap, or 60-minute baby nap, surely pushes me to get certain things done quicker.  I’m finishing this piece on a Friday, late in the afternoon. This piece started at 11:30 pm earlier in the week, but I quickly became too tired to continue. People warned me about being tired, truth is: I accepted during my wife’s pregnancy that I had already experienced the best sleep of my life. What no one told me: how much I would yearn for a regular night’s worth of sleep, and how much I would need to suffocate that yearning. I have never known an exhaustion like I do right now. What’s different, is the new brain functionality through it all, because yes, it is quite miserable, and it would be a lie to say otherwise. What wasn’t shared with me, was how this exhaustion differs from before my time in parenthood. I don’t dream of sleep like I used to, but I do dream of rest in ways which feel necessary to show up for our little one. There is now an understanding and willingness to live with that exhaustion in a way which is hard to describe. Some days I wake up and immediately think about the next time I will get to sleep, and learning to drown that thought has become a talent.  What no one told me: The sleep deprivation comes with a side of nightmares. I wish someone would have informed me about the all-consuming new sense of fear that drowns you as a new parent. I did not sleep the first night, fearful every little noise, grunt, and movement she did (or did not) make, ultimately holding THE fear all new parents have with a newborn. When I did finally get some sleep, it felt like the whole first week I was having nightmares as clear as I would in deep R.E.M. sleep. Joy is the overwhelming feeling everyone told me about (and which I experience), but the new sense of fear I’ve gained, is something I never expected. This little person, this human, I never expected to be the most concrete evidence of my lack of control in the universe. Having to submit to that truth, is a deep, sobering reality no one warned me about.

These are not complaints, and my child is not the crucible in which I work through my existential dread and crises. Many of you who will read this, may even interpret this as a desire to make a long trip for milk and cigarettes, but this is not the case. If anything, there is an intense desire to show up in ways I cannot fully understand. These are not measurements of good or bad, they just are. The truth is: the joy parenthood brought and brings me is indescribable, and with that joy comes new excitement each day, about what comes next. Yes, the sleep deprivation…terrible, but my brain is literally in the midst of change, and knowing I’m doing it for her, makes it a little different. Or maybe that’s what I am telling myself. It’s rare if you are informed about the inescapable reality you are plunged into with parenthood. My cousin, my buddy Jim, and even Teddy were the only ones seemingly willing enough to talk to me about it. There is a new all-encompassing feeling with the existential reality you are plunged into with parenthood, and it is a jarring one: this is now your life. It’s quite easy to fool oneself into living in denial. We do it all the time…I know I have at different points in my life. With parenthood, there is an undeniable truth that is impossible to escape “Welcome to your life, there’s no turning back”.

It is this same truth that shifts everything, your identity, your thoughts, your perspectives, your motives, and existence. This is a fact I mentally tried to prepare for, but knew I only barely understood conceptually. It’s only been six weeks, and I can see why people measure their lives in terms of before parenthood and after. My old life is gone. I don’t think I miss it, maybe certain elements, but recognizing its non-existence feels important to me. I think often about legendary artist Aira Toriyama, who wrote about the birth of his son, in 1987.    

I don’t think grief is a bad thing, thematically I am finding it more relevant and necessary in my writing as I get older. I tried to spend the last year grieving the end of my existence as I knew it, understanding I had no idea what was going to be next. Even now, I don’t even fully know what’s next, I just know what was, is no more, and can never be. No one prepares you for it, you just have to experience the end of yourself in a way I feel few ever talk about. To experience this is one thing, but to experience it with someone also going through the same thing, is an added experience. Rarely are two people in a relationship simultaneously going through the profound life-changing event in their respective lives. Sure, you share moments, as one may be experiencing life alternating change, but it is rare to simultaneously experience this type of change. My partner isn’t the same, just as I am not the same person she married. It feels almost shameful to believe she would be the only one changing. I didn’t recognize how I was changing, and in many ways I still have trouble recognizing what I’m fully experiencing. I just can feel that things are different.

Let me be clear, nothing I’m stating is profound or groundbreaking. I am grateful in ways beyond explanation. I just wish people would’ve been willing to talk about some of these things a bit more. But isn’t that the gag of adulthood? Hindsight feels almost like a beautiful scam, only bringing clarity to time once we have passed through it. I’m grateful for hindsight, and really wouldn’t have it any other way. Again, these aren’t complaints, just observations I’m noticing in this amazing new reality I am experiencing. Still tired, still emotionally overwhelmed, and still wondering how silly I’ll feel looking back at all of this, knowing this stage is the easiest part. That’s the paradox of it all, even now with our little Moon. This tiny human, who is already so different than two weeks ago, three weeks ago even. All of this change I’m getting to rapidly and joyfully experience, truly only getting to understand it once it passes. The many firsts, which disappear only as fast as I start to recognize them, cherishing them as they dissipate. It seems more and more this is a part of the dizzying reality of existence.  So, I wonder, are these the things I will soon forget to pass along to whomever comes next, just as they were forgotten with me? Is this no different than the things I will forget to tell my daughter about childhood? Amid survival, even if just existentially, life is disorienting enough to forget these. I think I’m more empathetic to the idea of why nobody actually told me these things.

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