Friday, February 28, 2014

Becoming a Dad-Pt 1: The Before Times

My life was completely different two months ago and between then and now I have become a totally different person. If I had to describe my former self, overall, I would say that I was very self centered individual--even though I am, and have been for all of my life, a very caring individual. I also never wanted kids and could never imagine the possibility of having kids. I don't relate to them, I have always thought they were often kind of snobby, and mean, and don't have developed reasoning skills.

About a week before having the bombshell dropped on me I was up late playing League of Legends, a game I was quite addicted to for a couple of years. I played many games with many people, but for some reason this one interaction in particular stuck out to me—I thought about it for days afterwards for no particular reason.

I was in champ select and the fourth pick keeps spamming chat with "mid Teemo" "mid Teemo". Obviously not caring—first pick decides to take the mid position, I pick my role second and when Mr. Fourth Pick’s turn rolls around the guy auto locks the Teemo—who is typically played in the mid position.

Frustrated at the thought of losing the game, I type into the chat window "Oh you must be 12." To which he responds "Actually I'm 30 with 2 kids how about you?" His response took me aback and so I said the only thing I could think of at the time to say in return, "31, no kids."

I wanted to type "knock on wood" afterwards but just as I started typing the game started to load. I remember even thinking during the loading screen that I should knock on the table or something just in case, but then pushed the feeling aside as being needlessly superstitious. My team ended up having a great game, Mr. Fourth Pick’s Teemo ended up being a non-factor in an easy victory, and life went on, but for some reason I’d thought about this particular event for several days afterward.


Fast forward to a week later and the day starts out like any other, I don't honestly remember what all I did that morning—I think I went out with my girlfriend to get coffee or something like that, but I do remember that later in the day we ended up getting into a heated argument over something insignificant that made me walk away out of anger. As I was sitting outside alone still a little angry, my girlfriend came out and said the words, "I think I'm pregnant."


Being a sexually active 31-year-old guy, this was not the first time I heard those words strung together in that particular order. After having heard it a few times, and it always turning into nothing to worry about, you start to develop a kind of immunity to the words.

I quipped back, "What makes you think that?" I remember feeling pretty nonchalant at that moment, thinking she was going to say something like, “I’m a few days late for my period,” and that we would go get a test that would inevitably come back negative and life would continue on. Instead she replied with, "Because I took two pregnancy tests and they’re both positive.”

Well then, I would say two tests with reported 99.9% accuracy saying you're pregnant warrants a little more than an, “I think I might be pregnant,”—In the mean time, Why is the room spinning all of a sudden? I remember my internal dialogue firing off in my head, thinking a thousand different thoughts a minute as time seemingly stopped. My first real thought was to burst into tears, and my second thought was that I didn't want that to be the first reaction to having my first child.


What happened the rest of that day all seems like a blur now, filled with fleeting thoughts, emotions and feelings. My girlfriend and I talked about all of the things regarding parenthood we could possibly think of at the time, which wasn't much and the day continued on. The one consistent thought that I had throughout the rest of that day is that I didn't know exactly how yet but I knew my life would forever change and almost everything would never be the same.

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