I remember waking up
the next day feeling different. I wouldn't describe the feeling as better or
worse than any other day, I just remember having this sense that my life from
this day forward would be forever different even if I didn't know how. I tried
to go about my normal routine, but I started to find myself questioning
everything I was doing as part of this routine and framing it in a larger
light.
To be quite honest,
this feeling was fairly new to me. Looking back it is difficult to examine
myself before receiving the news, because I now feel like a completely
different person. My entire thought process throughout most of my life, until
that point, had been very me driven. If I'm also being totally honest with
myself, I think looking back on the first few days after finding out; I
struggled with feeling a sense of loss. For a few days I coped with the loss of
being able to think selfishly all the time, but these feelings immediately
faded and I have yet to look back.
My initial reaction to
all of this—like anyone's, I would imagine, was fear. I thought, “Up until this
point I have been able to pretty much do what I want, run my life how I want
and make decisions that only effect me.” When I began to look around at my
surroundings, and my life in general, I found that while I had been able to
lead my life however I chose—I was completely miserable almost all the time.
I have always been a
person that cares a great deal about others. I think a large part of the reason
why I was so ok with living a selfish existence prior to the big news was
because my care for others never truly translated into caring about myself, and
I was horribly unhappy everyday for a long time because of it.
I can remember having
the same conversation many times with my girlfriend where she would ask me
"Why don't you care about yourself?" and honestly I was never be able
to provide her an answer, but I always knew it was true. The simplest
explanation I have for this is that I guess college, and life in general kind
of turned me into a nihilist at some point. I was raised Catholic and now
consider myself an Atheist and I think the combination of guilt and not
believing in any form an afterlife whatsoever kind of morphed itself into a
weird personal philosophy that involved treating anyone else with the utmost
respect, but not giving a damn about myself. I remember feeling like I existed
simply because I woke up that day and other than that I felt no general
purpose.
I am so glad that my
life has changed. Now I wouldn't take back a single second of anything for the
world. I have never felt this way before—In fact my girlfriend and I had the
discussion about kids very early on. I mentioned—much to her dismay—that my
feelings were very strongly against procreation and that I never foresaw that
changing for anything or anyone.
Going back to personal
philosophies, I tend to have a lot of principles that I try to uphold for
myself, that ultimately I don't believe are applicable to society as a larger
whole. For example, I’d say on a personal level that I am very pro life, but being
a man I feel like I have no right whatsoever to tell a woman what she should
and should not do with her body. Although I am politically pro-choice, I also
don't feel that abortion should be taken lightly, by any means and since I am
not a drug addict, in dire poverty, in an abusive relationship, etc. I feel
that in my personal circumstances abortion for any reason would be unjustified.
I had also developed a thought early on that made me believe that I could never
go through with that process personally.
This baby was
conceived despite birth control that is supposed to be 99.9% effective, that to
me means that he or she really really
wants to be a part of this world, and I for one, cannot wait for their arrival
very soon.
Back on topic, in Part
3 I will go more in depth into why I was so anti-child before this whole
experience.
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