I hope you have a car crash. I hope your roof leaks and that you have to spend thousands of dollars on a plumber. I hope that you lose your job. I hope that your husband has an affair and you get divorced, that your dad has a heart attack and dies, that your mom gets dementia and kills someone driving the family Buick, that you get robbed, and that your house burns to the ground with your most treasured family heirlooms inside. Finally, I hope that one of your children dies of cancer and that the other suffers a traumatic brain injury leading to a lifetime of diaper wearing and drool wiping.
I’m sorry. I am really really sorry to be wishing all of these awful, terrible things on you. My stomach hurts and my throat is tight as I write these things. I don’t even know most of you and yet here I am wishing that bad things will befall you. It’s not that I’m a masochist, I promise, I just suffer from something called the gambler’s fallacy.
No, you won’t find this condition listed in the DSM as a true mental illness, but I know I’m a crazy to think that my kids, my family, and I will be safe as long as all these bad things happen to someone else. As if you could inoculate yourself from bad things happening. These are my own fears and deep rooted anxieties that keep me awake at night and wishing them on you will not prevent them from happening to me.
The universe simply does not work like this. There is no one keeping track of all the bad things that happen to me and my friends and neighbors in order to balance them with the good. There is no limit to the number of bad things that could happen to me or my kids. This truth makes me want to build a bomb shelter off on some Vermont mountain side and lock my family away from the world until we all die happily in our sleep decades from now.
Someone (anyone know who?) once wrote that having children is like having your heart walk around outside of your body. On most days I don’t think of them of this way. Instead, I wish my 7th month old would find her rubber giraffe entertaining enough to let me clean my bathroom. I’d like to my 3 year old to get her snow pants, jacket, hat, scarf, boots, and mittens on without me having to ask her 50 times. I’d like my husband to notice the Cheerio, dried pea, and sticky spilled apple juice at his feet and pull the mop out because it’s really just starting to bother him for once. During the day, you’re my friend and neighbor and I wish the very best for you.
But many nights, when I pull the quilt up to cover Penny, as I look at Addy nursing at my breast, after I’ve tucked my frozen toes underneath my husband’s warm calf, I think of these terrible things. I cannot stop thinking of the worst possible things that could happen to the ones I love. I think of them and wish them far far away. Then I start to bargain with the universe. Take anyone, Universe, do anything. Just not to mine.
Having kids has not turned me into a better human being, clearly. At these moments I would do anything, sacrifice anyone, to keep them safe. I’m sorry, but if these things have to happen, I wish that they would just happen to you.
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Having kids HAS clearly turned you into a better person. You’re a mother.
It’s biological (after having lived in Africa, I feel better able to say this with authority) to want to protect your own, even at the cost to others.
And amidst the recent earthquake in Haiti, I’m sure that along with the sympathy we’re sending, most of us also feel relief at the safety of our own families.
Thanks for admitting to how we all feel, deep down.
Before I get on a airplane I search the news to find a plane that crashed. If I find one, my flight is much more enjoyable. Love makes us sick and twisted.
This post is demented. It perfectly communicates my own feelings. Thanks.