Babies crying can make you crazy...

Tethered To The Need Machine

June 20, 2019

The experience of fatherhood has been great for GARY STEEL. Well, apart from the parts that leave him feeling hollow. And stuck. And in… a very dark place.

 

The author with his baby daughter

โ€œYouโ€™re really not supposed to admit to that,โ€ said my old friend, who quickly moved the conversation onto a less personal topic.

Iโ€™d been telling him about the difficult times Iโ€™d been experiencing as an older parent with young children. How my 4-year-old often drove me to a deep rage, which then turned in on itself, occasionally prompting dark thoughts.

About how the lack of sleep and the constant demands and the loss of nearly all valuable regenerating โ€œmeโ€ time often left me feeling hollow and stuck. And about how the sense of parental failure often permeates through me. To such an extent that it results in deep-seated feelings of guilt.

“About how the lack of sleep and the constant demands and the loss of regenerating โ€œmeโ€ time often left me feeling hollow and stuck”

I felt churlish for mentioning it against the catastrophic breakdown of my friendโ€™s marriage and the consequences thereof.

I love my wife and two kids more than life itself. And I love life a lot. Iโ€™d also been lucky to have been able to experience life as a young man without the burden of marriage and kids.

But there it is, in black and white: the burden of marriage and children. Itโ€™s baked into our language. This thought that being tied down to marriage, and subsequently raising children, is a real downer.

Babies crying can make you crazy…

I never had that attitude. Instead, I was philosophically opposed to marriage and children. For the boring reason that true love shouldnโ€™t need a certificate. And, well, thereโ€™s a population explosion already without me adding to it.

Itโ€™s true that my life would have been shaped very differently had I been saddled (there it is again, the vernacular) with children at a young age. I would have had to get a โ€œrealโ€ job. Rather than live the partially itinerant, financially risky existence I ended up experiencing as I started (and ultimately, failed at) various business ventures along the way.

As a music writer, I would have lost a lot of my listening and writing time. And would have struggled to make it out to the thousands of concerts Iโ€™ve attended over my โ€œcareerโ€ in journalism.

“Itโ€™s true that my life would have been shaped very differently had I been saddled with children at a young age”

Not having children was just freakish good luck, though. It could have happened at any time. And I never did give any credence to the idea that a child was a โ€œburdenโ€. Until I had them, that is. And realised what an incredibly tough job it is.

My blueprint for children, and the way I always envisaged it being, was through watching Italian movies. You know, those semi-rural films where an extended family is sitting outdoors on a huge table. And the parents are eating and drinking red wine; the kids doing their thing and having their own dramas. But somehow, itโ€™s all just part of the milieu.

This was my dream of family life, I guess. Where having children is more or less like growing pot plants: give โ€˜em a bit of water and a bit of soil conditioning … and theyโ€™ll take care of themselves.

Itโ€™s not like that.

It can feel like a living hell, being accountable 24/7 to a tiny “need machine.”

Children can be little monsters

But donโ€™t misinterpret me. It can also be the best thing in the world. Thatโ€™s just one of the reasons I find this parenthood thing hard to process. The love I feel for both my children is so strong that it hurts.

And itโ€™s a type of love Iโ€™ve never experienced before. Itโ€™s not that yearning, tomcat yowling love you feel when you fall for a woman. And itโ€™s not the complicated love you feel for your parents. Itโ€™s child-specific. Itโ€™s a primal love. One all parents have, unless theyโ€™re hardwired wrong: a love that makes sure you know that itโ€™s your prime directive to PROTECT and NURTURE these little urchins.

“It can feel like a living hell, being accountable 24/7 to a tiny “need machine”

Thereโ€™s also the bliss you sometimes feel โ€“ the sheer joy โ€“ of spending quality time with your children. Or even just sharing a smile and feeling the sense of wonder of it all.

But itโ€™s a bipolar experience: unparalleled. โ€œEverything is right with the worldโ€ joy one minute, countered with deep rage the next. A cauldron of emotions brought on by the sheer emotional madness of little people.

If I hadnโ€™t experienced parenthood myself, I wouldnโ€™t have believed the emotional troughs and highs it would put me through. And my inability to control the situation. Thatโ€™s a big part of the issue.

“But itโ€™s a bipolar experience unparalleled, a cauldron of emotions brought on by the sheer emotional madness of little people”

Iโ€™m a natural problem-solver. And for every problem life brings up, Iโ€™m analytical and active in solving them. Except the issues that parenthood raises are beyond problem solving. And they involve coming to terms with the fact that you simply have to accept a range of compromises in your life. And that those compromises will continue apace, for a very long time.

And then thereโ€™s the matter of age. I now wish that Iโ€™d had children about 20 years earlier than I did. Because Iโ€™ve got less energy. And Iโ€™m crankier and frankly, Iโ€™m not sure Iโ€™ve got it in me to work for the rest of my life, to put my children through school.

Caring for children is a bipolar experience

And then there are scenes that feel like they come straight out of Eraserhead. Where the baby is crying incessantly with that indescribably nerve-jangling tone. One that only babies have. And the 4-year-old is niggling incessantly. And youโ€™re stuck at the dinner table, unable to manage a single sentence of a conversation with the wife. Because of all the noise and commotion.

But even as I write, I can visualise the slaughter that awaits me on social media, for daring to air my personal difficulties with late-in-life fatherhood. So donโ€™t get me wrong, please.

“And youโ€™re stuck at the dinner table, unable to manage a single sentence of a conversation with the wife because of all the noise and commotion”

Iโ€™m not complaining, Iโ€™m explaining. Which brings me back to my friend. And the opinion that itโ€™s somehow wrong to give any oxygen to this subject. Perhaps itโ€™s because fathers feel like theyโ€™ve failed. But they also feel that itโ€™s wrong to talk about the difficulties; that everything sometimes just falls apart. Spectacularly.

In truth, I count my blessings several times every day. Because I know that Iโ€™m luckier than many. But ignoring the issues that present themselves โ€“ or worse still, pretending they donโ€™t exist because weโ€™re not supposed to expose weakness โ€“ canโ€™t be a good thing.

 

 

 

 

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Steel has been penning his pungent prose for 40 years for publications too numerous to mention, most of them consigned to the annals of history. He is Witchdoctor's Editor-In-Chief/Music and Film Editor. He has strong opinions and remains unrepentant. Steel's full bio can be found here

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