Big post of thinky and fear and so forth

Been reading some stuff on Dw3t-Hthr’s blog about fear of motherhood, fear not of the ‘I don’t want this, don’t make me do this!’ sort, but fear that goes hand in hand with the wanting, fear and want twined round each other like a nest of garter snakes. She talks about fear of what she might do to her kids, what she might inflict on them-passing on the generational curse. I understand that, and I wish I didn’t.

Reading it makes me think about my own fears. I’m scared of what I’ll do to my children, what kind of parent I’ll be, because the first people we learn parenting from are our own parents and mine taught me so many bad things that I am still painfully unlearning. I don’t want to be my mother and snap and lash out and try to stuff my children into a just-like-me box made out of ticky-tacky. I don’t want to be my father and live in a world of my own, not paying attention to what my children actually think or say, meaning well but being totally unreachable because when they talk to me I don’t listen, don’t even register their voices. I want to teach and protect and not be a burden of spikes digging into their minds, hanging on them as they try to grow up. I don’t want to be a monster…

And as well as that, and even worse than that…I’m scared of what my children will be. Maybe that train of thought started with my fiercely hating my mother, wanting so badly for her to be out of my life, and having everyone tell me that this was Normal. Everyone hates their mother when they are Teenage. Everyone rebels when they are Teenage, purely out of spite, for the sake of rebelling. Because god knows, Teenagers don’t have any thoughts of their own, they don’t see their own paths and try to follow them, they just want to make their parents angry…

I heard that over and over, and somewhere in there I started doubting myself, and that added to the misery…

(These days I don’t have much hate left towards my mother. Just resignation and sadness. And a firm determination to cut all ties with her sharply, as soon as I can support myself. Not solely for my sake. I could cope, you know, if I just had to see her once a year at Christmas or whatever, and that could be managed if I only moved far enough away…But I don’t want her anywhere near my children. Ever. Not even for one day a year. I don’t want that poison in their lives.)

However it started, I’m scared. What if my children hate me? What if they rebel against me, and the way to do that will be to become Normal People, geek-hating, gay-bashing Mundanes like those that made my growing-up hell…

I want children so badly, but what if they turn out to be objects of fear?

It makes me want to cry and hide my head under the blankets. And meanwhile a small annoying voice in my head says I’m getting ahead of myself, worrying about stuff that won’t happen for years yet. But it’s my future that keeps me going, the thought of my future; if the Promised Land turns out to be another deathtrap, where will you live…?

And I don’t have any answers.

But then I start examining myself and think that what this all boils down to is that I don’t trust. I don’t trust myself to be a good or passable parent. I don’t trust my unborn kids to have the good sense to be decent people. I just realised that I also don’t trust my girl-my future wife, and thinking that lifts me out of my misery a little, gives me a happy little buzz-to help me, help catch my mistakes. I don’t trust in my own strength to cope if the Worst Case Scenario actually happens. I don’t trust my God and my little gods and spirits to help me and give me strength…

And then I remember what Athene said a long time ago about trust and trustworthiness, that Zidane didn’t find people trustworthy by never trusting them, never trying to trust.(And that means accepting the possibility of getting hurt, and not letting the hurt when it comes turn you bitter…)

And I wonder if maybe total inability to trust isn’t what makes Silvers, or some of them at least. If maybe closing yourself in and threatening the host of monsters outside with a knife isn’t what makes you a monster, too. There’s got to be a middle ground between naïveté and cynicism; between the idiot that can’t smell a trap a mile off, and the idiot whose mantra is ‘it’s not paranoia if they really ARE all out to get you’. The Golden Mean, and all that.

I’m working on it.