Panic Attack #768

Somewhere between my eager anticipation and happiness, there is fear. And it is becoming more real everyday:

I fear that your birth will bring about a 360 degree-turn in my life;

I fear that once i look at your beautiful face, i’ll never be able to look at anybody else the same way again;

I fear that once i get to hold you, it will break my heart to put you back down;

I fear that i’ll never want to leave your side once i get used to being with you;

I fear that i’ll love you a thousand times more than i love your dad (and i don't mind at all that he'll love you a thousand times more too)

I fear that your smile could ruin every ounce of objectivity in me;

I fear that when you wrap your little fingers into mine, my whole world gets wrapped in it too.

and in about 60 days, i fear that you will define for me what life is really about. :)

contemplating.

Last day

Sana i could make this come true.

My dear eldest nameless child.

By now, you can probably hear me and your father talk about you endlessly every night, heck, every moment that we are together. By now, you probably already know that our goodnights revolve around what your name will be after you are born and about how I always complain that my name will be reduced to a mere middle initial because your father wants his name imprinted all over you. Don’t worry, I have no qualms about it at all. Truth be told, I am actually even prouder that he considers you to be his own wonderful creation. And that I co-created you with him. (My conversation with your father will have a different perspective though: “He co-created you with me.” Don’t mind us. Someday you will understand and will laugh about our silly competitions)

By now, the conversations you hear between me and your father may already have wielded your opinion about how we will be as parents. So, as early as now, am writing this to manage your expectations (and in the same way, manage our fears of not being the best parents we hope we could be).

Your father and I, we are not perfect. We’re far from it actually. At 29 and 30, we’re still children prematurely pushed into adulthood because of you. Let me tell you a little secret: I haven’t planned a future with your father because I never really believed we’d end up together. And you coming into our lives is a welcome change from that mindset. As you can probably tell from our nightly discussions and arguments.

Though I cannot speak for your father, I can tell you little things indicative of how I think he will fare as a father:

• Am not sure if you remembered the time we fought about him waking up at 2am to watch a football match between Spain and Netherlands? I cried a whole lot then because he preferred watching the FIFA finals over me losing sleep, turned out he was blogging about how he would wake up the same wee hours of the morning to take care of you when you are born.

• Your father tosses and turns a lot when he sleeps, that is why I am having second thoughts about having him sleep in the same bed with you. However, now I am pregnant with you, he always makes it a point to check whether you are comfortable, if my sleeping position does not hurt you, and if his embrace is not squeezing you inside my tummy. And he does not like my idea of keeping his bed separate from yours.

• He has zero organizational skills. In fact, he even voluntarily refers to his life as an “organized chaos” – Not to worry though; he is learning to clean up our house for starters. Lately, he has claimed the kitchen and the bathroom to be his domain.

• He’ll insist on turning the music louder than a normal person can tolerate, but I can assure you that he’ll instinctively cover your ears to shield you from the sound of thunders during a storm.

• He does not like talking to people, except a select few. And you’re on top of that selection – since he apparently talks to you a lot, even tries to verbalize you thoughts sometimes. Which I do not always agree with.

• Your father never learned to say goodnight to me. What he learned to do every night though is to listen to your heartbeat, though most of the time, it’s just my stomach digesting my dinner; to kiss and have a short conversation with you; to kiss and hold my hand till I fall asleep; to wake up to turn the aircon off whenever I complain that it’s cold already.

• Your father has had lots of women before me, a few serious ones, but he assured us that none of them could claim to be mothers of his child. You’re his first. (We might need to revalidate this one though. :)

• He is a wonderful child to your grandparents and a great kuya to your cousin. I am sure he’ll be even better as a father.

• Your father is my best friend. Sure, we fight a lot, we criticize each other a lot, we compete a lot about who is better at everything, we throw tantrums to annoy each other. But at the end of the day, we accept and try to live with each other the best way we can. I look forward to the day when you, too, could be best friends.

Coming Clean.

As a rule, I never open the topic of weddings in any conversation. But I do not necessarily hate the subject. In fact, weddings excite me just as much as the prospect of buying new shoes come sweldo weekends. Well, mainly because it does involve me buying new shoes the nearest sweldo weekend if I am to attend somebody’s wedding. I like looking at wedding pictures and formulating my own fashion dos and don’ts based on the same photos. I like watching prenup videos better than watching sappy Tagalog soaps. I like seeing people in love and declaring it to the world.

But my excitement ends just about there.

I dread having to listen to the whole procedure especially the part where couples recite their wedding vows. I have yet to hear somebody deliver lines that do not sound like an excerpt from an 80’s greeting card. I dread having to gather with all the other female guests for the ceremonial tossing of the bouquet because I hate the thought of it landing on my hands, with all the silly superstitions and beliefs that come with catching it. I prefer going alone, without a date, rather than be with my boyfriend during weddings because it would mean that he would be among the other guys who might end up with the groom’s wedding garter. I am sure I’d hate to watch him place it on the leg of the person that is not me amid bellows and catcalls from the crowd. I hate attending weddings but I do not hold my feelings against those who want to participate in this primitive ritual.

I could probably come up with a thousand reasons why I hate weddings. And just to be fair with myself, I have also given it a lot of thought, all the while wondering if I am just being illogical and short-sighted when looking at weddings. After weighing all my facts, I have decided that there is nothing wrong with me, and my bias is not at all that irrational.

Why? When we go down to the bottom of it, I haven’t really mentioned that I do not want to get married someday. I hate those generic and cheesy wedding vows, but that does not mean that I cannot come up with something fresh and original, even if it comes to the point that I myself have to write the lines for my groom. And for my own wedding, I can just ditch the other traditions that I hate and I am good to go.

The reason it makes me uncomfortable discussing it now is because I do not have ready and honest answers to the question “When are you getting married?” or “Why are you not yet married?.” Well, the severity of these questions largely depends on the personal circumstance of the person being asked. For me, the second question is worse because it has a tinge of finality and hopelessness as opposed to the first question. I have answers in my head but good morals and simple etiquette would not allow me to reply with “because I can see your life and I do not want the same for me” or with the simple but effective “I don’t see how it is any of your business”, especially when it your family who is bugging you with these types of questions. For family, my normal answer would be “I am not yet ready for something that serious”; for friends, it will be something like “what do I need it for, as long as I am with someone?”, all the while knowing that both of my family and friends are not buying any of it.

So why indeed? While both of my answers above are partly true, a much more major reason would be because, when all the shoe-shopping and other preparations are done, the fanfare would not change the fact that a wedding is a symbol of something really major that I am not sure I could sustain for life. Being so self-righteous, I honestly believe it is selfish to bind another person into a life contract with no escape clauses given the volatility of human emotions. What if the other person feels differently after two years? What if it is I who would feel differently sometime in the future? I would not want either of us to suffer needlessly because we were so in love then and we failed to look at things as objectively as possible. In short, I am fair and selfless. Second reason: I am a big spender and my annual net income is still not enough to cover all the debts that I have accumulated over the years. Given this plight, being wed is the least of my worries. Besides, it would be unfair to the person I am marrying to share in the mess that I am in. Third but not the least bit unimportant: Because he hasn’t asked me yet. Given an actual proposal, who knows? I just might flush all my arguments down the drain. After all, nobody would really believe that spiel about selflessness and fairness, when I have been consistently unreasonable and stubborn all my life, especially when it comes to getting what I want – from toys to boys – to a concatenate of both. And I really do need someone to share my finances, for better or worse.

But for now, I am content to be with someone who I hope to be with long into the future. Depending on how volatile our emotions would be. Or on how long he could tolerate my cooking.