issue #9: contemplating fear

Of all the emotions that ran through me during pregnancy, leading up to childbirth, and the actual birth, fear was not typically one of them.  I was anxious or excited, sometimes even angry or sad, sometimes joyous, but rarely fearful.  

Fear did creep in during those first few weeks, after the positive test, before the doctor’s appointment.  Fear that yet another one wouldn’t stick.  It showed up a little bit before our genetic testing, not knowing what to expect, preparing for the worst but hoping for the best.  Knowing we would have some difficult decisions to make, depending on the results. Oddly, I was not afraid of birth, or labor.  Perhaps it is having a L&D nurse in the family to set my mind and expectations straight, or perhaps it’s because I wholeheartedly trusted my medical team and my partner to guide me through it.  Or, most likely, perhaps it’s because I knew there was absolutely nothing I could do at that point to control the outcome - whatever was going to be, would be, and there was nothing I could do about it. 

But now, 10 months in, fear is a consistent, prevailing emotion.  Always there, hovering in the back of my mind.  I understand that part of this is for safety, protection. Genetically embedded and evolved in order to keep our babies, and ourselves, alive.  Our minds, in what seems like magic to me but is actually science, changing with past generations to recognize what is actually a danger in each new world, but hanging on to our innate instincts we were given to protect our families. Our catlike reflexes when we see them start to fall, or grabbing them before they can run into the street. The part of fear that allows us to live longer. The part of fear that makes me comfortable.

Like most parents, I am afraid of the practical things - will she choke on this strawberry?  Will she have a peanut allergy?  What if she gets sick?  Wow, cars have suddenly gotten a lot scarier, and what about the internet?  Am I a bad parent for posting a picture of her face on Instagram?  Did I just give up all her privacy?  Open her up to weirdos that look around for children?  Am I reading enough books? Giving enough baths? Feeding enough food?  Will she make friends when she goes to school?  Will we be able to afford college?  How can I protect her from, well, everything, while also allowing her to flourish, become independent?  

These days, though, there is another feeling of fear that I have noticed.  Sloshing around in the depths of my gut.  Less logical, practical.  More uncontrollable, existential.  This fear grows stronger with each report of new violence.  School shootings began while I was young, but not too young to remember a time before. They seemed far off and infrequent, an unfortunate accident rising from isolated depths of loneliness.  No longer.  Now, they are still unfortunate, still, I think, rising from isolated depths of loneliness, but no longer accidental, no longer infrequent or isolated. Our society has become immune to them, allowing them to flourish, because after each one there is no action. Nothing changes. We offer up our condolences, our thoughts and prayers.  We analyze the motive, who the shooter was as a person, how it could have led to this.  Maybe it was the video games?  Maybe it was the internet?  Maybe some unengaged parents with a passion for firearms and an astounding inability to parent through their selfishness? Perhaps all of the above. Or maybe it’s our access. We have unlimited access to killing machines. Our children have unlimited access to killing machines.  And we have a loneliness epidemic fueled by social media and confirmed by the strange corners of the internet where kids can go to learn how to kill not just themselves, but others.  And because we are so insistent on our freedoms, we do not stop it.  We let it happen because we think it means we are free. But to be free like this is to live in fear, and to live in fear is to stifle our lives, our children’s lives.  How many have been cut short because we have decided that the freedom of one is greater than a long life of hundreds, thousands more? 

My stomach sank to its absolute depths this weekend when I received the news alert that you know who had been shot at during a Pennsylvania rally.  I absolutely do not want him to be president and if he would just leave the public eye and go enjoy whatever is left of his gilded life at Mar-a-Lago I would be undeniably thrilled.  But to resort to violence is not the answer. And I just have this sinking feeling that this young man, who I am sure we will psycho-analyze until we are blue in the face but to no avail, has kicked off a new era of extreme division, hatred, and violence.  Sure, we have already been living in one, but every inch of my intuition is telling me that it is about to get worse. We are going to see generations of resentment, bad social policy, greed fueled class division, and systemic racism and misogyny bubble up and explode in the worst ways.  Our already divided and angry nation will become even more so, with one side hailing a mere human as god-like and persecuted, taking it into their own hands when it comes to retribution.  The other, employing their own set of distorted logic, assuming those on the other side are not worthy of conversation, that nothing can be done to change them, unreasonable in their beliefs and unfounded in their anger. 

We cannot go on like this, and every day I fear for my daughter.  I fear that she will never know progress. I fear that she will never know how to live without active shooter drills in school. I fear that she will hate her neighbors for no other reason than they believe differently, look different, appear different - because that is what is being sold to her.  I fear that we will be living in an era of unprecedented violence of which no one will escape unscathed.  I often think about leaving, about just getting up and driving to Canada, but then I fear that doing so is just running away.  But at what point is it necessary to say that enough is enough, and frankly, I would rather watch the country implode from afar than try to stay to fight for what I feel in my gut is right. Perhaps I’m being dramatic - I remember this same instinct rearing up in 2016, and again leading up to November 2020 - the reverberations of both we are still feeling.  But then it was just me.  Now, I have her. And the thought of raising her in a world so angry, so hateful, so dangerous is, quite frankly, terrifying. I do not have the answers. I only have sadness, and disappointment, and, of course, fear.  Words and community have always been the things to help me in the past, but now those feel inadequate.  I do not know where we go from here, how we fix this, without a complete overhaul of everything we know and hold dear.  But something has to change, we cannot continue on in this state of division.  

I hope that I can teach my daughter empathy, trust, and love.  That there is good in the world, and that there is hope.  I would love to see her grow up in a world in which we take care of one another, no matter what we believe.  A world in which we can coexist with one another’s personal views, preferences, living our lives as we wish and allowing others to do the same. Existing side by side not to tear down, to denigrate, to hate, but to lift up, encourage, learn from. I want to raise her in a way that doesn’t tolerate hatefulness, that speaks out against wrongs where she sees them and understands that together, we are better.  That rejects division but is curious about differences. That makes impactful change in the world where those of us before her have failed.  

But I, too, feel myself falling deeper each day into a place of rage, of hatred, of failing to misunderstand. Of despair.  I try to put on a happy face, to try to trick myself into believing that things will be ok, to show my daughter that I’m good. But am I? And are they?  It’s hard to know how to feel about this time we’re in, what may or may not happen next, and how to feel about it all.  I suppose history shows that this too, shall pass, and that somehow we will make it through.  But what will that look like on the other side?  Will it be a world that I want to live in?  That I want my daughter to live in?  I don’t have the answers, but I know I’m not the only one, staring at the ceiling all night, facing down those fears and wondering what I can do, what we can do, where we go from here.