CN: MENTAL ILLNESS
For this episode, I want to tackle a feeling that has been omnipresent during my experience as a parent. Guilt is a feeling that I am very familiar with. I've always been prone to massive bouts of guilt over trivial things. Recently, I have learned that part of this is due to the mental illnesses I live with. However, these feelings have also stemmed from the narratives I told about myself that I mentioned in episode one. When you constantly criticise yourself and tell yourself that you're awful and that you’ll fail at everything you do, the guilt of falling people rolls over your existence like an avalanche.
All of these things are intertwined, of course, and to complicate matters, even more, there are things that I still to this day think that I deserve to carry guilt for. These transgressions weren't trivial –’ they are big mistakes I struggle to forgive myself for and am still working on.
Parenthood has been a minefield of guilt. It's probably the prevalent issue I have had over the past two years as a father-to-be and a father-in-action. All of the topics I have talked about in this series have an element of guilt tied into them in some way or another. They continue to impact me every day. But it's not just mental illnesses or my years of telling myself that I am a piece of crap.
I didn't want to be a father unless I could be the kind of father I wanted to be. I've seen plI've of deadbeat dads who thought their part in parenthood ended after conception. I've encountI've many Dads who use the term 'babysitting' when looking after their kids. I've seen plI've of couples where the mother does all the hidden labour while the Dad plays golf. I didn't want to be that Dad. I wanted to be better. I wanted to be partners with my wife – not another baby.
I have no apologies for wanting to be the best Dad I could be and for learning from other men's mistakes. However, the problem is that the kind of father I genuinely want to be probably doesn't exist. The person I visualised isn't human. They don't stumble. They enjoy every aspect of the journey, and because of that, their child magically has no issues. If that comes off as holier-than-thou virtue signalling, then so be it. I have built a straw man to challenge the role of the world's best Dad. But while in a debate, you usually create a straw man that's easy to beat, I've built one that will win every time so that all I ever live with is the feeling of being a loser.
ONE
When Ava was six months old, we had our first night together, just the two of us. That sounds weird, I'm aware, and like I’m a late bloomer. But Gems had been on maternity leave, and I travelled for work a bit back then. Hence, she had multiple opportunities to look after her herself. In contrast, I didn't get once to return the favour. Additionally, we had been able to have a couple of nights and weekends away at this point where my parents had looked after her - it's not like she had been imprisoned every night with a baby. And I realise as I say all this, I'm being incredibly defensive, which probably implies some guilt on my end for having taken so long to give her a night off completely...but anyhow.
Things went well. We had a good time. I fed her, played with her, got her to nap – I just did all the usual parenting stuff you have to do with a six-month-old, and it was a little nerve-wracking at times, but it was also fun. It felt good to prove that I could do it and was getting on with the job. I could see a future where it didn't matter who was at home. It would be entirely consistent, regardless.
The secret to my confidence at this point was that I was good at getting Ava to sleep. That was my job. She was a gift in this regard. She seemed to fall asleep quickly and loved sleeping through the night. We are confident that this is because we had to bottle feed from day one, so she never went hungry. There was never that stress and trauma that mothers endure when the milk supply doesn't come when needed or when the baby has trouble feeding. It was great, and I was proud to have a job I owned consistently and successfully.
This night was no different. I gave her a bottle a little bit earlier than what was probably normal (I can't recall specifics), and she fell asleep instantly. I was comfortable with her there, so instead of waiting about twenty minutes, I watched TV with her on me for an hour or so. I had found that the longer she slept on you, the better. The most considerable risk tended to be moving her too early when she wasn't in REwasn'tp but was halfway to falling asleep. So, I figured there would be no problem.
However, just as my show finished and I got ready to dismount the chair, she started to stir and woke up. No big deal, I thought. It's not like she is fully awake. I will pat her bum with some white noise in her room for five minutes, and she'll nod off. It wasn't the first time she had woken for me to have to do a bit of extra work. I'll get her downstairs, and we'll start again. She should be out like a light in no time.
You know where this is going. Ava didn't go back to sleep in no time. I thought I carried her around her room, patting her bum, shhhing her and listening to lullabies for about twenty minutes. After a while, my arms started to get very sore. When I put her down, she started screaming at me. Not only was she not falling asleep, but she was also actually getting more aggressively awake with each passing second. I tried lying her down and patting her bum in the cot. Nothing. I picked her back up to try and get her to sleep. Nothing. I kept reinserting her dummy, hoping she would soothe herself. Nothing. After about 45 minutes, I lost the plot a bit. I didn't know how it could have gone so wrong so quickly. We were having such a good night, and now she was so angry at me, screaming so loud, and I had used every trick in my book to get her back to sleep. It had been a dream to get to sleep for six months, except for the times she had been sick. She wasn't sick now, though. She was screaming and screaming at me.
My patience started to fray. I was staying calm, and I was holding it together. Still, the tone of that screaming started to get more intense, and my resilience started to shatter exponentially. Once the first chip happened, it triggered a chain reaction where a total collapse was imminent within seconds. I held her in my arms, she screamed at me, and I tried to put my dummy in. Nothing. The white noise started getting on my nerves because it wasn't doing anything.
Then there was just one scream too many, and I knew I had to leave. I put her down in her cot, screamed in rage and in a blinding second where I could see what I was about to do and knew it was a bad idea but continued anyway; I slammed my fist against the side of her cot. The moment I hit the wood, it rattled. It was like the world had stopped. I knew I had screwed up. The hit probably wouldn't have put a dent in the mud. But it made a hell of a racket, and I was yelling at the time like a madman.
The silence was instantaneous. And you know, if a baby cries and suddenly goes silent, there is no good outcome. The half a second it took for her to erupt into a new scream at a new pitch felt more like half an hour because I knew what was coming. I scampered out of the room and slumped onto the floor as Ava's scream went to 11. The noise didn't concern me. It was the pitch. To an outsider, your baby’s screams sound the same, but you quickly pick up the different emotions as a parent. You might not know the specific thing they are demanding, but you can tell the difference between an angry cry and a scared one. This was a scary one.
I sat in the hall for a few seconds, and my internal monologue kicked into overdrive.
What is wrong with you? She's six months old. You're 36. Do you know that hitting an object is the first step to hitting people? You're a monster. You will be a violent dad who hits his kid and his wife. You can't even give your wife a night off without traumatising your child. What is wrong with you? You're a monster. You just scared a six-month-old. Do you feel like a big man now?
I knew I had to get in there and fix it, but I didn't know how. I picked her up, held her close, and apologised to her like I was being paid. In desperation, I took her upstairs and made a bottle, hoping it might stop the screaming and calm her down if she could handle it. She drained it like she completely drained it and fell asleep on me in about ten minutes. And I just sat there.
She was hungry, you monster. You didn't think of maybe feeding her before attacking her cot? What is wrong with you? You are everything that you don't want to be in a parent. She will be scared of you and hate you and have good reason to. You are a monster. I put her back to bed. And I stayed up listening to my thoughts for the rest of the night.
TWO
One night, I was asked this by a guy I had just met. He was a friend of a friend, and he was trying to make small talk. And he didn't mean anything by it. There's no gimme more accessible to ask a parent of a beautiful baby girl than 'is it worth it? It's kind of like asking, 'do you like air’ or 'do you like having enough food to eat’?
Of course, he didn't realise that he was speaking to an overthinker who could represent New Zealand at the anxiety Olympics. It was very awkward because I became flustered and didn't answer immediately – and you should answer that question immediately. That's a no-hesitation question right there.
But I didn't even didn't. I couldn't figure out what to say. Each millisecond of silence became more noticeable, so I resorted to answering a question with a question. 'Do you want to have kids' I enquired curiously. 'Oh yes,' he answered without hesitation, a genuine smile breaking out over his face. 'Oh, you will find it worth it then’, I said, and he nodded hesitantly back at me.
That was the end of our chats for the night, and it was kind of the end of my chatting at all. I was consumed by self-loathing and guilt. How could I have bobbled such an easy question? You don't drop the ball on 'is it worth it?’ What are they going to be talking about on the drive home? They'll probably be contacting Oranga Tamariki to let them know a sociopath is living with a baby in Hamilton.
It haunted me. I stared at my daughter, and I could feel panic washing over me because there were times when I thought it wasn't worth it. I had kind of just disregarded them. But what was I doing? Was I a fraud?
I thought about this a lot, as you're probably not surprised to hear. I was asked this question in a state of stress and fatigue. I was in mourning for the simplicity and freedom of my own life – and sometimes I am in mourning for that all over again, just like you sometimes feel profound grief for a loved one you haven’t thought about in a while.
I went over it and over it and over it again, pondering the very nature of the question. What happens if you say no? You can't exactly do anything about it, can you? What on earth would the dinner have been like then?
I spread the question out into different scenarios. Is my sense of isolation and failure worth giving up sleep-filled nights? Possibly not. Is her laughing and cuddling me with her arms outstretched worth giving up regular nights at the movies? Yea, of course it is. Is the financial strain worth the sacrificing of financial freedom? Um...I don't know. Does being able to smell her hair in the evenings worth giving up mammoth Xbox sessions on the couch? Depends on the game.
I felt guilty about this for ages. After unpacking it many times, I realised later that this question is so stupid and cruel. I don't feel mad at him for asking it – as I said, we'd only met. He is a lovely man who will make a phenomenal father. He was doing what you do when you only know about the person you are speaking to is that they're a new father. You ask them a gimme and hope it will put everyone at ease.
But I was asked that question at a moment when I was frazzled and tired. There had been multiple moments over my parenting journey where I thought it wasn't worth it. Of course, there had. How can there not be?
In my best state, I know that thoughts are essentially meaningless. Our inner monologue doesn't defidoesn'tIt's our actions that do. But I take those thoughts seriously a lot of the time because I am not in my best state of mind. That's part of the struggle and journey, as I think I have made pretty clear by now. Often, I don't handle my thoughts properly, and they overwhelm me. And this same thing happens to so many people—this time, I could.
Yes, I had those thoughts before. But they didn't mean anything. I didn't need to be scared of the question the way I had been. The question is so absurd and so simplistic that it can't possibcan't a proper gauge of reality. There were times when I said that having my daughter wasn't worth it, and there are times I say it now. I also have fake arguments with people in the showers and think many things aren't true.
At the risk of this whole episode turning into some cliche, overdone masturbatory meta-mediation on the role of the author in their work, I need to talk about this show. I need to express that I am aware this whole experience has probably unfair to her. I have been plagued by the guilt of knowing that I produced this series while she was a baby. I haven't been to communicate with her and ask her if she is comfortable with me doing it and whether she is okay with me exposing parts of our lives to strangers like this.
I feel guilty, wondering if I have sacrificed her in my wish to model vulnerability to other parents out there. I worry that I have only highlighted the negatives of my parenting journey. I feel guilty that people might think I don't love my daughter or don't like her, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I feel guilty that I have mined personal, private trauma for my benefit. At the same time, she innocently continues being her beautiful self, unaware that I'm scrutinising our relationship to relay to people she'll never meet. I feel guilty if I've done a lousy job with this, and she now has a lot of people pitying her for having a father that would be so cruel as to write a podcast series about how he has struggled with being her father.
I don't imagine Ava will listen to this podcast in the future. By the time she's old enough, even potentially to have any interest in her parents’ younger days, we will probably have moved on from podcasts to some other form of content that we all will feel stupid for not seeing was the future.
But she might hear this show one day. Or read my transcripts. Or she will somehow encounter this version of me talking about my struggles with fatherhood. I worry that she will resent me for it, and I won't have an argument to sway her away from not resenting me.
I feel proud of my work with this podcast in some ways. I have had beautiful messages from other parents telling me how they have related to these struggles. I also feel like I have succeeded in modelling the vulnerability that I want people to feel comfortable showing around me. I feel like I have been forced to unpack some of my complex emotions, which will help me become a better dad.
But have I made those connections by throwing my daughter under the bus? Have I potentially improved my ability to be a good dad by exploiting her? Have I given myself something to be proud of at her expense?
I don't know. The jury is kind of out on that one. Hopefully, next week's episode will make it up to her even slightly.