My daughter is 21 years old today. She is a symphony of contradictions. Her personality is the height of both the intelligence and eccentricity of both her parents, coupled with their misanthropy. Her parents were confused, narcissistic people who didn’t think things through. Her mother, especially, was lost and wandering. When I look at her, there is no doubt that people are a product of their environment. She is adaptable and critical and idealistic and strong, because her circumstances made her that way. It was the perfect storm to create such an individual – someone who seeks the higher purpose regardless of the bleak reality staring back. She impresses me – something most people can’t do.
I was 21 when she was born. That’s bordering on passive tense, because I was passive about my entire pregnancy. It wasn’t happening (not really) until my water started to leak – not break, but leak the night before my 21st birthday. Her dad was at a concert in Denver that weekend, because he didn’t want to miss Santana, even though I was already a week overdue. When my water started to leak, I did what I always did back then … nothing. What’s wrong with a person who is a bystander in their own life? Who just sits around waiting for things to happen? It’s not like I was one of those stupid bitches who give birth in a toilet or anything; it’s just that I didn’t accept the gravity of what was happening until I was bent over having crippling contractions at Methodist Hospital at 1:30 in the morning while some asshole tried to shove an epidural needle into my spine (while telling me not to move or I might be paralyzed). Then, and before, and ever since, I’ve always been a proponent of “give me drugs to fix the problem.” Not a great life motto, in retrospect. When the doctor told me he would have to cut me open after 12 hours of labor because the baby was not breathing any more, reality started to set in and hurt a little bit more. Reality cracked through the veneer of bullshit I had so haphazardly constructed my whole life.
My daughter is the age now that I was when she was born. For some reason that seems relevant or impactful, even though I can’t feel anything about it. I want to be emotional about the passage of time, but I don’t feel anything. I feel … a little numb, frankly. I don’t miss my youth; I am damn glad to be rid of it, quite honestly. Maybe this is what it feels like to have a midlife crisis. I know for a fact that I already had a (couple of) quarter-life crises, so maybe it’s just time for another one? Turns out that I don’t know anything of importance. All that knowledge and wisdom in my head is just packed-up space. Stuff that has no practical application in the game of life. Things that mean nothing in reality. All that knowledge, and I still have to keep my day job to pay the shitty bills that accumulate. I think I should have been a Russian novelist; at least I’d have a reason for my fucked-up perspective on life. Death and war and famine would at least give me solid, tragic backdrop.
I’m going to watch this girl who came from me live her life, and she is going to inspire me to be a better version of myself; I can feel it. All she has to do is live the way she is right now – without apologies, and with purpose – and I will follow her lead. I spent a lifetime telling her to blaze her own path and think for herself and not cave to social pressures, and she has done a beautiful job of following my advice. Now it’s my turn to follow it.
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