My Own Road

Satan's being a brain fuggler again.

Through the last month, I've felt it--the devil is messing with my head. March is usually in my top four months of the year, but not so this year. Instead it has been a month of panic, guilt, depression, and meltdown. Reasons for the turmoil are already being assembled in future postings, but one of the main reasons is this--I'm on my own road.

For me, sharing a common human experience is one of the most important realizations for me. It's what drew me to literature, writing, and language. Growing up, I shied away from most literature because I saw it as the musings of the pompous and snotty--pricks that could never have an understanding of what I had to deal with in life. It wasn't until college when a brilliant professors made it all click for me, spun that magical thread that showed me how I was connected to everybody, that out there, somewhere, hundreds, if not thousand and even millions, of people know what I go through daily (sort of like I Heart Huckabees, but less crazy). Lately, however, I've been feeling a lot more of the solitude of life.

I dealt with this when my wife was pregnant. For this reason, I loved lamaze classes because it let me connect with people, I rediscovered that thread. Now, that thread seems to have disappeared. Being the only expecting couple among my friends was tricky. What my wife dealt with was unknowable by any of the other wives, and the anxiety of becoming a father was unknowable among the husbands.

It's happening again now that my son is here. It's interesting to see how the dynamic of the group has changed. Some of it may have been unavoidable even without a child, but with a car seat in the back and a diaper bag across the shoulder, it feels more obvious. None of the changes were intentional or malicious, but they are very real and quite odd to deal with.

As the only father in my social circle (but there's another on the way. Yippee.), I feel I am on my own road that is heading in not a different direction, just a different route. Maybe I'm taking Route 66 while the others are blazing along the interstate. I don't know. Whatever it is, though, I feel a unique tug and direction to my life right now that I'm not sensing from the others I hang out with. More of this to come in soon-coming, perhaps slightly depressing posts.