Mouse bad, keyboard good
This is a shortie. I just want to tell you a couple of things pretty quickly.
1. One microgram is one millionth of a gram.
2. One microgram of certain stuff may make an enormous fucking difference in your brain.
3. Happiness is chemistry.
4. As is unhappiness.
6. These are some stats.
7. That’s all for now. I’m good. Thanks for asking. I hope you’re doing alright as well.
There’s been radio silence here for a while now, interestingly not because I haven’t had anything to share with you from my regular rambling repertoire of reprehensibly reckless recommendations. In fact I have quite a few posts I’ll be happy to perpetrate quite shortly.
No the cause of my negligence is that I’ve acquired a new affliction. Symptoms are pretty serious and include terrible insomnia, severe anxiety, sudden bursts of emotions and reoccurring nausea.
It’s a chronic condition, and only rarely does anyone get rid of it in their lifetime, and in those cases it’s always resulting in terrible depression (well… except in cases of people that are already severely suffering from disturbing mental issues).
I’ve already spent a fortune on different necessities to treat the condition in the proper manner and I can clearly see I’m not going to get rich in this lifetime.
The name of this curious syndrome? Let me present: Mathilde Trømborg Jacobsen.
That’s right. I’ve been fatherized, daddyfied and papa’ed and holy crap has my life ever changed. Firstly I’ve never been so much in love, and secondly I’ve never been quite so fucking tired before. (This from a man with chronic periodical insomnia. Not the kind you brag about. The kind that hurts.)
It’s been said countless times before, and it will be repeated to the end of time; Having a child is a crazy, lovely, terrifying, messed up experience. That part about it being a treasured and beautiful experience for the father to attend the birth? Bullshit! We will be there; but do not be fooled, prospective mothers, we are there for your sake. There isn’t one of us that doesn’t secretly yearn for the days when the mans role during child birth was to nervously smoke a lot of cigarettes in the waiting room.
Mathilde, being a daughter of mine, entered the world explosively and wreaking havoc and mayhem to all that beheld her. And, well… A hundred years ago I would be a single parent. Then again; A hundred years ago I’d be wearing my trousers pulled up to my nipples, probably worrying about the potato harvest and speaking in a weird staccato. The point is; It was dramatic. Very dramatic. 1 But both lovely mother and lovely daughter are now doing well.
So we’ve established that I do love my sweet little imp, but boy does she ever scare the crap out of me some times. On the subway this morning after spending about 4 the last 48 hours asleep I had to distract myself and get an outlet, so these tweets what was I came up with:
- I’m sure I’m losing followers Like I’m spending money with all this spam, but so be it. The torture of parents by infants needs a voice.
- FACT: an infants screams are designed by evolution to drive (grown-up) people completely bonkers. Much like the stench of corpses.
- FACT: Depriving someone of sleep is a well known form or torture (or “enhanced interrogation” for you yanks).
- FACT: The result of the two latter excrutiating experiences combined is far, far greater than the sum of their parts.
- FACT: Infants have no wish to cause you harm. It is simply in their nature. Much like that frog-riding scorpion. This does not help.
- FACT: Much like a camel can retain impressive amounts of water an infant can save up to three times its own weight in poop in its body.
- FACT: Infants live by and enforce Murphys extended law. This is why they will strike exactly when you are about to enter REM sleep.
- But she really loves me. I shouldn’t have made her so mad. It’s all my fault really.
Well. It says it all I guess. Still:
She is my sweet little princess (think Leia, not Cinderella), and I vow to spend my life protecting and supporting her, and make sure she has somewhere she can feel safe, no matter how crappy of a human she may turn out to become. “It’s bullshit to say that my life now has meaning”. It already seemed very meaningful to me, but it’s very much true that my life now has a slightly different focus, and yes, another meaning entirely. That, my friends, is all.
Finally I’m allowed to talk about this.
A couple of months back my life took a turn for the strange. My girlfriend and I had for some months been trying to work through some problems in our relationship, and long story short we spent that weekend apart giving both of us some time to think, and that following monday we decided to go our separate ways. This was a friendly break-up mind you. We do love each other. We just can’t live together. (Although, ironically, we still do.) She’s a wonderful girl and I’m a bit worried about how I’ll get along without her.
We were scheduled to go to a wedding the next Saturday, and we joked about the alanity 1 of it all. The joke got even more hilarious on friday when my now ex-girlfriend surprised me with a three-litre carton of wine and a pregnancy-test with a blue dot on it. 2 Holy twist of fate Batman!
So long story short; We’ve been thinking a lot about what to do about this, and we’ve decided (unanimously) to keep it. Lord knows there’s enough kids out there with divorced parents (statistics say 50% of all marriages in Norway end in divorce), so you might even argue that it’d be an advantage to us that we already know we’ll have to work together on this despite of not being romantically involved anymore.
Of course there’s a lot stuff to be considered when making this decision. First and foremost of course is what I mentioned above. Apart from the consideration above, which of course was crucial, I also have some genetics to take into account. Depending on which site you’re visiting you may already know that I suffer from Bipolar Disorder 3 which is a hereditary disease. Melodramatic as it may sound it is a factor to consider when deciding to have children. It wasn’t too hard for me to decide that it’s not going to make a difference. First of all there’s a good chance it’ll be a non-issue. BP tends to skip a generation. Secondly I’d take great offense at any suggestion that it’d be better not to be born than to suffer from this disease. The only reason my condition has caused me real (and real they were) problems is that it was discovered so late and being aware of the signals I dare say my own experience and knowledge (and that of my ex-girlfriend, what with her having lived with me) should prevent that to be the case.
So am I ready for this? Of course I’m not, but I’m looking forward to it and although I’m scared shitless I’m pretty sure this’ll be the most interesting, devastating, exhilarating, amazing, trying, rewarding thing I’ve ever done.
