No, this isn't some bashfully unsubtle confession about being afraid of falling in love. I am legitimately afraid of the insect itself. Alright, they're pretty from far away. I used to love butterflies. In fact, one of my favorite pastimes as a kid was to chase them around with a butterfly net, or even catch them with my bare hands. But there was a time when I was about 8 or 9 years old that I had caught a bunch of them and kept them in a jar. My teacher told me to let them go at the end of the day, so I opened the jar. They all flew out, and one flew right into my fucking mouth. As soon as I inhaled for a scream, it went down my throat and I nearly choked to death. It was painfully ticklish, and I couldn't stop coughing for a good hour. And then I cried the rest of the day about how I killed a butterfly by eating it. Nonetheless, I was traumatized, and since then I've been really scared of butterflies. They're frighteningly spastic too. And why are their wingspans so giant in proportion to their tiny-ass bodies?? Unnecessary.
There was a time when I very much looked forward to being a mother. Starting in high school, I started writing in my diary in the hopes that my children would one day read it and learn from it. As of today, I have 3 full journals for them. I know what to do during pregnancy (what vitamins to take, what to expect, what foods and shit to avoid, etc), and I actually looked forward to it--even the labor. I plan on doing a natural birth, so I put up with cramps every month without taking any Midol or birth control to ease the pain because I want to prep myself for it. I'm realizing in the past few years, however, just how difficult motherhood is. Maybe I've got a stunted perspective on it because I myself was an only child raised by a single mother who struggled to get by in a foreign country. I can't begin to understand how difficult it was for my mother, nor how she managed to raise me by herself. I also know what a horrible little demon-child I myself was, and I don't know how the hell I would handle a child like myself. Nonetheless, I never did drugs, I am responsible with sex, and I turned out pretty decent in general. What if I fail as a mother and I raise a menace to society? What if my child doesn't respect me? What if I don't respect my child (i.e. as an individual)? What if I become the overprotective, micromanaging, suffocating mother I told myself I never wanted to be? What if I can't provide for my child the way I would want to? What if my child ever goes missing, or gets a terminal disease at a young age, or starts hanging out with a bad crowd? What if my child has some sort of disability that I'm too impatient or ignorant to understand and accommodate? What if my child ends up resenting me and pushing me out of his/her life--the life that I helped come into fruition--the way I've observed my half-brother resent our dad? With these worries, I start to think more and more each day that I am undeserving of and unfit for motherhood.
I'm not worried enough about it to the point where I would stop drinking alcohol and smoking hookah altogether (after all, I'm starting to get the sultry smoky sound), but it does frighten me that my most prized livelihood could be taken away from me. I fear for it every time I am recovering from illness and my voice isn't back to normal. I had swine flu in sophomore year of college, and that was probably the longest time I'd ever gone without singing. You know how muscles work--use it or lose it. When I started singing again after recovering from good ol' H1N1, my voice felt unfamiliar and wobbly. I've also got some unfounded belief that if I can't sing anymore, people won't like me anymore. It's almost like I believe that that is my only redeeming quality (I'm fairly sure a lot of people would agree. They could say they're joking, but I'm not so sure...). I've met so many people from singing (e.g. from performances, audiences/listeners that become friends, etc) that I believe my friends will be gone once the reason for our initial friendship is gone. I think ultimately, then, this could probably translate to a fear of being alone more than a fear of losing my voice itself, if it were not for the fact that singing in itself intrinsically gives me much happiness. Hearing my voice harmonize with songs, being able to sing along with the radio, it all makes me feel... fulfilled. I've been singing my whole life. I can't imagine my life without it. I would rather be blind than not be able to sing.
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