________  ________  ________   
   2021-06-28                                   /        \/        \/    /   \  
                                               /       __/         /_       _/ 
   Our daughter was born 13 June 2021, 14:10  /        _/         /         / 
UTC, just before midnight our time, and life  \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
since then has been a thick, gauzy blur.        /        \/        \/    /   \
                                               /        _/         /_       _/
   When you  talk to other  parents, they'll  /-        /        _/         /
joke with you about how  little sleep you're  \________/\________/\___/____/
going to get and  about how  quickly you get
used to handling dirty diapers and all that superficial stuff but no one talks
about how hollowing those first weeks of parenthood are.

   It's hard.

   Maybe my experience is  unlike most. I'm sure  there's a lot of  motivated,
put-together  types with upper middle management jobs and  gym memberships who
take having a baby in stride. A straight-line life. Drinks on Friday, football
on Saturday. New baby? No problem!

   I'm  not  like  that,  though.   I'm  a  long-legged  spider  navigating  a
crystalline web of depression, addiction and anxieties.  Gingerly testing each
thread for signs  of self harm or self  sabotage. My relationship  with myself
is, by your average measure, strained. I route around damage well but a change
this significant is a shock to a delicate ecosystem.

   Having  a baby  is  an  exciting, thrilling, wonderful  moment.  A rush  of
adrenaline, a dizzying ballet of midwives and doctors.  But then it's over and
you come home and... and what?

   You've spent the better part of a year  working towards this moment and you
return as  if from war, shell  shocked, into a life that no longer fits you. A
stranger's house, a stranger's clothes, a stranger's habits.

   You haunt your old life. Cleaning and examining  objects, turning them over
in your hand trying to  remember what they  were for, why they were important.
You try to have conversations with people you used to know. Every conversation
is the same.

   There's no  more  accurate term  to having a child than "giving life".  You
can't create a  life from  nothing, you know  in your heart that  in  creating
their life you sacrifice a significant part of your own, but like a magician's
ledger, you don't know the cost until after you've agreed to the terms.

   All you can do is pay the debt, hand over  a piece of your life to  another
to use as they will.

   I feel strained  to breaking, stretched to  fraying, but I  hand over  this
piece of my life to her willingly and without hesitation. Her name is Thomasin
Dorothy and she fills the hole we made in my life tenfold.



EOF