With Apologies to my Friends with Children ...
Life is a mystery to me in several ways. How is it that we can so easily get into financial trouble, but cannot get out of it no matter how much hard work we do? How is it that the worst music is that of youth, when every generation has its own music? How many times does Bill O'Reilly have to be proven wrong before people just switch him off?
Perhaps the most perplexing mystery of life to me is the desire of others to have children. Now, to be fair, there are a number of people who have procreated with no intention to do so whatsoever, it was a simple affair of hopefully enjoyable sex gone horribly awry. However, unlike what I would expect, some of these people do not fly into blind panic at the revelation of what they've done, but come to accept, even embrace this event. There is a certain joy and sense of excitement based on the approaching birth of the child. My question is, simply, why?
This author finds it is important to make himself clear: I love children. I think my fondness for them was far more liberal before I began teaching, but I will tirelessly try to protect, provide for and defend children in any way I can. Having come from an abusive childhood, the idea of children being exposed to any kind of harm is repulsive to me. Just as disgusting, to my mind anyhow, are people who say they hate children. Those sort of sentiments reek of the same time of smug satisfaction and superiority inherent in the words of bigots and holocaust deniers. To dislike an entire population due to their age is as sickening as if it were their skin color or nationality, but, in this case, it is a universal trait: Adults who hate children were once children themselves. They deny others the respect that they would've had at that age.
I write this only to clarify that my bafflement at having children is not aimed at the children themselves, but at the adults having them, particularly those that reproduce with a feeling of enthusiasm.
One would think that my confusion would be rooted in the pain of the past, but I haven't been a child for quite some time, at least 17 years now. It is not the humiliation, fear, despair, loss, discomfort, disappointment and rare-but-painful tragedy that hurts as much anymore, but rather the misery that has attended the years that have followed.
I have spent the better part of the last ten years as a worthless failure. I have tried in multitude of ways to better my conditions, from getting a college degree to moving overseas. None of it has born fruit. It's all been a pointless waste. Over and over again I have done everything I could to make a decent living, only to be reduced to clean toilets for 6.50 an hour (thank you, OSU), to do without medication for a painful medical condition that exactly one human being I've ever met suffers through, to having members of the fairer sex outright ignore my affections for those of abusive criminals who've actually been responsible for landing them in jail.
I have to ask: What has all this been for? What was the point of all this work and crashing disappointment if I get nothing for it in return? My only explanation is that there isn't one. I'm simply a result of my parent's thoughtlessness one night 34 years ago. There is no comfort, no peace, no accomplishment to be felt here, only defeat for every successful breath taken.
So for those couples yet to have children, I would plead you to consider what you're doing if you're thinking of having children. Those with children, don't let them turn out like me. It was a wrongheaded decision on the part of my parents that rendered ugly results.