I just woke up from a dream…

At first, it was a story about this awkward girl telling a story about this strange autistic boy marrying Britney spears. It seemed like a normal enough story (besides the obvious) except she said some really odd parts like she said something strange about “I could have called the cops on her, but I didn’t”… The marriage was a big fancy ordeal and the story was told in a big hotel…

Then all of a sudden, the perspective shifts. There was no Britney Spears, there never was. The girl was a drug addict who was together with the boy. She’s pregnant but has serious problems, an opiate addition. They’re on a trip and they’re in a much more normal hotel. Suddenly she starts to very prematurely give birth to the child who came out looking off. I woke up in the perspective of the boy watching this baby just slide out of this girl with the feeling something really bad was happening and not knowing what to do about it.

I think I understand where this dream came from. I recently became a father after 10 years of trying with my wife. Our son is perfect, he’s so smart and beautiful and strong, at just 6 months old. He reacts strongly to people, and when he sees me or plays with me or I sing to him he smiles at me and looks at me. Always has.

Before I met her, I briefly dated a stripper with a kid. Beautiful girl, she was clean at the time of drugs but drank too much. I didn’t realize how bad her past was. I grew attached to her kid somewhat but our time together ended and she headed off to one of the big cities. After that I know the story grew darker. She’d call me fucked out of her mind, one time her kid was taken away by the state. Later the kid was taken in by her parents.

Today I was thinking about how different our son is to her son at the time. My wife was once friends with the stripper too, she told me he had problems because she was abusing substances during the pregnancy, and he had anger issues and ADD and ADHD from that and because of the messed up stuff he’s had to see in his short life.

That had a big impact on me with my newly developed paternal instincts. The difference between the two babies is so marked, it had a big impact on me thinking that her little baby could be so harmed by selfish decisions.

Now that I’m a dad myself, I look at a lot of people’s decisions in a much more judgemental light. Instead of just saying “I understand”, now I say “how could you do that if you have the same feelings I do?”