Sometimes my reactions startle me.
I found out today that a close friend got some important news: his daughter (who lives in South Africa) will probably come live with him in Minneapolis. He was so excited that he didn’t eat all day. Literally, all day. “You’re going to see a new side of me,” he said.
And I get that. It’s an event you never think will come. You resign yourself to living away from your child. And then suddenly, the possibility of raising them is very real. I can imagine that’s crippling.
Along with the happiness and relief that I felt for my friend, I also felt envy, anger, and even disappointment. I wish I hadn’t. But I did.
Humans are weird like that. It’s not as hard to solider through something if you have someone who gets it next to you. ‘Yeah, this is fucked up. But that’s life. I’m not the only one.’
You take that away and all of a sudden things feel very different. Does he deserve to raise his daughter more than me? Do all these fathers deserve to raise their daughters more than me? Simultaneously knowing that ‘deserve’ is a relative and it went out the window years ago.
