Before everyone jumps to check off a box on their cat lady card, this is the fag who wrote this article:
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By Miguel Macias
A journalist, audio producer and public radio reporter based in Spain.
This essay is part of How to Live With Regret, a series exploring the nature of regret and the role it plays in all our lives. Read more about this project here.
When friends ask me how I’m feeling 18 months after having a baby, I usually tell them that it has been wonderful. Sometimes, though, if I’m feeling particularly confessional, I will smile coyly and say: “Well, this is not the life I wanted. But the life I had before was not the life I wanted, either.” I say it in a cheeky, half-joking way, hoping the gravity of the comment will go unnoticed. But it’s not a joke.
Since my daughter, Olivia, was born, I have cycled through a huge range of emotions. I expect many of them would be familiar to any parent: joy, exhaustion, deep love, confusion, wonder, exasperation, happiness, sadness. But there is another, quieter, emotion that comes up every now and then. It’s a feeling that’s so difficult to talk about, so universally taboo, that I feel nervous expressing it even to the people closest to me: regret.
Since I was a teenager, I knew that I did not want to have kids. I did not budge for decades, and I had quite the battery of reasons for feeling this way, from the emotional to the practical — the biggest one being that there were simply too many things I wanted to accomplish in life, and a baby would surely get in the way.
When I was young I dreamed of becoming a famous filmmaker, traveling the world making documentaries. It hardly seemed like a good way to raise a kid. But I also just never had any interest in babies or kids. Rather, I felt resolved, ironclad in my conviction that I would never be a father.
But things change. I settled down. And at 47, my life didn’t look like the one I had once envisioned for myself. To be clear, I have a lot to be proud of. I do work that I care about as a radio producer and reporter, and I’ve been fairly successful. But I didn’t set the world on fire. I am not traveling the globe chasing major stories and winning Oscars. And over time the reasons I’d held onto for why I did not want to have children slowly faded.
On the emotional side of things, the decision to change my mind, or rather to capitulate, was fairly easy: I love my partner, and I wanted to make her happy. Her happiness was, and is, more important to me than my own. And I had begun to come to terms with the fact that the dreams I had for my life when I was younger were most likely not going to come true, baby or no baby. And so we took the leap.
I am not sure when, exactly, the feeling of regret first flickered across my mind. We are probably hard-wired to reject such thoughts. There is just too much at stake, and having a child is among the few things in life that you cannot undo. So when I first considered that I might regret having my daughter, I did what any parent would do: I discarded the thought immediately. I told myself: No, I can’t possibly regret this. This is too big. My daughter is too important. I love her too much. I do not regret having a child.
But what if I do?
I’ve always been a little suspicious of regret. As someone who has suffered from depression for many years, I’ve learned to focus on the positive. I have embraced optimism as a means of survival, and regret felt antithetical to that hard-won worldview. It seemed to me like a waste of energy and a good way to make myself miserable.
I could, and did, apply this same logic to my daughter, focusing on all of the wonderful things that parenthood has brought: Olivia’s smile, for instance, which appeared at two weeks old and has remained a constant in our lives. She is happier than I probably have ever been, and what an incredible blessing. But there have been hard moments too. And if I allowed myself to regret having a child, even for a moment, what would that mean? Would it make me a horrible person? And even if it did, it wouldn’t change the reality. My daughter would still be here right in front of me, refusing to go to sleep while I spend hours in a chair beside her crib.
I thought regret was a dangerous and unhelpful feeling, so I pushed it out of my mind. But pretending it wasn’t there did not make it go away. And eventually I learned to stop trying to banish it. I tried instead to sit with the feeling and stare at it head on for a few minutes. What could I learn from it?
And somehow, I have found comfort in allowing myself to feel regret. I have always had a bit of a rebellious nature, and it feels, in a way, pleasantly subversive and liberating to allow myself this forbidden thought, even in the privacy of my own mind. It is at the very least a reprieve from the feeling that parenthood should be a constant delight.
Like when Olivia refuses to stay still for even a single minute so I can change her diaper, or when I look away from her for just a few seconds and find that she has managed — somehow — to get into trouble.
I could continue the laundry list of things that drive me crazy — I think most parents know what they are. But there are bigger things, too. Like the ways our lives are transformed forever, how we lose control of our time, our priorities, our days, our goals. We are supposed to love it, to think it is the most wonderful thing we have ever experienced. We are told we will become better people as a consequence of being parents. And maybe that’s true for some people. But there are other truths as well.
I am not a perfect father. Heck, I’m not a perfect person. I do the best I can, and I work every day to be better. But there are some things about me that have not changed. Like the fact that, despite my love for Olivia I don’t really enjoy playing with her. I mean, I can play for 10, 15, 20 minutes, but after that I get bored and frustrated that I am wasting time, and that my to-do list is just growing. Yes, I am that person. And I’m still the same guy who had a list of rock-solid reasons to never, ever have a baby. And I still think about those reasons from time to time.
Having a child might not be the best decision I’ve ever made. Not just for myself, but for my daughter; after all, with climate change and the rise of political extremism and everything else that’s going on in the world, what kind of future will she have? But allowing myself to accept that having a child may not have been “right” has been humbling and comforting. It has forced me to admit to myself that I will never know if this, or any, decision was the right one.
In my mind, the notion of regret is directly connected to the notion of certainty. Most people need some kind of certainty in life. We try to make life simple; we want our choices to be clear. Just like optimism, it’s probably a survival tactic. We need to think that things will get better in order to keep going. After all, who can live a life where we are always second-guessing our decisions? It’s easier by far to tell ourselves that everything happens for a reason; it’s definitely less painful not to continuously revise our own history, or simply be convinced that we have made no mistakes.
But life is long, and it has many chapters. We open new doors and close old ones. We change jobs, we marry, we divorce; we move to other neighborhoods, other cities, other countries. Friendships start, end or change over time. We are healthy, we are sick. We lose people we love. At every turn we leave behind versions of ourselves that we will never be and versions of our lives that we will never live. How can we possibly not second-guess anything? Not wonder how things might have been if we had made that other decision, taken the other job, gone on a date with that other person? If we don’t allow ourselves to feel regret — really feel it and come to some sort of peace with it — we risk being haunted by it.
I have sure made some mistakes in my life. I’ve made bad decisions and hurt people I’ve loved. And I have regrets, without a doubt. But now, at 48 years old, regret doesn’t scare me any more. I am looking at the rest of my life with the hope that I will finally be able to live in peace with my decisions, right or wrong. I am coming to terms with the fact that most of us are imperfect people, but trying to do the right thing — and to be honest with ourselves — is what’s most important.
And so I face my feelings of regret about having a daughter. I am able to contemplate them, allow myself to own it, and let it go. It doesn’t consume me. I have come to understand that my abundant love for my daughter and the complicated feelings of regret I have around becoming a parent do not contradict one another. They both are true. And, though I can’t be sure, I suspect that I’m not the first parent ever to feel this way. I suspect that others grapple with similar regret, though they may feel they can’t express it.
Olivia has taught me a great deal in the short time she’s been alive. For instance, when I am in a bad mood, everything in the world seems irritating: the person walking too slowly in front of me, the bicyclist riding on the sidewalk way too fast, the teens standing in the middle of the street being loud. Then Olivia waves and smiles at a stranger from her stroller, saying “Hola,” and suddenly the world melts. People smile at her, wave back, laugh with joy. I look at them, nod my head and smile back, suddenly at peace. I can’t say that becoming a parent has fundamentally changed the way I see the world, but maybe I am a different person in the world now.
This might not be the life I once wanted, but it’s the life I have, and there’s so much about it that’s wonderful.
More on parenthood
article/archive
By Miguel Macias
A journalist, audio producer and public radio reporter based in Spain.
This essay is part of How to Live With Regret, a series exploring the nature of regret and the role it plays in all our lives. Read more about this project here.
When friends ask me how I’m feeling 18 months after having a baby, I usually tell them that it has been wonderful. Sometimes, though, if I’m feeling particularly confessional, I will smile coyly and say: “Well, this is not the life I wanted. But the life I had before was not the life I wanted, either.” I say it in a cheeky, half-joking way, hoping the gravity of the comment will go unnoticed. But it’s not a joke.
Since my daughter, Olivia, was born, I have cycled through a huge range of emotions. I expect many of them would be familiar to any parent: joy, exhaustion, deep love, confusion, wonder, exasperation, happiness, sadness. But there is another, quieter, emotion that comes up every now and then. It’s a feeling that’s so difficult to talk about, so universally taboo, that I feel nervous expressing it even to the people closest to me: regret.
Since I was a teenager, I knew that I did not want to have kids. I did not budge for decades, and I had quite the battery of reasons for feeling this way, from the emotional to the practical — the biggest one being that there were simply too many things I wanted to accomplish in life, and a baby would surely get in the way.
When I was young I dreamed of becoming a famous filmmaker, traveling the world making documentaries. It hardly seemed like a good way to raise a kid. But I also just never had any interest in babies or kids. Rather, I felt resolved, ironclad in my conviction that I would never be a father.
But things change. I settled down. And at 47, my life didn’t look like the one I had once envisioned for myself. To be clear, I have a lot to be proud of. I do work that I care about as a radio producer and reporter, and I’ve been fairly successful. But I didn’t set the world on fire. I am not traveling the globe chasing major stories and winning Oscars. And over time the reasons I’d held onto for why I did not want to have children slowly faded.
On the emotional side of things, the decision to change my mind, or rather to capitulate, was fairly easy: I love my partner, and I wanted to make her happy. Her happiness was, and is, more important to me than my own. And I had begun to come to terms with the fact that the dreams I had for my life when I was younger were most likely not going to come true, baby or no baby. And so we took the leap.
I am not sure when, exactly, the feeling of regret first flickered across my mind. We are probably hard-wired to reject such thoughts. There is just too much at stake, and having a child is among the few things in life that you cannot undo. So when I first considered that I might regret having my daughter, I did what any parent would do: I discarded the thought immediately. I told myself: No, I can’t possibly regret this. This is too big. My daughter is too important. I love her too much. I do not regret having a child.
But what if I do?
I’ve always been a little suspicious of regret. As someone who has suffered from depression for many years, I’ve learned to focus on the positive. I have embraced optimism as a means of survival, and regret felt antithetical to that hard-won worldview. It seemed to me like a waste of energy and a good way to make myself miserable.
I could, and did, apply this same logic to my daughter, focusing on all of the wonderful things that parenthood has brought: Olivia’s smile, for instance, which appeared at two weeks old and has remained a constant in our lives. She is happier than I probably have ever been, and what an incredible blessing. But there have been hard moments too. And if I allowed myself to regret having a child, even for a moment, what would that mean? Would it make me a horrible person? And even if it did, it wouldn’t change the reality. My daughter would still be here right in front of me, refusing to go to sleep while I spend hours in a chair beside her crib.
I thought regret was a dangerous and unhelpful feeling, so I pushed it out of my mind. But pretending it wasn’t there did not make it go away. And eventually I learned to stop trying to banish it. I tried instead to sit with the feeling and stare at it head on for a few minutes. What could I learn from it?
And somehow, I have found comfort in allowing myself to feel regret. I have always had a bit of a rebellious nature, and it feels, in a way, pleasantly subversive and liberating to allow myself this forbidden thought, even in the privacy of my own mind. It is at the very least a reprieve from the feeling that parenthood should be a constant delight.
Like when Olivia refuses to stay still for even a single minute so I can change her diaper, or when I look away from her for just a few seconds and find that she has managed — somehow — to get into trouble.
I could continue the laundry list of things that drive me crazy — I think most parents know what they are. But there are bigger things, too. Like the ways our lives are transformed forever, how we lose control of our time, our priorities, our days, our goals. We are supposed to love it, to think it is the most wonderful thing we have ever experienced. We are told we will become better people as a consequence of being parents. And maybe that’s true for some people. But there are other truths as well.
I am not a perfect father. Heck, I’m not a perfect person. I do the best I can, and I work every day to be better. But there are some things about me that have not changed. Like the fact that, despite my love for Olivia I don’t really enjoy playing with her. I mean, I can play for 10, 15, 20 minutes, but after that I get bored and frustrated that I am wasting time, and that my to-do list is just growing. Yes, I am that person. And I’m still the same guy who had a list of rock-solid reasons to never, ever have a baby. And I still think about those reasons from time to time.
Having a child might not be the best decision I’ve ever made. Not just for myself, but for my daughter; after all, with climate change and the rise of political extremism and everything else that’s going on in the world, what kind of future will she have? But allowing myself to accept that having a child may not have been “right” has been humbling and comforting. It has forced me to admit to myself that I will never know if this, or any, decision was the right one.
In my mind, the notion of regret is directly connected to the notion of certainty. Most people need some kind of certainty in life. We try to make life simple; we want our choices to be clear. Just like optimism, it’s probably a survival tactic. We need to think that things will get better in order to keep going. After all, who can live a life where we are always second-guessing our decisions? It’s easier by far to tell ourselves that everything happens for a reason; it’s definitely less painful not to continuously revise our own history, or simply be convinced that we have made no mistakes.
But life is long, and it has many chapters. We open new doors and close old ones. We change jobs, we marry, we divorce; we move to other neighborhoods, other cities, other countries. Friendships start, end or change over time. We are healthy, we are sick. We lose people we love. At every turn we leave behind versions of ourselves that we will never be and versions of our lives that we will never live. How can we possibly not second-guess anything? Not wonder how things might have been if we had made that other decision, taken the other job, gone on a date with that other person? If we don’t allow ourselves to feel regret — really feel it and come to some sort of peace with it — we risk being haunted by it.
I have sure made some mistakes in my life. I’ve made bad decisions and hurt people I’ve loved. And I have regrets, without a doubt. But now, at 48 years old, regret doesn’t scare me any more. I am looking at the rest of my life with the hope that I will finally be able to live in peace with my decisions, right or wrong. I am coming to terms with the fact that most of us are imperfect people, but trying to do the right thing — and to be honest with ourselves — is what’s most important.
And so I face my feelings of regret about having a daughter. I am able to contemplate them, allow myself to own it, and let it go. It doesn’t consume me. I have come to understand that my abundant love for my daughter and the complicated feelings of regret I have around becoming a parent do not contradict one another. They both are true. And, though I can’t be sure, I suspect that I’m not the first parent ever to feel this way. I suspect that others grapple with similar regret, though they may feel they can’t express it.
Olivia has taught me a great deal in the short time she’s been alive. For instance, when I am in a bad mood, everything in the world seems irritating: the person walking too slowly in front of me, the bicyclist riding on the sidewalk way too fast, the teens standing in the middle of the street being loud. Then Olivia waves and smiles at a stranger from her stroller, saying “Hola,” and suddenly the world melts. People smile at her, wave back, laugh with joy. I look at them, nod my head and smile back, suddenly at peace. I can’t say that becoming a parent has fundamentally changed the way I see the world, but maybe I am a different person in the world now.
This might not be the life I once wanted, but it’s the life I have, and there’s so much about it that’s wonderful.
More on parenthood
