My Daughter

He said, “getting drunk was about 50% of my identity.”

What is left of my arbitrary identity? Why do I feel so broken? I had built up so many false realities around myself, I was cloaked in identifiers that could not stand the test of time and the trials of these years. I was a teacher and leader at work. I was an intellectual bookworm who loved to party. A flirt who knew how to make nearly anyone swoon. A fit and fiercely independent kickboxer. But now I’m just here.

I look in the mirror and hardly recognize myself. The squirming child inside my body is adding new curves and veins every day. My center of gravity is perpetually shifting, and in a few short weeks my body will be transformed again and I will be handed an unexpected treasure. My daughter. My own daughter. And it will be up to me and her father to show her the ways of this world. To help her navigate the challenges and confusion.

But how are we supposed to do that when we are still figuring out who we are?

Stripped down of everything else, I feel like an entity. Who I am is more of an essence than a being.

And no, my daughter, I didn’t just assume you were a boy before. The doctors told us you were clearly a boy, then four weeks later told us the opposite. It was quite a surprise, but I’ve come to expect the unexpected.

Perhaps our “identity” doesn’t matter all that much. The baseline standards are so easily pulled out from under us and shift as rapidly as culture does these days. The only thing that has remained under my control is my communication. The feelings, physical and emotional, are sometimes out of my control, but I can choose how to respond and how to treat others around me. But it is hard to stay positive given the circumstances of the world. But perhaps it isn’t necessary to be positive all the time. Maybe it is okay to let myself mourn the loss of the world I imagined myself to be living in; to mourn the shattering of my expectations.

My lungs are currently aching from the COVID and I worry whenever I can’t feel you moving. Every day we remain in monotonous isolation, I feel pulled deeper into a mental pit. I want to be strong for you and for everyone else. I want to be strong for myself. But my body and mind don’t feel strong right now.

More than anything, I want these circumstances to change. I’ve been a firm believer that we can alter our physical realities with our ambitions and dreams, but I don’t see the way forward right now. Right now, all I can do is wait for you to arrive and do my best to prepare.

I promise I will do my best. I love you.