To whomever

A Story by Nicholas

To the people who find my letters,

I wouldn’t be truthful in saying that the possibility of parenthood is terrifying to me. I have a nightmare that a smaller me is talking to me and when I talk to him the booming voice of my own father comes from me. It scares me more than the possibility of a car accident, and the most horrific of natural disease.

The scariest part is that I will revert to being my father. Though he was not abusive, his stains covered his soul with more of an impact than mine ever will. He strained to cover them through most of my brothers and my childhood. My brother understood why, while going through a similar situation. I, however, am still blind to it and that is the biggest barrier that hinders the most basic forms of a father-son relationship.

He is stern, and un-moving. I feel his lack of interaction added to my character in a need to mature at an accelerated rate, but at the cost of an American sense of father-son moments that later add to a strong adult relationship.

I feel after the chord is cut, I’ll feel a minor separation anxiety that lasts a minimal amount of time. Our interaction afterwards will be fake, but believable to one of us. That is what scares me about the possibility of my own parenthood. My wife, or lack of, will give birth to my seed, and like a primal urge I will revert to a spitting image of my father. Then my child’s life will be like a rerun of my own, with the same resentment or misunderstanding of me as I have for my own father.

That is scarier to me than any movie, book, or real life situation that I could think of, and it feels very rational.

Primally Yours,

Anonymous Writer