Running Away

He had not been prepared.

People had warned him, he supposed, about what he might feel.  They had told him it would be overwhelming.  They had spoken of waves of emotion; of a love that was so deep, so raw, it would sweep him away.

But they had not warned him about the fear.

From the moment she was born, he was trapped in a paroxysm of fear which excluded all else.  Yes, there was love in there, but the love was so tied up in terror that it was impossible to isolate it, to just feel it, without experiencing the accompanying, heart-clenching panic.  He felt unmanned, unprepared for the onslaught of adrenaline which coursed through his veins perpetually.  It denied him sleep; it denied him clarity; it even, in its worst moments, denied him breath.  It was so big that it rendered everything else insignificant.

He had, like all dutiful, modern-day dads, watched the birth from the business-end.  He had watched the minute head appear from the unrecognisable chasm that seemed completely detached from his wife.  He had watched the little head (don’t say “little” in front of her – it sparked a furore of analogies involving watermelons and the penis) turn spontaneously, a miracle of nature to allow easy egress (ditto with “easy”.  Not advised.)  He had marvelled, and felt proud, and felt manly, and felt that he was in the presence of something amazing.

And then they had placed his daughter in his arms.

Immediately, he saw that he had been a fool.  How on earth could he be expected to protect this tiny, perfect miracle?  She was fragile, needy, a perfect victim for nature’s cruel humour.  A thousand – no, a million – different things could happen to her, each equally terrible, and each beyond his power to stop.  He had ripped out his heart and placed it in a glass jar, to be kicked about by a dyspraxic elephant.  He was an idiot.

His wife didn’t understand.  She fussed and fondled and bundled and bobbed and took to the experience like a duck to water.  She was a natural mother: deeply loving, yet wanting to encourage independence.  She was thrilled when her child first rolled over.  He imagined her rolling off the sofa, hitting her head on the flagstone floor and bleeding to death.  Was his wife blind to the possibilities of doom?

Whereas before he had imaged his love for his spouse to be unconquerable, he now saw that it was nothing, a mere drop in the ocean.  He knew, unquestioningly, that if she did anything that hurt or damaged their daughter, he would leave her without a second glance.  She was nothing.  He looked at her sometimes with a clarity and dispassion which made his blood run cold.

Desperate for a channel for this tidal wave, he took up running.  Every day he would don trainers and jogging bottoms and run away from the fear and the pain and the heart-stopping, sweat-inducing terror which gripped him with the ferocity that his daughter gripped her favourite blanket.  And every day he would realise, as he thumped through the streets, that he could not run away; he could not escape.  He would arrive back, sweaty and red-faced, and lollop up the stairs to her nursery, where he would stand, desperately trying to calm his gasping, while he listened for her breath.

He was trapped in a cage that would be his until he died.

He went to see his doctor, unknown to his wife, and explained his feelings of terror.  The GP looked at him with limpid eyes and spoke of anxiety.  The inadequacy of the word made him want to laugh.  The doctor prescribed some pills which he never took.  The idea that mere drugs could salve this wound was ridiculous.

At the casual instigation of a friend, he tried yoga.  He attended a couple of classes filled with an assortment of women; some unpleasantly sinuous, some improbably lumpy, all impossibly smug.  During the meditation session at the end he found himself wondering how they could possibly leave their children to come and do the class.  What kind of monsters were they?  He gave it up.

His mother told him he looked stressed and recommended camomile tea.  It was disgusting.

By the end of the first year, his daughter was walking and he was a nervous wreck.  He jumped at every squawk and squeal of the baby monitor, his phone ringing caused him acute distress, and when he arrived home one night to see an ambulance in the street (thank God it was only his neighbour having a heart attack), he nearly lost control of his bladder.  He was a man on the edge.

And so, he came to the realisation one night, as he sat upright in bed, listening to his daughter breathe, that there was only one way to run away totally and completely.  Only one course of action could stop this spiralling fear which would chase him until he was dead.

He reached for the pills and the whiskey.

PSK