6:45 PM
Fucking freaky dream last night.
I'm in New York, and I have to pick my baby daughter up from her daycare.
(I have a daughter? This is news to me.)
The thing is, since I didn't even know I had a daughter, I don't know where her daycare centre is. Time is running out, becuase it's getting late, I should have picked her up long ago. Where do I begin? I go to a payphone (I'm at a fair/festival type place, chaotic, crowded) and start looking under 'daycares' in the yellow pages. Then I realize I don't know my daughter's name, how will ask these people if she's there?
All this time I have this baby snuggly/carrier strapped to my chest, meant to carry my daughter, I'm wandering around in a desperate hazy daze thinking "I want my baby, I want my baby, where is my baby" like the Hole song "I Think That I Would Die" and this carrier thing strapped to me is this great void, I must find my baby, that is what is so entirely missing in me. I didn't know I had a baby, I wouldn't have wanted a baby, but now I can't live without her and I need her here with me now. She is a part of me, an extension of me. I want my baby. And I can't find her.
I've got the carrier strapped to me as I walk through this terrible makeshift zoo. All these haggered sickly dispirited animals moping around. I pet a lion. It's mane had shed away, he wuz thin and weak and hairless. Like a cancer lion. With no pride.
I have to find my daughter's birth certificate to get to her name, which I'm sure is in my wallet somewhere with my own ID. I've flown home from New York to go through my wallet. I'm looking for something strange cuz I know I would never give a child of mine a common name. But "Kyla" keeps sticking in my head. It is either "Kyla Jesus" or "Jesus Kyla". I named my baby Jesus. Baby Kyla Jesus. Jesus Kyla.
I never did find her.
There is this cold, hollow feeling in my chest where she would have nestled up and slept in the snuggly.
I still have the empty baby carrier strapped to me.
I think of my friend Nadia, who has a daughter who would be the same age as mine in my dream, and I'm jealous. I guess that wuz the feeling. That she had her baby with her, and I didn't. I lost my baby before I found her.
This probably came from having written down my DON'T MAKE ME BREED conviction yesterday. I don't think I have ever wanted children of my own, But I get these dreams, that are so intense. Where I'm a mother, and this child's life is above my own, I cannot go on living without this child. It is so contrary to my concious feelings on parenthood. I have no control over it. The feeling in these dreams is always; "This is my calling. These children. This is what I am alive for." In the dream there is no disputing that feeling. Nothing else matters as much as having that child with me, near me, and safe.
These are nightmares to me. In reality they are nightmares. For a whole day afterward I am all numbed over with this "want baby" urge. It's dangerous. And stupid. It passes, thankfully. Tom Waits is wailing "slept like a baby"... "pregnant women" at me. Agh!
Let me think of Grace Slick here. Or any fabulous and rich people who choose to have kids. If you're overloaded with money then go for it. There's nothing more depressing than common people breeding. That is soul death. But, Grace Slick, even Courtney Love, yeah, do it. They were fierce enough to begin with that they did not turn into fucking morons when they reproduced. "What kind of mother...?" Shit I hate the overwhelming majority of people who are ...I can't find words intense enough to describe how much I hate the BOREDOM in parents. They are wasted shells. Useless, discarded. "And I hate, and I hate, and I hate..."
I don't personally know any Courtney Love or Grace Slick examples of people who still kicked ass and had their acid tongues lashing even after their wombs were employed. I'm afraid it's very fucking rare. And I don't want to be the junkie at home crying cuz social services took my baby away. And I don't want my own family doing that "What kind of mother would...?" hissing evil witch hunt behind my back. "Chaara is an unfit mother!" And I don't even want to be a mother! But if I wuz... I know the scenes already. Either I stay exactly as I am, and have everyone around me circling me and chanting "Demon! Demon!" Or I go numb, like every mother I know, and slowly trudge deeper into Head In Oven misery day by day... The approach widely approved of, nay, encouraged.
Man, I'm getting carried away with this. It seriously pisses me off, this spawning conflict. Do, don't. Don't. Oh, do. Yes now NO YES and Never Right now. Why?! I am most definitely not faced with this issue in my life right now. Why does it irk me so, whenever it comes up? Why do I bring it up?
I think of the scene in Sylvia (mother with head in oven) Plath's "The Bell Jar" where she is in a doctor's waiting room looking at all these mother's with their plump smiling baby's and trying to see what they see. What makes them so pleased with themselves? So content? And she can't get it cuz she doesn't have any maternal instinct. NO MATERNAL INSTINCT. I understand that fully. What is with these alien women who thrive on making babies? It's so fucking scary to me. Once you do that, once you give in to that, you can never say, "Fuck, children suck." You can never say, "My life is wasted. I had children and my life is now gone. I should have never- "
Because that initial joy and love that I feel in my "I Think I'm A Mother" dreams, in real life, gives way to scenes like what I am living right now. Do I care now if my mother got that cozy-warm feeling when she held me as a baby? Do I care now if my mom used to think I wuz all the world? Do I care now that she used to care so much for me? Not really. What do we have now? This overgrown child that won't leave, won't help, won't pay rent, won't, won't won't won't. And this thing that for maybe two years wuz adorable and wonderful is now a money-sucking, space hog, with no outward respect for the person who tried in vain to raise her to be strong. Good try. That's not very comforting is it? No thank you.
What a great quote to get from a band called the breeders. How fitting.
I just remembered, four years ago, when I last saw my dad. He told me: "The last time I had a daughter was when you were two years old." So, you see. T'is truth. Well he shouldn't have spawned he should have just fostered some kid. Then gotten rid of them when they turned two. Bastard. Why does he keep resurfacing in my fucking rants and writings? I hate it. So fucking cliche. Bad daddy. "Do you know how far this has gone? Just how damaged have I become? When I think I can overcome... It runs even deeper."
Urgh. Two embarrassing things there.
One; that I quote nine inch nails.
Two; that I think about my father.
There is no debate. Parenthood is to be avoided. Lesson is learned. Message received. Loud and clear.