♥ O testemunho de um pai que ama os seus filhos

May 23, 2008 at 5:43 pm

I’m a dad — 2 kids, older teenagers – lovely kids, no complaints. Couldn’t ask for better kids But I regret having them and how it changed (destroyed) our life and marriage.
Having kids absolutely can ruin a marriage. And I disagree with a previous post in here (and others) that this happens because the couple didn’t know why they wanted kids, or didn’t really want them.
No. It happens because young parents don’t realize how pervasive, life-changing, and RELENTLESS an effect children will have on your life. We are fed these lines of bull from our parents, and child-rearing books, and from society in general, that it will be only “temporary”, that we will rearrange our lives and find ways to keep the “spontanaeity” there – “you just have to work at it.” That the reward of watching your children grow will be worth all the time you miss out on with each other.
These are the same idiots who describe giving birth as “a little uncomfortable” (no joke, that’s the term our childbirth instructors always used).
That’s how it happens, man. It looks like it will be nothing but joy and satisfaction to raise a darling child with the woman you love. Then you wake up 20 years later, look back on all the quiet, soulful, intimate time you have lost with your wife, and realize that you basically traded a passionate, care-free, loving relationship with a woman for 20 years of stress, work, and loneliness.
If just one man reads this, decides not to have children, and 20 years from now wakes up in the morning with his wife in his arms and thinks how lucky he is and how glad he is that they have dedicated their lives to each other, then my posting all this will have been well worth it.


FONTE

♥ Matilda | matilda.writing@gmail.com

♥ To my irish friends

Years ago when I first arrived in Dublin, one of the first things that stroke me as surprising was the astonishing amount of foreigners walking up and down O'Connell Street. There we were, just gotten out of a packed up bus making its route from the airport to one of the busiest corners of the capital, with the closest thing to a GPS being the driver, motioning us this was it, 'the hostel was somewhere nearby'... To be completely honest, not even one of those street maps behind glass frames, with a big, red circle stating YOU ARE HERE, would make it more easy peasy to me.

I felt completely lost, panicky even. White, round words had been painted beside the sidewalk, on the tar: Look Right. The luggage weight was pulling at my arm veins as I rolled it across the road but all I could think about was that heavy tide of foreigners passing me by. Like those walking-nightmares where no matter how much you keep moving your feet, your body never follows. O'Connell St. forces any oblivious mind to keep sharp. It made me feel I belonged, that that was really it. Home.

***

Para quem tem dificuldades com o inglês:

Há alguns anos, quando eu cheguei a Dublin, uma das primeiras coisas que me surpreendeu imenso foi a grande quantidade de estrangeiros a caminhar pela rua O'Connell. Ali estavamos nós, acabados de sair de um autocarro apinhado que fazia o seu caminho de volta do aeroporto para um dos cantos mais movimentados da capital e o que tinhamos de mais parecido com um GPS era aquele motorista, gesticulando-nos que era ali, "a pousada era algures ali ao pé"... Com toda a honestidade, nem mesmo um daqueles mapas da rua por detrás de molduras de vidro, com um grande círculo vermelho que indica VOCÊ ESTÁ AQUI, tornaria as coisas mais fáceis para mim.

Eu senti-me completamente perdida, em pânico mesmo. Letras redondas e brancas tinham sido pintadas junto ao passeio no alcatrão: Olhe Para a Direita. Eu sentia as veias dos meus braços a serem puxadas pelo peso da mala enquanto atravessava a rua mas eu só conseguia pensar naquela grande maré de estrangeiros a passar por mim. Como naqueles pesadelos em que estamos a caminhar sem sair do mesmo sítio. A rua O'Connell obriga qualquer mente mais distraída a ficar atenta. Fez-me sentir que eu pertencia ali, que ali era mesmo o sítio certo. A minha casa.

♥ Matilda | matilda.writing@gmail.com