Two nights ago, Blog Anxiety attacked me while I was trying to fall asleep. For hours, my head was ravaged by possible topics, accusations, what ifs, are my blogs too long? too short? and the Field of Dreams-type disembodied voice of one of my former writing professors: “If you blog it, you cannot publish it.” So as I tossed and turned and I thought of topics, I pulled back thinking that if I wrote about the media and children or the desensitization of violence in children and its relationship to Sienna or really anything, then I couldn’t be published and if I couldn’t be published, then I wasn’t a real writer…I doomed myself to failure.

There are so many things I want to say, but I’m afraid to because of this desire to be published…REALLY published; to succeed as a writer. Then there are the self-barbs that my blog isn’t any good. I’m not witty. I’m not insightful. No one outside of my closest friends and family are reading it. How many visiters have I had? I have no clue. Are people stumbling upon it and reading it? I doubt it. So immediately I rush towards the end game. I can’t attract readers. My blog will never be recognized as important as one of the “top blogs about blah blah blah” out there. I won’t be cited in magazines or newspapers or other blogs. I’ll just be floating in cyberspace…alone. I’ll have failed.

Hours of this garbage causing deep chest pains. This is what anxiety is: irrational attacks from the mind that you feel defenseless against and that quickly manifest into physical trauma, thus causing your defenses to weaken until you eventually submit. Luckily I didn’t have a panic attack. Instead I took a melatonin and eventually fell asleep, though the aftermath was grogginess the following day and a dull throb of anxiety coursing through my body.

Last night, similar thing. I didn’t write yesterday so I flagellated myself for not writing. I’m supposed to write each day, right? Isn’t that the rule? Despite everyone including my therapist telling me that it’s my blog and that I can do whatever I wish, I still feel these unwritten pressures and rules. I tell myself to breathe. I tell myself I’m being irrational, that this is where I go. It doesn’t work…yet (my therapist tells me to always add “yet”). I’ve been advised to try yoga or meditation classes, but I’m scared as hell because I can’t remember a time when my I wasn’t present – when I truly let myself go, and deep down, I don’t believe it’ll ever happen. Yoga. Even the word frightens me. The thought of me being in a class with all of these people (in my head) looking at and judging me. Knowing without knowing that I can’t master breathing techniques. But I need to try, for my sake and for Sienna’s. She cannot have a father figure who’s tormented by his own thoughts and therefore terrified of the world. It’s not fair to her. It’s not fair to me. I guess yoga or meditation is in my future. I have to try.

I’ve felt such a rush of love for Sienna the last few days that I felt it was important to revisit a blog I’d written for the NYC Dads Group about falling in love with your child. The blog was about how much trouble I had loving Sienna during her first 6 months and how I set myself up for failure. I still face that problem in therapy…setting myself up for failure. So this blog re-post is also a reminder that I need to patient when it comes to  therapy. This is a blog for myself, mainly, but also for all those new parents out there who are inundated with insane expectations forced upon them by society. You can find the original post here and I thank the NYC Dads Group for allowing me to share content I’d written for them on my own blog:

Here is what I wrote:

One of the most ubiquitous and most dangerous clichés around is “love at first sight.” In respect to having a child, it’s supposedly that moment when you hold your son or daughter for the first time, when you feel your heart “melt” and you know, truly know, that you’re in love. I use the word “dangerous” for a reason; for someone, such as myself, who suffers from depression and anxiety, the cliché can act as a catalyst for the mind to create an unrealistic anticipation, an engraved in stone expectation. But what happens if that moment doesn’t occur? What happens if you hold your child for the first time and love is the furthest thing from your mind? For me, my anxiety and depression ratcheted up about a zillion percent, and my mind became even more of a brutal enemy than usual. While depression and anxiety can exacerbate just about every aspect of having a baby, perhaps the worst thing it intensified in me was that concept of love or more specifically, the question: When will I fall in love with my child?

Further, I finally realized I had set myself up by believing in the clichéd “moment,” the Good Will Hunting breakthrough. As with therapy, there is no sudden burst of lucidity when it comes to falling in love with your child, and by expecting it, you’re only setting yourself up for disaster, guilt, and agony. It’s a different experience for each dad, for each parent, and comparing yourself to others will only end in mental anguish. This is true with most people, but for those with depression and anxiety, it is especially pertinent, for we always go to the extreme and then blame ourselves when it doesn’t come to fruition. So while the clichéd moment might be false, the clichéd “falling” in love just might be true as it implies something continuous and gradual, something that happens without you even realizing it. I carry the picture (see below) my wife captured of Sienna and I with me at all times…not as a reminder that I love my nearly one-year-old daughter (for that I feel it in my gut), but I will always need to remember not to succumb to the minefield inside my mind. Things will happen when they happen, so long as I let them.

Turns out that sometimes staying home can be just as adventurous and exciting for Sienna as going out. Yesterday Elaine and I had planned to take Sienna into the city, but the weather report was foreboding (and eventually wrong), so we wound up staying in our apartment.

We spent the day playing with Sienna, trying to appease her insatiable curiosity by naming everything she pointed to: door, wall, wall, Phil Rizzuto (an autographed pic hanging on the wall), ball, duck, wall, etc. We took turns reading to her from books we’d read so many times they were engraved on our brains: “A cow says moo. A sheep says baa. 3 singing pigs say la la la!” We gave her a bath. We watched “Spongebob” and giggled as Sienna tried to sing along to theme song.

The day wasn’t without its literal bumps. Sienna slipped in the tub and cried. She banged her head in the bathroom and cried. She caught her finger in something and cried. A collage fell off her door about an hour into her nap waking her up and leaving her hysterical. And dinner was saucy and not in a good way.

We had gone out for Italian the night before and Sienna enjoyed pasta and tomato sauce, so we figured we’d replicate it. It didn’t happen. Sienna barely ate the pasta and instead stuck her hands in the sauce and smeared it all over everything. This is something that normally would bring on massive anxiety for me and it started to for Elaine, but something happened. We tag-teamed it. We didn’t let Sienna’s toddlerness get to us. Elaine cleaned her and we switched to a bowl of cereal and milk and a cut up banana which our daughter gobbled up. We joked about the mess. We said Sienna was trying out for the part as the Red Skull in the next Captain America film

And then we danced. The three of us danced to “OPP” and “Rock Around the Clock” over and over, Sienna emanating pure joy. We played monkey in the middle using, what else, stuffed monkeys. Sienna ran between the two us laughing and clapping as each monkey soared over her head. We asked Sienna to point out her mouth, her cheek, her neck, Gleeb, Minky, a blanket. We clapped and cheered each time Sienna got it right and our daughter clapped and cheered too…she clapped so hard and with so much pride that it looked like she’d fall over (something she did later each time I spun her causing glorious dizziness).

But the highlight of the day was when Elaine had left the room for a bit, came back, and Sienna looked at her and said, “Mama!” Everything stopped. Elaine and I looked at each other and I watched as Elaine nearly burst from happiness, my own heart warm and proud. We were a family. We spent the day inside having fun as a family. Elaine, Sienna, Minky, Gleeb and myself. No trip, no outdoor experience could ever replicate those shared feelings of familial closeness, fun, and love.

Kids, back in olden times, long before I met your mother, there existed this wonderfully smart, funny, multicultural children’s program complete with grouches, counting vampires, a big, blue, baked goods-loving monster, a frog that read the news, a diverse cast, and, well, no omnipresent, 3rd person-spouting, red muppet in sight.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. There’s no way around Elmo and you’d be right. Elmo is ubiquitous – books, clothing, toys, music – and (to my dismay), I realized when I watched “Sesame Street” with Sienna for the first time, he’s completely taken over the show relegating most of my beloved characters (Count von Count, Oscar, Cookie Monster, Bert & Ernie, Big Bird) to what amounts to a special appearance. Only Grover seems to have survived the purge as he has his own little segment called “Super Grover.”

I’m not going to lie. I’ve never liked Elmo. I’ve always found him grating. This has nothing to do with Kevin Clash’s (the voice behind Elmo) homosexuality or his sleeping-with-underage-boys scandal (though I’m pretty disgusted by the latter). In fact, I found the documentary Behing Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey to be fascinating and uplifting. This is just about Elmo’s character not only being annoying, but being EVERYWHERE and thus driving me bananas.

Luckily, thanks to Netflix streaming and YouTube, I can expose Sienna to what life was like before Elmo. We can watch classic “Sesame Street” episodes or clips of some of the show’s best songs and segments like “Rubber Duckie,” “C is for Cookie,” and “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” And you know what? Sienna enjoys them! She especially likes “Rubber Duckie” since she has one of her own. And as a plus, I really get to re-live my childhood as segments such as “Pinball Number Count” pop up during episodes filling me with a deep nostalgia.

I know I can’t cut Sienna off from Elmo completely, nor would I want to. That would be cruel and tyrannical. She loves “Elmo’s Song” and plays with plenty of Elmo-related toys (the Elmo-onesie, we inherited, however? Gone). But I want Sienna to spend time with and get to know Big Bird and Oscar and Bert and Ernie and Kermit and Cookie Monster and my absolute favorite, The Count. She might not ever know them as much as she knows Elmo or this Abby Cadabby, but that’s ok, because if one day she turns to me and says, “One apple! TWO apple! Ah-Ah-Ah!” it’ll all be worth it.

I’ve already talked about my depression and anxiety, my fears of failure and success, and even my fear of food, but something I’ve yet to talk about is my slight case of agoraphobia. More than 15 months in and I’m still afraid to take Sienna out…even for walks to the park or  around the block. Part of it is a worry that Sienna will get sick. Part of it is an irrational fear of judgment. What do people see when they look at me? Do they see into my mind and soul? Can they tell from my perpetually hunched shoulders that I grew up with gynecomastia? And, of course, I still feel the “stigma” about being a stay-at-home dad due to my brain’s twisted view of success.

I also don’t do well in crowds, and it’s one of the reasons I tend to avoid Manhattan even when a NYC Dads Group meetup sounds exciting. I hate people rushing and pushing their way onto trains or past me on the sidewalk. I hate huge groups of school children out at the zoo or museums or wherever. And I’ve learned that large meetups aren’t for me, the ones where there are 30 or so dads with their offspring running around (including my own). I need to be able to talk to people one-on-one to prevent myself from becoming overwhelmed.

But herein lies a problem. Sienna needs to get out. She needs to make friends. She needs to experience and explore the world outside of the comfort of this little apartment. I can read to her all I want, but showing her pictures of monkeys does not compare to showing her ACTUAL monkeys. Now, I do much better when I’m with Elaine, and we’ve made Tuesdays sort of a family day. We’ve gone to the Bronx Zoo, Adventureland, and other places. We plan to head to the beach soon (something about which I’m VERY nervous). But I can’t count on Elaine all the time. I’m with Sienna every day of the week.

I’d love to have a set play date with one of my friends and his/her kid(s), but that has not yet come to fruition. I feel that would help me, though once again that would be relying on someone else when I alone am the one who needs to break through these fears. My therapist is always telling me I just have to do it, but I always fall into the trap of “I don’t UNDERSTAND how you just do it” to which she says, “STOP TRYING TO UNDERSTAND!!” That’s one of my problems…I need to understand everything and when I don’t, I freeze and/or stubbornly fight against it.

What I need is to fully take in the fact that my depression and anxiety pale in comparison to my daughter’s needs. I’ve not yet been able to do so, but I’m working on it, I’m trying insanely hard because in the  end, the solution is one sentence, four words, none larger than 3 letters: do it for her.