I'm sitting next to a pregnant girl at Starbucks. She is creating a power point about breast feeding and how to lactate nutrient dense breast milk. Gross. People who prepare that much freak me out, I mean, I understand making a check list of items to bring on a cross country road trip, maybe even reading a book about safty while traveling across a continent. But to create a power point on a computer about something as simple and natural as breast feeding makes me uneasy.
I wonder if reading parenting books and lactation books actually help a new parent be a better parent. I don't think it does. For instance, I love zombie movies and I watch them regularly. I have seen through Dawn of the Dead that while shopping malls are a great place to hide, it's an even better place to be trapped. I have learned from the Resident Evil series that some zombies can climb walls and dig tunnels under jails, so I should be prepared for some freaky shit when it comes time to fight. I have examined that some zombies have feelings and when you hurt them they retaliate more and some aren't after brains but power. I have watched every zombie apocalypse movie imaginable and I am more than confident in my ability to survive in the event that the globe dies only to be reborn.
I never understood why people in zombie movies want to be cooped up in a building when obviously the best place to be is in a field with an aluminum baseball bat. Ax's stick in the heads, which is good when your not facing more than one zombies, bats are always the best choice. Dark is good. People are afraid of the dark in zombie movies. They are dead, zombies can't see in the dark any better than you can, shut the fuck up and sit still and you'll be fine. I know all of these things, and after kicking my roommates ass in a heated kung fu battle last week, I'm confident that I can kill the undead. Still, if I were to really face these things, face the undead; I would crumble into a corner like dry wall that's being gutted with a sludge hammer. Nothing can prepare a person for a zombie apocalypse and their is sure as shit nothing that can prepare a first time mother for parenthood.
I hold the same attitude towards self help books as I do parenting books. I once read a few chapters of a self help book called the Road to Recovery while taking a shit at a friends house. I felt inspired I guess, but only while reading it, when it came to actually dealing with my baggage I handled it on my own and without the suggested use of a montre. The best self help a person can endure is a realistic perspective and a mirror. Books are rarely a mirror for everyone. And I'm just now realizing that each new man I date is not a mirror of the last and that to encapsulate every experience I've had, good or bad and hold that image next to a new one is unhealthy. I've read a lot of books on love, taking nothing but a skewed image of what love should be for me. So far in comparison to the books I've read, my love life is about as exciting as a molting spider.
I've learned a lot about myself in my short adult life through men. I've learned that cocaine dens and transexuals are fun, but living and loving under a roof riddled with both is devastating and can take years to build back yourself. I've learned that no matter how much you will someone to get help or help someone, substances are always a first priority and to expect anything else will kill your heart and take everything you have to piece it together again. I've learned to love myself and I'm learning to love people who love themselves. But with all of these things I've taken from broken men I've loved, the journey of self expression and sexual exploration and the strength to be good to myself and leave when someone else is not. With all those things I've learned, all the things I know; if I were to face those things, face love, I would crumble like dry wall.
So no. I don't think parenting books work at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment