The Myth of Normal 113

Chapter 10 Trouble at the Threshold: Before We Come into the World My Tristram’s misfortunes began nine months before he ever came into the world. —Walter Shandy, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759), by Laurence Sterne Dear little son/daughter, I feel you kicking inside me. I am terribly sad and discouraged and frightened now but I love you and will protect and nourish you with all the love in the world. This adrenaline you feel is not meant for you nor flows because of you. One day I’ll tell you about your gestation and I hope that if you carry with you ambivalent or painful memories, when I tell you the truth you will be able to heal. Dear little child: your Daddy will love you, too, when he gets to know you. He can’t feel you moving inside him as I do inside me. So wrote my wife when we were expecting our unexpected third child. It was a difficult period for us, and especially for Rae. She was stressed, unhappy, and anxious; what should have been a period of joy and mutual preparation felt like a lonely slog. I, the Daddy in the story, was in my mid-forties, outwardly a successful physician and columnist. Yet who was I within myself and within the four-walled world of our home? A depressed, anxious, psychologically underdeveloped man, years away from addressing his core wounds; a man whose family bore the burden of his dysfunctional, erratic, and emotionally hostile behaviors; a man whose workaholism took the form at home of physical and emotional absence, even negligence; a man addicted to his own internal drama, not knowing how to be responsible for his actions and mind states or their impacts on his family, least of all his child-to-be.