I liked watching horror movies. They were lighthearted thrills, irony, escapism, and casual little horror simulators for the last (female) men who were all too comfortable and safe. Our list of favorites is constantly updated and never fazed by gore, sadism, and edgy themes. it was fun.
After having children, this pastime disappeared. It’s not because I’m worried that my children will get a glimpse of traumatic chainsaw carnage. It’s just over. Every time I come across a horror movie, there’s something new that makes me nauseous. It’s not that tomato sauce and jiggly latex monsters are disgusting. Finally, I was deeply reminded that these are movies about death.
It’s not the parental influence I was expecting that adds a layer of disturbing humanity to the sorority sisters who somehow find themselves showering alone during a murder spree.
Motherhood has given me the world’s most dubious superpower: a vague and persistent rumination on the finitude of life with a twist of cosmic horror.
It sounds painfully trite and I cringe as I write this, but everyone who gets cut to death by a passerby is at least someone’s child. It’s not the parental influence I was expecting that adds a layer of disturbing humanity to the sorority sisters who somehow find themselves showering alone during a murder spree. But it’s there now. As she is gleefully dismembered, her death – real death, not just a fun Hollywood imitation – is suddenly there.
Beyond the horror genre, *Child is injured* Warning about strange dramas and thrillers. Yes, it would be nice to have one of those dreaded trigger warnings. We cannot afford to add to the burden of fear. I think about death enough now, thank you very much.
It was much easier to take life easy when you were the only person in your life, young and healthy and absorbed in the little pleasures and anxieties that filled your day. My own life felt instinctively eternal and somehow tenuous. The lives of my children, the lives of perfect, vulnerable, helpless, careless, and relentlessly suicidal (in the case of my toddler) children, are another matter. Far more precious and meaningful to me than my own life has ever been, their lives in questionable custody are both my greatest blessing and my greatest responsibility.
in “The Warrior and the Worrier” Joyce Benenson argues that children present a unique challenge to mothers, presenting them with a new burden of unprecedented negative emotions. This level of negative emotion was beneficial when danger was far more prevalent in our environment. It kept the woman and her offspring alive. Throughout the long history of our species, feeling bad is the evolutionary price of love.
A counterbalancing weight to every precious gift that children give you is the pressing fear that it may be taken away tomorrow. All the videos of miraculous first steps, wobbly puddle jumps, and lovingly misspoken words are the torture that awaits if any of the 1001 horrible things you’ve been worrying about happen (and haven’t happened yet) (Not to mention a million other things happening) You worry. )
I’m generally not a worrier. Even now that I’m a mother, I’m still relatively carefree compared to other people. I’m not as much of a worrier as my husband, but I worry in a different way. I am responsible for the type of worry that causes me to wake up in a cold sweat. For example, it’s a non-tangible fear that your luck will run out based on some strange calculation that is etched in your subconscious. He thinks more rationally about things like drowning and traffic accidents.
My reality is that I have two perfect children. I get to spend most of my time with them. I am healthy and my husband is also healthy. We are incredibly lucky, almost suspiciously lucky. In my heart, our many blessings sometimes feel like a fountain that slowly bubbles up.
I too have experienced personal and family tragedies, but these burdens are not officially recorded in my young family’s books, so I don’t feel they matter. We started with a blank canvas. So far it has been only goodness and lightness. In the back of my mind, a spring is starting to move.
I’m at least a little worried about concrete things like accidents, predators, kidnappings, and illness. But my main anxiety concerns the more fundamental nature of this world. This is not a kind place. It is a place of indifference, often filled with casual insults and cruelty. Kindness is definitely there and I teach my children to cultivate it in themselves and their environment, but you can’t really bet on it.
I hope my children will survive, but I know that they won’t. They too will be teased at school, seduced into vices, and have to contend with the demons planted within us all. And even if I try to help them, they may not win some of these battles.
These are perfectly normal things, but when you have children, they are heartbreaking in a whole new way. It’s easy to make peace with life’s tragedies when all that’s at stake is your own suffering. I learned that even if I couldn’t predict exactly how, the idea that my child would suffer was and always will be with me.
The sum of all remote probabilities for a disaster to occur always appears to be greater than 100%. I will experience (even more) catastrophic events, and so will they.
that’s reality. But until then, don’t remind me.
Alex Kuschata is a writer, cultural critic, and podcast host from Transylvania, Romania.This piece was originally published on her substack.
