After recently becoming a father, millions of things have passed through my mind about all of the future complexities that I'm about to engage with. Will I be able to ensure her happiness, will she be smart, will she find love, will I be there for here when she needs me and can't tell me she does, how will I cope when she begins dating? I've pondered on all of these and many more questions, but I haven't really given much thought to them because the simple answer to each is to be my best and the rest will follow. No point worrying about what ifs and buts when it comes to the future - but there is one certainty about the future that I can't avoid.
To those who know me off line it should come as no surprise that I had a somewhat sordid youth where I pushed the boundaries of how much one can abuse their body and mind. It's one of those things where the older I get the more acutely aware I become of how much my addled youth has rendered my brain at times rather useless. My working memory is so poor that I am constantly having to, on my own, retrain and relearn everything required for me to perform at my best in tasks where academia are required. You may think this is a bit of hyperbole, but to illustrate my point further with my friends from university when we meet together and wander down memory lane and relive our more memorable moments, they need to recount the stories to me as though I weren't there because I simply have no memory of them ever occurring.
So now that I am the father of my greatest single achievement and the one thing I want to remember the most, I can't help but be reminded of the fact that when my daughter is old enough to ask about her early childhood I wont be able to tell her because I simply wont remember. I can of course document all of my thoughts and record everything on video and stills, but there is a distance and impersonality to that which will never feel sufficient or close enough. I don't want to have to read about how I felt in that moment, I want to be able to experience the memory of that moment through feeling it.
Up until this point in time I was happy to pass off all of the experiences that I've had as character building and gave me the ability to live many lives in the space of one misspent youth. That every mistake I made led me to be the man I am today, and that is a man I have worked and strived hard to become in the face of strong adversity. But now that all seems for naught.
I have some solace in the knowing that even though I wont remember her past, I will be the man she needs at every point in her future, and that I will perhaps love her more unconditionally as I won't be able to remember all of the negative parts of her youth - but I want to remember the poo, the way she squirms when she nestles her head under my beard like a beanie, the way she smiles to herself as she dreams about the things that babies dream about.
I'm afraid that the older I get, the worse it will become, and now I have regrets.
