Is there anybody out there?

During the first seventeen months of my journey down Parentage Lane, I have carved a cave out of urbanization where I casually and safely perch at all times. Even while engaging in the inevitable social settings of the outside world, I remain in my sacred space. No eye contact. (What has happened to me?) I have fortified this safe place by disregarding the pressures of societal expectations of connubial relations with my partner, securing an entourage of peers that accept, encourage, and emulate my life-style, and avoiding the outside world of critics, oppressors and drooling, snotty, diseased youngsters and their mums and pops. (The kid as never been sick!) Doing so has allowed me to completely surpass the inevitable struggles of raising a breast-oriented, unvaccinated, vegan babe in this world, with my radical and over-analytical mind full of thoughts such as: “keep your hateful, fucked-up school system and its ill-teachings away from my holy kid”, or “ No you fucking idiot, just cause she intakes my breast milk does not mean that my vegan child wants your shitty puddin’ cause it is “dairy-based like my milk”(HA!) or how about this one: “I really don’t want her to go to the slumber party cause they will force her to eat foods with processed sugar and animal-products”. Am I really the weird, anal-retentive mother that I recall from my youth? The one that ruins all of the fun cause she imposes “different” regulations and rules on her child? Or will my child love the way we do the things we do? Will she understand that animals are her equals? Will she love and support our holy notion of Veganism? HEY MAMAS OUT THERE THAT UNDERSTAND- I NEED YOU! Let’s take over the world and create a friendlier place to raise children! A place where “they” don’t judge and ridicule our choices as parents! A place that supports and understands the very breadth of a hard-working stay-at-home-mama. Shit ain’t easy, yo!

I can feel my safe temple crumbling as I am moving more into the light and dark of the outside world. A world where family is right around the corner and we will no longer have the excuse of “well, we don’t really know anybody or really any place that is babe-friendly, so let’s just hang around at home where mama can be topless so the babe can suckle as she pleases, daddy can put his pj’s back on at 3 in the afternoon and watch The Daily Show and Colbert Report reruns, and where we don’t have to worry about scheduling our lives around social gatherings or plans—cause ya know, we are hardcore homebodies.” How will I react to the outside world? How will I react to society and its fangs and claws plunging at my throat? How can I express to the “others” that I don’t like the idea of public schools, even though I come from a long line of teachers? How will I remain close to my child when I need to make financial ends meet? This child needs to run in grass and pick wildflowers not fall on concrete and mounds of chicken bones.

I want to live under the Golden Canopies. Run free. Drink pure water. Eat good food.

Oh, dearest bubble; don’t burst on me now…you control the Monster of Anxiety that is caused by Post-Partum Depression.

The calm is dying as the sun begins to set beneath the thunderclouds.