This One’s Mine
by Ryan P. Kinney
I could tell something was wrong from the moment I saw her. The usual vibrancy that I find so irresistible was replaced with fear and doubt.
“Go look in your bathroom,” she said.
Laying on the counter I saw it. In our over-litigious world the blue donut no longer proclaims the news.
Just one simple word.
“PREGNANT”
I was immediately ****** into the eddy of doubt that plagued my accidental lover.
We had to be sure. So she made an appointment for the coming Tuesday to verify our fears. I anticipated that day with great anxiety. I needed to know, to create a solid path to follow. But the day came with no resolve. The doctor cancelled at the last minute. Life was torturing me for the sin of corrupting Erin’s innocence.
What I feared more than anything was the uncertainty. I’ve always feared it more than death itself. Death is going to happen. It’s inevitable. While I cannot anticipate the when I can try to prepare for it. Uncertainty gives me no straws to grasp at. Nothing to get ready for. Nothing to control, to steer, or get my bearings.
Nonetheless a week later our suspicions were confirmed. The depth charge known as a baby had been detonated into my life. My emotions became chaotic shrapnel, cutting shards into my every thought and confidence.
In those early stages my mind was a flurry of fret. My brain conceived every outlandish scenario: from adoption to challenging for sole custody. Only occasionally would a rational thought throw a life-saver into the churning murk of my thoughts:
“You survived Lisa, Ryan.”
“You will survive this.”
My first difficulty was Erin. She has been a conundrum between my word and my nature since I fell in love with her. For one symbolized by fire it is in my nature to burn that which I hold closest. But my word, the mock chivalry, deceives me into trusting that I will do what is best.
I loved her, I hurt her. A little over a year after I first picked the lock to her chastity I had left a time bomb in her life. No matter how little commitment she wanted from me, she would now be linked to me for the rest of her life.
And while it is undignified, assinine, and unbefitting The Phoenix, the human portion of my soul affixed misplaced blame, then shifted to lament and anger...
“You should have known better. You played with one born of fire and we both got burned.”
“Why was I never good enough for you?”
“My life was finally going in a direction I wanted it and now this comes to **** everything up.”
Angry more at myself but blaming Erin, I sought revenge on my life through self-pity and self-destruction. I desperately sought the affection of a woman I hadn’t corrupted. Yet, I was still afraid to corrupt another with my desperation. Eventually, I came full circle. It took both of us to create this child. It will take both of us to continue creating him. Although we may never be one, our unity will still exist in our son. It will have to be enough.
However, there was another storm on the horizon. And its name was Kinney.
My family is a curse, who it is my responsibility to love. No one else can understand them. They don’t even love themselves very well. Ours is a family where dysfunction is the only way we function. It’s like some unsolvable, incomprehendable equation that must still exist if the fundamental laws of reality are to hold true. No one else should have to take this taint of Kinney upon them. Yet someone now does, one poor mother and a marked child.
I am sorry that you both will have to share the blight of Kinney.
And, so very, VERY proud of that.
There is a twisted pride in surviving the curse of the Kinney. This survival is a quest to turn all that dysfunction into unyielding potential, of creating something beautiful from all the filth. Is it any wonder that I fought so hard with Erin to ensure that the label “Kinney” was somewhere in my son’s name? Another son to carry on the sullied name, another to try to make it mean something. The mark of Kinney is my stamp of selfish pride in having created something from nothing, my greatest art project.
Initially, the reward of my child felt as though I had been sentenced to 18 to life. I had reached a point in my life where I was ready to move on from Erin. I lamented something as trivial as the loss of my love life. My whole life was soon to belong to someone else. Control of my existence has shifted, seemingly overnight, from the culmination of my experiences to a little person not even half-formed yet. A deadline had been placed on my youth.
Slowly, acceptance began to quell the hurricane of emotions and uncertainty turned into certain doom. I began to make plans. In true “Ryan” fashion I looked to the future. It was time to get to work.
My anticipated son gave my dreams a sense of urgency, a deadline. A series of shelved, unfinished art projects burst into an organized chaos of activity. My art studio was erected in four months. A room full of storage was converted into an actual room. My most personal space, my bedroom, has always undergone radical changes each time my personal mindscape must radically change. It, like my life, was incomplete. It now better reflected the man I wanted to become; chaotic, nuanced, lived-in; not the man whose most brilliant pieces lay hidden in boxes. My entire foundation, which my home had become since the last foundation was shattered, underwent and is still undergoing major baby renovations. It is time I made room for someone else in my life.
To the beautiful mother of my son, who I will always love if for no other reason than she gave me this new life, I say this:
“Just as fire breeds we too shall watch our little spark explode into life. We will guide, tend, and fuel. It will be our job to give the energy of the universe form and function. The fires of a phoenix and the faith of a believer burn within our child. As Blessid Union of Souls says, “Love will find a way.” Ours will find its way into our child. I love you Erin, but I will love our child more.”
I remain full of doubts and insecurities in my life as one self will end when our child is born. Born of con artists and addicts, this cliché haunts me, “Can I do it right?” The only promise I can make is that the world will never be the same. The Phoenix is drawing to a close. The latest manifestation of Ryan, The AntiFather shall rise from its ashes, bearing, like all spent phoenixes, new life.
As I enter this new chapter in my life I have one thing left to express:
Of all the people it could have been with, of all the doubters and underestimaters, all the possibilities, potentials, mistakes, and failures. For all my incessant ramblings, babblings, worries, and obsessions. To the world in which I bring my son, I say this,
“******* *****, this one’s mine.”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=alh2uHjTHHU&index;=15&list;=PLPvb07CD2LbgXN0YvnrZ79D9vrgGEUYUY
