i remember holding my son when he was tiny a real wisp of a thing all swaddled and smelling like baby powder and formula and there i am in the glider in the nursery the little night light glowing like a dull coin and i’m just rocking him rocking him and i’m tired beyond belief this whole dad thing is new you know and all of a sudden this thought just slams into my head like a brick and it’s like *what if i just dropped him* and it wasn't a question it was just this cold hard impulse to just let go and it scared the absolute SHIT out of me i loved that kid more than anything i still do obviously but for that one split second that one terrifying microsecond i just wanted to see what would happen if i opened my hands and just let him fall to the floor and i never told anyone that not his mom not my best friend not even in therapy years later (because who wants to admit something like that right like you'd get locked up for even thinking it) but it’s always just kind of been there in the back of my mind this little dark corner of my brain that holds onto things i shouldn’t think or say and i guess it popped up again because i’m in this philosophy class now this really dense stuff about free will and determinism and sometimes i look at my kids who are grown now obviously and just wonder about all the little decisions and non-decisions that led us here to this exact moment you know (like all the tiny little currents that pushed us along even when we thought we were steering the ship) and that image of my infant son just tumbling from my arms it just came back to me out of nowhere it’s funny the things you hold onto the things you push down and pretend never happened but then they just surface again decades later when you’re trying to understand kant or something and you're like oh yeah that that thing that truly awful thought i had when i was a young dad and it’s just there like it never left it just parked itself in your brain and waited for the right moment to remind you that you’re capable of just about anything good or bad and that’s a real unsettling feeling when you’re 70-something and still trying to figure out what the hell you’re even doing with your life (like aren't i supposed to have it all figured out by now) it’s just this constant hum of uncertainty even when you think you’ve got a handle on things this academic pressure at my age is no joke either by the way it’s like being back in high school with all these young people and sometimes i just want to yell like dude chill your grades are not the end of the world but i don’t because i’m old and i’m supposed to be wise or something but sometimes i just want to scream