I want to tell you a little story.
A story about a man who asked me to be his baby-mama. It’s a true story. A story about love, spirit and connection.
Once upon a time, in mid-March 2013, I moved to San Francisco for 3 months. A friend of mine had offered me his house in exchange for taking care of his dog while he was away on several business trips, making it a perfect opportunity to explore this beautiful city some more.
Said friend has a speculative law firm; taking on high-risk, high-return cases prosecuting insurance companies, corporate organisations, and other big-world baddies, acting as prosecuting attorney for ‘the little people’. Women who had been sexually harassed and worse, men who had serious accidents that went uncompensated, single mothers who were illegally evicted from their rent-controlled homes and so on.
This friend – let’s just call him Tom – worked very hard, and very long hours, risking his personal funds to pay for the court hearings of his low-income clients, with the hope that they would end in massive payouts.
To say Tom was very stressed is certainly an understatement. His high levels of stress were palpable on every level: his body literally reeked of it; he had trouble sleeping and took sleeping pills every night to aid his rest; he suffered from various skin conditions; was balding prematurely; his friendships and relationships suffered; even his dog was nervous, on edge and frazzled.
Having spent his entire life devoted to developing his vocation, here Tom was, 32 years old, with a career that was at the precipice of either taking off or burying him, and absolutely no life balance, no inner peace, no true happiness. He was miserable, and constantly consoling himself with the idea that ‘when this case succeeds / when I have this much money / when I move to this kind of amazing penthouse… Then…yes, then I will be happy’.
Tom had never spent any time developing himself either emotionally nor spiritually. Never connected with his own soul or felt what it feels like to truly live. He simply fulfilled the dysfunctional pattern of trying to create a life that appears like success in modern, capitalist America. Because that is, he thought, is what would bring him a fulfilled life.
Now that you have a little bit of background, here is where things get interesting.
One day Tom came home, when I was there and decided to announce he was in love with me. For me, a laughable fact, since in all his disillusioned life he had never even had a chance to get to know me. Not really. Not the way someone who loves you does.
To him, all I was, was a pretty girl, a free-spirit who lived life quite differently to the way he did. And while he was certainly enamoured by my freedom, my ease, my infinite calm and joy, and my view of life, he most definitely was not in love with me.
I know love. I know it well. I know what it feels and tastes like.
I knew what he felt was not love. What he was perhaps in love with, was the idea of owning something in his life, which gave him an escape from the choices he had made. He saw something in me that his soul craved, that he desperately yearned for, but it was not me.
While he was busy crushing his soul with endless court hearings, fighting for people and cases that made him cry, he had lost his own sensitivity, his ability to feel and connect to truth, his Spirit. And instead of seeking that connection within himself, he sought it out in others. In me.
I was gentle and clear with him, that his idea of love to me is an illusion. And that perhaps he might like to look within his own soul to find what he is looking for. Because what he seeks is not in me. Tom looked at me with sad, hurt eyes.
The next day he went to see his therapist. And came back with some ridiculous book about women rejecting you because they were too fucked-up to see your worth. He showed it to me and said I might like to read it. I laughed and told him to enjoy it.
A week later, he confided in me his dream to have a child. He told me that he really wished to become a father, to raise a son and teach him the ways of the world. I could see that what he wished for wasn’t truly a child, but to feel. To feel loved, to feel like he belonged, to feel important, to feel a sense of worth, a feeling of being needed. What he wished and craved for was a sense of connection to the powerful energy that we are all a part of, the feeling of Love the connection with soul and Spirit brings.
And then things got weird…
Not long after, Tom asked me if I would help him fulfil his dream of having a child, and become his baby’s mama. He offered to support me, my life and our child; in exchange for bearing it and raising the child together as friends. No relationship. No contractual romantic commitment. Just, would I please have his baby.
To this day I’m not sure if this request was a very convoluted, complicated way to get me into bed; or to tie me to him, but as you can imagine… That’s just not the way I roll.
I told Tom that I believe having a child comes from a union of deep, mutual love and not from a financial contract. I told him that I didn’t believe that he was emotionally and mentally in a place that’s supportive and healthy to having a family, and that perhaps this was a good opportunity to actually dig deep and delve in why he is seeking to fill this hole in his life and soul in such a way. Proclaiming love and seeking to have a child with someone who very clearly doesn’t share any kind of deep feelings and emotions with you, is an act of insecurity and deep inner detachment.
Tom was so disconnected from life, love and truth that he couldn’t identify them.
Over the next days, as he saw that my mind wouldn’t change, Tom became extremely moody, dark, sharp-tongued and evasive. He wasn’t comfortable with me and what I represented to him: his unwillingness to face his truth. As the air in the house that we shared, became flooded with his animosity and bitterness, I moved out, and onwards.
I am forever grateful for this experience as it showed me and taught me how so many people do actually live. I needed to see and experience this, to know the contrast to my own life and choices I make. To understand why I choose the way I choose. Every experience is valuable and there is a reason why life brought the two of us together the way that it did: to learn from each other.
Whenever *Tom is in my thoughts I send him love, and hope that one day he jumps into the deep abyss of his soul and finds what he seeks. His own beauty, vulnerability truth and shining light.