I wasn’t supposed to be a parent. Not in any tragic, infertile, pining kind of way. Just—fundamentally. Structurally. Like a building not meant to hold that kind of weight. I didn’t fantasize about names or bedtime stories or watching little league games in the sun. I never stared at babies in restaurants. I was fine. Flatline content. But I was also bored. And boredom is dangerous when it wears the mask of ambition.
After a few years of marriage, the question started drifting in. Not from her, but from everywhere else. Parents. Friends. Magazine articles about “next steps.” I wasn’t against the idea. I just wasn’t for it. But people kept saying having a kid would change everything. That it would “add meaning.” That it would be “beautifully hard,” like hiking Everest or learning to love jazz.
So I said yes.
Eleven years later, I wake up every morning with a low-grade dread I can’t shake. I’m not talking about being annoyed, or “kids are tough,” or the kind of exhausted martyrdom people post about on Instagram with wine glasses and hashtags. I’m talking about hating my own child. Quietly. Persistently. Like a dull hum in the background of every moment.
He was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which sounds like a punk band or a phase. What it really means is: he fights everything. He resists every request. He enjoys chaos. He pushes people to the brink just to watch what happens next. The acronym is ODD. Odd. As if his behavior is just quirky. As if the way he breaks things—people—is just… unusual.
He doesn’t just ignore rules. He seeks out the cracks in them. He learns your patterns so he can weaponize them. It’s not impulsive. It’s studied.
Last month, I spent three hours on a shelf. Tools out. Instructions followed. For once, something in my life made sense. When I stood up to admire it, he walked over and kicked the center beam. It collapsed like a drunk in an alley. He laughed, of course. His signature. Always a laugh. Like the world is a prank and we’re the punchline.
This morning I came home and there was peanut butter smeared on the living room walls in deliberate arcs—one continuous motion like a Jackson Pollock fever dream. When I told him to clean it up, he made eye contact, walked into my office, and dropped my laptop into a mop bucket. A bucket of filthy water. No panic. No shame. Just watched it sink, like he was curious what drowning looked like.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t slam a door or demand apologies. I just left. Quietly. Like a ghost. I drove to a parking lot behind a Rite Aid and stared at the dashboard clock. 5:38 PM. I sat there for two hours. No music. No podcasts. Just the sound of my own breath and the distant murmur of life moving forward without me.
You’re told that parenting rewires your brain. That even the worst moments are suffused with love. But what if they aren’t? What if that switch never flips? What if every hug feels like an obligation? What if your child walks into the room and you immediately feel tired, braced, ready for impact?
People don’t talk about that. The parents who feel nothing. Or worse—resentment. Regret. They bury it under schedules and birthday parties and parent-teacher conferences. They say “it’s hard but worth it” and stare into the void behind your eyes, hoping you’ll say it back.
But what if it’s just hard?
I thought having a kid would fix something in me. That the act of loving him would fill the emptiness. But now the emptiness has a name, a face, and a bedroom down the hall. And every day feels like survival. Like holding my breath and waiting for the next explosion.
I’m not stupid. I know how this sounds. I know there are people who’d kill to have a child, any child, and that my words sound monstrous. But I don’t say them for shock. I say them because they’re true. And truth doesn’t care how ugly it sounds.
If I could go back, I wouldn’t do it. Not because I hate him. But because I never should have looked to another human being—let alone a child—to fix the hollow place inside me. I was already unraveling. I just handed the thread to someone too young to hold it.
And now?
Now I make coffee in silence. I keep the door to my office closed. I flinch when I hear his footsteps. I mark time by the hours he’s asleep. I live in the blank spaces between his tantrums. There is no plan. There is no epiphany coming. There’s just me. And him. And the quiet countdown of years I have left before he leaves.
Or I do.