Am I having an identity crisis?

It’s been the most amplified four days of my life.

I used to think I was fearless. Then I watched my wife endure twenty one hours of contractions and fight her way through an hour and a half of pushing to bring our little baby into the world. To say I was “afraid” during labor would be like saying I was “happy” after delivery. Imagining the multitude of birth related complications that might arise and endanger my wife’s health, all of which were theoretically possible but statistically improbable, I was terrified. I experienced fear, true fear, for the first time in as long as I can remember.

I used to think I was graceful under pressure, level-headed and resourceful when sh*t hit the fan. That fantasy lies in a million little pieces on the floor of the hospital recovery room. The helplessness I felt that first night with our baby girl, not being able to console her as she seemed to struggle with her little breaths, was so foreign yet so intense. In the minutes before the nurse on-call arrived, I glimpsed a sense of helplessness so deeply that it felt molecular.

I used to think I was content, at least as content as a restless soul could hope to be. Then I experienced my first skin to skin contact with my baby girl, thirty six hours into her young life. I found a serenity that I could not have imagined possible. I wonder if Siddhartha would have left his newborn in search of enlightenment had he experienced the bliss of connecting with something (and someone) so pure.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror this morning while shaving, it was the first time I had seen myself in four days. I could barely recognize the person looking back at me. His confidence had been shaken, his sense of perspective toppled, his grounding uprooted, his history rephrased, his future recast.

And yet, it didn’t feel like a crisis. It felt more like an evolution. It felt awesome.

4 days in!