-You loose your innocence when you have a child. All of a sudden the world becomes a much more dangerous place.
–Jon Stewart in an inteview in PBS

Am sure most parents feel the same way, but every time I hear some one say this, it is an extra validation that I am not a crazy lady!

Any one seen the tamil movie Tenali? Kamal tells his shrink that he is scared of anything and every thing. It starts with, “Yellam sivamayam endru solvargal. Aanaal yenakku yellam bayamayam” (Meaning: People say that God is everywhere, but for me I only see fear in anything I see) and he gives a list of everything under the sun. I am pretty much in the same boat.

I fear so much for my girls and news like the Virginia Tech shootings are not helping in any way. I can no longer watch movies like Life is beautiful, which by the way is a wonderful movie and no one could have taken a better war movie, conveying the impact of war, without even one scene of violence in it. But sometimes you don’t have to show bloodshed and gory details. You show scenes like the father and son been taken to a concentration camp on the day of the little one’s birthday and the viewer’s heart is in a vice. Any way the point is, I watch a movie like Life is Beautiful and start imagining, which is quite vivid by any standard, self and kids in such a situation. What would I do if toddler and infant don’t co-operate like the kid in the movie? I am thinking, “May be each kid is different and I must adopt a different technique with toddler and infant” and by the time I realize that it is just a figment of my imagination and snap out of it, I have stressed myself out more than necessary.

So touchy feely movies, especially the ones in which kids are involved, are pretty much out for me. Same is the case with books, anyways I have hardly read anything other than Brown bear and Cat in a hat in a long time, so that’s okay. The other day I was flipping channels and happen to catch a glimpse of a sitcom. In the sitcom, an intruder enters a house and kills the mom, though the details were pretty graphic, I was still doing okay. But the mom collapses near the baby’s crib and the baby wakes up and starts crying. Something about the image of a helpless baby crying messed me up completely. I was dreaming about it again and again and it took me a quite a long time to shake myself out of it. Then I hear from my neighbors that there was a break-in in the neighborhood when we were in India. That’s it, my dreams return. As of yesterday we have a new security system installed at home.

I used to trust people blindly. I can write a book about the number of times I have been taken for a ride. After becoming a mother, I think everything with my girls in mind. I am having trust issues, I am so frightened to leave my girls alone with anyone but a few close friends and close family. So far concentration camps and torture seems to be the #1 fear, closely followed by kidnapping and child molestation. Slowly I am trying to affect the people around me too, recently scared the hell out of a friend telling her about an imaginary kidnapping scenario. The reason for this post is the hope that talking things out loud might ease my imagination a little bit. So if any one feels the same way as me, please do leave comments that way I would feel happy that I have company. If any one feels that I am being a fuss bag, please do leave reassuring comments, that way I can work on myself. Ideally it will be perfect if I can find someone to top my story, but I feel like I have hit rock bottom, so I guess it is hard.