Is That Really How People Feel?

I feel like a real oddball sometimes.  And by "sometimes" I mean pretty much every moment of every day.  Sometimes I really can't say I understand people.  I feel so totally out of step that I just don't feel like I belong.

I was watching "Louie", which is Louis C.K.'s sitcom, and he said a line that seemed to resonate with the audience.  The gist of it was that a parent looks at their kid and at the same time, feels the conflicting emotions of, "I love you" and "I wish you had never been born."

I can honestly say I have never felt like I wish my son had never been born.  Hey, I'm not saying this for swagger effect.  I'm the first person to acknowledge the darker sides of human nature, especially when they manifest themselves in me, and I'm almost biologically incapable of not-admitting to them if they're comic in nature.

My son?  Has been, hands-down, the best thing that's ever happened in my life.  I'll even go so far as to say that being a father is, truly, the only significant thing I've ever done.  The rest means nothing.  The year on a Special Operations Team in the 5th Special Forces Group, the Ironman Triathlon, the MBA from Case, everything I ever thought I was proud of, that I ever thought was an accomplishment, is dwarfed by the absolute sheer magnitude of being a father.  It is the most rewarding thing in my life.  I suspect I will never have another thing in my life that is nearly as significant.

Do other parents feel this way?  Enough of them that this is something that resonates comedically?  I can't ever even regret marrying my ex-wife because we had my son together and he is just perfect.  I would not change a thing about him.  He is a wonder and a joy.

Another glimpse like this was similar, but it involved a mother who was walking behind her children, who apparently were being very difficult, and flipping them off behind their backs.  The general gist was that the mothers who heard about the episode had no negative judgement and the consensus was that they all had felt exactly this way at one point in time or another.

Again, never felt that way.  Granted, my son is not a teen, yet, but neither were the little kids in the flipping off story.  I can understand being frustrated, but flipping off your own kids?  Would you flip off your co-workers?  Would you flip off your relatives?  Maybe some people would.  I wouldn't.

The last episode like this was another comedian, Bill Burr, who said something to the effect of, once in a while, you just look at your significant other and you could just kill them.  Wow.  The audience cracked up.  Apparently, this is another idea that resonated.  I have not had a great marriage.  In fact, it ended in divorce. But I never looked at my spouse and was so angry that I wanted any harm to come to her.  There were plenty of times when I was so angry I wanted out of the marriage, but good lord!

I just don't get it.  The ironic part of all this is that I spent a lot of my life wondering if I was a sociopath.  Not so much as a adult, but as a kid, I can remember not being particularly empathetic in situations where I thought I probably should have been.  I think I was fortunate to have joined the Army when I did because you are thrust into a giant cross-section of humanity and forced to interact with people from all walks of life.

I went from having, at most 2 or 3 close friends to having a bunch of good friends all the time.  I started to feel connected to the world.

I guess I believe that I'm not alone in this.  That I'm not the only person who seems to lack these rather odd, antisocial urges that seem to be common, at least if stand-up comedians and mommy bloggers are to be believed.

At least I can only hope so.