“I don’t want this child!”, her unspoken frustration spills. Her tone is covering up the locked up messages in her subconscious. She don’t wish to offend, only to protect. Her intentions don’t want to be misconstrued for something else other than her story.
He, just like many men, does not wish to raise a child of their own. A common theme, not a surprising one. His fair reasons vary. From not wanting to be ‘selfish’ during times of financial pressure, to simply not being mentally prepared to onboard a life changing giving decision. Some men simply don’t want kids. That’s not what legacy automatically translates to in their mind.
And even if the reasons remain valid, do they still stand if you are about to have one anyways?
That term “ready” has always played a funny role in today’s society. The simple term defines itself as being in a suitable state for an action or situation. And yes, it’s true that if you fail to prepare, then you prepare to fail but no matter the play you take, the word “ready” becomes abstract and a more suited term suddenly arrives. Risk. Truth is, a man does not know what he is building until he has built it. The blueprint only makes sense from the finished floor. Same rule applies for a business he has never tried, only imagined. A woman he has never spoken to, only seen and appreciated. And of course, a first born child. No matter what angle you wish to look at it, in order to become or be with someone, you must dive into the deep end. You must risk your life for a life.
You can understand why his reasons mattered to him. His experiences growing up didn’t adopt the “all roads lead to wanting a child” stance. His father set an undesirable example of himself and he followed suit. He’d rather find solace in having a ying to his yang, and an aspiring lifestyle that he’s building towards. In other words, if he didn’t have the manual for it, it wasn’t his cake to eat.
But everything changed the minute she was pregnant. Unplanned and not ready yet something in him changed. What society forgot to mention is that just because a woman carries child, doesn’t mean that his father is not connected. Intimacy has a profound way of showing up when unexpected. Giving birth to a child lives in the top 3 for that true feeling. How do you describe a life-giving change that flips the switch on for humanity, commanding you to die for another other than yourself?
Unfortunately, she didn’t understand. Today’s world didn’t permit that for her. Too many examples, too many tweets, but not enough men to convince her that a child will be raised with two.
She had seen this before.
Not him specifically. No no he never did anything deliberately. She knew she was with a man who knew about love. She feared he wasn’t a father. The situation and his energy negotiated a different outcome. An outcome that suggested that yes, he loved her but probably didn’t know how to stay.
Her mother didn’t speak ill of her father neither. She gave the ‘what if’s' of life a chance to decide, and that much stayed with her. A villain didn’t exist in the story she was told. It only spoke of a man who chose a different road and a mother was strong enough to raise her to not need one.
So she was strong.
Strong enough to love him.
Strong enough to carry this through the doubt.
Strength and fear have always shared the same bed.
What she couldn’t tell him, or anyone for that matter, was that fear was never about him failing her. It was about her inner child growing up with the millions of questions that she still lives with, but never speaks of.
Where is he? Why didn't he stay? Was I not enough?
She already knew the answer because she had already been that child. And with everything she had left, she refused to pass the baton on. Because, truth be told, it takes two. It took two to love, two to conceive, yet her mother, just like his father, raised them on their own.
It showed. In its beautiful way. It showed.
He didn’t fully understand what she was saying.
Yet, he listened to every word. Grief and fear and exhaustion have a language of their own but she spoke all three at once. Her sentences refused to finish. Logic chose to sneak out the room. She didn’t even try to make a case. She was breaking.
And he let her.
He didn’t reach for the right words. Didn’t try to fix anything because that would imply that something needs fixing. All she needed was his presence. So he sat with her in it. In the gibberish and in all the things she couldn’t say.
But in that moment, he already had the answers to the questions she never asked.
He looked at her and for the first time he didn’t just see the woman he loved. He saw the mother of his child. A woman carrying something heavier than pregnancy. All her questions sitting between her eyes, hiding behind her generational strength.
He understood.
Not all of it, but enough.
Enough to know that the opportunity to become fatherless to his firstborn was no longer an option. That the door has closed from within. He shut it himself without realising, the moment he chose to stay in the room and be in her presence while she fell apart.
Because a man who runs doesn’t sit with the breaking. A man who stays, stays.
And he stayed.
The beauty about an intimate conversation is that sometimes they don’t even happen out loud. It becomes an undeniable connection felt by you and a special person who haven’t yet found the words to articulate it in the exact way it’s needed. Moments do not explain themselves, they’re created for experiences. Not even a phone could capture that sense of belonging. Some things are too large for language. They live in the chest and refuse to travel to the mouth. And so they stay there. Warm and unspoken. Understood by the two people in the room pretending not to feel what they feel.
The room had room for it all.
She didn’t need to tell him about her father. He already lived next door to her story in his chest. He knew what it felt like to grow up reaching for a version of a man that never showed up. He knew the shape of that absence. A specific absence of a house that had love in it but not the right kind.
He didn’t need to tell her that he was scared too. That the reason he never attached himself to the idea of family was about self-protection. It had nothing to do with coldness. You don’t grieve what you never wanted. Except he did want it. He just didn’t have the language for it until she gave it to him without meaning to.
In her breaking, he found his building.
And she felt it. Through the quality of his calmness. The way he didn’t leave. The way in which his phone or the door didn’t become an excuse to exit. He just stayed. Present in a way that her body recognised before her mind could argue with it.
This felt like something different.
Something her mother never got to have.
She let herself believe it. Quietly though, refusing to announce her delusion. The way you exhale after holding your breath for so long you forgot you were holding it.
And that was enough.
Because, truth be told, it takes two. Two people willing to stay in the room when everything in them says run.
They were those people.
They knew it took two.
Be reminded that a real man understands responsibility. He takes accountability and he steps up. He takes risk. Be reminded that a real man knows intimacy in the face of adversity. The times for hide and seek are beneath him. Only a game to be passed on to his first born child in his adolescence. Along with the toy cars, the trips to the zoo, the next Mbappe project. The love he chose not to pass on. Chose to give.
Her goal wasn’t to take that from him. His goal wasn’t to deny it.
They knew that it took two.
Hood Author’s Note ✍🏾
Notice how nobody is right or wrong in this story? Two people allowed eachother to be shaped by presence, saying no to the absence they grew up with in their own rhythm. They allowed that for eachother. She loved him enough to be terrified. He stayed long enough to become someone he didn’t know he could be. This story isn’t based on love alone. It truly identifies the intimacy in it all. And those are the ones worth telling. If you enjoy luxuriously intimate cinematic storytelling, subscribe to our platform and never miss a beat.
— Your Hood Author, Mr.10
#Stay10
IN10MACY DOES NOT EXIST WITHOUT THE INTIMATE CONVERSATION.
Were you raised by one or two? And did it shape what you believed was possible for yourself?
Let’s have the intimate conversation in the comments below. 🥂
I love how stylish everything about the presentation here is, from the prose to the Spotify integration to the visuals. Very polished without losing your unique writing voice or the emotional importance of the content, a real breath of fresh air in the age of samey sterile AI "work." Very enjoyable! Favorite line: "Because a man who runs doesn’t sit with the breaking. A man who stays, stays."
I still read and enjoy your work even if you are not sharing it in my group chat threads 🙂