conversation between nick parents about his sucid
Answers
m Matlack: One of the things I really love about The Ticking is the Bomb is the way you write about the way we all get lost. I think many of us men are at a crossroads. You realize this the morning you get up and look in the mirror and don’t recognize who you are.
Nick Flynn: I think it’s hard to tell when you are actually lost. It’s hard to remember that it’s actually a common experience — and maybe just a human experience, and almost a necessary experience — to get lost, and not to assume that one’s life’s going to go in some sort of clear trajectory where everything’s recognizable. I just don’t think that’s realistic.
But it also can be very dark and very troubling. Some people don’t get out of it either. For some people that’s the end of the road. I’ve had a few of these experiences in my life. It’s the nature of life. There’s some element of suffering in life. It comes to all of us. And it’s almost impossible to know how to navigate it until you’re in it.
It does feel a lot like the things I did in Boy Scouts. They drop you in the woods, and you have to survive for the weekend, with a knife and a match and a tarp or something. There’s a reason that the Boy Scouts do that. It’s a metaphor for what’s going to happen at other points in your life — how are you going to figure your way out of this thing? And hopefully you figure out somewhat healthy ways out of these things. The thing that led you into there might not have been that healthy. Or it might just have been necessary. It could just be circumstantial. Certainly life blindsides you.
TM: You write about the impact of realizing that you were going to be a father. How do you view fatherhood as potentially transformational?
NF: It wasn’t that I suddenly realized I was going to be a father. It was a choice. It was actually a very active choice. But the choice was something that had to be navigated. I had to step up to make that choice. The pregnancy was no surprise. And yet even within this sort of conscious decision, there was a lot of uncertainty. There was a lot of wondering if I was actually up for this moment, that I would be able to show up for it, that I’d be able to be a father. That was really abstract.
My wife [actress Lili Taylor] didn’t put any pressure on me any way. She was very clear. She was like, “This is what I want to do, this is the time for me to do it, and I’d like to do it with you. If you’re not ready to do, we’ll move on.” And it became very clear that it was really my choice. It was remarkably clear and simple that whatever I have to struggle with is what I have to struggle with. And it was not about making her happy or saving her. It was really very clear that she would prefer that we did it together.
I realized I hadn’t really approached our relationship in that way before. It always felt like there was some sort of burden of responsibility on me to take care of women or to save them, that there could be some crisis if I wasn’t there, some very serious consequences. And this didn’t seem that way at all. It seemed clear that I just had to wrestle with whatever was inside me and it gave it room to be dragged out into the open.