Does abandoning my child make me a bad person?

It is always interesting -- if not particularly pleasant -- to see oneself from an outsider's perspective.

I've been following with great interest the debate between lucifrix and stakebait over my post about the child who mistook me for her mother last Friday.
Much as I hate to admit, stakebait is correct in several of her points. Mostly, that's because I didn't give her anything else to work with. I was writing the entry at work, trying to finish up before heading off to my second job, and attempting to get across all the salient points in the minimum amount of space.

So, yeah, I *do* look like a heartless and unfeeling bastard. lucifrix got to hear the story over lunch, complete with post-mortem self-flagellation and a liberal dose of Catholic guilt over not helping the helpless when given the opportunity.

stakebait has never met me or interacted much with me, and all she knows about the story is what I wrote in my post.

Considering that in a different, but somewhat similar situation last year, I immediately went to perform CPR on a stricken (adult) train passenger, I have to ask myself why I was unwilling to help a child.

Am I *really* that evil? Or dissociated?

lucifrix asked me, "Why *didn't* you help the child?"

Good question. Why?

When I started thinking about it, I realized that my initial reactions to the child were colored by the split-second feeling that, surely, her actual parent would appear any second (and probably accuse me of trying to kidnap her kid, the way my day was going).

Following hard on the heels of that impression was the nagging suspicion that this was all a stunt for the current equivalent of Candid Camera. The presence of video cameras in the audience that quickly formed reinforced this discomfort.

Now, remember, I'm trying to reconstruct my subconscious impressions from almost a week ago, so please bear with me.

The arrival of the cops was really when things started to go downhill. I admitted in my previous post on the topic that I handled the situation very, very badly, and that my poor reaction certainly contributed to the problem.

But I was seriously, seriously freaked out.

I am not fond of children. I am not good at getting along with them, I have had very little positive experience with them, and I emphatically do not want any of my own -- largely because I think I'd be a selfish and dissociative parent who might very well end up dropping off the kid at Grandmom's for most of the child's life.

The idea of having children of my own, being responsible for the upbringing of another human being (and quite possibly fucking up beyond belief), frightens me in ways I can't even fully describe.

It's the cell-deep kind of fear that defies explanation.

I've always sort of felt like there was a big invisible sign somewhere over my head that read, "See this chick? *SO* not a mom!"

The thought that *anyone* could possibly mistake me for a potential parental figure, even in an in absentia sort of way, was terrifying. I freaked completely.

And, like many people, I dealt with my discomfort by becoming distanced, angry and combative.

Subsequently, I wondered about the fate of the child. Frankly, I was afraid to try to find out any information, in case someone decided that my interest constituted more evidence of abandonment. Since I haven't heard anything further, I choose to live in happy-go-lucky-land and assume that the frantic parent was reunited with her distraught child at the police station a short time later.

Anything else would've made the news by now.

I thought I wrote a reasonably objective post about the subject on Monday. Evidently, I should have been considerably *less* objective and should have instead detailed everything, complete with each garbled and less-than-clearly-defined (even in my own mind!) reaction that I had.

I handled the situation wrongly. Yes, if I were in a similar situation again, I'd react differently. I've learned from the mistake. I kind of thought that everyone would just assume that OF COURSE I've seen the error of my ways.

I forgot that not everyone reading my journal is someone who actually knows me to be a stand-up kind of girl.

I didn't post effectively about the situation, which led to a number of people choosing to privately insult me, and to causing a friend of a friend to develop an extremely bad opinion of me.

For instance, I didn't mention the woman in the audience who actually said to me, "What the hell is *wrong* with you? Pick up your baby!"

When I replied, "The baby isn't mine," she yelled back, "So pick her up anyway!"

I didn't give a blow-by-blow statement of all the questions the woman from Child Welfare asked me, or a detailed discussion of how the cops kept their hands on their guns while they talked to me.

I didn't talk about the increasingly black mood of the gathered crowd, or how they muttered things like, "That's what's wrong with white mothers these days . . . have a mixed baby and then not want to take care of the little thing."

I didn't mention the guy who spat at my feet and told me that my man should "knock [me] around a little, see if that'll put some sense into [my] head."

Although her logic was fallacious in some places, which will be addressed in replies to comments on the original post, rather than taking up space here, the bulk of what stakebait had to say was valid, based on what she had to work with.

But I still don't like hearing what she had to say, which I am perfectly aware is an emotional reaction. It's hard *not* to react that way when someone, in effect, tells you that you're a bad person.