A Father’s Anxiety, a Childhood of Humiliation, and the Fear It Might All Return
For the regular readers of this blog, I want to say this upfront:
This time, you probably won’t find what you expect from me.
This is not a light post.
Not funny.
Not the kind that leaves you smiling.
There is only one thing here:
a real father’s fear for his daughter, and a sincere hope that she will resemble me only on the outside—and nothing more.
I’ve written before that I recognize certain traits in Sara that remind me of myself.
Not all of them are good.
It’s time to settle that debt. To open my heart.
The Child Who Believed He Was Inferior
When it comes to appearance, I spent most of my life distancing myself from people and keeping to myself.
Mainly because of deep feelings of inferiority that took root in me as a child, centered around how I looked.
I can’t pinpoint exactly what caused it, though I can guess.
Maybe I’ll share that in another post—one that will be no less exposing or emotionally challenging.
What I do know is that things became significantly worse when my parents left south Tel Aviv and moved to Holon.
The most surprising part, in hindsight, is that objectively speaking—my appearance wasn’t that bad.
But once a child believes he is inferior to others, it shows.
Children know how to be cruel.
And when they sense weakness, the primitive side comes out.
Mockery and Humiliation
The worst thing I remember, looking back, is the mockery.
What may have started as an “innocent” joke by one child spread quickly and turned into relentless humiliation—lasting for years and shaping my personality.
To the point where it almost erased my identity entirely.
Fear of mockery turned into fear of the world itself.
Anyone who passed by became a potential humiliator.
I learned to lower my gaze, move on with my head down and my spirit crushed.
I excluded myself from social activities, skipped class parties and bar mitzvahs, and always preferred the walls of my small room, where I found refuge.
It’s hard to explain how a 12-year-old already knows he will always be alone.
No friends. No relationships. No love.
But there’s no doubt it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There Is Nothing Worse Than a Crippled Soul
In hindsight, I understand how true it is that what a person projects shapes how society responds to them.
I projected defeat.
Total self-erasure.
Out of shame and disgust, I avoided looking in the mirror.
There were moments when my thoughts went to very dark places.
If I hoped things would change in high school, that hope was crushed quickly.
One of the biggest mistakes of my life was choosing a technical high school I knew in advance wouldn’t suit me.
The reason was simple and painful: most of the students were boys, and I hoped that would at least spare me ridicule from girls—the kind I feared most.
Life, as it turns out, enjoys irony.
The same boys who targeted me in elementary school ended up in the same high school.
Everything started again—only worse.
Muscles Didn’t Fill the Void
In 11th grade, I tried a different strategy.
I trained obsessively in my room with dumbbells, with Stallone and Schwarzenegger hovering above me as role models.
I achieved visible results.
I went from a hunched, broken figure to someone intimidating.
People stepped aside.
Looks changed.
People changed their path to avoid me.
But inside, I was the same child.
The muscles on the outside couldn’t fill the void created by years of worthlessness.
Military Service: When There Was Nowhere to Escape
Military service was the breaking point.
For the first time in my life, that frightened child had nowhere to escape to.
In school, no matter how bad things were, there was always an end to the day.
There was home.
A small room where I could breathe, calm down, and survive until the next morning.
In the army, there was no such refuge.
The humiliation followed me day and night, for three consecutive years.
No safe space. No door to close. No place to recover.
Short trips home were nothing more than brief pauses for air—before being thrown back into the same reality.
That was the difference.
And that difference broke me.
That’s how I lived the first decades of my life:
hiding from people, retreating inward, existing rather than living.
When the World Saw Me Differently
By my mid-twenties, as I started working and studying, the world already saw me differently.
Women flirted with me.
People called me “handsome.”
And I didn’t believe them.
The ridicule I absorbed throughout my life—especially from girls and women—destroyed my sense of masculinity and my ability to enjoy intimacy, sex, or love.
In the end, I felt truly safe only alone.
Disconnected from the world.
That prophecy of a 12-year-old boy came true.
I began the surrogacy process at 48—desired by women, yet alone at home.
What If Sara Falls Into the Same Pit?
And now that I’m a father—how could I not worry?
How could I not fear that a beautiful, confident little girl might grow up frightened and isolated like her father?
Especially when she starts life at a much harder point than I did: she has no mother.
Will she rise above that cruel reality?
Or will she, too, be targeted by ruthless children and robbed of her joy and inner strength?
And what kind of example am I setting, living without romantic love?
Without a partner?
These are the thoughts that keep me awake at night.
My Plan
I’ve already formed a clear plan.
If I recognize even the smallest trace of what I went through in Sara, I will attach professional support.
Not to “fix” her.
But to protect her before the world manages to break something inside.
No matter what, my daughter will not turn out like me.
I will do everything I can to make sure this apple falls as far from the tree as possible.
And to hell with Newton.
Follow Sara & Me
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribe by email—so you’ll automatically get a notification whenever a new post goes live.
No spam, no ads—just the posts.
Read Next
If you’d like to read more about Sara and our life together, here are two more posts you might enjoy:
Beyond the Blog
Alongside this blog, I also give talks about late fatherhood, surrogacy, and the emotional journey of becoming a parent later in life.
Sara and Me 