Family, to have or not have, that is the question
Can’t escape the consequences for our actions, ever. The last 2 years have been ones that have included tremendous growth, tremendous sorrow, and tremendous hope. I start to wonder if those things have to all be together for it to be a rich life. I know that it is hard if not impossible to experience joy without sadness, the having without loss, and the light without the dark.
But in somethings it is hard to accept the consequences. For almost my entire life I have coped with sadness, loss, disaster, and anything else negative by trying to come away from the experience with lessons learned. It hasn’t always worked. And sometimes the lessons are learned too late to make any real difference.
My oldest son came over last night for one of the 4 days he stays with me in a month. Not a lot of time to try to rebuild a relationship. And last night he was sad, grieving and mad about the loss of his girlfriend. In his anger he looked for something, anything to blame, and I became it. I find increasingly that as things are hard for Katie and him, that they just shrug their shoulders and decide it’s all my fault because I did everything wrong. I listened with my heart last night. I tried to listen without judging, and I affirmed that I had made many mistakes in their past, and that I had no way of going back and changing them. I told him that I live with those mistakes every day that I don’t have my two oldest kids in my life. I grieve for the pain they feel because of those choices, and hope that I can help to undo some of the damage by healing myself and being a better person.
The hardest thing to hear was that he felt that I was never there for them. Looking back, whatever I did, I made no decision without totally considering all of the kids and the impact of that decision. I always tried to do the best. I know now that it didn’t work. I didn’t always do the best, and some of what I did hurt them.
My deepest wish for the future is that someday the pain will heal enough for both of them, and good memories, (yes there are good memories) will come back and we can be a family again. However, the path is the path, and what is meant to be will be. I cannot push it into the shape I want it. My love for them will be there regardless.
I think the biggest thing to come out last night was for the first time I felt real anger toward Stephen. One of the things said to me was that I was the one who ruined their lives because they could remember everything I did, and since Stephen wasn’t a part of their lives they didn’t see that he’d ever done anything wrong or hurtful. That made me really angry. He didn’t even involve himself in their lives for 12 fucking years. If he did during the summers it was because I pushed it. Their early years were in many ways hell for all of us because of his drug addiction and actions, and because we split up and he abandoned them, and then got to come in at the darkest hour and “rescue” them - he is now a hero in their eyes, and I am the dragon lady. It makes me so angry that I really wish I’d never called him in. I wish that whatever the pain to me that I had dealt with what was going on myself. I’d like to think we would have worked through things, and the kids would still love me now. It isn’t fair, it really sucks and at this moment I really hate him for that.
