There was this girl

It’s been a long long time since I’ve written any thoughts. For fear of facing them o guess. There are words that can never be uttered out loud

in the past, I’ve thought in terms of why me…what didn’t I do? What could I have done? Now I know that guilt is just one of the many vices to be found here. I do sometimes still ask: Dang, was there ever really a day she believed I didn’t love her. I NEED her to know when there is just one of us left standing, I loved her every minute of every day no matter what. No matter what I said, or did, or acted…no matter what I felt. The hatred the anger, bitterness, resentment. I loved you always. When I took your child. Again and again. My one wish on this earth is for you to know and believe that.

I don’t cry very often. About three weeks ago I was punched in the gut when o saw this girl, though. Everything came rushing back…she was probably about your age, same hair color, dressed in sweatpants, wearing furry boots like the kind you used to like me to get you for Christmas. It was the boots that got me. She had a bunch of tattoos, too, even her face was tatted all up. She had dark eyes, too, and a cigarette on her hand that she could barely hold since she was on the concrete sidewalk stomach down, barely lifting her head like a one-week old kitten—bobbling it around. It broke my heart. I wanted to scoop her up- I wanted to scoop you up…I wanted someone to see you and stop to help you. I did nothing. I came to work so I wouldn’t be late and I called a friend and I sobbed on her shoulder. I sobbed as I prayed she would get better, as I prayed you would get better. As my friend prayed over you and through my tears, I sobbed.

I'm sorry

Man, there is no escaping this anger. And there is nowhere for it to go. I feel so sorry for you I can't even stay angry because I wonder if you can even help yourself anymore. I guess my energy in wanting to wipe "him" off the face of the earth has been replaced by loving and caring for your son. But the anger just seems to melt into a dozen other emotions. Today, I'm mostly sorry. I'm sorry you aren't the one snuggling with this sweet precious baby. I'm sorry you won't be worrying yourself sick when he doesn't feel well only to be relieved when he feels better. I'm sorry you won't be the one he looks to and looks for and looks up to.  I'm sorry you won't rise to challenges and look back and wonder how you ever got through it and feel like you're the strongest creature on earth. I'm sorry you don't have someone that will take you out to eat or to a movie. I'm sorry he ruined your birthday an Christmas and my birthday and your brothers birthday and nearly very day in between and you still feel like you have to be with him. I'm sorry you don't realize nobody wants anything to do with the life you've chosen. Im sorry i don't  comprehend how someone is raised their whole life with love and and decides a needle in her arm is worth throwing everything away for. Im sorry we cant accept the people that give you drugs as members of our family. Im sorry your disrespect is intolerable and has cost you almost every relationship with any hope of being healthy. Im sorry   life is so hard and nothing ever goes your  way and that everybody  lets you down.  Im sorry the world will judge you by your actions. I'm sorry your son will grow to realize where your priorities lie. I'm sorry he isn't your priority. I'm sorry your friends call me and ask me why you chose to live with him instead of with your baby. I'm sorry we can't be friends or have normal mother/daughter conversations. I'm sorry you have no one to talk to and no friends you can trust and that I cannot stand to hear the same predicaments and expected remedies that never come. Im sorry youre constantly disappointed because you depend on irresponsible people and nothing ever goes the way you plan it because they are ao unreliable. Im sorry my husband who has cared and provides for you since you were 8 years old is a sonofabitch because he wont listen to you scream and cuss and cause an uproar in his household after 3+ years of pure hell. Im sorry for when your baby gets attached to him because he is the one that carries him to and from the car every day and goes to get his food and fixes his medicine and gives him his paci in the wee hours of the morning. I'm sorry I don't jump for joy to know you have food stamps and are living off an elderly person and are surrounded by people who bring you down  . I'm sorry I can't listen to how "mommy and daddy" are buying Christmas presents and manage to keep a smile on my face when I know the next week you won't have gas for a visit but will have cigarettes and probably liquor and other things not good for you. I'm sorry I wince when I hear the onslaught of medical ailments over and over because you won't even go to the doctor for free to take care of yourself   I'm sorry you're shocked that you actually have responsibilities like expired drivers licenses and normal, everyday inconveniences necessary to function in society. Im sorry i cant pay the renewal fee and that you are completely clueless as to how financially burdensome your decision has been for us. Im sorry that most people cannot look at your decision as one if selfless love, but rather selfish abandonment. Im sorry most people call a spade a spade. Im sorry your dad doesnt even answer your calls yet just a few short years ago was telling you its ok to quit school, letting you drink, Smoke, and have a boyfriend stay the night. Im sorry youve insisted on following his shitty example. I'm sorry you're hellbent on being grown yet you don't even have shampoo to wash your hair or feminine products.  I'm sorry your infant son has to go to daycare for 10 hours a day when he could have his momma all to himself. . I'm sorry you feel you can't leave your boyfriend for any length of time without worrying and having anxiety attacks for fear of what he might do while you're gone. I'm sorry you didn't use your mental health insurance one time before it expires January 1. I'm sorry you don't have the $12 for a county mental health visit. I'm sorry you haven't the decency to go to the health department and get birth control. I'm sorry you ran up about $5,000 of medical emergency and ambulance visits because you were too lazy to follow up with your free Medicaid. I'm sorry you can't depend on me anymore and that you lost the best friend you've ever had and I'm sorry that I did too.

She grew up a beauty; had the world at her feet

Instead of staying at home she chose a life on the street 

With a needle in her arm and pills all around

Man I don't wanna have to put my baby girl in the ground

Her pretty baby boy is just 3 months old

Why the hell wouldnt she listen to a thing she was told

I couldn't overcome those things that drowned out my voice. 

I guess she can't overcome that she forced me to make a choice 

Now I'm raising this child, who is a part of us both

Seeing to his every need and watching each part of his growth 

Precious love, precious love, why do you come with such strife 

Precious boy, little boy, I pray you'll have a beautiful life 

To Her

February 1, 2012
We used to stand on the rays of the sun
We used to dance on the waves, having our fun
Now we can't even seem to reach
It's a struggle even to speak
My words are like fire, yours cold as ice
Could I have ever known it would demand such a price
To love you, to hold you, to gaze at your face
Now I'm just here, numb and out of place
We're both headstrong and so we choose to go along
I sure hope we meet on common ground
While we're both here to have the other around

May 19, 2012
Could it be that I'm never satisfied?
Or do I just want off this crazy ride?
You see an angel, I see a demon
Dragging you down with all this schemin
I don't understand, what is the deal
When did lies become what's "real"?
You treat my pain like it's a mere tickle
No wonder I've become so damned fickle
I hate being the enemy; I want to be your friend
It's just that I don't see that the madness will ever end
I can't get that night outta my head
The realization that you could be dead
Not his fault...I'll give you that
But he's done nothing but lead you down this dangerous path

June 3, 2012
Come home with me
Be wild and free
release this misery
Oh baby baby baby

November 26, 2012
I've been hatin not embracin
The whole time my heart is racin
Trying to be a mother to you and your son
While not remembering I am only one
Waking up daily to see if I've killed yet
I can't believe I didn't splatter his blood the day we met
I am not well; I refuse to come to terms with this hell

Righteous Anger

My righteous anger was replaced by self-pity. To that end, here is today's journal entry, the first I've written in years and years:

3/12/11
Ah. Finally something to write about. A nerve has been touched; curiosity stirred. In a conversation with my sister last night, a profound question was asked in regard to the circumstances in which I claim to let my emotinos rule, yet I'm discovering, I am rather emotionless. The question was, "Where is your righteous anger?"
And what a question it is. Only hours later, I wake with this on my mind-on my heart. Will the Lord finally reveal something to me? So far, my only thought is, I am, ghastly as it is to admit, more concerned with the comfort of others, including my own children, than with the condition of their heart. At times, I have prided myself wit pretty words like "compassion" and "mercy." And yes, I do believe in those spiritual gifts...and I clearly recall asking God over the last few years why it seemed he'd taken my genuine love for people from me. For in recent years, it's true, I began just to not care. As if I'd traded hearts with someone, my compassion and caring turned to stone. Perhaps I was simly "jaded." Which itself implies a need for cover, protection. Certainly I can recall being hurt, wounded, let down, but it strikes me, quite literally, that somehow, as my sister put it, I tend to "fear my anger." I fnd this very interesting and for now can only attribute it to years of self-numbness, disappointment and the art - or curse - of learning to die to my emotions.
Whatever the case in this newfound discovery/search, I believe that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. As one who is rarely, if ever, interested in seeing my own sin, or even being aware of it, another "art", I am now asking God the same question. "Where is my righteous anger?" I trust, Lord, you will show me. You will use me with my very own children by exposing this sin and you will make perfect this weakness that has been meant for such harm and destruction.
In my warped, evil thinking, maybe somehow I rationalized not caring was being selfless - that by burying my right to thoughts, values, actions, would put others "first." Perhaps I didn't feel worthy of exerting any anchoring in the vessel I'd so badly botched. but surely, I have come to the conclusion that contrary to a person of love and compassion, I am as empty as they come. Caring of everyone's comfort and feelings, perhaps, but a genuine, Christ-like love, I have not. My prayer as I endeavor to ask God to reveal these things is for a healing - in sum - to be consumed with the work of Christ - the knowledge that by only becoming more like Jesus will I die to myself and this fake love...the kind that destroys and does not build up. How sinful, selfish and naive I have been - which I confess has caused wounding and heartache, a forfeit of the gifts God has given that I must reclaim, believing that the blood of Jesus will cover.
Where is my righteous anger? I do not know, but I intend to trust God to show me- give it to me- I trade my passiveness for Christ's boldness-my complacency fr his passion, my comfort for His glory-my hurt for His healing... I think that's beauty for ashes.

P.S. Shortly after writing this, I concluded that quite possibly, it could me medication that covers are real feelings. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, necessarily. Just reminds me of the woman that mistook her birth control for prozac. She had 10 kids, but didn't care! LOL

Fathering the Fatherless

I can still remember very clearly, when my son was just a little boy, a father picking his son up from school and lifting him high above the ground in his arms and the smile that shone on both their faces. It would not have been that significant, except that even then, I realized I would never be able to give that to my son. It was bittersweet for me to see the dads with their sons. Playing ball, coaching ball, hunting, fishing. Even at a time I hated my son's father with a passion, I still longed to give him that. On one hand, I had to do everything in my power to keep us both away from him. On the other, I wished 1,000 times over he would just be the dad my son deserved. For whatever reason, reasons I'll never know or understand, he wasn't capable of connecting with my son unless I was part of the bargain. While he complained of never getting to see him, the few times he did were used as opporunities to torment me, by making it obvious he had no interest in our son apart from our being together again. Oh, how I hated him for that. Years would pass, and I would rationalize how he needed his father, many times out of desperation. And I would call him and plead. Beg him to love his own son, to reach out, to do what seemed so impossible for him, yet came so naturally for me. Nineteen years later, he never has, and he probably never will. I don't know which of us made more mistakes. And if I'm being honest, at times I was a mother with my own agenda, with a beast of a hatred for a man I wanted nothing to do with. But mostly I was just a young mother, fathering the fatherless. Something I was neither equipped nor eager to do. At 16, I was barely capable of being a mother. And after all these years, I still see the consequence of my actions. It wasn't my consequence, necessarily. Sure the struggles and inconveniences of raising a child alone were there, but the consequence, to this day, is my son's. If it cuts me to the bone to wonder why his father wasn't there, ever - for one birthday, one Christmas, one baseball game, what must it do to him? In hearing the happy stories of those that have risen above, I give them credit. But I still wonder...what about my son?

To all those fathers who rise to the challenge of being a dad, God bless you. To the mothers and fathers that have bitten their tongues til they bled in order to save their child's feelings about his/her other parent, God bless you. To the parents that have swallowed their pride, given second chances, did what they had to do to raise their child alone, or never gave up on being a part of their child's life...God bless you. And God, please bless my son. Your word says that he was never fatherless. For you are a Father to all of us, and you will not leave us as orphans. I don't know if my son will ever speak to his father, or what kind of father, if ever, he will prove to be. But I know the Father. And He loves my son even more than I ever could. And that just has to be enough.