lonely
My little girl went back to her Dad’s tonight.
For the last 10 weeks or so she's been with me almost full time. We got on one another's nerves a lot, but tonight, when I look at her empty bed, tears well up and I feel the familiar splintering of my heart... A part of me screams ‘It’s not fair!’ whilst the other soothes with calm rational logic… ‘She’s OK with her Dad’ and ‘It’s good for you to have some time to yourself’.
Times like these I need a cuddle and I notice the empty half of my bed. One voice pipes up with ‘It’s just sex… that’s ALL you’re missing out on, and BTW don’t forget all the muddle; the emotional complications (all the things your friend’s whinge about!)’
The other voice, weaned on fairy stories and princesses that awake from deep slumber, wonders whether ‘You’ve just never experienced true love!’. Maybe there’s more to it than sharing a cup of tea and the paper on the weekend… maybe there really is such a thing as a ‘perfect fit’? A puzzle piece that might plug the gap and make peace of my eternal disquiet?
Then I pull myself together, remembering that lovers do not necessarily good nurturers make. What I need is a Mum. And again I’m overwhelmed with longing, fear, grief…
Last month we found out Mum has bowel cancer; this week she started chemo. In forcing myself to imagine the possibility of her not being with us forever, I start to list all the things that I wish were different between us.
I crave a closeness we haven’t shared for a long, long time. I know she loves me but, being me, I want more. I want her to accept my sexuality; my non-existent girlfriend; my yet-to-be-conceived baby… I want her to really ‘get me’… to come on the adventure with me (even if she secretly thinks the way I’m going about it is ‘a recipe for disaster’).
But, in articulating all this, I realise, once again, I'm making it all about me. So %$#!! self-indulgent! AND I want her to talk through the whole thing with me ON CAMERA!
I hope I never have a child like me!
Or maybe… maybe I’m pushing it in an effort to make our relationship the best that it can be. With my family, so adept at shoving things under the carpet, conversations on camera seem to have more depth and insight than many of the superficial ‘in transit’ ones we have every day… that’s why I’m doing it… so we can connect… captured for time immemorial on a tiny flip-out monitor.
Maybe then I won’t feel so alone. And, if I can help my family get it, get me… GET US… then maybe, slowly the ripples will spread, slowly, slowly, the world will change…
And my little girl won’t have to grow up feeling alone, like she doesn’t fit… I hope that she has no need to hide who she really is, or where she came from or whom she loves…
February 20th, 2008 at 1:06 am
As a parent in a shared cared situation I can understand. Every alternate Sunday that same cry rings out….’‘It’s not fair!’.
‘Shared care’ is a hard call for many ‘generation X’ parents. Many of us don’t have the cultural baggage. We don’t neccessarily have the wisdom passed down from parents as to how we can/should deal with a single parenting situation. Then throw in the gay parent aspect and you are most definitely in ‘unknown territory’. At the end of the day we fly blind.
We hope and yearn for like-minded individuals or empathetic family who can guide us, listen to us….or just be there to ride the wave of the unknown. For parenting in whatever era, guise or frame is unknown territory. What we can have, and I believe it by watching the beauty and compassion that is my daughter.. what we can have is a child that can/will understand that Mum/Dad is doing the best that they can….and loves them.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:49 am
AND we have the amazing capacity to support one another!
I had no idea you felt like this about seeing J go back to her Dad’s… I’ve always admired your calm and your stoic willingness to negotiate with him… but I should have known that it was accompanied by the old ‘It’s not fair!’ refrain… It’s kind of hard to block out, after all, even with Buddhism 101 primers…
XX
August 4th, 2008 at 5:19 am
I am just poking my nose in here, I hope it is not rude of me since I don’t know you. I just tottered over from Lisa’s blog and have enjoyed reading a bit into your life.
But on this section I just had to tell you that I really feel for you in sharing parenting like this. While I can sit in a relationship and think ‘well I don’t share a paper on the weekend anyway, and it is not all it’s cracked up to be’… I think I am too much of an independent person… but to have my children have to go and stay at dad’s would just be so painful sometimes. Then the constant living on eggshells wondering what you will have to negotiate next, that must be really un nerving.
Anyway, while there are blessings to your single life that I can see from this side of the fence, I can imagine how much some of those facets would really hurt.
Linda.
August 4th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Hi Linda,
Thanks for writing - not rude in any way!
It makes such a difference knowing other people can relate… and you’re absolutely right - there are many, many advantages to being single; sometimes I think I’m too aware of them and this limits my potential to enter into something new ; )
And is there really such a thing as ‘too independent’? My theory is - only if it clashes with someone else’s expectations of you…
In any case, I have to say, I’m really hoping that the people I share the new baby’s care with will be easier to negotiate with and more loving (of both the baby and me) than ‘the angry ex’ !!