The shear emotional pain of abandoning children even for one day is unbearable when you recognize the betrayal in your child's eyes or the tenor in their voice that suggest they don't really trust you. Had I known what I know now I would of tried harder, I would of pushed aside the call of the wild, I would of put my fears in a mental compartment while shutting the door.
For so many days this is what I did with thoughts of my children, put it in a compartment and gently shut the door yet hesitating as I did because I really didn't want to forget about them, I just wanted the emotional relief, I just wanted time off from the thoughts of guilt that crowded my mind. It wasn't easy yet over time it became easier and then there times when days would go by and I wouldn't even think of them, in some respects I felt a sense of victory followed by a sense of debilitating remorse, a kind of mental sickness that warrants immediate servitude in the boughs of hell. I never really felt any sense of relief, just a sense of surprise that I could actually have moments were I would forget about my children, I shutter to think about these times when life seemed clouded in grey while I took on the form of human numbed in a type of zombie existence.
I never forget those words of people who would discover I had children yet during our interaction I never mentioned them, they seemed shocked and disappointed in me. They had the look of betrayal upon their face and it made me go inside, push back and I would stop being around them because that's the only thing I knew how to do, it's the thing that I did back then. I wasn't ashamed of my children, I simply needed space from questions or stories about them, things that I did not have because of my lack of involvement in their lives. I was so busy trying to escape that I never gave myself a chance to wonder what was going on in their young lives. I couldn't trust myself to be consistent, so I did nothing which seems to be my default mode. In this space of doing nothing, I find that I'm more miserable than if I had tried and yet I saunter into this habit like a rote machine. A machine with internal torture devices, beatings of a mental kind, acutely spinning me into self aggrandizement because coping was a basic instinct and I would survive all this.
I wasn't fully negligent and it's interesting when my son who lives with me now tells me this fact but not in the way I want him to. He reminds me of my abandonment as from age five to 14 and it makes me want to cry, I do cry but not in front of him. No, I defend myself saying, I'm here now and considering that 5 to 14 was most of his life, being here now feels useless but again because kids have hearts made of gold, he confesses that he is glad I am here now and doesn't want me to go anywhere. This fear of my leaving is a force I deal with hiim from time to time and one time it had really awful consequences because I went out with some friends and ended up staying out all night. This same evening he would lose his keys and friends of the family would come to rescue him but he refused in a raging manner that scared people. I would arrive home to find him laying next to the door, cold and asleep. His body teethered to the door as if his life depended on it, as if he was waiting for the predictable as if he might not ever see me again. And I hate these moments of doubt that linger on my children's faces, the look of not knowing what is next with me and I know I deserve it but it feels no less hurtful.
The reason why I say I wasn't fully negligent is because when the mood hit me which is not the real truth just the cynical, judging attitude I inflict on myself with the help of others, I would spend time with my children. It was a time over compensation for the time I hadn't been there, I spent all disposable income on them, always sent it to them and afforded them nice things, trips and fairyland times together. The older they got the harder the visits because I could see in there bodily shape and form how much they had changed. I could hear in their voices stories of things that happened without me and I could see in their eyes that I was like a stranger with a kind but guilty heart. But children have hearts made of gold and the spirit of resillence, sometimes I wished they would curse me, tell me how selfish and awful of a mother that I have been but that wasn't there job and none of this is their responsibility.
Why confess now? Why smear unto the page this stuff that ressurects the current of suicidal anger and pain as thick as bolders? Why send my heart into places I've shielded from myself for way too many years? What change will I make now, if any?
I confess because I have to believe that somewhere in the releasing of this internal satiric drama, there is an alternate ending. Not the ending I imagined for the bulk of my years. An ending at the expense of my own hands wanting life to fade away, to be gone. I confess because I want to get better and not for others but for me and my children who are now all officially grown. And I want to afford myself the excuse that it is too late but I will not give in, I will rise above my deepest and most shameful fears and began again, as I do every day to do better. To use the God stuff inside of me to live more lovingly. I can't promise perfection or even progression. I can engage in earnest effort with the desire to better etched in every micro ounce of my actions. I can cry these tears of guilt, I can look at pictures of them growing up and see what I missed, I can call them with just a hello, I can want the past knowing it will never come to be, I can be gentle with the part of myself that feels I deserve a life sentence in jail, I can take each breathe and surrender it all to the divine spirit, wherein lies the truth, the power, the peace, the joy and the love that heals and makes the world a better place.
I'm working with balance these days, I haven't perfected it yet I continue to wish for more balance. I remind myself that I came back to Ann Arbor to heal old wounds and just when I think that I've done my work, something else comes to the fore and I want to ask, when will it be over? But I dare not go there, the way I will do this is to know that with my higher power I will get through and getting through is good enough for me. I refuse to ignore and neglect or abandon or push to the side the awful memories, I will allow myself to feel the pain but in a place of knowing that I will get to the other side where I am healthy and whole. I gave up on suicide many, many years ago. It's the easy way out and if nothing else, I've never been one to take the easy way out, I'm too smart for that plus for some reason, in the vestiges of my human purpose I am not allowed to die before my natural time because the work I have been destined to do is work I gladly assume. I finally once and for all take on those responsibilities. I've discovered that the pain is wretched, contorts every fiber of your being, piercing as a gun shot wound but each time I sank into it's bottoming force, I unfold a piece of myself where I am alive, more alive than I have ever been. Honestly, I wish I had dealt with this stuff before but I am grateful for the process now. I am grateful to be alive, alive enough to feel the complexity of living and alive enough to do the work. I get frustrated with myself sometimes, I get in those spaces where I think I'm not going to make it but then something small happens, like the sound of birds in the morning, or a funny conversation with one of my children or the way I caress this body of mine admiring it's softness and it's color and it's voluptuous beauty (but not in a conceded way), I open up to something so magnificent that I can't help but want to keep keeping on.
I am perfect and I am whole and I am complete. I LOVE ME!
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