As I sit here I am forced to face all the mistakes of my past… stare each one in the eye and own my blame and accept my fate. I have no one but myself to blame for my current situation – no one to hang my excuses on… they are mine and mine alone. How can I expect others to trust me when I can not even handle my own life and have made a mess of everything I have touched? A father is not supposed to have to worry about how his crying will hurt his children – or struggle to smile as he tells them he did not get a chance to go to the grocery store – when the truth is he does not have the money to get them the little extras they are used to. It is easy to hate others for this situation – but I chose to marry, I chose to spend, and now I must figure out how to cope and deal with my mess I am facing. It does make it hard to swallow that I have to give her more money than I get a month to live on, that she has profited from her lies and cheating… but I can not condemn her for that, it is her life and her lies and conduct are between her and God. I can only try to work through the forgiveness and allow God to heal me – right now I have a hard time facing myself…
Over the past year I have successfully isolated myself from most people – my days without the girls are spent alone in thought. I have lost the desire and pleasure of working out or just doing “normal” activities. I am haunted by my finances… everything I do is in the fear of money. I wish I could escape and start over… I am tormented by failing my children – by being a disappointment to them. Will they look back at me when they are older and resent me? Will they remember me as an isolated and broken man? They know that I love them, but sometimes that just doesn’t seem like enough. In my head I know that is the wrong attitude… but my heart hurts.
I am a romantic and often dream of the happy ever after – but am I just a foolish dreamer? Can anyone really love me and rely on me… Will they ever take the chance to let me love them? Am I that screwed up? At times I do not want to know the answer to that… because I think I am. I get all these grand ideas – I write poems, believe it when people tell me I have a gift to write and I should pursue publishing them…. I let my dreams begin – why? I have never completed anything in my life! People think I have it together, but I have failed at so many things it is absurd. I want so bad to do well and right by my children and by my future wife…. Am I destined to fail them too? To quit is wrong, to not try is a sin! What do I do?
How do you explain to someone that they are all you want? That you understand their heart ache – you might not have experienced all their pain, but you can relate and have had and still have your own issues. That each night when you go to sleep you think and long for the day you can hold them and them alone! The thought of them not in your life is unbearable! You physically ache to touch their cheek! Even when you can not see good in yourself, you want to give everything to make them smile! One kiss will erase years of pain… one hug will bring hope and security to a world of chaos. Alone we spin and slip deeper into the mire we are in… together we will thrive and our darkened would will be full of color and suddenly become alive.
I can not explain to anyone how I got to the place I am at now… no one put me here – this is the result of decisions I have made throughout my life… each one built upon the other. Hindsight I can see a lot of my mistakes and I have learned from many of them – why am I here, I am not sure. What will I learn through this? – I can not answer that either. I hope that I will gain my partner in life – the one I will spend the rest of my life with and together we will provide the stability and love OUR family will require.
When I take the time to detach my emotions from things I can see where I need to separate myself from the world. To not allow the repeated disappointments I feel from my father to impact my self worth… the repeated rejection from the women in my past to determine my future… the failures of my biological father and my step father to determine what kind of father I will be… my history of isolation and rejection, of not having friends and being judged to limit my ability to interact… how simple rejection and cruel laughter still impact my self esteem and how I perceive myself! – I know inside that I am doing these things and I should not allow them to have power over me, but how do I stop it? She does not see how scared I am to give everything I am to her… that inside I have the same voices she does… but I HATE where this vicious cycle leads and I do not want to find myself here again. That is why I want to be with her and never let go… I know that we are right, but we have to act on faith and determination… that is our only hope of getting out of this.
When I stop to think about it – I am scared to death! What if I fail her, if I disappoint her, if I can not meet her needs? What if she leaves me? What if… What if… What if… Then in a moment of clarity I think… We will be happy! We will love each other forever! We are meant to be! That little word, “if”, can destroy all hope. We simply commit to each other and to our family – renew that each day and take each day as it comes. The Bible tells us not to worry, if is a word of worry! We need to hope; we need to believe; we need to love. – Corinthians tells us what Love is – and it will heal all things, though Love, time and God’s grace we will be whole!
Our past does not define our future, it only influences who we are to the degree we allow it. God can heal all things, if we allow it.
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