Single parenthood sucks. Wow. Stunning revelation, hunh? It's hard, it's exhausting, it's imperfect. (Actually, in my case it's closer to rarely reaching a level of self-acceptance.)
It is tossing and turning at 2:30 in the morning while analyzing decisions and paths and ultimatums. Perhaps even decisions, paths and ultimatums from a week ago. Or a month.
It is constant wonder about which particular act will ruin the kids forever.
Single parenthood is vows to never ruin the kids forever.
It is saying goodbye to your children once a week. Every single week. And sending them off in some cases with the person you once loved more than you ever thought possible, and then hated more than humanly possible, and now have a balanced insanity with.
Single parenthood is coming home late at night after work to the toys and clothes and books and all the reminders of your babies ... except your actual babies.
And turning on the TV or going online because you can't sleep through the missing of them.
Going through the motions. Lather rinse repeat. Waiting for something to break the cycle. Wondering how many have gone through this path before you and come out clean, because nothing in life is original or unexperienced. Wondering what will be next you never could have anticipated, but anticipating it all the same because perhaps it will be that critical change you wished for to create a new life for your family and for yourself. That one new thing that you did-thought-said-typed to change. It. All. Forever. Happily. Ever. After.
Because guess what? When you stop waiting for IT, IT will happen. It cannot be repeated enough, that mantra. Or apparently it can't be, because damned again if someone hasn't repeated it to you. Such bullshit.
And it's self-perpetuating. Because your kids will always come first (as it should be), no one will ever measure up. Because you put their interests above all else (as it should be), your own true personhood is delayed and then lost. As it should not be.
It's also a yearning to be with your children all the free time you have. To ignore everyone else or activities that don't involve them. Because you're doing this by yourself while working full time, the time spent is never, ever enough. And it's not just some guilty sense. It's true craving to be with them because they're the highest purpose ever and how could you not WANT to be with them all the time? How could you not rejoice in the joy of them? Delight in their changes? Meet them anew all over and over again?
It's probably not a whole lot different from parenting as a couple, I suppose. Only you're left to bear everything alone. There's no one to back up your parental decisions, but more vitally, no one to back YOU up. Your bed, assuming a child is not sleeping in it, or a cat, is cold when you climb in. Your worries unvoiced and lingering.
There's no one to chide you that it's all better during the daylight hours.
To reassure you in a way you might actually believe because of the source.
It is, in the middle of bountiful love, lonely.
Who is strong enough to take this all on, to love my children as I do? How could I ask that of someone? And yet I'm willing to love someone else's children, should I be lucky enough to meet a fellow lonely single parent who happens to be my perfect mate.
Sensational.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
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