Shameful

Shameful that your personal growth was stymied long before you reached adulthood.  Consequently you have remained in a position of virtual childhood, owing only to immature antics.  Shameful that you think even with your entrance upon more than three decades of life, you are somewhat entitled to speak as condescending; act as ego-maniacal as you sound, and most-disappointingly - use our child as your scapegoating pawn in order to get to me.

Do your worst I say. But do your worst to me. Leave out the innocent that you could once identify with.  I thought that it was known. You do not manipulate your child. You do not elevate your own agenda by the damage to your son.  You were unfortunately showered with these same sad and sick behaviors through your quote un-quote youth. You learned first-hand how to hurt, despite allegiance to family.  I seriously question at times, whether allegiance of any kind has a place in your life.  It certainly does not in relationships, nor in fatherhood. I can speak to its absence in marriage and now our child can attest to its awakening in his own life, led by none other than his own father. 

The damaging and hurtful dialogue to your child - by both you and your newly espoused, will affect his psyche for years. It already is. He exchanges doubt with the care that he feels for you and that you squander on a target toward martyring yourself and bringing pain to me. Yet,  you are not bringing pain to me except that through our child. He is the one that suffers and questions if you are anything other than empty and mean. I listen intently and give hugs whenever I can. I answer what voids I can account for yet many remain as just that -- a void.  And mostly, I pray for you.  Stymied. That is what you inhabit.  A stale, non-expressive existence that  must lead you to believe you were forgotten. Your own emptiness is quartered and delivered to those closest to you so that they might do your bidding which you are too cowardice to complete. 

I answered tonight with a reply that would make you blush, had you a conscience.  He asked me why you hate me so ...why you hate where I came from with such disdain?  I answered: because there...there, he (as in you) had to be a man ...and he could not.  There - he had to be accountable, and he failed. And there - he had to be responsible and he did not know how.  Here - where he is now requires none of that. It is easy for him (you again) to be spiteful, vengeful and manipulative.  It is effortless to be irresponsible, unaccountable and fueled by your self-serving agenda toward defeat.

And what was the worst part?

After all that...after the listening and the explaining...our child gave a half-cocked smirk, closed his eyes and said: "I'm sorry Mommy".

As if he has anything to be blamed for. Yet my pride in seeing a child of a mere eight-years-old taking more responsibility and insight than the man that so candidly hands out psychological warfare -- it made me happy and sad.  He is going to be far greater, far bigger a man than your greatest desires for a meager existence.  There will come a day when you wish you could measure up to the boy that you portrayed as being led astray. And you will not. Your poor presentation as a caring, doting father, will be massively over-shadowed by the child that you irreverently dismissed. 

And at that point, that half-smirked grin of his will grow in accordance with my own.  I will be the one to apologize for your lacking, shameful solitude, with a hug and an: "I'm sorry son".