I am really missing my boys today.
I haven’t lost hope that when they grow up and start to see things for what they are, they’ll want to know me again or at least be curious. If they do, I hope I’m still around.
By then my youngest’s voice will have changed though, which is bullshit. I love his little baby voice! I feel the worst for that one, because I think at some point he’ll realize that refusing to see me at my house and insisting on eating out or not seeing me at all was just so ridiculous and sad and forced by his father and brothers’ manipulation. I mean, come on. Hotter is a former chef and I currently cook restaurant food that people pay good money to come and eat! There is nothing wrong with the food here, and he was raised in this house (which the Dept of Social Services certified as safe and suitable when my ex involved CPS in our divorce out of spite). Nobody here has ever laid a hand on him. But his father has convinced him that he can’t set foot in my home or something bad will happen, and I don’t currently have “taking four people out to eat once a week” kind of money. And even if I did, I don’t know that I could sit there once a week knowing I wasn’t paying a utility bill so that my baby who is only alive because I re-argued Roe v. Wade with his father and learned to do unspeakable medical things once he was born so sick can look at me like I’m garbage. The last time I spoke to him all he’d do was talk about how great my ex was, how he “buys us things and takes us to do stuff like a normal parent should.” I asked him what I was, then, an ABnormal parent? The remark was parroted straight from my ex, and by normal he means “affluent.” I can’t compete with my ex’s money, and even if I could I don’t see outspending as a valid parenting method. If my baby doesn’t want to know me because I am poor, I can see it as him being childishly self-centered, I can even on some level hope he finds a little happiness in the things his father can give him because I want him to be happy and enjoy his one hard-earned life. But I can’t bear to see the scorn on his face.
I hope Middle Child comes around, too, although I have a little less sympathy there. Where we left things, he had forgiven his brother for beating me crippled, but would not, could not forgive me for being so sad and angry about it. I told him that forgiving a man for almost killing a woman, but holding a grudge against the woman for having inconvenient feelings about the whole thing was something a trash person who hates women would do, and if that was honestly his stance then he was my greatest failure next to his Sociopath of a brother and I didn’t want to be part of his life and watch him go about applying a false double standard like that. I feel so awful about that. Not for saying it, because fuck, it’s TRUE, but he’s still my kid. I don’t want him to hurt like that, even if it’s because of something I said that he needed to hear. Really I just wish that somehow he was able to see me as a human being, but I think his father has convinced him that I don’t deserve that kind of consideration and I wish I knew how so I could borrow his tactics and somehow brainwash the kid back into being the kind and compassionate child I once knew.
I wish my health was better and I could work more so we could move out of this state. I already know from The Narcissist and The Sociopath that any time I see someone similar-looking in a crowd I’ll do that flinch-pause-doubletake, I did it for years until The Narcissist died. I still do it thinking I see The Sociopath. I didn’t think there was anything worse than that feeling, but I was wrong.
Yesterday I was pulling out of a business across from the middle school and the bell rang and kids came pouring out of the building. I sat there blocking a driveway and watched them all get on the buses, trying to catch a glimpse of my boys. I just wanted to see them and see if they seemed happy, but I quickly realized I had no idea what their hair or jackets or backpacks look like anymore and in the end I wasn’t even sure if I’d seen them or not.
I don’t know how to do this.