A bit ago I woke from a nap - nice to have the time now to rest and rejuvenate almost all I want to! - and before rising I reflected on Life - my experience with it, so far.
This was prompted by my going over family genealogy records sent to me last Summer by a second cousin on my mother's side whom I've never met, and whom I did not know existed before she contacted my out of the Blue, and asked to send this most precious gift, representing her personal years of hard work, and expense.
I lost contact with her shortly after the large volume of records arrived, and now she seems to hav vanished from earth.
That got me to thinking how like that it is with my children's mother. She appeared suddenly in my life, we loved each other almost from that moment, and married, sharing living together for 27 years, having 4 dear children, and then she vanished even more quickly, and, permanently, believing things about me that just simply are not true.
I am beginning to understand how human life works.
It, this Life stuff, takes place without one's being able to stop it. Oh, many people and things can stop others lives, but until and during one has the means to end Life, Life remains until age, disease, or accident removes it. But, even then Eternal Life goes on, and no human has power to halt it.
Relationships, between humans, create the quality of the life experienced. Even then, if a particular experience comes along in a relationship, one or more of those relatives may choose to end their participation in the relationship, such as a son or a daughter abandoning the parent, or the whole family, or a sibling. Even then, most people want and need to establish a similar relationship with someone else to replace the lost or rejected person's presence.
An event in my life happened during my 11th year that developed into my abandoning my relationship with my family. It involved each of my parents, and, even though it was an exceptional hurt that I felt they had no right to inflict on me, it was my choice to permanently renounce them as my parents that has made my life very, very miserable, especially in relation to making, maintaining, and encouraging all my relationships with my children, their mother, my second wife, and to anyone else. That single choice I made at age 11 has so warped my entire living experience that I sometimes wonder if I ever had a good reason to be.
The trauma of this particular incident became a consuming fire of resentment in my whole heart and mind, so that any time my thoughts included my family, especially my parents, my internal person became violent with resentment, abusive to myself image, and then went on to outwardly hurt and harm and eventually destroy my most close and precious relationships.
I'm 66 this year, and it's taken me these past 55 years to come to terms with what I now think of as an ultimate form of suicide. One form of death where the body is yet living, even very healthy, but it has lost all the essential components of having meaningful relatonships with other human beings. Sometimesit seems, real death would be such a wonderful thing for me, since why am I still alive, yet so alone in Life?
I hope my children and their mom read this sometime, as I think it will aid in their sense of hurt and shame regarding my being husband and father who failed so miserably for each of my precious family. If so, wife, child, then you are the one whom I hope to restore some of the missed and destroyed goodness of your relationship with me. After all is said, and my life, and yours is lived out, you and I honestly deserve to have experienced a wonderful relationship, regardless of those things that have happened to us that damaged and destroyed ours. You deserve, from me, all I can do to make your understanding and experience of relationships a rewarding one, and a warm memory to reflect on, and to pass on to your own children - my children by you.
Maybe the following will help you understand my dilemma a bit;
At 11, I stopped any sense of maturing. I decided that I would leave home ASAP - I was 19 and fresh out of H.S. when I fled my home - and find a suitable girl to marry, and then, and only then, I would resume my maturing as a man. Yes, bad error in my thinking, but I so wanted to experience the joy of becoming a man with those I felt loved me, that I chose to find another family to mature my own person with. I felt that with my wife, and my children, that I could control the experience, and not find myself feeling so abused and denigrated as I had felt with my mom and dad.
Well, just the opposite, naturally, happened. My sweetheart and mother of my children had no way to understand my neurosis, nor did she have the knowledge to open my heart to the damage to our relationship, and to our precious children that my warped reality caused us all. She, thankfully, stayed with me until our 25th anniversary. Honey, that's 25 years of marital joy I did not earn. I cannot love you less for abandoning me, but how I hurt!
Reflecting back over these years passed since you left me, now going on 19 of them, I do know that we surely would have found the healing and health to our relationship and love, had you maintained our marriage. But, you chose what you did from desperation, and who am I to blame you?
I purposed in my heart back at 11 to grow up with my kids. It sounds so silly, but a major part of the resentment I had for my folks was how they diligently watched my every friendship everywhere, and stepped in behind my back to severe all relationships with children they did not approve of, for whatever reason. It was this series of destroyed childhood relationships, plus the seclusive living my folks made for their family that resulted in my resorting to looking for those whom I could have clandestine, secretive relationships with, out of the eyes of "authority" figures.
This furtive mindset to develop secretive relationships applied to my children, as it had to their mother when we first met. I simply felt too vulnerable and weak to find and maintain a relationship openly, in the face of even the smallest objection, and my weakness resulted in having only relationships which I felt I could control. With my dear wife, this warped sense of relationship control quickly led to us becoming dissatisfied with our marriage, but not educated or resourceful enough to correct it. One thing led to another, and my life and those I had relationships with betrayed my honor to my wife and our family, and then went on to relationship that developed for her with men she far preferred to me as husband, and then to one whom she especially adored, and believed, who proceeded to openly defame our marriage, and she finally succumbed to his dishonorable intentions.
I must be quick to say it was all my fault for her leaving, but the final act was hers, and she must take full accountability for the destroyed family. That's Life, dear.
Now, let's take this full circle. It started with the reflection that Life is so uncontrollable for every human being. Who can order their conception? Birth? Marital and children experiences? Who orders their death at will, even though one can cause self-death, the experiences that led up to the decision were not controllable. And,who defies death? Who has power to stop Life after death? Who can go from life to death, and back, at will?
Yes, we humans do not have the key of Life. What we do have is choice during the Living each of us experiences, to establish, or not, or to destroy, our relationships. We cannot cause others to respect us; respect is never earned, but wholly it is a gifted core part of every relationship. without respect being gifted, there is no possibility of having relationship between humans. Period!
So, what would have been my marriage with my sweet heart, and children's mother, had she chosen to go on respecting and honoring me, as her vows freely given, so stated? We'd be husband and wife today! There is no other answer.
But, is this not applicable to every human relationship, then? It certainly is!
Nobody has the power to run away from a person who respects them! Oh, we may physically and mentally hide and abandon that respecting person, but the gift of the respect itself is always alive, and that alone forms an unbreakable bond between people. so, for the remaining time I am given to live, I am resolved to respect my children,and their precious mother, and still my dear lover, since each one deserves that from my heart, and my Living.
Yes, it's been a long, rough maturing to a man for me, these 55 years, but, it's worth every moment, every heartbreak, and every lost relationship, even though I'd now give my life to keep each relationship I've lost, especially with my children's mother. Dear, you're worth that, at the least.
Family, live on!
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