Discover Mare Martell

13/11 :  Sometimes it helps

   If you've been reading what's been going on, you know that I've been dealing with the loss of a dream.

The only thing I have ever wanted was for him to be happy. I've stepped up every time I've seen an injustice in his life and protested loudly to deaf ears. I've gone up the chain of command warning people. I feel like Chicken Little must have felt when nobody believed him. Although his sky really wasn't falling, my prophesies were and are really happening.

When I lost him 14 1/2 years ago, I slept in the nursery I created for him for six months. I was completely numb. I had no emotions, no feelings, no place to put the hurt and anger, betrayal and mourning I felt. I simply didn't have anything left to give to anyone. I isolated myself so much that the kids were baffled why I wasn't playing with them anymore. I couldn't do anything but cry. It was totally devastating to my psyche to have, a week before he was born, the day I picked up the adoption papers, the day before I was to leave and stay until he was born, it all taken away. I've heard the cliche of how people claim that their heart was ripped from their chest, but that doesn't explain the complete emptiness I felt. I'd made a lot of room for that little boy in my life and heart and he was gone in a phone call.

I've fought the schools. I've fought my dad. I've fought with the whore. I've talked with his birth mother. I've talked with him. I've tried everything to make sure he was safe and happy and I failed. Ben says it isn't my fault, but when I set out to protect someone, either from an outsider or from themselves, and it still happens, then it seems that to some extent that it is my fault. Even if the choices are removed from me and I have no choice but to retreat. I believe this is a tactical retreat because he still has court dates up to cover his criminal charge of possession. But that's neither here nor there.

When we arrived at the hearing, the smirk on his face indicated he felt it was all a big joke. My dad flipping off every employee that walked by didn't at all seem out of place in their world. I consider myself intelligent, but I realized then, painfully, that I can't save him. I want to. I want to give him what he deserves, but he is gone. I can't touch him any longer. He is so lost in his world of anger and hurt that he can't see past it to know that he is worth anything but what my father has told him he is. My father telling me that he has no faith in counseling, clearly has never been. He thinks that the boy won't benefit from it. It doesn't matter any longer.

Nothing I can say or do will change what damage my father has done with the help of the whore. Nothing that I could provide will ever prove to the boy that he is smart, funny, beautiful, charming, engaging, and worthy of love. Nothing I am is good enough for him because he can't see past his anger towards the women who have harmed him.

I dreamed of a happy boy with a solid foundation on which to grow. I dreamed of doing homework with him while helping him to achieve his every dream. I know it would have been. But living in the woulda, coulda, shoulda's will do no good to anyone now. I just keep eating right now. It's stupid how I'm punishing myself, but I think that the unexpressed love I have for him is eating most of what I'm doing right now. I know I've gained weight back that I've lost. I've been hiding in comfort foods in an attempt to squelch the horror I feel at his situation.

While it is true that he has made his own choices to commit the crimes of his youth, there wasn't anyone to stop him. I wasn't there. I finally got to a point where my father conceded that the boy would do better with me, and there is nothing I can do to help him anyway. There should be a statute of limitations on how long a parent can be absent before their rights don't matter. 14 1/2 years of absence and he still has rights? Over two years with just phone contact from his birth-mother and she still has rights? She gave him up when he was 5 days old. She left him in the hospital. And she has rights? What the hell is wrong with people? What happened to doing what's right for the boy? What happened to the child's rights?

That is why I'm trying to set this down. I'm trying to just let things happen. I don't know what else I can do that I haven't done already. I've tried, but he doesn't want me. I just want to move far away from them all and say, "Fuck it." I was wrong to come here. I was wrong to believe that I could build a relationship with my father. I was wrong to think I could help someone else's child no matter how I feel about him. I was wrong to believe that an emotionally absent father could ever love someone as healthy as me. I was wrong to believe that, by example, I could show the boy there is another way to live. I thought I got it, but I was wrong about that too. In every regard, I was wrong about the boy, his dad, and anyone associated with him.

I'm not wrong about the drugs, the alcohol, the emotional abuse, the sexual abuse, the anger issues, the apathy, the blind eyes and reinforcement of disrespect towards self and women. I am not wrong about that. I'm just wrong about thinking that my efforts made a difference in that child's life. I am wrong about thinking that love is enough for him. He intentionally hurts me where he knows he can cut me. He knows I love him, that's precisely why he doesn't like me. I can't possibly love someone that hates me is his opinion.

What he doesn't realize is that the more he hates me, the more I love him. I don't know any other way. I get how parents stand by their children even when they've done wrong. It's not something you can choose. It's a state of being. It's the air that is breathed. It is the sunshine and the rain. It is the sun, the moon, and the stars. It is all encompassing. It is a perfect love with imperfections of character testing the boundaries that don't exist within that love. I don't get it. I don't understand it. I just do it because it's supposed to be that way.

May the Lady have mercy on that boy. May she guide him with wisdom, kindness, and peace. May he find his path blessed by Her gentle hand.