I tried not to put this in the world. I'm trying really hard to be more positive and focus on good things and things that are happy and not grumpy. But I'm really overwhelmed right now.
Last night was a horrible night for me. This weekend was kinda difficult.
Our 19-year-old turned 19 last week, and this weekend his brother and my mother and step-father came to celebrate him. On his birthday, my wife texted our 14-year-old to remind him it was his brother's birthday and he might think about texting him birthday wishes to make him feel good. Our 14-year-old did that. Then my wife asked him what he would like to do for a gift for our 19-year-old. She didn't hear anything at all from him. On Friday, he came over, and again she asked what he wanted to do for his brother. He didn't know. She told him that there would be a celebration on Saturday. My wife went to him three times, and all three times he didn't know what he wanted to do to celebrate his brother and he was given time to come up with something. You might have already guessed, he didn't come up with anything. Our 19-year-old celebrated his birthday this year, and his gift from his brother was a text prompted by a mother-reminder. That really makes me angry that that was his choice. Even more frustrating is that there are no natural consequences for this action, because our 19-year-old was truly moved by the text gesture, and vocalized this when his brother came over. Which means this will happen again the next time our 14-year-old needs to think about somebody else, which means this behavior that infuriates me will persist without consequences and continue into the future where it will again infuriate me.
It is highly likely that one of the major reasons why this behavior is so infuriating to me is because I acted this way when I was a child. I needed reminders. I was selfish. I was inconsiderate. I was a big fat fuck. And I am still embarrassed and mad at myself for those actions. I am disappointed in myself and truly regretful of who I am. And to see these qualities reflected in a person who then uses them against the woman I love and have married is a lot for me to take without vomiting in disgust.
Then I'm told that our 14-year-old has some ridiculous football practice from 11pm until 2am on Sunday evening into Monday morning. This is yet another example of the dangerous fanatical way of life that passes for okay in our country. 14-year-olds practicing football until 2am is absolutely ludicrous. Absolutely insane. And my wife feels she has been stripped of any kind of motherly powers over this kind of thing because she's had multiple attorneys tell her as much, as well as her ex-husband. If she makes the sane choice and says, "today you will be taking care of your body and sleeping during the hours your body most-readily uses sleep to recover and make you strong instead of practicing to play a game with a ball," this then comes back to her in the form of legal action. "Since you have refused to promote school activities, a healthy lifestyle of physical activities for the child, as well as obvious antagonism against the child's father, we will be suing for sole custody of the child." Then that action gets taken to court, where she gets grilled about how she is preventing the child from exercising, participating in school activities, as well as participating in activities he says he wants to do. Doesn't matter why he's saying he wants to do the activities. Just matters he's saying he wants to do the activities.
--Time out. You give a kid a choice: say you want to go to the midnight football practice or don't. Either choice is okay. The kid says, "I don't want to go to the football practice." He gets berated and beaten. He's given that choice again, say you want to go to practice or say you don't, whatever you say is right. He says he doesn't want to go, and gets beaten and berated for longer this time, because he's made that choice twice now. He's given that choice again. He chooses practice and doesn't get beaten and berated. Now he's saying whatever his abuser wants him to say in order to avoid being beaten and berated. Time in.--
So my wife takes him to this ridiculous, dangerously fanatical (as all fanatical activities are) bullshit fuck, and guess who's there... his father, the abuser. The Abuser will be taking him home at 2am, because he's going to be staying at the practice that whole time. What kind of sick twisted alternate reality have I slipped into where this is okay and accepted on a large scale?? Where people don't just say it's okay, but they promote it?!
I couldn't sleep last night. All of this was weighing heavily on me. And I had intentionally stayed up with my wife in order to help keep her mind off all of it, which she doesn't talk about with me because she reads my blogs and knows how furious I get. But I know she's injured by all of this still. I know she's injured by it all on a daily basis. Every time her phone makes the sound for You Have Gotten A Text From Your Youngest, I know she will be hurt. Another event is taking him away from her, and he wants to go to it. Another party, another practice, another "work out" with his father that somehow has been defined as a school activity. Or just a non-responsive answer to "How was the last party you went to?", or "Did you do anything interesting this weekend?" Often she will get no response. Then, when she does get a response, it's useless. "No." "I honestly don't remember." "I didn't do anything." And she is very good about suppressing that injury. Repressing it. Pushing it down. Meaning it will resurface later for more injuries that haven't been dealt with. And reminding her of just how inexplicably it hurts to have her child stolen from her, legally, not only by her ex-but his lawyer, the child's lawyer, and her own lawyers. Everyone: "it's okay. It'll work out one day." Yes, it will work out that one day that the child wakes up and says, "You know, all this shit that nobody told me about and I never knew about and never affected me... all this shit that I have no clue about... suddenly, I realize that my mother was always there for me, helping me, standing beside me, even though my father, step-mother, and aunt blame her for everything bad and say bad things about her and have trained me to not listen to my mother, brother or myself. They have trained me to disrespect my mother. But today is the day that, suddenly, I break free from that training and I realize the fallacy of all of that and regret my ways and will start to build the relationship with my mother that she always wanted and deserved for so long. Because even though I was never taught critical thinking skills, one day I will magically use them to critically analyze this situation and realize the truth."
This shit makes me furious because, again, it reminds me of horrible mistakes I've made and horrible hurts I can't undo that I really, really wish I could. And, in my estimation, the biggest difference between me and our 14-year-old is that both my parents pushed me to think for myself and supported that critical thinking that is so essential in healthy growth for humans, and our 14-year-old has had a support for static thinking, along with an almost universal dismissal of any kind of critical thinking. After all, if he were able to analyze his situation, he probably would be speaking out against it. Slaves are kept slaves because they are told things will be worse if they aren't enslaved, and they aren't given the proper tools to actually think about what it would be if they had freedom. My heart weeps for our child. My heart weeps for my wife. And I'm so unbelievably enraged that the most I can do is stand on the sidelines watching the entire tragedy play out before my eyes.
I couldn't sleep last night, and I was sorta awake around 1am. And I thought I was still sorta awake around 2am. So I moved to the couch. And as I left my room, I noticed our 14-year-old's room light was still blazing. And I was furious again. "His father has taken him to his house rather than our house. And there's nothing my wife can do about it." And I stayed on the couch, trying to sleep and not be enraged until my alarm went off. I got up, thought about call in to work, but decided I needed to go in. I got dressed, and as I was leaving the house, I saw out 14-year-old's light snap off. He was in there the whole time, lights on just like so many other nights. And I became incredibly embarrassed of what I had done jumping to conclusions, borrowing trouble for myself, wasting time being angry when I could have been sleeping. And I was enraged at my own stupidity, along with the insanity of the situation. Why would anyone choose to have children if this is what waits for them on the other side of the fantasy?
By the time I got to the Circle K, I was almost calmed down. Then my old supervisor walked in. I hate that fuck. And I gave the girl one dollar bill and six pennies to pay for my ninety-six cent drink, expecting on dime in return, but instead getting two nickels. Why are you all so fucking retarded??!!
Then I got to work, and a co-worker told me the story of how she is going to a divorce attorney on Thursday because her current husband has beaten her truck with his bare hands, causing expensive damage, and she suspects him of starting an inappropriate relationship with a woman because my co-worker has looked at his phone and taken pictures of texts between the two. And she has talked with him about divorce, and he has said that he's not going to divorce her because he has no money. And she's concerned that if she tells him she's leaving him she will become the victim of a murder suicide. And all of her choices are stupid and short-sighted and dangerous and stupid as hell. And maybe if I were in a different place, I would have a different reaction. But right now, I just want her to make the right choices, and then see the choices she needs to make in order to prevent a murder/suicide. She is so dumb. But more than that, the situation is so very ugly. And her husband is so very ugly. And my wife's ex-husband is so very ugly. And our 14-year-old is making choices that are ugly.
And I feel painfully naïve. I feel stupid that I thought there were good people around. My feelings about my wife have grown stronger now. She IS the one for me, because she's the ONLY non-ugly person in this world. My mother and step-father, also, are non-ugly people. And my 19-year-old is not ugly. And while he angers me and frustrates me and pisses me off a lot, my 14-year-old is not ugly, and I hope he does not grow up to be ugly.
I WANT THE GODDAM UGLINESS TO FUCKING STOP NOW!!
And while all of this was going on, I had this super-depressing thought: even if I did win the lottery, it wouldn't make anyone less ugly. It wouldn't make our 14-year-old make different choices, it wouldn't make my wife be less injured by those choices or the people our 14-year-old continues to associate with that continue to injure her. It wouldn't change my wife's ugly ex-husband, or his ugly attorney who lives ugly right across the street from us. It wouldn't lessen the ugly. And I don't know that it would allow me to build a fortress deep enough in the earth to blind me and protect me from the ugly. In fact, thinking that, I'm not really sure that I even want the lottery anymore. I'm don't know that I want anything anymore. At some point, the salmon says, "I'm fucking tired of trying to swim up this stream. The stream keeps pushing me backward, and I'm making no progress, and I see no end in sight. I'm done." And the salmon stops.
I just want it to stop. I'm so tired.
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