Fuhgeddaboudit

Cade begs every night for me to “snuggle” him.  He always wants me to lay with him, after the official tucking in, so we can talk about our day.  I don’t do it nearly often enough, I know.  But I did it this week and he was just chatting away, until he was quiet, as if he ran out of stuff to talk about.  Then he asked “What’s your favorite thing you ever did with me?”

It was tough for me to answer.  I wish I could say that it was tough because so many things came rushing to my mind and I couldn’t pick one.  The flip side though is that it wasn’t tough because I don’t do fun things with him.  It was tough for a whole different, guilt inducing reason.

It was tough because I’m a forgetter.  That’s been my coping mechanism for much of my life.  I just flat out don’t remember stuff.  The reason I know it’s a coping mechanism is because it’s not that I have a bad memory.  If I mention to B something that was said in the lunchroom at work and he asks what brought that topic up, I can recount 20 minutes worth of conversation nearly verbatim.  It’s not that I have no memory; I have distinct memories that I’ve hung on to from growing up, but there’s a reason behind why I remember each of them.  But outside of those, I’m a forgetter.  That’s how I dealt with life.  That’s how I found the strength to go on as if nothing were wrong when my parents repeatedly forgot to pick me up from school.  That’s how I held together my fragile self-esteem when my parents fought about whose weekend it was because neither wanted me there.  That’s how I could be excited and happy for my mom when she announced she was engaged after her 2^nd divorce.  That’s how I can manage to be in the same room with my brother today and act as if nothing ever happened.  

And that’s why I can look at my 7 year old with a blank stare on my face when he asks me about my favorite things we’ve done together.  In case you’re wondering, I think I pulled it off ok.  I thought about pictures I have of the boys and where they were taken.  I thought of big family vacations we’ve done.  I thought about places where I’ve “checked in” on Facebook.  And I asked him some of his favorites, which also spurred my memory with more ideas.  We were able to talk about fun memories for quite a while, and it was special.

As I move on through this healing journey I’m finding areas like this that COMPLETELY piss me off.  Until I did all this digging and making intentional steps towards healing, I had no idea how completely the abuse and neglect entwined itself into every freakin part of my life.  Something I put in place is now harming my kids, and I’m the one feeling guilty because I’m the one that put it there.  Every time I find another area like this that has been marred with the past, it feels like one more place where “they” won.  And I’m the one left to do all the work to fix it.  That’s not how it’s supposed to be.  I tell my boys all the time that if they hurt someone, even on accident, they need to see if there’s anything they can do to make it better.  Yet here I am with the pile of work in front of me.  

I’ll do it.  I will do it because I want to choose better.  I will do it because I’m changing my family tree.  I will do it because I’m worth the effort.  I will do it because I’ve tried the alternative of living as if it doesn’t matter, and found that wasn’t really living.  I’m not happy about it, but I’ll do it.