Tonight, I watched "Hannah Montana, The Movie"....bet you didn't see that one coming, did you? Now, here I sit blubbering, with snot running down my nose thinking about being 15 years old and the heartbreak of that time in a girl's life. You have no idea who you want to be, you only know that you want the space to figure it out and the world is judging your every (mis)step. You want to feel as safe as you did when you were five and you could crawl into your daddy's lap and he would make all the bad stuff go away. And you want to be free to make your own decisions because you feel ten feet tall and you don't need anyone, especially your daddy, to tell you how to live your life.
I miss my daddy....at the strangest times and under the strangest circumstances...like at 9:52 on a Monday night when I should be folding clothes and getting the lunchboxes ready. Or when I am hanging ornaments on a tree and I unwrap the glittered Santa that he bought my mother the first year they were married. Most likely, I just miss the vision of who I wanted and needed him to be. My dad made a lot of decisions in his life that left me scarred in very deep places, but I have always been madly in love with him, regardless. And the older I get the more I realize how hard he must of tried, how scarred he was from the mistakes his parents made and I can only hope that he did the best he could. Honestly, I am not sure whether he did or not.
I know that I would not be the woman that I have come to be and that my life would not be nearly as amazing as it is today if any day before this one had not occurred exactly as it did. I know that struggling to overcome the baggage I was left with forged me into the parent that I try to be with my boys. And, in that sense, I am grateful for the experiences life has given me.
In the work I do in the court system I see hundreds of parents every year who are struggling to figure out what to do with their children under the most difficult of circumstances. A lot of them are dads who have either worked too much or not worked enough or given too much or too little and now they are faced with re-making their lives as men and as parents. It may sound unbelievable, but a lot of the children in the families I work with end up seeing more of each of their parents after the divorce than they did when their parents lived together. Because when you have your children and you don't have another parent there to share the responsibilities, you do it all...by yourself. I have been at this work for over 11 years and the parents I see now, at least the young ones, often say the same thing...."My parents were divorced and I never had my mom/dad when I was growing up. I want 'our' kids to have both of us." So, from chaos some order is created...and hopefully their children will become more capable and stable because of the chaos.
I don't know that any of these words make much sense. Maybe it is because January is a dark, sleepy month. Maybe it is leftover Hallmark sentiment from the holidays. Maybe I am feeling burned out about my job. But, regardless of where these feelings are coming from, for better or worse, this blog is where I get them out. Sometimes it is funny, sometimes it is controversial, but it is my reality. I know that writing who I am leaves me feeling vulnerable...but also gratified that I can put words to the tides of emotion.
Damn, that Hannah Montana! Now, I have to blow my nose and go pack the lunches....
Footnote: I started watching the movie with my kids before they went to bed because "there was nothing else on, Mom." I got suckered in because my youngest always wants me to tell him how things end. And don't worry, I am not just picking on dads. I feel quite certain that at some point in the near future I will put the moms in my crosshairs, too.
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