Often being a parent is difficult. Love and responsibility eternally locked in a battle for your focus. You want more than anything for your children to feel loved and be loved, but that love cannot always come from you. To that end you are responsible for raising them in ways that will encourage and support their pursuit of love in the future. Sometimes that means hiding your love behind discipline, rules, or expectations. Sometimes that means hiding hurt so they can see love in you when they expect it. Sometimes that is very hard to do.

               My divorce was difficult for all of us. My ex-wife had never believed I would ever actually leave, called my bluff so to speak, but I did. My children had no idea what was going on, most of our conflict was late at night and hidden in that space of time when most people sleep. I had no idea who I was without my family, other than who I was at work. I became only that. I didn’t have a place to stay and spent a month living on a couch, so we started off with me only seeing the kids on Sunday evenings. When I finally had a place, my ex-wife didn’t want to change that. She was their mother, and that was more important than a father in her mind. I had worked while she was home. They knew her better, loved her more, needed her more often, or so I thought, and she agreed. I hurt, and that hurt I blamed on myself and in doing so raised it into hate, and to protect the kids I felt I had a responsibility to let them be with the person they loved the most more often rather than fight to see them. I thought then that this was responsibility.

               It took more than a year before I started to realize that I was not some broken monster, just broken. That I could love and be loved too, and started to try and find some purchase, some purpose, to build myself up as I should have done long ago. Before even the marriage, the children, the divorce. My love started to beat back this false sense of responsibility. I asked to see the kids more, to follow the agreed visitation. When this was denied, I demanded, and I was reminded again of who I was before, and why I had been that person. While being told I was not worthy of love and the little time I had with my kids was charity, her kindness, to one undeserving, I discovered that I was worthy all along. That it was my responsibility to love them and show them that love, and responsibility are one in the same, even though it doesn’t always feel that way. But I had to fight to get there and so I did, with papers and police.

               A month later I was picking up the kids, but under the stipulation that I picked them up from the local police department. Because, as she told the kids, she was afraid of who I had become. She was afraid that I would hurt her, that my intent to see them was just a ploy to visit harm on her. Then she would tell the kids that they had nothing to worry about though, because I loved them; and I do.

               That first time picking them up was hard, because they were scared. I was scared too, because I saw that old part of me reinvigorated, illustrated in the harm that part of me felt was my fault for causing them this fear. Had I just left it alone, they would still feel loved and not afraid of me. They would not suffer that anxiety of loving two people who were so at odds. Being a parent is hard. In the end we can only be responsible for how we react and demonstrate how to react in those situations. I picked them up told them, not to worry and we went to my small apartment. Made food, played games, had fun and in a few hours forgot about all of that, or at least set it all aside to unpack later, like radioactive waste leaking out into something like this.

               This went on for a year or more, I can’t remember, but each time it got a little bit easier. The children and I became less afraid, but their mother became afraid of something a little more tangible. That I really had changed, that I had found self-worth and would not be coming back. In that sense she had good cause to be afraid; and I am sure I did hurt her. But sometimes being a parent is hard, and you have the responsibility to show children love just as much as give them the opportunity to be loved, even if it is by someone you hate.  

Custodian

Being a parent is love and responsibility
eternally locked in a battle
to give love and show what love is.

Sometimes love hides behind discipline,
               rules
                              expectations.

Sometimes love hurts but needs to be shown.

When love ends
it is hard on everyone
Conflicts oft hide
in that space of time
where sleep resides.

My children didn’t always know my love,
only that I had murdered that of their mothers.
They knew her better,
               loved her harder,
                              needed her more.

I hurt myself to concede this
and called it responsibility.

Within that broken monster of my mind
I was lost and fractured
               unable to put the pieces together
                              recognize who I was
until far too late.

Though the time it took is untold
know that I awoke in a hostile place
renewed but maligned by old cognitions,
demanding to love and be loved.

Once denied,
I remembered from whence I came,
why I had been.
               the voices echoing through the shadows of memory
Unworthy,
               undeserving,
                              unforgiving.

But I chose not to listen
to love myself
and called it responsibility.

To love yourself,
               be loved by yourself
                              show love to yourself

Is a terrifying thing

Be afraid,
               for I have felled that weakness in me
                              and it will never return.

Those who love me find it reflected,
               each day stronger,
                              shown more clearly.

Those who do not
               find only horror,
                              that love can exist in such a place.