Old Pains Can Hurt the Worst

When you are a parent you try to protect your child for things that can hurt them. So you may not tell them things because you don't want to push them in one way or another.  You want them to grow up strong and independent and to make their own opinions and views of the world and people within it.

Then there are things you do not tell them because the pain you feel is so great and laced with fear that for you to remember it is to much.  You push it to the back of your memories and let it scab over. You do things to try and make life over and mark it as lessens learned. 

My life with my eldest sons Father was one of those things.  So when he left us, when my son was only a year old I thanked God and tried to go on with my life. I went to college and studied psychology, mental heath, and social work. I stopped using drugs and stopped drinking.  I wanted to make a good life for my son and I.  To put all the pain and abuse of my younger life behind both of us. 

No it wasn't easy, and there were days I cried, but I never gave up or turned back to the life I had left behind.  Yes I did stumble along the way, but I kept moving.  What I guess I didn't see in my desire to make a better life for us was how much not having a relationship with his birth father was really hurting my son. So at 5 I went well out of my way to track down my ex and try to bring him into his sons life.  I only put 2 restrictions on their visitations, 1 that they not be alone, and 2 that he at lease try to pay the 35 dollars a week child support the court had ordered when our divorce was finalized.

Both of these restrictions were do to incidents involving my ex and his 1st wife and son. For my son though these restrictions would prove to be problematic because after only 1 visit my ex once again dropped out of our lives. I know then that it had really hurt my little boy when the next week he waited all day at the door for his father who never showed.  So I made it my mission to try and find his a new Daddy and after another 4 years I did just this.

I found a man who not only loved and adored me, but loved my son just as much.  No mean feet, but my new husband was and is no ordinary man.  I hoped that having a new Father someone who loved and cared about him would help my Eldest child get over the feeling of rejection and desertion he felt over is birth Fathers choose to not be part of our lives.

Then when he was 15 I got a letter in the mail from my ex wanting to once again try and connect with his son.  My husband and I decided that it would be wrong of us to not let my Ex try once again to have some kind of a connection with his son.  So we arranged for another meeting.  This one went about as I had anticipated with my son deciding to not pro sue a relationship with his birth father at that time. I hoped at that point that, that would be the end of things, but no.

Again about 6 years later my son felt the need to try and connect with his Father.  I gave him what information I had and let his do the work of tracking him down.  The meeting was a disaster with my Ex rejecting our son, accusing him of just wanting money or something. And again I hoped that this would be the end of things.

The whole time all these hits and misses where happening I held back my fears and feelings not wanting them to color my sons opinion or experience.  I never let him see the pain it caused me every time I saw or heard about his father.  It was a life I had worked hard to put behind me. 

Yes as he got older I did tell him how bad things had been, not in graffic detail, but to try and warn him about why he couldn't drink and about other mental problems that ran in the family that he might want to be aware of.

So now we come to today.  My Son has found out over the years that not only does he have an older brother on his fathers side of the family, but 2 younger sisters as well.  So I supported him in trying to track down his missing siblings, reminding him to not forget his brother and sister I gave birth to after I married his Dad,(Not step Dad cause he never treated My Son as anything lease then his Son and does not refer to him as anything other the His Son).

Through FB I found my Sons older brother and bushed him to make contact and through that contact he has now meet one of his sisters.  These things I am very happy for and truly hope he can have a true connection with them.

Then he told me that his Father had contacted him, and now wants to try and reconnect, and for the first time the memories and fears over took me.  So when he called me to tell me he had visited with his Father and that everything had gone well a voice in the back of my had kept screaming tell him, tell him to be careful, to watch his back, to not trust the man.  So I did, ( Wrong move)

He doesn't understand my fears, yes he knows his father abused me, but not the details, So he thinks I'm holding a Grudge.  He doesn't know the pain that I went through, so he doesn't understand why I don't trust the man to not hurt him or my grandsons.  He doesn't see how much it hurts his Dad to sit here and worry that this man that hurt Me and my Son so much will do it again.  All he sees is the large whole that was left in a little boys heart as he stood at the door waiting for his Father to come and get him.  And I cry because I don't want the Man my son has become to have to relive that pain.

I cry because I am reliving the pain and fear that man beat into me all those many years ago, and my Son just doesn't understand that all I ever wanted was for him to have a good life with a father who loves him.