This is weird because I have marriage and death on my mind at the same exact time. And there is some anger in there as well that I have not been expecting. I've known birth-mothers who have hated and bad-mouthed the birth-fathers of their child and I never understood that. I haven't really spoken much about Baby Daddy on here, in detail. And, quite frankly, I don't know if I'm going to. We'll see. For a long time I felt pity for Baby Daddy. And to this day, I don't even know if he is alive. And I don't know if I even want to know. So, there you have it.
Scratch that. I just spent the last hour-and-half trying to locate him. The last electronic imprint I can find on him is from 2010. I also found his mug-shot from 2006, which was 2 years before I met him. When I knew him, I didn't know he was a criminal. I didn't know of his criminal background until he cheated on me and left me for another woman whom was already married... and pregnant with his child, it turns out. As if that isn't enough salt in the wound, it turns out she was 3 weeks further along in her pregnancy than I was when I found out I was pregnant. She ended up mis-carrying due to her meth use. I learned all of that from his mother when I was seven months pregnant. He wanted to come back to me, I told him where to go, and that was the last time I ever heard from him. I never told him I was pregnant. That's where I'm at right now, emotionally speaking. I never expected to feel these feelings of anger towards him.
I am frustrated that I can't find any information about him after 2010, but I'm not frustrated for me, I'm frustrated for "my" little boy. I hope Baby Boy will never have a desire to look up his dad, but if he does, I'm sad for him that he will most likely be led to a dead-end. And I'm relieved that he will most likely be led to a dead-end, and sometimes... it's horrible. Sometimes, I hope that dead-end is that his dad has passed away. And then I feel pity again for Baby Daddy that if he is gone from this life, that he left it never knowing the beauty and light of "my" son, whom he helped to create. And then I hate him. I've never said that on here. I hate him for his lies. I hate him for his manipulation. I hate him that he used me so poorly. I hate him that he misled me. And then I realize that not all the hate belongs to him, because at that time in my life, I thought that to love someone was to trust them... and I trusted him way too easily. So, there you have it.
What do I tell Baby Boy if he ever asks about his dad?
Then there is my job. I work in the field of divorce. I see divorce every day, Monday-Friday, and an occasional weekend when I have to take work home with me. The type of work I do, I am a microscope to parents who are involved in extremely high-conflict divorce cases and who can't co-parent together and in attempts to emotionally injure the other parent, they use their children as ammunition in their war against each other. Sometimes I find myself wondering, "What if I had told Baby Daddy?" And then I go to work, and that question is answered as I navigate and negotiate between warring couples and advocate for their children. My little boy... it scares me to think what his life could have been like.
Marriage is a curious thing to me. I want to be married so badly, it's unreal how deeply I feel this hole inside me that will only ever be filled by companionship of a husband and our beautiful children. I'm no where near that, and that realization tinges and tingles my eyes with tears of frustration that I push back because I'm afraid to let them loose. I have this fear that lives in the back of my head that keeps telling me that marriage doesn't last. And that fear is mostly correct, 50% of marriages don't last. But, 50% do. And I want my future marriage to be part of the 50% that lasts. But, how does that work? And that's when the fear in the back of my head whispers loudest. I don't trust men with me and I don't want to.
What I want is to trust one man with me, just one. And that man, I know he's out there and I know he is looking for what I have to offer him, and I have a lot to offer him. But, it's getting harder to find him. I'm not the only single girl who has noticed this. My roommate and I talk about it all the time. I just want something real. Someone who can be real with me and not leave me questioning his motives and whether I'm "doing" our relationship "right", and whether or not he's going to leave me; that's my biggest fear, is to be left. Does that make sense? I don't know what I'm doing. I know what I'm not going to do anymore, and that's all good to know, but when it comes to dating, I have no clue what I'm doing.
What I do know is that I've got to figure some things out about myself still. I've come a long way, but I haven't gotten "there" yet, wherever "there" is. I think "there" is a place where I'm content. Content in a way that is secure. It makes me think of Keriah. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Keriah. I don't know a whole lot about it, I've just been reading up on in. From what I understand Keriah is part of Shiva, which is a week long mourning period in the Jewish culture that first-degree relatives (mom, dad, sibling) observe at the death of their loved one. At the funeral, the mourners rend/tear an article of their clothing and they wear this same garment for the whole of Shiva. It's believed that the practice of Keriah is rooted in a more ancient tradition of tearing at your hair and clawing at your skin during mourning, which from what I understand is forbidden in Jewish law. But the idea is the same, it's a visual representation of extreme sorrow, while also allowing a mourner to show their anger and sadness in a physical way. It's quite beautiful, really. It seems honest.
I think that I'm going through an emotional rendering right now.
That's an interesting word, "rendering". It can mean a translation to something else. "Translation" is also an interesting word with spiritual connotation, but the basic meaning is a change from something to something else, a transition. I'm in this emotional bog right now where I am transitioning. I recognize how far I've come and I'm implementing what I've learned and I'm so grateful for it all, but I also realize that there is further to go. Baby Daddy... I've never felt anger towards him and I do now, and I think that my anger is more honest than my feelings of Zen towards him were because there was no enlightenment in my lack of anger then. It was fake. I didn't know how to feel about him. I was trying to figure out how I feel about me.
The fact that I feel the way I feel when I remember him tells me that I've got to tear through and remove the part of me that is still hurt. I can't carry that kind of baggage into a future with a good man.
I don't know if I've made all these connections effectively enough. Keriah is about honesty. It's about transition too, I believe. It's facing the fact that you hurt and it's letting the hurt be known and seen and felt, and over the course of Shiva, experienced. And then the mourning ends and you move forward. I don't know how much of this anger is straight anger or masked sorrow. That's the thing about grief is it can take a while to sort out what is what. It's taken me nearly 4 years to realize that I have all of this inside me and that it is directly connected to Baby Daddy. It makes sense. It wasn't just Baby Daddy though. It was all the guys who came before him, too. None of them were "keepers". I was desperate for marriage and an identity because I had no clue who I was. I know better who I am today.
It's hard not to compare all the men I've dated. They were all scumbags. Truthfully, they were emotionally and physically abusive scumbags. Today, I know a couple of guys who aren't scumbags, they are really great men. And one of them I really want to see what will happen with because he's great. I've talked about him recently on here. I don't know what he thinks of me. He's hard to read. And I can't help but recognize that I'm probably really hard for him to read, as well. Heck, I find myself hard to read and I'm me... so, there you have it.
This post seems really depressing, or maybe not, I don't know. I'm emotional right now, so it's hard to gauge how it comes across. What I do know is that I'm not the woman I used to be and that's good, and it's also sad because I lost a lot of innocence. But I'm stronger now than I ever was and that's a good thing. I don't know how I will ever answer the question about Baby Daddy and that's not good enough for Baby Boy because every person, at some point in their life, wants to know where they came from. I will learn how to answer that question because I know it will be important to Baby Boy and he deserves to know if he ever wants to know. What I do know is that the confusing emotions I feel right now about Baby Daddy are more honest than I've ever allowed myself to feel since I met him and it's uncomfortable, but change and transition usually are, and so I'm doing it right.
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