Where does it end? Maybe that should be ‘when?’
I think I have done my best with the kids. On the whole I have had to work it all out for myself. I have had no support or role models to guide me. I have just had gut instinct and a wish that no harm comes to them. It has been a very tough job, nothing that people get paid for can possibly compare to it as far as maximum stress for minimal reward goes.
Often I ask myself why? What is the purpose of kids? True, they carry the genes, a little piece of me will live on after I have gone but the cost is too high if that is all there is. There is a lot of love along the way but, if I am honest, it is so rarely demonstrated I could be forgiven for missing it.
This is a job for which I can see no reward. My hope would have been that as they got older some of what I had given by way of love and commitment would be given back. That somewhere a balance would be achieved between us in that neither was any longer the giver but we both were. I don’t know when that is meant to happen because I have not seen any of it yet. We are just cruising through life waiting for things to change. We go around in circles over and over. I make the rules, they break them. I ask for help, they give me more work, I offer help and they reject me, I ask for trust they tell me lies.
I have invested a lot in the kids in the hope that when I die someone will say ‘he did well’ but I don’t think that is going to happen. I see a gravestone saying ‘here is a loser, good intentions that fell apart, he achieved nothing’.
That’s what I guess I really ever wanted from having kids, to have people that were better than I am, had greater chances in life, had the will to always aim higher than I could ever have done. For an outright snob it is so difficult to admit that my kids are average, could do better, just like I was 🙁
In other aspects of my life I have done some things I am proud of, I have had influence on people which has changed them for the better and I am pleased with that BUT … parenting is and always has been my main job and if I can’t succeed at that then it makes everything else seem insignificant to me because my kids are a mirror on me, how people see them is how they see me.
It’s becoming real hard to bounce back right now. I shall cos I always do but this is hurting real bad and there really is nothing that anyone can do as far as I can see unless some minor miracle happens.