mine
so anyway, i know sometimes you feel as though you are worthless, because you are small but the world is so big.but you are not. it takes us to make the world what it is. it takes mothers, brothers, sisters, and it takes fathers.
it takes love, and i won't believe the fools who say it doesn't.
and i know, sometimes, we are scared because we want to touch each other so much, and we are afraid that we will not, that we will brush up against another and they will not even know we have been there.
so i often feel that but i refuse to believe i am nothing. i refuse to believe the people i love are nothing.
when it comes down to it, i refuse to believe you are nothing too. it seems to me simply fated that you are big or small, a mover or moved. it is nothing to do with you. you are just a clutch of atoms with ideas above its station.
it takes love.
you know what, if you don't have a child, you do not know how it feels to touch your sleeping child on its face, and feel for a moment that the whole world has become your backdrop. the love you have, enormous, untamed, radiant, flows from you to the child. you can feel it coursing through your hands.
they tell you it is not real, but wait till they too touch their sleeping child.
if you don't have a child, i pity you. i shouldn't, i know, but man, what you're missing!
you have never loved anyone like this.
tonight i was talking to zenella about going back to England to see L, her cousin. zenella is for it, a hundred per cent. but when i say, maybe we should all just move back there, i have to be clear i mean everyone, her brother and sister too. and she says, you need to work really hard, daddy, so that you have thousands and millions of dollars and you can fly all my friends and their families to England too.
to believe you can shape your world just by wanting it so!
if you cannot touch another person and believe truly that you love them, i pity. i shouldn't, i know, but
but what's wrong with you?
okay, people who do not have kids, you can stop reading. next paragraph is just for us who do.
you know the biggest thing that happened to me? one of my kids was talking to me, saying daddy this, daddy that, and i suddenly realised, wow, i am the man i adored when i was a child. i mean, i am walking in his shoes. i feel unprepared, untutored, but time doesn't wait for you to catch up. you are daddy, right now, and finally you feel sympathy for the guy who stuffed up before you.
posted by Dr Zen @ 9:18 pm
11 Comments:
you know what, if you don't have a child, you do not know how it feels to touch your sleeping child on its face, and feel for a moment that the whole world has become your backdrop. the love you have, enormous, untamed, radiant, flows from you to the child. you can feel it coursing through your hands
Yes. But it's not always reserved for parent/child relationships, Z. People do get to feel like that for each other whether they're related or not. Perhaps you never have, until your kids came along - but I did and before C was born too. The fear for his safety, his affection for me, his health, his happiness... it was real. No one knows what it took to leave more than me, and no one really understands why I did, but fuck them. I have a shit threshold like anyone else.
you need to work really hard, daddy, so that you have thousands and millions of dollars and you can fly all my friends and their families to England too
[...]
you are walking home with a broken heart. you've finally realised that it's never going to happen with her
Maybe she will still want you when you're old and your kids have left home. She's some kind of twat if she thinks she can have you before hand.
sympathy for the guy who fucked up before you
Becoming a father destroyed my sympathy for him, but growing older has let it sneak slowly back. Now I can only hope my sons will also understand some day.
Mother said, "People do get to feel like that for each other whether they're related or not."
I'm unable to believe it.
Beautiful post, Z.
I'm unable to believe it.
It was so short lived, Don, that it's a wonder I can say I had it at all. It was incredibly intense and mad and at the time I had no idea what it was - it's only cynicism and age that's made me realise. But, like the old adage... it's gone. Ironically, the good in its going far outweighs the bad because I don't believe that level of intensity is healthy - unless it is as Zen describes here... the love between a parent and their child.
to believe you can shape your world just by wanting it so!
wow.
was that ever bittersweet and beautiful.
but never give up hope.
because your father in heaven loves you even more than you love your children!
all you gotta do is join reformed atheists, inc. or some such.
and finally you feel sympathy for the guy who fucked up before you.
those days are long gone.
i finally realized a couple years ago that there was never any there there. no love whatsoever for anyone but his sick twisted self.
it would be like feeling sympathy for a rabid dog who's relentlessly attacking your children, and smiling while he's doing so.
i suppose there's a miniscule level of pity left, but no sympathy at all.
I find I've become the guy I wish was there to adore. There's nothing but a hole for most of my memorable childhood. I probably take my own f-ups a little too lightly because they seem so small in light of the disaster that was my dad-in-absence.
I don't have a lot of sympathy. I have a little, because he had a lot of baggage, but in the end he never took responsibility for his life. He's my dad because of blood, but he's more like that f-d up uncle nobody really knows what to do with.
Looney: I find I've become the guy I wish was there to adore.
i have too, in spirit and in heart, but otherwise i'm virtually paralized. and nothing grieves me more than that.
my blood-father is a monster. for what he's done to my mother and my sister and myself (and all of our children) -- the atrocities he's committed and the constant malicious betrayals are so evil -- he should be jailed and raped 24/7 for the rest of his grinning unrepentant life.
but instead, he'll be out golfing with the boys -- most of whom are cops.
spit.
oh, and merry christmas everyone!
ba'dum, chsh!
zero, the story is overcoming that in yourself. i can understand not forgiving it. i do not judge you harshly for that. what do i know about the true hardship men can cause their children? not much. my dad was just useless, not evil.
but we have choices for ourselves, can prove points ourselves, if we choose to see it that way. surely anthony is an object lesson in what's possible? if anyone proves that the lotus can grow in garbage, anthony proves it.
also, mother, you know better, and you cannot shit me about that.
the story is overcoming that in yourself
well sure, but like you, for me the paralyzation is externally produced through circumstances beyond my "control".
yours has grown naturally worse over time as your daughter grew up and started bonding with all her friends and their families.
mine has grown naturally over time because of an evil man who hates me (aggressively fucking with my life) because i know what an evil shit he truly is -- so he needs to discredit me (and the rest of his family) to keep the only thing he has left: the illusion of love he gets from aquaintences who've never seen the real him.
we all suffer the consequences of his desperation to keep those illusions. day in, day out.
he lies, he campaigns, he steals, he manipulates, he sabotages.
(and he grins).
it's his way of censoring the truth.
my dad was just useless, not evil.
count your blessings.
but yeah, my "dad" was totally useless as far as providing emotional, intellectual, and practical direction.
and actually, now that i know him better, i'm glad for that. i'm thrilled that he never spent any significant time with me as a child or a young man, twisting my mind. i was spared that much at least.
i suppose my "dad" was "useful" in that he always provided a place to live and eat, but it turns out that the only reason he was doing any of that wasn't out of any love, it was to get great meals from my mom and to have a "story" to tell others in order get what he wanted from the rest of the world.
IOW, it was a storefront operation, not a family.
we were/are not people, we are just tools for his pathetic ego and pleasure.
for him, life is about nothing other than money.
he'll betray everyone and everything for money.
very much like his own father, i think.
and sadly, with my father, it turns out that it's far worse than just the money thinger.
anyway, the buck stops here.
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