Babysitting

So I went over the girls' house this evening and had dinner there with a friend of theirs. Someone once told me that you can tell when a child has been loved; my girls shone. But their friend was so familiar to me, a sarcastic, self-deprecating nine year old with sass. Her mother is Italian like mine.

Is this what I must have been like? It made me so sad, because I understood. I felt nothing but sympathy for that child. Coming to terms with so much over the last few months, I realize how much I really have been deprived of any positive support from that end. My family was never there for me just like this little girl's weren't either. And silently, I hated them for it, my own relatives and hers as well. I got angry for us both. In her case, it was a difficult divorce, in my own, pathological narcissism. I gave her no wrong for being rude, and eventually she caved. I know what it's like not to be able to trust anyone or anything, to have learned that lesson too young. I get it.

I'm spending more and more time away, trying to avoid them as much as possible. It's just easier that way, and I haven't been happier in a while. I'm trying to break the endless pattern I've been living, I'm tired of always getting the short end. I gravitated and wasted my time with men that reflected the same selfish tendencies I grew up around, men who didn't care for anyone but themselves because that was what was familiar. I'm beginning to see the damage it's done me, the lies I told myself were true in order to avoid the obvious, the admission of abandonment, the feeling of giving and giving and never quite receiving anything in return. I'm resilient because I had to be. I'm independent because nobody was around for me to depend on. And lately, I'm tired of it.

I believe there is something beyond all this, the walls I've set up to protect me from the responsibilities of actually feeling anything. I believe there is genuine love and happiness, I see it in the girls and all of my closest friends. I'm beginning to see possibilities again, and that is something I'm grateful for.