My day began yesterday at 7:30 am, so I'm pushing 30 hours awake. We flew out yesterday afternoon, getting to Baltimore around 11:30 pm. We made our goodbyes, and I returned to the airport. My return flights were scheduled to begin at 6:10 am, and I was hoping to get checked in and back to my gate, but security was closed. So I checked in and wandered around til I found the 24 hour Subway. I got a sandwich, and sat there reading comics for about two hours. I then got up, wandered to a different area, and sat there reading comics til Security opened at 4:00 am. I then made my way back to the gate, waited for my flights, and made it back uneventfully, a nice change from when I got the boys.
You start thinking some awfully dark thoughts about the direction your life has taken when you're sitting in the 24-hour Subway at BWI at 2:00 in the morning. You start to really feel the pain of your son being gone. But you push it back, cause you don't want it. Not there, not then.
But it keeps coming back, no matter how hard you push, and at some point you relent. And so now, right now, the pain of E being gone washes over me and the tears flow unashamedly and I hurt, I just hurt so much and it's a pain that doesn't go away, it just eventually gets bearable. Hell, I bet I'm down to crying just twice a day by the end of the week!
I work with people who joke about how they would give their kids away. I'm sure you've heard jokes like that. Maybe you've made them. But I don't laugh, and they know now not to make those jokes around me, because the pain is just
so
damn
intense.
You are supposed to eventually see your children on their way away from you, but you don't expect to have to start doing it when they are 4. And it doesn't get easier. If anything, it gets worse, because each time he's gone he grows a little more, he takes a few more steps down the path to becoming the man he is going to be, and I don't get to see those steps.
And there are no answers. I think at this point we can safely say that L and I can't live together, no matter how much we might love each other. We just can't live together. And yet, it may take some sort of drastic restructuring of my life to be able to be with him more often. Because as much as I want to, and sometimes do, blame her for us being here, I don't want her to miss out either.
Fuck, life sucks sometimes.
(Note: I intentionally turned off comments for this post. I hate when I'm the guest of honor at a pity party, but I needed to say that stuff.)
