Days Like This....

I would never use harsh words about you in front of the boys... I try to be nice.  I try to remember it's not you who is gone but it is the fault of the drugs, alcohol, whatever it is that you are doing out there... those things are the things making you choose to not be here.  You, under it all, are still good.  Tonight, I am really angry at those things.

When I have to yell at the boys, night after night for fighting and then I have to take a perfectly good night and yell at Jacob for something irresponsible that he does, and he still gets those HUGE crocodile tears in his eyes even at 11.... it is so hard for me not to yell and scream at you.  I want to hate you.  I want to say bad things.  I want to call you so many bad words right now.

That is what you have missed today.  You have missed the opportunity to be the parent that I have always needed from you.  The one that can take a look at me when I am angry and set me down and tell me to stay while you go "fix" it.  We always did manage to work well together that way.  When I failed, you picked me up.  Tonight, I needed that.  I needed a father for my boys tonight, and where were you exactly? UGH - see.... I try so hard to not ask those questions.  I try so hard to tell myself that it doesn't matter I can do this without you.  The truth is, how am I supposed to be raising YOUR CHILDREN without you? They are HALF of you.  I think that means I need you to help me raise the half of them that I don't understand. 

I am failing.  There is going to come a day those boys are going to hate me so much for the mess I have created in their lives.  They are going to look back at all of these days when I have failed so miserably as a father and ask me why I needed to walk away from you.  They are going to yell at me and blame me and tell me it is all my fault that they turned out the way they did.  I play that over and over in my head.  Kind of like the way you used to tell me over and over how much you blamed your Dad for things in your life. 

I hope that I can do better for our boys, even if you are gone forever, but I know in my gut that they would be so much better if something inside of you would just wake up so you could be here.  I am not sure how you would fit here but somewhere, somehow they need you here... and more and more I am starting to believe that I do too.