Witnesses, and Costs

My life is both an open book and a closed book. What I try to tell here, on this blog, is the sharable part. What remains untold cannot be shared without hurting someone else I care about.

Whom I care about is not a changeable item. I'm not like some of the people I've known and become involved with. They will drop one lover for another, move on without regret, cut off all contact, and pretend that that is a viable way to conduct a life.

That is not a viable way to conduct a life, that is a recipe, ultimately, for a sad, lonely end.

I seek another kind of ending, to my story. One filled with as much emotional honesty as can be mustered, where whatever mistakes we made, collectively, those whom I've loved and presumably loved me back, were justified in the totality of our love.

Then again, as I reconsider these matters, there is the very real issue is who was watching as we adults comported ourselves as we did.

And this is where this story becomes very painful. As I look into the lovely eyes of my youngest child, a girl becoming a woman, and consider what I have subjected her to the past, I worry about the people I've introduced into our family, into her reality.

She talks to me all the time about her memories of our life together. She is an artist and a story-teller. Some of the friends, especially women friends, who have been welcomed into our family over the years figure prominently in her memories, which is normal.

But, as is also apparently normal, all of these people have more or less disappeared. When she and I are working on a project for school, they are absent. When she and I are planning an outing, they are absent. When she and I are doing something as simple as going shopping, they are all completely absent and silent.

In the end, apparently, few if any of them actually intend to exist for her going forward.

But that's okay. Because she has, for now, at least, a Dad. A man who sees her and values her and cares for her, which of course will play a big part in her future emotional health.

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