This is What Sucks

Although most of the time I celebrate the joy of being a parent, it's often not easy, and sometimes quite difficult. On occasions, it is one of the most frustrating jobs in the world.

Right up there alongside being a co-parent with an ex-partner.

There really is no glamor in being a divorced Dad. Right from the start, 50 percent of the population assumes at least on some level that you are to blame for the breakup of your marriage.

Then, on your own, as you try to establish a household with some sort of order and coherence, so that when your kids visit they are in a "stable" environment, you face all sorts of logistical issues.

You usually need to learn how to cook, how to clean, how to handle the laundry, how to shop, how to help manage their social lives, and supervise their schooling.

After all, you've always previously been away at your job, providing for the family, not being the main adult in the family.

Starting nine years ago, already at a very ripe age, I assumed this new position, and I've struggled all of those years, trying to make it work.

Tonight, I feel like I've failed.

The details don't really matter. It's just kids being kids, doing what they're programmed to do at these ages, but I'm starting to think I may just have become too old for this work.

What they need to do at their age and what I need to do at my age are out of sync, sadly.

This job feels overwhelming at times like this.

I don't know how to keep going on. My ex-partner criticizes me at every turn, battering what's left of my self-esteem. She makes it seem that I give in to them too often, but what is that all about? No matter what I do or try to do, it is always wrong, in her eyes.

And probably in 50 percent of all the eyes out there. Women are like that -- very good at always blaming the man.

Meanwhile, the special dinner I cooked for the kids tonight sits cold in the kitchen. The teens are out on the town, unaccounted for, "playing basketball," supposedly.

Their Dad is very, very tired.

And the few partners I thought I had these past nine years, who might have been here with me on a night like this, have flown to the winds. Good for them. They got away from this hell. So it's just me and that God-damned mockingbird, which mimics car alarms, outside my window tomorrow morning.

This is what sucks. That fucking bird. I think I'll get out my shotgun and make it shut up one of these mornings soon. A few of my neighbors would agree and also be grateful.

Kill the mockingbird!

-30-

p.s. Not really.