Hope Dies

We woke up this morning to torrents of rain; actually, the dogs woke me up at about 3:30 to be let out, and when I went to the back door I was greeted with a face full of rain, with both dogs looking up at me like, "You have got to be fucking kidding me." They did go out, finally (helped along by a boot in the butt), and within minutes came in soaked-and it was still like that when we all got up again. I like the rain, don't get me wrong, but already we are going just a little stir crazy. I have had the kids busy all morning cleaning, I made blueberry pancakes and bacon, and with hope they will make it through the day without seriously maiming one another.

I am feeling a little blue today, though, maybe because of the weather. I talked on the phone with one of my dearest friends last night, and that kind of made me sad and introspective. She has not been married long, after being a single mom for many years, and things are not going well for them. I don't worry about her in the sense that they are going to get divorced and she will be left with nothing, and I have no doubt that she will be "okay," whatever that means. I am sad, though, that after all of her years of waiting for the right person to come along, it just isn't turning out like she hoped it would.

We talked, though, about how hard it is to be single for so long and then try to add another person into the mix. April and I have talked about this before, too, about how we have had the reins for so long that it would be really difficult to let go of them again. I have thought and thought and thought about this, not just since April and I talked or since I talked with my other friend, but at different times in the past three years of my own life, and I have come to the conclusion that not only is "it" never going to happen for me, I don't think I want it to anymore. For one thing, I just don't think I believe anymore in the power of love-I don't even know if it exists, I really don't. No, I take that back-I know it exists, I just don't know any longer if two people can sustain a relationship for any length of time. I think that-well, I could go into my analytical mode and make suppositions based on taking someone else's inventory, I could made educated guesses about the why's of this and probably be pretty accurate, but all that is is a way of divorcing myself from the pain involved in this realization in my own life.

Which is actually neither here nor there. I look at my kids, at the life we have made together, and I know that at this late date, there is no way anyone could step in and be a "dad" to my kids-they don't need that, not now. And I don't need the help. I mean, I need to be supported in my decisions and that kind of thing, but I don't need someone to come in now and help me raise my children. They need positive adult males in their lives, but they have that. All of them, even Sam, have gotten so used to having me as the only parent they have really known that it would be nearly impossible for someone to come in now and start telling them what to do.

So what does this mean for me? I think I am sad today because I am going to have to make some really, really difficult decisions about things, and make some changes that are better for me in the long run but also extremely painful. I think it means that I have to make the decision to let go of any desire to have a partner in life, because it wouldn't be good for my kids at this late date, and I have been doing just fine on my own anyway. You have all been part of my journey of loneliness as far as relationships go, and you fellow single mamas will relate to this, too, I think, at least on some level, but this is a decision, not something that has been done to me. I am not a victim, and I don't mean to come across that way, but what I am is finally getting to the point where I have to start making changes it accommodate this absolute singlehood. I have to work harder on enriching my life, because no matter how good it is now, there are not many years left before I have no kids at home, and I have got to have a life well-established before that happens.

It just hurts to have to give up the belief that somewhere, someday, I will be able to have what I want-and to realize that I have to face it all head-on with my dignity intact. I can do this-I HAVE been doing this. I just think it hard to come to a cross-roads and realize that I have been hoping and believing in the wrong things all along.