This was not one of the good days. I’d like to argue I have more good days than bad, but even the best days don’t take away from how bad it gets when it is bad. Today was a rough one from a familial standpoint. I took hit after hit and really had to recognize the place I have in the lives of the people around me, what I am doing to make their lives better or worse, and the impact my actions have overall. I say this as a person who, in essence, is juggling two lives that truly ought to feel like one but don’t. I have my kids half the time, so half my life is lived in a fashion quite different from the other half of my life. While my older step-kids live with us, they don’t shift the landscape of how I live my life. School age children do that in a way that older kids cannot.
So, I struggle with the constant shift and struggle with the expectations during and between those shifts. Today was part of that struggle in ways I really don’t know how to explain. Needless to say I created a large amount of pain and drama based on parental choices that were mine alone and done without the consent of my partner, who is their stepmom and my best friend. Except I haven’t been acting like much of a friend. I haven’t been acting like much beyond a selfish person who doesn’t seem to know who is on his side or why there needs to be sides at all. Instead I behave that there are sides, and I am the only one on mine all the time. This isn’t how it actually is, but it is how I feel more days than I should. I don’t know how to fix that fundamental problem. I don’t know how to feel like I am on a team where I am supported. I spent my entire first marriage being on a team where I wasn’t supported and was raised in a household where I was constantly treated as less-than and the problem, so while that is no excuse, it is an explanation of why such an old habit continues to rear it’s ugly head.
I don’t know how to make things right, and I keep making things worse. For as much as I call myself a good writer, I am a bad communicator. That, is why today is a bad day.