Rat Carcass Reporting for Crow feeding

The title pretty much says it all. Do you ever feel like you have so much on your plate that every ounce of energy you have goes towards keeping up? Initially the adrenaline kicks in and you mentally slip into “Super Man”, “Super Woman”, “Super Mom”, “Super Employee” – you get the drift.

Years ago I was involved with a man whom I loved with all my heart. The title of this entry is how I would describe myself whenever we got together with his 4 daughters (ages 14, 12, 10 and 8). To say that there were issues with him and the girls’ mom was an understatement. The real problem was how the 4 girls learned how to play them against each other. The last thing their mother wanted to hear was that he had someone in his life that made him happy and to add insult to injury that they had fun with me.

Initially I really enjoyed being around them, tried to get to know each one individually and enjoyed the fantasy of the weekends of us creating new memories with his children and my son. All and all it was fun and I looked forward to those weekends. We always took the children to stay at his family cabin (his children were not allowed to know where he lived). I guess he feared what their mother would do if she found out.

After a few months of our creating a false family atmosphere, we had headed up to the cabin and decided to stop for pizza before getting there. While getting out of the car the oldest girl decided to slam the door on the second youngest leg. The second youngest screamed in pain and started crying which provoked me to scream bloody murder at the oldest. Much to my surprise their father went into his “cave” or where ever the hell “Men are From Mars, Women from Venus” wants us to believe men go when they insert their heads up their ass. I told him to “control the evil brat” so I could take care of the injured one. Apparently at the time I didn’t feel he was doing enough disciplining because after I was done checking for broken bones and blood I asked if I could speak with him in private.

“I don’t know how their mother allows them to treat each other at home but when they are with us they will respect each other and be kind to each other. It is important to me that we return them in the same physical way as we picked them up and physically hurting each other will not be tolerated”.

A little back ground on this guy…. He had been diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia with homicidal tendencies towards authority figures. (Probably not the right guys face to get into).

Needless to say, from that night forward every time I was around his children I resented him for not grabbing the concept of a condom in his early 20’s. Who did these kids take after…..was it their mother? Was it him? Was it the hostility that their mother felt towards their father that created this evilness within them? Is this the way children turn out if the parents can’t figure out how to somehow get along for the kids well being and development? I did not want to make this mistake with my son and his father. (And believe me if anyone has earned the right to bitch about their sons father it is me, I’ll save those stories for a later date). So I remained relaxed and learned from the front line of a war that these two parents had created…..the only soldiers to be wounded in this senseless battle were their own children.

If I learned nothing else from their situation, I do believe that every experience in life negative or positive does teach us something worth taking with us.