I Did It For The Children
Prior to becoming a parent you might have had some ideas about what it would be like when you crossed over the threshold of parenthood. You might have had some inkling that you would love them dearly. You might have had some concept of the concern you would feel if they were ill or their safety was at risk. But chances are that you hadn’t any clue how your understanding of those things would change.
The capacity for love and the fear of something happening to your children are enormous. It is hard to properly express these things and in my mind virtually impossible for those who aren’t parents to understand. But that is neither here nor there. The point and purpose of this post isn’t to engage in a lot of self congratulatory blather about how cool parents are.
No this is a post that is for me first and then my children. I don’t want them to read or see this for quite some time. This is one of those posts that they can read in 20 years. This is what they read when they want to know what their father did when times were rough. And right now they are indeed that…rough. I am sailing through stormy seas and wondering if I will find a calm harbor to drop my anchor in,
A few weeks ago I described my situation with the following words:
I cannot win. There is a minuscule chance that things will go my way, but I am not real hopeful. This experience has been dreadful. It has been damaging, harmful and hurtful in ways that are still yet to be felt.
I intentionally did not publish them. I wanted to think about these words. I wanted to let them marinate and see how I felt later. I wanted to mull them over and figure out if that was just how I felt at the time or if it was indicative of my true feelings. The point wasn’t to react but to act. When I say that I won’t wear a sweater because someone else is cold it is because I mean it. I don’t jump just because someone says to.
Words have power and they have meaning. I look at these words and ask whether I understand them in the same way as when I wrote them. All of life is not a game or a contest, though sometimes we might wish it to be. Is it right or correct to talk about winning. Is this even a scenario in which winning can be discussed? Hell, I am not quite sure.
What I do know is that it is 1:30 AM and I am awake…wide awake. I have been spending too many days jacked up on 1,098,932 ounces of coffee. I work seven days a week and rarely relax. The mind is always whirring, clicking and clacking away. There are moments where I turn it off. Out on the court I usually forget about everything except for the game and inside the gym while I am lifting weights. Exercise is good for that.
The endorphin release and the rush of adrenalin from the competition helps. Hell, it doesn’t just help, I love it.
But that is not the point of this either. The point of this post is to give myself a mental ass kicking. If I say that I love my children it is time for me to stop pretending that I am 25 again. It is not smart for me to try and keep up this pace. Sooner or later it will catch up to me and I am unwilling to pay the piper. I am tired of cutting corners.
It is time to make some changes.
It is kind of funny to think about how upset I was when I wrote the words in the blockquotes versus how I feel now. Everything I wrote there is true, but I am calm now. I think it is because I have made some choices about how I want to proceed. Made some choices about the future. I don’t like having things hang over me. I am not afraid of confrontation but I don’t like waiting for it.
So the time has come to go meet destiny head on. Stay tuned to your bat channel and one of these days you just might get the details about this little romp through Jack’s mind.
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