Stuff That Makes Me Mad
I’ve been doing therapy for almost exact a year now, and I’m happy to say that it’s made a real difference in my life. My friend Larry, who I’ve known since June 2001, and I were talking about some stuff this weekend, and he remarked that I seem to be a lot less angry than I was a couple of years ago.
“Now, I’m not saying you’re all happy and fun,” he went on, “but you’re not in that same dark place you were two years back. And I’m not denying that you had a right to be angry, considering all the circumstances with Sam and work and everything, but there was a point where you were.. well you know, just fucking awful.”
Larry’s right, and while many areas of my life are still a total clusterfuck, I feel that in many ways I’m coming down from that apex of raw, indignant rage at the world and all of humanity. I don’t think I’m going to be able to walk away from all shit I’ve gone through, like my much lower tolerance for bullshit and my willingness to X people from my life for personal offense, but I think the healing has finally started to take hold.
But there are still things that make me really mad, and I don’t know what to do.
Saturday June 14 was our last night at Wind Gap, and Sam and I were getting ready to do songs and stories before bed. It was fairly late by his standards, probably a little after 9:30, but as we walked to the tent he suddenly burst into tears.
“Why are you crying?” I asked. I crouched down to his level. “What’s wrong? Are you OK?”
“N-n-n-nooo,” he cried.
“Well, what’s up, buddy?” I asked again.
“I-I-I-I-I don’t knoooow!”
“You don’t know? Well are you super-tired?”
“No…”
“Do you have a tummy ache?”
“No…”
“Are you sad?”
“Yes…” The poor little guy’s lips were doing that trembling thing. It was heartbreaking.
“Well, why are you sad?”
“I don’t knooow….”
“Is it because you have to go to bed?”
“No..”
“Is it because you’re scared?”
“No…”
“Is it because you have to go home?”
“Yes….”
This isn’t the first time this has happened. I’m not sure if I wrote about it before, but at the end of his last visit, just before bed, he turned to Christina and me, scowled and balled up his fists and growled, “I. Don’t. Want. To go. HOME!”
That was at least funny. What I saw on Saturday made me realize what a rotten position my poor son is in, despite having two parents who love him to death and would do anything for him. Every couple of months, Sam drives 8 hours, has to say good bye to his Mom (at an age when little boys adore their moms) and spends only enough time with his Dad that he wants to stay longer. Having Skype has helped, but video and sound are often choppy: I don’t have the best computer, and either way he’s a child and getting him to interact with a face on a screen is pretty tough. Most sessions last only a few minutes because he’s not old enough to really interact with a two-dimensional TV dad. It’s unsatisfying, at best.
Furthermore, when I pick him up, he invariably ends up crying for his mom during his first night here. It’s really tough for the poor guy to have to go through. And I have to wonder, what happens in 2009 when he starts school? His mom is objecting to dual citizenship, for reasons like “he might be drafted” and arguing that because Canadians have 8-month student visas, we shouldn’t rush into anything. The night before he came down she hinted that when Sam was older, she wouldn’t necessarily be up for an arrangement in which we split primary custody (a year or two with me, a year or two with her with ample visits). We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it obviously, but I have a right to have a relationship with my son and I have a right to some degree of custody as well. And I don’t like to have to think about stuff like that, because it makes me more than a little angry to have to argue over our child, when in general his mom and I do a really good job of putting our differences aside and co-parenting.
And so Sam and I sat in the car in front of my tent Saturday night and I hugged him and told him that it was OK to be sad. “I get sad when you leave too,” I said. “It’s OK to be sad.
“And,” I went on, “you’ll be coming back down in another couple of weeks. Besides, why are you sad? You’re going home to see Mommy, and you’re going to be so happy to see her again! Now c’mon, let’s do stories…”
We read our stories together and sang some songs, and he was fine the next day, but I was still upset. I don’t like seeing my son cry because he’s forced to choose between one parent and the other. It’s not fair to him. And when his mom suggests that she’s not going to let me have him for a summer, or for year-long primary custody when he’s older, that also pushed my buttons.
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