Missing what you can never have

Missing what you can never have

Life can be funny, strange, fickle and even cruel. When the cruelty of life happens to someone else all you can do is have sympathy. When it happens to you... well that's another matter. Anger can take over on many points and in many ways.

Too many people today want the "what ifs" in life. What if I was rich or famous. What if I could do this or that or the other thing. What would they do if... For me it was different, way different.

When I was growing up all I ever wanted was to have a family I could be proud of, mainly because my childhood was... cruel. I wanted children I could raise to be better than me, what loving doesn't? My father was an angry man blaming everyone else for his own problems never seeing that he was the cause not them.

Many times he took his anger out on me, back then it was called discipline. I eventually struck back when I was thirteen, forcing him to realize that he could no longer take his problems out on me. That changed him but not as much as it changed me, I realized then that I was not my father. And that stand made me part of who I am today, but only in part, because life is never so easy or kind.

When I was twenty my life changed again and not for the better. I found out, after a minor accident, that I was sterile. Unable to have kids of my own was, in a sense, kicking natures built in need to reproduce right in the balls (pun intended) and killing my dream of ever having a family.

Anger grew inside of me in ways you can not imagine unless it has happened to you. And soon I started to know, in part, what my father felt. It took a long time to get over that anger but not the sadness, I never will.

You can not imagine not being able to know the joys and pains of having a family of your own, it was like getting a knife stuck in your heart and left there. You feel the sharp edge with every beat cutting into your heart waiting for the knife to finish you off, but it never does.

How do you go on with life when you know there will be no one to call you dad? No one to hold with joy when they are only a day old or later when they are hurt in one form or another needing your comfort. No one to be proud of when they do good or achieve more than they thought possible. Your pride in them showing brighter than the sun?

Don't get me wrong here, I never believed in the old tv shows where mom and dad knew all the answers or kids actually listened to their parents. I knew there would be good times and bad times, that's all part of having a family. But to never know any of those times...

Now, try telling the woman you love you can not give her what she desires most from you. What she wants growing inside of her by the man she loves. It tear's her up almost as much as you. For many women it forces them to make a decision that affects the both of you, but you more than her. The decision to leave because she can still have children with someone else.

When that happens, it rips a hole inside of you so big you know it can never be filled, it only scars over. It shows you have nothing to offer a woman no matter how much you love her. Then what do you do?

I've struggled to go on throwing myself into my work for a while. Eventually finding someone else to love, but it all turns out the same in the end. I know there are women who don't want children but that is not the path I wanted. Yet it seemed the only path before me, is this what I had to look forward too?

I can not have one without the other, for me it is as easy as yes and no. You either want children or you don't and neither the two shall meet on equal terms. I wanted children but couldn't so the answer was simple... I was SOL.

I have friends who have kids and their kids have called me uncle many times. I love those kids as if they were my own and would die for them if need be without a second thought. They became part of me even if I could never truly be part of them. Their existence did fill part of the hole in my incomplete life. Even with all that love, will it ever truly be enough?

I am older now, and with age dose not always come wisdom. Nor dose the understanding of the how's and why's in life. Only more un answered questions filling the pickle jars. Will I ever know the answers?

I do know one thing, when I die there will be no one to carry on who I was, whom I could have become as part of them. Only memories of me will trickle into the future with my friends and their families. In the end will that be enough to be truly remembered... even for a little while?