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Tightrope walking

Sorry, sorry, I know - I've been lax in posting recently.  In my defense, it's the school holidays here, and there's an abundance of apprentice grown-ups in my life - so I've been very busy.

I've spent the majority of the last two weeks spending time with other people's children.  Children I love.  Children who hold significance in my heart.  It's been difficult, and I'm still recovering.  I've learned you can't short-change children.


Another thing I've learned is the cost.  I love these heart children, everything about them, from the littlest at only a few months old, to the group about to hit puberty - they salve a part of me that still bleeds.  The hole left by my own boys.  The boys I allowed to close me out.  The boys I miss every day.  I've become very good at not actively thinking about them.  I try not to actively wonder about what they're doing, or how they're developing - while refusing to let them fade from thought. 

This last couple of weeks has shown me how precarious my balance is. Walking a tightrope is tough, particularly when you lose your center, and have to start from the beginning. 


Ignoring a bleeding wound isn't the same as healing it.  I could begin letting the wound close I suppose - but that would mean no longer holding out hope for reconciliation - and that, I refuse to do.  I have to go on, every day, with the knowledge that my children rejected me.  I have to keep breathing when it feels like a tank is parked on my chest.  I have to hold on for a  'one day' that may never come. 

The end of the tightrope is beyond my vision, my safety net prevents death, not pain, and my balance is rubbish.  I fall off a lot.  Some days I don't move forward at all, I'm too busy not falling.  Others I stay where I fell and cry a lot. 

I don't regret the time spent with other children of my heart.  I love them dearly.  They are the hearth fire of other families though, and my own is cold ashes.


Derri.

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