Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth."
Benjamin Disraeli
It's funny, I have a girlfriend, we've been friends for 'around' 27 years. We lived and met in Chicago, at a bible study. We have children around the same age. My older one is older than hers, and her younger one is younger than mine - just by a couple years. Our girls are about the same age. She moved to North Carolina twenties years ago and we moved to Atlanta.
It seems funny to say this, but she is more my family sometimes, than my own family is.
I'm lamenting over my son.
My son got married in 05. It was a nice wedding, however I can't say it was a real 'warm' wedding. It was a 'perfect' wedding. Perfect people. Perfect arrangements. For me, something was missing. He married a nice girl, who has no real interest or a limited interest in his family. Truthfully, I don't blame her, I blame him. She just follows his lead.
Now my friends daughter married a year later and that wedding was extremely warm. I felt move love and being wanted, than at my own sons wedding. (My daughter and husband felt that too). I will NEVER forget at my friends wedding how she turned around and looked at me when her daughter was walking up the aisle. Our ours met and smiled. It was a bond. She had written me over the past year about the wedding, step by step, I felt a part of it. We exchanged a look that only kindred spirits would understand. I know we both care about and for each other a lot.
Now it's not that my son doesn't love us, he does, we just have an extremely odd relationship. Maybe he will change when he has children, maybe he won't. That's kind of up to him now. HIS CHOICE.
It's not even that he doesn't want a relationship - it just has to be on his terms - and to his degree of closeness. You have to be a little careful with him - kind of watching why you say and what you do and how you act.
I had always hoped through the years that things would change - that it was just youth and immaturity - well he's 32 ! I came to realize that things probably won't change and I'm learning to accept things as how they are. I think it will be a life long process for me - but I am on the other side now. I'm not fighting it and hurting like I use too. The only one who has changed is me. I've had to let him go a bit and let him do what he needs to do. And that wasn't easy for me!
Growing up, if there was anything at all my son disliked about me was how sensitive I was. I listened to him for a lot of years. Oh how he hated emotion of any sort and he holds his own emotions in like a tight sealed drum.
So I set my goals out to change and become tougher. I did become tougher. For better or worse I'm much tougher today. I'm still emotional and sensitive, but it's not the same.
Anyway, I used to blame myself for his distance - I figured when I changed and got less sensitive he'd like me more - well it didn't matter. Either it wasn't really the problem or the relationship had already been set in stone.
Now - to change things between us - would take a miracle. I believe in miracles, but I'm not holding my breathe. It hurt, still hurts, but not as bad. Time heals all wounds.
Now the miracle I did receive was my grandson. He has SPD which is EXTREME sensitivity. He loves really strong and is not afraid to show his emotion what-so-ever. That is a gift to me.
The biggest gift of all was that he has let me see that sometimes you are born sensitive and that it's not a personal fault. Just like my son might have been born more on the aloof side. What my grandson gave me - was the ability to forgive myself for being 'too' sensitive and to forgive my son for not being 'sensitive enough'.
I wasn't too sensitive, I was just more sensitive. And my son, who holds it in, I think is an emotional person too, he just refuses to let it out.
And as the quote above says sensitivity is truth. Truth is a good thing.
So another miracle is my friend. We are the President of each others fan club! I'm a lucky and blessed person. When you look for the negative you will find it. You need to let go so that you can see the miracles that replace the sadness.
Sharing my heart and soul today,
Chatty
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