March 1st in Not All Who Wander Are Lost

My two youngest have TikToks and youngest made me get one, too, so I’m on the app and spend most of my time watching cleaning-centric content. Youngest and I also follow each other and recently she made a video and tagged middle child in it. I’ve known middle child has a TikTok and middle child even talked about debating following me because he wasn’t sure if he wanted me following him but didn’t specifically say he didn’t want me watching his videos (he’s shown me a few) but also didn’t block me, so all this to say I clicked on his name and watched a few videos. I watched maybe like two before landing on one that just broke my heart, in two ways. It was a giant block of text talking basically about how much he missed spending time with his dad. My ex has not been . . . The best . . . When it comes to his relationships with his children. He’s been in two relationships since we split and apparently he just spend all his time with these women and the kids are an afterthought. And now that he’s single (and still pining for his latest ex) he’s spending all his time at the gym. And he just doesn’t DO anything with the kids. I get that they are older and not small children so it’s not like you need to take them to the park but, like . . . Play a card game. Watch some TV together. Do something.

Anyway, my heart hurts for middle child. He’s deffo taken the divorce the hardest of the three kids. Middle child also primarily lives with ex husband and youngest primarily lives with me (our houses are about a mile apart so it’s not like we’re very far and we can see all the kids whenever we want.) This isn’t what I wanted for my children, obviously, it a perfect world we’d still be one family unit. But, like . . . There was nothing I could do. My ex simply didn’t want to be married to me anymore. At some point he stopped loving me and that was that. No amount of talking (that he refused to do) or therapy (that he refused to go to) was going to fix the fundamental problem of him not wanting to be married to me. And it hurts and it sucks but I’ve tried to make it has easy on the kids as I possibly could, even when ex hasn’t been as accommodating. People often comment that I let ex walk all over me which I probably do but at the end of the day it’s easier for the kids for me to deal with his selfishness than them. But I can’t do much about it when I’m not there which is what middle child is struggling with now. He and ex used to be extremely close and ex has just pushed that to the side in favor of whatever woman he is dating at the moment or whatever hobby has piqued his interest for the time being. It sucks.

The second thing middle child said in the video that hurt was a comment that their dad “was the only one who really paid attention” to them. This kind of caught me off guard. I did a lot of things with my kids when they were were young. The zoo, the park, art museum, science museums, the library, coffee shops, bookstores - I signed them up to meet Disney princesses and be mermaids for a day, trick or treating in a Harry Potter themed downtown, just like . . . stuff! I asked youngest child about it since I was really upset and her reasoning was that “dad would sit on the couch and watch Shawn the sheep with us and we really liked that.” So. Cool. I’m assuming while ex was on the couch watching TV with them I was doing all the things involved with running the household because ex never did any of that. I’m not going to lie, it’s hurtful and frustrating. I feel like I tried to my best to give my kids a good childhood and apparently it pales in comparison to watching Shawn the Sheep. Like. What.

And I get it. Core memories are core memories and that’s what they held on to. I’d never tell my kiddos that what they feel isn’t real, obviously, and their feelings and emotions about certain things aren’t valid. But it just sucks feeling like this. And youngest pointed out that it’s not how middle child feels NOW, that he recognizes how much I do and have done for them, but I guess I just didn’t enjoy the implication that I didn’t give my children attention when they were younger, because of course I did, and tbh I feel like ex husband did NOT. The majority of time they were watching TV together he was sleeping because literally all he did was sleep and play video games. If he ever did do anything with the kids outside of the house it was because I made him. Honestly why was I married to this man for so long again??

Anyway. Just wanted to get those feelings out because they’ve been weighing on me and making me feel bad. I’m not going to bring it up to middle child because I feel like I shouldn’t have even watched the video to begin with. It’ll be fine. All three are coming over for family game night tomorrow so that will be good. Congrats if you got through this emotional verbal vomit.

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