Ring around the Rosy in Journal

I feel an urge to show my children self love, confidence, a healthy reciprocity between parents. I feel desperate, full of remorse, and distraught that I cannot do that RIGHT NOW.

I have such doubts about what is so bad in my not being treated well. I can deal with it. So he won’t have sex. So he gaslights. So he’s cold. So he’s cruel. So he is selfishly indulgent. So I will never feel loved. So I will never be cherished. So I will never be wanted. So I will never be remembered. So I will never be thought of with fondness. So I can deal with it.
But, why? This very self same bad treatment models horrendous relationships to the children.
Dealing with it is the same thing as as not providing what they so desperately need. It would be something else entirely if dealing with it resulted in good, virtuous, moral behavior. But it doesn’t. It results in the opposite.

So I get here, and I feel a terrible, deep, and pervasive wound; the problem that plagues me is that I am bad, that I am selfish, conceited, a brat, spoiled, utterly wallowing in self pity because I am just manipulative, greedy, I have no empathy, and I don’t care about.. who? My mom.

My needs and any attempt to assess them are greed, selfishness, self pity, and absolutely disgusting.

So of course, I was ignoring this the whole time in order that I might stay with J. I resisted analyzing my dad for a long time, because I would have to admit that J is perpetuating that wound. And I didn’t want to admit that. I never wanted to be divorced. I never wanted to be a single mom.

But I was hurting my children by refusing to acknowledge it.