Judgement Day

There comes a time when everyone has a day of reckoning, a day when we have to account for our actions and inaction's. I've done a lot of soul searching, in regards to my son and what I can do to turn things around. I'm struggling to move past my own selfish feelings and inaction, to be the father that my son needs me to be. My heart hurts over the lack of interaction that transpires whenever we're together. Our relationship is so bad now that my son doesn't even bother to look me in the eye anymore when we're together. I feel like we're 2 strangers meeting each other for the first time after 14 years in each others life. My sadness is overwhelming at times because when I look in his eyes I see a little boy that is so lost and clueless to what life has in store for him, that I just want to grab him and shake some sense into him. I want to embrace him and hold him close to me and tell him that I love him so much and that I'm here for him if he needs to talk about the things that are on his mind.

I constantly ask myself what I've done to create this space that exists between us. Was it the fact that his mother and I constantly fought when we were together and his loyalty is only for her? I can only imagine how much he's seen and what he really thinks about me. I have nightmares of a boy turning into a man and confronting me about the issues he has with me. I picture a young man in a rage expressing his hatred for me and telling me how lousy a father I've been and that he'd like nothing more than to write me out of his life forever. I picture a young man telling me how much he needed me emotionally, while he was growing up but I was never there for him.

While he was growing up it was so easy for me to pass the responsibilities of his daily care to his mother. I had a million excuses why I couldn't do the simplest things like change diapers or do the feeding or even giving him a bath. I didn't realize how important these moments of bonding were and how they would lay a foundation that would last a lifetime. You can't recapture those moments. Once they're gone, it's done and over with forever, moments in time never to be relived again. Those lost moments will be my cross to bare when my judgment day is here.