Once again, I missed the the LFB deadline. I have it mostly done. I just don’t have the heart to finish. Instead, I need to tell you about my evening, if you don’t mind listening for a bit. Let me preface this by warning you (as requested after the last sad sob story) that it might be a tearjerker.

As you may or may not know, my son does not live with me. I have him every other weekend, and then up until recently, every Tuesday evening as well. Until now, he’s been in kindergarten, going to school half days, so I could pick him up from daycare in the early afternoon (he goes to school forty minutes away from me on a no-traffic day) and then take him back to daycare the next day, as long as I got him there before noon.

Well, now he’s going to first grade this year. My little man, all growed up. Except that it makes it more difficult for me to pick him up on Tuesdays, being that I wouldn’t be able to pick him up till about four-thirty, right in the middle of rush hour traffic, which puts us home around seven. It would be dinner, then bath then bed time right after that, since we’d have to be up at 5:30 so I could get him back to daycare and get home before starting work at seven (again, driving right through rush hour traffic). Which leaves me driving about four hours altogether, to spend about an hour in the evening with the kiddo. No fun for mom, and no fun for him because then mom’s a grouch. Plus if he stays up late then HE’S a grouch, and no one likes that.

So I made the decision (painfully) that I wouldn’t take him on Tuesdays again until next summer. Which means now, that it will be two weeks between each visit. I feel like I’ve just abandoned him again.

He’s been staying with me for the last two weeks. I was just getting used to having him around, you know? Coming downstairs when he woke up to sit next to me for a little bit, his incessant questions and “Hey mom…”s and his joy at pounding a nail through a board and his giggles while playing with the Dog, I was just getting used to all that, and then today his dad and soon-to-be-stepmom came and picked him up, and here he’s only been gone an hour and I’m bawling like a baby.

His dad’s fiancee mentioned that they were sure that after a week they would be calling me and telling me that it wasn’t working and that they’d need to come get him. As if that would have been okay, as if they could do that.

I feel like I just left him all over again.

I feel inconsequential.

I feel incredibly sad and alone and like I miss my little boy. I don’t know who to talk to or what to say to express what I’m feeling right now.

As I bent to give him a hug goodbye, he kissed me on the cheek and told me not to be sad, that he would see me again day after tomorrow. I had to remind him that I wasn’t going to be able to pick him up, that it would be a couple of weeks until we saw each other again. His little face fell and he looked at me with his big blue eyes and said, “But mom, I’m going to miss you really a lot!”

After that I listened with half an ear to the fiancee talk about how she and the Kid’s dad managed to get all moved into their new house, and how happy they are together, and how they weathered the move which only made them stronger as a couple, and if they can make it through that they can make it through anything, and I have to tell you, it made me a little sick. I mean, really, do I really want to sit here listening to my ex’s girlfriend talk about how great they are together and how they were just made for one another?

Not so much.

So they drive away, and the Kid is looking at me through the window, waving till I’m worried his arm’s going to fall off, and I blow him a kiss, which he catches and slaps onto his cheek and then he blows me one back. I catch it, of course, and smack it on to my cheek and even through the window I can see his smile and almost hear his delighted giggle. Just before they’re out of sight he rolls down his window and hollers “I love you mom!” and then waves at me until their car is out of sight, and I’m waving like a maniac until he can’t see me any more, and then I’m just glad that he can’t see me crying.

I stand there for a few minutes, just staring at the empty spot where he was just a few minutes ago and I’m totally sobbing. I can’t help it; it feels like it did in the beginning when I thought my heart would break for not seeing him every day when I wanted to. So I sit on the edge of the deck for a few  cigarettes and then I come in to do the dishes except I keep thinking about his little face looking at me through the window and how he helped me with the dishes while he was here, and before you know it I’m crying buckets again. Poor PVDD, bless his heart, is always a little stymied when I lose it, not sure what to do so he falls back on trying to make me laugh, which though it usually works, tonight it’s not doing the trick.

Tonight I just need to miss my little boy.

– 2N (currently SuNk)