just wait

The depth of feeling I have for my children opens up an answering chasm inside of me; a gut-wrenching awareness of what has been missing from my life.

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My mother would glare daggers at me from the time I was 10 years old and say, with unwarranted venom: "Just wait till you have your own children someday! Then you'll see."

And I do see, though not in the way that she meant it. I see all the things she never gave me, the ways she never felt about me, and the courage she never had, to do what needed to be done. I see the emotional detachment, the neglect, the abuse. I see myself, and I want to cry and cry and cry, to weep for the little girl I never got to be; and I don't ever want a child of mine to feel remotely what I felt growing up in my parents' house.

But I'm not afraid of that, anymore. I know my children will know that they are wanted and loved. Because I am myself, and I am not my parents. I AM NOT MY PARENTS!! I am not my parents, and I never will be.