GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #73: IT NEVER HAPPENED

In my entire life, I never noticed a moment of true love between my mother and father.


I'd never really thought about it before. I don't have the same family values as the rest of America supposedly does. I obviously love my family, but I don't have the same connection, and I have to wonder if that's because I've never seen my mother and father so much as kiss each other.


I'm not the worst boyfriend in the world, but I'm pretty bad. Holy shit, it took me a long time to realize this. No one wants to believe they're the problem in any given relationship, but I know how I am. That's the primary reason I've done my best to stay out of any romance in the past few years. I've had several chances lately, and I'm glad I never took them because it would have only led to disappointment.


I don't want to be bad at this, but until I figure out my own shit, I'm not going to put a woman through the nearly impossible position of being romantically involved with me.


I don't hold it against either Mom or Dad. I know that things were fucked up between the both of them. While they might have been high school sweethearts, they were clearly not meant for each other. I know too many people who blame their parents for their intimacy issues. I'm not that guy. I recognize that what happened between them might have had an impact on the way I handle myself, but when it comes right down to it, I'm in charge of me. Not my parents. ME.


Those of you who have known me for quite some time know I'm not a traditionalist. I couldn't care less about traditional values, because that phrase means nothing. Politicians talk about it but only because they know it's a meaningless phrase that turns on people's thought centers so they can vote for that particular slimeball. If we're really talking traditional values, then we must be talking about guys who have a bunch of wives with a ton of concubines. Clearly, none of these cocksucking politicians mean this. At least not in America.


But there is a part of me that wishes I'd been raised by two people who loved each other. It doesn't matter if those two people took the traditional roles of mother and father. I would have been fine with two fathers or two mothers or whatever. Just so long as there were two people who unconditionally loved each other, who both wanted to raise me to adulthood as an intact individual.


I am a bastard. Traditionally speaking. My mother and father were never married. I lived with my mother, and I got to see my father on weekends. I grew up thinking that was the regular way of handling such a situation.


Do you want to know something horrifying? Maybe--JUST MAYBE--there's nothing wrong with that. If the two people involved no longer love each other, why should they stick together? Just so long as they share the responsibility, it should be OK, right?


I get that. The rational side of me understands that. I just wish that once--ONLY ONCE--I could have remembered my mother and father kissing each other. Like lovers. Like two people who had created a life together.


It's not a deal-breaker. I'll be OK without this. I just want to have this memory in my head.


My mother's dead. My father has his own family. I can never have what I truly want, and that's fine. I just wish things could have been different. I have love notes from my father to my mother, and that's cool. But I have no memories, and that's what's hurting me the most.


I had my problems with my father's current wife, my second step-mom. We're OK now. We've worked it out. In fact, I like her a lot more than I would have thought when I was a kid. She has a certain irreverence which I highly respect. I just didn't get it when I was younger.


I never got along with my mother's husband, the father of three of my brothers. This guy physically abused me for many years. I have scars on my body because of him. When I was a kid, I hated him. I plotted ways that I wanted to kill him. Now, as an adult, I know that he was sick in the head. He had mental problems. It's not excusable, but I understand him now.


But he's dead now. So fuck him.


I'm not traditional in any way possible, but through most of my existence, I wanted that traditional life. It took me until my college years to realize the error of my ways. When you're young, it's easy to hate. You think you're being rational, but it isn't until you're an adult that you realize the truth. You know that things are waaaaaaaaaaaaay more complicated than you thought they were a mere two years ago.


I'm sorry. I had to stop for a moment because I broke down in tears. I couldn't help it. My mother died four years ago. When it first happened, I felt an overwhelming grief. It took me a few weeks, but I got back on track. However, every once in a while, it comes back to me. Out of nowhere, it will hit me, and it will cripple me, at least for a night. This is one of those nights.


Never mind that. What I'm trying to say, even though I've taken the long way around, is that on an intellectual level, I couldn't give less of a fuck about the traditional way of doing things. On an emotional level, though, I wish I had at least one memory of Mom and Dad loving each other.


Just one.