I Never Thought

A fter being told I was unable to have children, I never pictured myself parenting at 34.  About to move in the home with Dad, there are four of us, not two who will be living together.   It has been the biggest blessing in the world; however I am also filled with emotions I cannot even label.

Full of both gratitude and isolation, there are a five year old boy and an eight year old girl in our home.  They have become like my children, and she has even expressed on several occasions that I am like her mother. I just always feel as if I am on the outside.   I feel like the house will never been equally mine.  Oftentimes I don't quite know where I fit in, for example, even when it comes to snuggling on the sofa watching TV at times.  The kids still sleep in bed with us, and it's torturous for me when my partner does not sleep next to me and snuggles with the children.  He keeps saying they will be sleeping in their own beds soon.  In the meantime, I lose sleep with a gut-wrenching empty feeling, laying awake, eyes wide open.  I have expressed to him that sleeping in bed with the children and pretending to go to bed with them every night is not quality time.  The times we make love is when we wake up after they have fallen asleep and go downstairs on the sofa, late after a long day's work.  The daughter and I are also constantly fighting over the front seat in the truck.  I feel it neither safe nor respectful for an 8-yr old to ride in or fight over the front seat of a vehicle with a grown woman.

Both of the children are quite spoiled and he promises it is only temporary as it is residual of the divorce.

I feel as if there is a huge hole in my heart and I will always be at the bottom of the totem pole.  It is a horribly lonely and confusing feeling which I cannot label. On the other hand, I feel like the most blessed soul for having such an amazing family and bond with these people I consider my closest family and in other ways, strangers' home I have crashed.