Daddy's Shadow 3/6/13

It's 4 am
And here I sit
Trying to kill
The parts of myself
That I'll never be able
To reach
Trying to identify and
Destroy the pieces
Of me that are broken
Enough to make what
I did to myself
And those I love
Okay
But it never will be
It never was
There's no way
To explain
To anyone
Let alone myself
How I let everything
Fall away

I have put my children
Through something I never thought
I'd be capable of
I was a shadow portrait of
My father's actions
Only I took his desertion
To an unreachable level
I put my children through
Exactly what I did
As a child
I know just how they feel
My eldest's disillusionment
And the pain she endures still
Is a  white hot branding iron
Across my heart
Because I've lived it as well
And my baby....
My youngest...
Doesn't even remember me
Or so I'm told
And that alone
Is enough to send me here
At 4 am
To pour out my own pain
My own desolation
To try to come to terms
With myself

There are times
Like now
That I wish
I could be face to face
With the woman I was then
So that I could break her
So that I could end her
Because I hate her
For what she's done
So that I could show her
That she was about to follow
In her fathers shadow
And put her own babies
Through the same hell
She lived as a child
When her daddy walked away
Wish I could show her
That they would live believing
That they were somehow at fault
That they were unloved
Or not loved enough
To make her stay with them
To fight to make it right

I can tell myself all I want that
I didn't leave them...
That I was sick in the hospital
And when I got home everything
Fell apart...
That I didn't leave them by choice
They were taken from me
But that's just lip service
It all ends up the same
It all ends up here
At 4 am
Trying to come to terms with the fact
That I am
My Daddy's shadow...
I'm just like him
I loved them
But I left them when they needed me
The most...
And I can try to rationalize
But it all boils down to this...
I wasn't strong enough to fight
And I let the world fall away with my
Pain when I should have fought like hell
To keep them...
No matter the situation
I allowed my demons to take me
When I should have been something
More...
Their Mother...