Leaving the nest...

I really hadn't thought about this concept until recently when I had to face this truth: Our girls are growing up. And not so much Kaylee, I still have a 8 good years with her. But Kara and Megan are getting older and the older they get, the less we see of them. And, in six months, Kara starts her adult life so I know and have to accept that we'll see very little of her for a few years. But I never thought it would happen this soon with Megan.

Megan is only a sophomore in high school and I didn't really think that her high school career would interfere with my custodial time (breaks and summer). I thought I had two more years before I had to worry about how little I would see her. But now I'm faced with the cold, hard facts: I'm losing both of my girls at the same time! I am NOT happy nor ready for this!

It's one thing to accept this fact and quite another to HAVE to accept it knowing that it doesn't have to be this way! Why, you ask? Well, with Kara, she turns 18 in six months. She's graduating from high school, her life is her own now and it's up to her to decide where she wants to spend her free time. Of course we hope she'll WANT to spend time with us vs. the "court appointed" time we'd been given these past 10 years. But we've had time to deal with that. Megan, however, is another story.

She lives in CA with her dad and since we moved up here, he's never been generous or courteous with my custodial time. It's always been a fight and usually the fights come down to days and even hours with her. But now there's a new glitch in our parenting plan: Megan's life. She does have one, even at the ripe young age of 15. She's learning how to drive, doing water polo, involved in her church, and taking summer school. Plus she has two families that want to spend time with her. The problem is her family in CA couldn't care less how much time she has with her mom and now that I've been asked to give up my custodial time with her because of summer school, we're still fighting over how much time we have with what is left over. Of course I don't think that's very fair to me; the parent that hardly sees her child. But of course, whose fault is that? Mine, according to some.

Anyway, I realize that this is just the beginning of what's ahead for me. I'm not there in my daughter's life and the older she gets, the time that the courts appointed to me will diminish. Not because she or I want it that way, but because that's the way it is. She can't stop her life because of me and I wouldn't want her to. But that doesn't make it any easier to let her go. I don't want to let go. I want her to be here. I want to be with her. I don't want to spend less time with her than I already do!

I'm prematurely dealing with "empty nest syndrome".

I'm very proud of both Kara and Megan. I know they have good heads on their shoulders and I know they love us very much! What bothers me the most is that we didn't get the time that we really wanted to have with them. We tried. God knows we tried. But for reasons that would take forever to list, we fell short.

So I'm sure that what I'm feeling here is a lot more than just loss. It's guilt, fear, pain, sorrow and loss! A whole bouquet of fun feelings!!! They are emotions that I could neither explain nor justify to anyone who has never been in my shoes but they are real and they are emotions I'm just going to have to deal with.