It's a horrible responsibility to put on yourself

Most of my life I have played the role of “Super Mom” or so I thought, everything was doable and as my youngest approaches her teen years I wonder what kind of warped sense of life did I give my children. Then I look at my grown children and wonder if their mates are a reflection of who I was when they were the most impressionable. So then that would make me very delusional.

My oldest son who unfortunately is a crack addict, has been married twice that I know of and the women that he has chosen in my opinion are not a reflection of me. As I search my life I don't think that I was ever as self absorbed as the women in his life have been, but then I have never been an addict.

My view of myself is that after the age of 25, was and am a mother first, not saying that I didn't get overwhelmed or selfish from time to time. Then I think back to going to school and working as many as 3 jobs and still not making ends meet and out of the 36 years of being a parent, being a single parent for 18 years with little to no support from the other party I really wonder what impressions I did leave with my kids.

I see a lot of myself in my second son, though he tends to have some control issues, I think our basic views are similar. Yet I look at the person he is with and wonder what happened. She is an addict, in my view extremely selfish, is always claiming she is sick and expects everyone to raise her children. Her answer to child rearing is to ignore them. Her children are complete monsters without manners and if there is ever a problem it's everyone other than her children's fault.

Then I see my oldest daughter who is still at home and going to college and I watch her make the same mistakes I made in relationships, always trying to make things better and taking the full blame for everything that goes wrong.

So at this point in time my oldest son has signed off on all his children, my second son is a wonder father and parent, my oldest daughter loves kids (dating people with children) will be a great mother, and my youngest loves little ones. It looks like in the parenting department they are all with of course one exception pretty much like I am. As I look at what I have written I guess we are all pretty much attracted to the same kind of jerks too!

It's a horrible responsibility to put on yourself! LOL