In my single life I bought an X-Box 360. I didn’t have many games and I rarely played it, but it was mine. When I moved in with my Amazing Amy, I traded it all for the X-Box One, a newer, faster, better version of a system I would rarely play. I bought a couple games I thought everyone would enjoy and I bought 4 controllers. Since then I have bought many new games, some with the intention of playing them myself and others to play with the family. 3 of the original controllers are broken due to neglect by the kids. I was lucky enough to get the Microsoft Store to replace 2 at no charge. The other one remains a hardly ever working thing I never used and probably never will.
If I am being honest I don’t like video games. I am not good at them and the kids often laugh at me and make fun of the total lack of skills I have when I try to play in front of them. I was first made aware of my lack of skills when I played Halo online and was repeatedly murdered by grade school kids and then humiliated by them T-bagging me while I lay shot, bleeding out and dying. That will make you realize game play has passed you by with the quickness. I also loved hearing the high pitched tones of, what I can only assume is, an elementary school child telling me to “take that bitch” while he simulates a sex act he couldn’t possibly fathom. That’s fun.
So like I mentioned, I bought some games for others, but some I bought for me. I downloaded them to my X-Box, and some I played, albeit poorly, and others I simply downloaded because I bought them and, at some point in my future, might be getting too big for my britches, feeling a bit overconfident and need to be chopped down a few pegs by a toddler. Well I can’t now because the games I bought and downloaded have been removed from my game system and replaced by what others want…on my game system. I get that I bought it “for the family” and I also get that I hardly ever play it. So why am I so bent outta shape by the fact that everything I want to be there isn’t?
Let me pause this little self examination to say I love my family. I feel like they are mine and I am theirs. I have cried for and with them. I have stayed up thinking about the things they say, not knowing that I am hurt, and cried. I have felt like they care as much for me as I do them and I have felt like they couldn’t care less about me, sometimes in the same day. I can honestly say I have prayed for them and I have prayed for me to be better for them. I have been saddened by them. I have been so angry at them I want to shout at the top of my lungs. I have also thought how empty my life was before them and how I thank God that he allowed me to join them. If all that is true, then why am I so upset my silly games were deleted?
It is childish, I know, but I was genuinely upset to see that all my stuff was gone. It all still exists, it is in the cloud (whatever and wherever that is) and I can download them all again, but it isn’t just the X-Box. It is the toolbox my wife bought me for Christmas (or maybe my birthday) that is supposed to be locked and I find it opened and tools all over the house. It is the cereal bowls that never seem to get really cleaned because no one washes them out before they put them in the new, thousand-dollar dishwasher we just bought. It is the filthy grime left in the brand new microwave we just bought when people can’t be bothered to wipe it out after they heat spaghetti and the sauce explodes all over the place. It is the names carved in the table and the way every single light in the house is on when no one is even in the room. It is way you can do everything they want for the entire weekend but you tell them to go to bed Sunday night because school is Monday and you are a piece of crap. The obvious answer is that they are kids. Kids are selfish and their minds are like the Janet Jackson song, “What Have You Done for Me Lately”.
None of that changes the fact that I am feeling like I don’t have anything that is truly mine anymore, and that I am a bit of a selfish asshole for feeling this way.
When I spoke with Amy about this she told me it is completely normal. That is something I am rarely accused of being.
I think the biggest thing for me is not being able to have things I would have had as a single man. I am not talking about an endless stream of supermodelesque vixens strolling in and out of my life, each one stealing just a little bit more of my soul. I am talking about cereal I like t eat. I am talking about Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food Heath Bar Crunch (before either Ben or Jerry decided they didn’t need to continue to make one of the best ice creams ever…but I’m not bitter) or Vanilla Double Stuff Oreos. I’m talking about microwave popcorn or orange juice. I am talking about the Britta pitcher of water that actually has water in it when I want a drink.
Amy (I have decided that since she is a permanent part of my life I will use her actual name and stop referring to her by the tongue damage she did to me on our second date) tells me I am normal in this as well. Well, most of it; some is just me being old man Rogers (oh, I will continue to refer to myself as Steve Rogers…just because why not. Muwhahahahahaha)
This time more than ever I need your comments. Please and thank you.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it
Rebecca got her license last August, and I found the perfect car for her that a friend of mine was selling. Between her graduation money and the paltry amount of money she had saved, she had $1500 to buy the great condition (for it's age) Honda Civic. I loaned her the $300 she needed to have the $1,800 asking price. 10 months later she still hasn't managed to pay me anything more than two payments of $20 each. Everytime I bring it up, she has to buy a textbook, or fix something on her car, etc. But she has plenty of money to go out almost every night with her friends, and buy fast food to the tune of $300 a month. When I really press her she says "I didn't need you to loan me that money, I would have had it myself in a few more weeks." I'm thinking the illogical b.s. of kids will never end until we die…
Welcome to step-parenthood Tom. Which I think is worse than parenthood since you inherit kids you had no hand in raising so can't instill any of your own values in them at a young age. You are feeling normal feelings. I used to have some of the same feelings when Jonathan came to live in our house full-time. I lost the "me-time" I used to covet and also the alone time with the hubby. My easy to clean house now had a pre-teen in it who has the worst aim in the bathroom and felt that any surface was okay to lay his wet towel on. (we still have this conversation and he's 23 now, lol) But I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything. I'm so glad I got to be a mom to him. So suck it up buttercup until you get those kiddies independent and out of the house. (or build your man-shack out in the backyard for yourself and lock it up like Fort Knox so you can have your me-time and your own "stuff") xo Kimmi
I am in the process of building a studio in the third garage for my podcast. Maybe that will be my cave. Glad to see it isn't just me.