The other night Nina & I were talking about her nephew who is having some behavioural issues at the moment - issues that everyone is struggling to manage / understand / control. Many of these, we believe, relate to his mother, but that is another story.
Anyway, Nina suggested that we may need to look after him if nobody else could ... and asked if I would be OK with that ... I said yes, but didn't really feel like, if that push came to shove, I'd really have a choice in the matter.
Apart from the obvious and contradictory thoughts that we might be his only hope ... but what made us so cock-sure that we'd succeed where everyone else has failed, a different thought struck me like a rusty spiked blade through my heart ...
Nina didn't want to have kids ... she's always said she'd not be able to cope ... yet here she is suggesting (albeit, just the faintest whisper of a distant possibility) that maybe we'd have to look after her uncontrollable nephew ... and she'd be OK with that.
Nina didn't want to have kids because of how they'd impact her life ... because she couldn't cope ... yet now is suggesting the possibility (which I don't believe will happen) of us looking after a child who has prover to be uncontrollable by anyone, and to stress out the rest of her family. Does that make her fears about not coping with her own kids a convenient lie she has been telling to me (and herself)?
It may sound selfish, but I don't think she has any concept of how that thought makes me feel - almost like rubbing my nose in my own failure. I was never going to be good enough. My life is an empty failure.
The contradictions ached at me ... yet at the same time I felt selfish for feeling them ...
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