At Arms Length

Heredity is defined as: ‘the transfer of characteristics from parent to offspring through their genes, or the transfer of a title, style or social status through the social convention known as inheritance.’

I used to believe that I did not inherit any of my mother’s traits. I wanted to believe that I did not inherit any of my mother’s traits. I had assumed that having been raised by my grandmother, I would escape that vicious circle. I did not factor in that the same woman who raised my mother, reared me. In much the same way. As I had been indulged and embellished, I was by all accounts a spoiled little girl in terms of material means. The cliché “you live what you learn” has not gone unnoticed and as a mother myself, I recognize the paradox. I recognize that I wantonly commit many the same mistakes which were put on me and quite possibly my mother and knowingly, do not correct or stop; as if there was no control button.

I have, however, devoted a steadfast and unswerving promise to convey to my daughter, those miniscule words, which do not mean much to some, and meant the world to me and I yet did not hear them after puberty. I have refused to let this one act be repeated. I love you.

** EDIT & ADDITION FORTHCOMING **

Coward

Controlling every little situation -- How you manipulate and guilt trip -- the master puppeteer -- and we your marrionettes.
Pitting your daughter and her mother against each other?
Makes you a big man, to put me down or critisize the way I do things?
Makes you big man to put your daughter down or guilt trip her...making her feel under your thumb.

Can't be in control of other aspects of your life, so control this one thing. Controlling your daughter, thereby controlling her mother.
Makes you a superior being to accuse me of the unnecessary circumstances and not take any responsiblity in why things are now the way they are. Can't even take 50% of the fault? It's so much easier to point fingers at others, than to accept responsibility or hold yourself accountable, or hold your wife accountable, for the actions you've both taken which have led to the circumstances were under.
Makes you feel grand to allow your wife to emotionally and psychologically abuse your daughter?

Makes you feel good about yourself to deny your own daughter, the unconditional love and protection she deserves, from the horrors and neglect of the unlove in your house?
To outright tell your own daughter, that you cannot tell her you love her because she reminds you of her mother?
To alienate your daughter from her mother, to satisfy your own hate for her mother?
Does that make you a better man?

Actually, that makes you no man at all.

Coward.

Alone

Loneliness is defined as, the state of being alone in solitary isolation; forlornness: sadness resulting from being forsaken or abandoned; aloneness: a disposition toward being alone.

“The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.”
Mark Twain

“There is no greater sorrow, then to recall in misery the time we were happy.”
Dante

“The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness. The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we noted the world and think about it only when we have to report it to ourselves."
Eric Hoffer

“There’s nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment, perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favourite shirt.”
Jhonen Vasquez

“There's a cold wind blowing softly through a narrow, dark ravine. A sound is heard, soft and everywhere, like the rustle of silk. It echoes from every dismal reaching corner of the abyss, and whispers of the aching loneliness within the crevasse. A cold, blue-white light transcends an aura of weird lifelessness to the jagged rocks of the cleft walls. There appears a soul within all of this, like a thin frail mist, congealing within its center -- a tiny translucent grey cloud.”
Ralph Kenyon, 1962

"We're born alone, we live alone, and we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."
-Orson Wells

“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.”
-Thomas Wolfe