Kenders' Musings

This is a story of failure, both present and future.  It is a story of the dysfunctional family unit that is, unfortunately too common in society.  Sure, these particular circumstances are not as common, but the underlying dysfunction is all too common, and there's no sign of it lessening anytime soon.

There's a lot of insanity in the world today, but I have heard of little as insane as a story I heard today.  There's a woman living hand to mouth at the age of 43, barely able to scrape along financially, with a man who is a little older than her, missing most of his teeth and with a 4th grade education. This man is racist, barely able to read, and scrapes along at what ever labor jobs he can find.
 
At one time she showed real promise, was successful and owned a nice house and lived a life of relative ease and comfort. Sure, she smoked quite a bit of weed, but that, she claimed, was to balance out her bi-polar disorder and beat back her anxiety. For him it's always been the same story since he was a child, doing whatever he could to survive, conning people, working at what he could manage to get, but always just struggling along, always waiting for the next big score.

She was raised in a liberal household, and lived her life as the quintessential liberal, hedonistic, always living for today with a belief system mostly based in feelings. She comes form a good family, full of successful people, a family of people who choose their mates wisely, seeking out those with similar education and goals to further the lives they have each built in their quest for the American Dream. Even given all of this she had a void in her heart. She felt something was missing.

He was raised in a trailer park, beaten as a child, on his own at a young age when his single mother threw him out into the world.  He learned on the streets to each his own and if he could take it, it was his own.  He learned to trust nobody but himself, and barely able to read, he learned to be crafty, manipulative, wily.  On his own, without family that would care for him, he spent his life doing what he could to make his way, and no matter what he tried the shyster ways he couldn't escape would always lead him to do something to bring his world crashing down around his head.

They hooked up in a moment when she was weak and lonely, which is always the way of the liberal, as they have nothing greater than themselves to believe in, and he quickly manipulated his way into her life completely. Even though she realized he wasn't right for her, and made attempts to leave him, he always manipulated her into staying through fear and pity, so she stayed with him. Partially because of his manipulation, partly in fear that, at her age, he might be her last shot to fill the void she had in her heart. What she thought the void was from is not, in fact, what caused the void.  What causes the void is a life led with only her immediate needs considered, and never considering what she was building, what life she was leading, what value she contributed to society.

Instead of leading a life worth living, instead of building up a life of worth and value first, she meandered along, and at the age of 43 thinks she found the thing to fill the void, but instead she has simply brought more suffering and want into her life, and taken a path which virtually assures she will live hand to mouth for years, causing others to suffer from her selfishness, weakness and neediness, including the one person on the planet who is supposed to count on her to give her a life of value.

For you see, these two have brought a child into the world. I feel sorry for that kid. Forty three years old with a newborn, money almost non-existent, prospects the same. She'll be raised in the feast or famine style the man can provide, with a woman unsuited to be a mother, who only wanted a child so late to try to fill the void in her soul.

The void in your soul cannot be filled from without, only from within, and the saddest part of this story is now there's an innocent child, brought into the world to a mentally unstable woman and a mentally stunted man, and she will be raised up in this dysfunctional way, someday to be unleashed upon some poor, unsuspecting man to carry on the hollow, pathetic ways which are the only way she'll ever know, ever see, ever live.