This Cup Feels Half Empty

My mother and her husband offered to keep the baby tonight. So, I decided to make the night special for my daughter since we rarely get any time alone together anymore. I offered to take her to a movie, and gave her a couple of choices of shows. She didn’t choose the one I would have really liked to have seen. She chose the romantic comedy of course. We went in this evening to watch Life As We Know It. First of all, I must say that I obviously don’t get out much, because I cringed when they told me it would be $17 for the 2 of us to watch the show. We hadn’t even bought any snacks yet! That added a whopping $15 to my bill. Ching, ching. So this is why I don’t get out much, huh?
I hate to ruin it for those of you who haven’t seen the show yet, but I do need to vent. The show ends with one of those airport scenes. You know the kind. The kind where one person races to the airport in chase after another after just realizing that they are madly in love with the other person, and they can’t live another day without them even though they just sent them off with a farewell. I realize this is supposed to be a suspense-filled moment in the show where the audience grips the arms of his or her seat as they anxiously wait to find out if they will catch the other person before the plane leaves, or if that person, once caught, will reciprocate the love. It was at this precise moment though that I found myself thinking, “Really? Another airport scene? C’mon already! Do we really have to ruin another good show with one of these?” Of course, the movie ends exactly like you would picture it to end, everyone lives happily ever after, yadda, yadda, yadda. Honestly, it was a cute show, it just stirred up some rotten feelings. Here are these 2 people who don’t care for each other much, yet they find themselves in life raising a child together, and Tada! They fall in love! Oh, gush. If only life were truly so neat and tidy. Ok, so there were a couple of sad parts, and some truthful portrayals of parenting and single-parenting.
So, we leave the show and I’m already thinking about how I am going to blog about this. Then I decided to ask my daughter why she liked the show so much since she was gushing over it. I thought, “Well, this conversation could add to my blogging material.” I asked her if she liked the whole romantic boy-meets-girl scenario, or the fact that it made her laugh, or how it ended with love? Her answer left me more than speechless. She said she liked how the 2 people loved the baby and they were like a family. Queue the part where my heart falls from my chest. Queue the part where I am holding back tears the rest of the ride home as I try to make small talk amidst all the chatter taking place in my heart. Damn! Girls her age are usually beginning to think more about boys, and are dreamy-eyed when they watch Cinderella-like movies where boy meets girl and falls in love. Here’s my little girl, just dreaming that a male would walk into her life and let her call him daddy.
Forget romance. Forget 5th grade crushes. Just give me a man that wants to watch my Christmas program at school, wants to take me for trips to the park, wants to tuck me in at night, or wants to tell me how beautiful I look in my new dress. It’s the one thing she wants more than anything, and it’s the one thing I haven’t been able to give her. My heart is still reeling from the blow. I was prepared for her happily ever after fairytale visions of a 10 year old. I was not prepared for this. It’s times like these that I begin to ask why God does allow some things to happen. I want to tell God that I am ok if there is no one out there for me, but I want to cry out to God for not placing some kind of father figure in my daughter’s life. Ok, ok. So God is our Father, right? But she wants something tangible! I can keep telling her God wants to fill that void in her life, but her response? “But why doesn’t God speak to me?” I try to explain to her that God speaks in ways we can’t hear like we hear each other speak. Alas, confusion. If God loves her like He does, where is her dad? And why does he choose to live a life without her, even though he lives a mere 20 minutes away? Why doesn’t he love her enough to sacrifice all his own interests, rearrange his priorities, and come chasing after her? My answers don’t really satisfy these questions. She’s still going to go to school tomorrow and hear other girls in her class tell stories of big, mighty, loyal fathers. She’s still going to be left with just movies to watch about how some other person got the love she always wanted. The love of her Daddy.