Fear

One of the things I've lost since I was last at work was my own brand of fearlessness. In coming back to work I've found myself wanting in social situations. I just don't feel like I could connect to any of these people. But is it really that or is it that I don't want to attach myself?
Knowing that I'm leaving in just a few months gives me a sense of panic of yet more friends I'll have to leave. I don't leave people well. I'm a very out of sight-out of mind kind of person. I try not to be, but old habits die hard. Once I've left a place I leave what's behind sitting on some kind of emotional shelf to be picked up again only when I'm back in sight. I know now how it hurts those sitting on the shelf. No one likes to be tucked away. All of my closest friends have been tucked away like this at least once. Some of them have endured it repeatedly. It's only been this last move where I've seen how truly devastated that shelving process can be, and honestly I don't want to do it to more people than I have to.

Another fear I've only recently developed is the fear of losing my son. As the month of September draws to a close and the prospect of moving grows closer I'm beginning to dread the summer when I'll have to turn Brandon back over to his father. As hard as it is being a parent, not being one feels like it might tear me apart. And then I'm hit with how hard it will be on Brandon. He's getting to really enjoy his way of life with us. My ex and I have such different parenting priorities. He wants little man to revel in childhood and I want to raise a man.

I know I push Brandon harder than my ex would like. I want to show little man that there is a time for everything. Play and work alike. It's hard though, because he is behind in his education (I love how schools advance kids that haven't learned what they need) and I want to get him caught up. I know he needs to play and enjoy time with his friends, but he also needs to have a reading level better than grade 2; he needs to know about social graces and the difference between right and wrong. There is so much I want to show him and only eight more months in which to accomplish it. Perhaps it's a good thing that the ex and I split our time with him. I know Dean will make sure that Brandon has oodles of slack time. Of course that pisses me off too. I have spent the last year bringing Brandon up to almost his grade level, and then come summer I have to hand him over to his dad where he'll get to slack off and most likely fall behind again.
But is that really the case, or am I convincing myself of it so I can get some sort of rightous anger brewing in order to tell my ex off come summer and thus bully him into letting little man stay with me?
I've done that. I've bullied Dean around (verbally of course), I make him feel small to get him to do things my way. But in order to do that, I have to be rightous.

Maybe I just fear my own self and the destructive cababilities I supposedly wield.

Of course, that assumption is very self centered, isn't it? How could I affect lives so greatly as to ruin them without mallice? Then again, how often has the off-handed remark of another scarred it's recipient? I think back to the tormenting I recieved as a child and how it took me years to overcome. It would be stupid to assume that my actions would not hold weight to someone else, especially in someone who loved me enough to marry me. Which leads me to the most important question. What is not to be feared, if you cannot trust your own self to be honest with you? Intentions and rammifications are often in direct opposition.
I intend not to hurt people - but I do. How can I be trusted?