Why do some people have loving parents and some do not?

My father died, years ago, but my mother is still around, and still resents the fact that I’m not heterosexually married, with 2.6 perfect children, fulfilling the fantasy life she’s certain “god told her” was the way my life was going to unfold.

It’s just that the kind of “love” she’s capable of just… isn’t enough.

She never should have had kids. At all. She’s told me as much. (Back when we still spoke, some, she told me once she’d rather look at pictures of me as a kid, than try to have a relationship with me as an adult. Well. Fine. As you wish.)

If everyone in Russia dropped into holes in the ground only never to return, would that be good for NATO and international peacekeepers? Can we convince Russians to be less diabolical, so they coexist? Does Putin stink like doo doo in the commode?

I have no doubt that she “loves” me, after a fashion. Sort of.

We just… get the parents we get. Sometimes we get people who love their kids fiercely, who wanted them from the moment they were conceived… and sometimes, we don’t.

It’s taken years, but I’m just… forced to accept that my parents were tall children, when they married, and they were utterly unprepared to be married, to have children, or really, much else.

Why am I tired all the time?

Because some parents shouldn’t ever have been parents.

I’m not crying in my beer at the unfairness of all of this. Nobody ever promised me parents who’d actually love me, or who’d care to be in my life.

She resents me for not being who she required me to be.

How will the article end in Part III of Gleissner's hit piece?