life ,Love and birthdays

 As we approach my youngest  daughters 21st birthday on the 9th of August  my heart is breaking , it's the first one we won't be together to party and celebrate and my family is a huge and treasured  part of my  life .

For my first 40 years this wasn't so because for reasons which I never came to terms with but eventually understood my parents were not a major part of my formative years, from the age of  4 -10  my parents were just a Xmas or birthday card . 
They were a product of their time and circumstances,   Mother was 17 and Father 19 when I was born in 1947 , she had been working since she was 4 years old in a variety of acts, contortion , acrobatics etc , He was raised in  the family Circus and had a wealth of talent, unfortunately none of it in parenting skills, He had a predilection for  other women and was constantly unfaithful throughout their marriage. 
 The determination not to be like him shaped my own life and relationships,  as a result my emotional intelligence was stunted and I grew up looking for love but shunning it when it became too serious , always using the timeless "It's me , not you " scenario to get out of a relationship . I now realise how hurtful this was to many of those I had feelings for and by todays standards I was probably not a very nice person.
  I determined not too marry until I was at least 40 believing that by then I would have the maturity to settle down raise a family,  it didn't work out that way, 
    My first child was the result of a wonderful relationship with Mia ,  a delight to be with, fun , full of energy and life , in  general a happy soul , we worked together on a circus in the late '70's and she was one of the first girls that I really fell in love with but as always with me it couldn't last,  She left the show and reappeared some time later with a pushchair with a little girl of about a year old telling me that this was  my daughter, My memory tells me I behaved gallantly and offered to 'do the right thing' by her and the child but to my eternal shame I don't think I did , Mia said that she wasn't prepared to travel with a circus and had decided to stay single and bring up her daughter on her own , I wasn't prepared to give up my life so we parted with the agreement that when the girl was older Mia would tell her about me and leave it up to her if she wanted to get in touch.
I told two people about this, my Brother and when I married in '87 my first wife, I did this in case something happened to me and my daughter got in touch at a later date.

I still find it hard to open up emotionally, Oh, I'll cry at a sad film , a well written piece of prose or good writing can bring me to tears  but that's superficial , my true emotion only comes out when I work, In front of an audience I'm stripped naked for the world to see, my triumphs and disasters all happen in public .
This is hard on my family but I do try and hopefully as I get older it gets better . 














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