I have taken a vacation home and have been unable to blog due to dial-up connection frustrations! Ugh.
So many times I missed my blog, my journals, but I didn’t take the time to write anything – on paper or online – while visiting. So many ideas occurred to me, but I didn’t write them down. New information came my way, old information was verified, and I cried a lot.
I cried because I was home but I still missed home. The home in my memory. I’d hoped that the quasi-perfect life that I remembered would magically reappear simply by willing it into place. It hurt when my old life didn’t return to me.
It’s late, and I’m tired. But I’m going to try to list as many things as possible that I want to remember to write about in the coming days. I don’t want the new, old, and imagined to slip into the abyss. Maybe I didn’t write because I didn’t want to remember when I came back here to my desk. My keyboard. My life.
Whatever. Here’s the stuff:
- Granny had a happy marriage.
- Nana had a marriage that provided her a home and everyday luxuries.
- My mother still won’t give details of her marriage to my dad, and I still don’t want to “know”
- I’m going to skip this revelation. One, if my husband cheats on me, then so be it. Two, the only “new” information I received was confirmation of my own suspicions from years and years ago. I decided to forgive his transgression (real OR imagined) 15 years ago, and I don’t want to go back there again. But I’m mentioning it because it’s sparked a desire and motivation to get healthy – lean and mean 🙂 and I want to write more about THAT later.
- My oldest son has a pretty serious anger problem that he saves for me and his little brother; of course, he blames me.
- Alaska, aloneness, and the inability to know everything in advance killed Chris.
- I am too fat to meet up with old friends. I’m embarassed. I didn’t even try, and I know they will be upset if/when they find out.
- My cousin loves me and my sister, but he picks on her endlessly and hurtfully. Why?
- I kept waiting for a divine secret to be shared with me to no avail. I’m beginning to think there will be no magical divine intervention on my behalf. I’m beginning to think I’m going to have to do the hard shit alone.
- My great-grandma was mistreated by my great-grandfather. In a way, I knew this because when he couldn’t care for himself anymore, he too moved to Indiana to be cared for by one of his daughters. My great-grandma and he lived 10 minutes apart in his final days; she didn’t care to see him. She didn’t travel to his funeral.
- My Nana still sees the ghost of (or imagines) her ex-boyfriend peering through her windows. When HE died, her well-meaning(?) family asked her if she was going to his funeral. She answered, “Would you go to the funeral of someone who threatened to kill you?” I wanted to do a purification ritual or an exorcism or put a safety spell over her home, but in my dysfunction, could not.
- Strokes can cause their sufferers to abuse the ones who love them. If my step-dad continues to emotionally and mentally abuse my mother, is it really any different for her than for me? No. The stress of dealing with an abuser, “sick” or not, can kill her as its killing me. There is no difference.
- Instead of gaining strength at home, I felt it sapped from me as I realized that the security I once felt there was imagined. The men I knew there were only parts of their whole. I never realized the things that went on when I wasn’t looking. My protectors were liars and frauds. Is it possible to remember the men I once knew now that I know I only knew the part they wanted me to know? Must I put aside my own beautiful memories with them in order to honor the still very-much-alive women who tried to love them?
I suppose that’s the gist of it. I’ll fill in the blanks in the days to come.