HURT

I do not know if I was taught this, or if I realized it through life experience, but it is my belief that you do not hurt people you love.  I know this is simplistic.  We all know very well that we do hurt the ones we love.  (The ones we shouldn't hurt at all. . .)  And sometimes it is with acute deliberation.  We either need to prove something to ourselves or to another.  It is actually amazing how often, in retrospect, I have consciously done this, and the variety of reasons or rationalizations that I have used.  And then there is the big general question that haunts my every waking and sleeping moment.  "Is this love?"  Followed closely by its red-headed step-child, "What is love?"

A very well-known person who is respected for her advice column and recently had a best selling book got into an on-line controversy about a statement that she made.  Actually, she tried to stay out of the fray and the disagreement was largely among her commentors. A year later it cropped up again.  She is so much younger than I that I blame my general disagreement with her philosophy on the fact that my life experience has been extremely various, and I KNOW better.  I also seldom, if ever, had to do a brief hiatus with heroin to clear my mind in order to come to a decision. She is read by so many that turn to her for help in their moments of confusion, and her advice is always so unilateral.  I feel it is dangerous, and, in fact, when the subject was re-introduced this year, it was someone who started out by saying why they thought her advice was dangerous.

I think we never stop learning and it is not a good idea to think our viewpoint is right for everyone.  I had a conversation with my daughter today and we were both growing increasingly uncomfortable.  Finally I said I thought this was the type of conversation we should have over martinis. It was SO not mother-daughter, but SO chick to chick.  I kind of felt like I should not have said many of the things I said, but, on the other hand, I am glad she knows my viewpoint, and she already knows I am anything but coy.

Nevertheless, when I made the remark about the martinis, she said she wondered if the baby would wake up when we shifted her from one car to another.  We neither of us said, "Ahem." but it was an "ahem" moment if ever there was one.  Yeah, you DON'T want to know what we were discussing.  Not that the subject has not come up previously in my blogs and fiction, cuz it has.  But a blog, whether it is true or not, I like to believe is anonymous. The thing that we agreed on was that what ever may seem to be the right thing to do at one moment in your life, may in fact later be the wrong choice.  And you can never be sure.  How can you even think you are sure if you are over the age of twenty?  (Under that age, saying you are sure is utterly meaningless, even to yourself.) And you are never going to know until experience shows you whether it is right or wrong.  So, if it is going to hurt someone, for whatever reason, the one thing that I know about love, or even consideration or empathy, is don't hastily make a decision that will hurt someone.  Circumstances may change for any number of reasons and you may wish you had a do over.  I am betting many of you already know this.  I bet many of you wish you had a do-over for lots of events in your life.  I know I do.  It may be for a marriage, or a break up, or just for picking out what color coat you wanted.  Whatever.  You may not get the do-over, so stop and think.  And, take a freakin' long time to do it.  If it feels right is NOT a good reason to do something.  Not if love, whatever the heck that is, is involved.  Anywhere.

I do not fear pain.  I have learned a lot from it.  I know it goes away.  But still, there are times when I have a choice about whether or not to inflict pain.  And even though I know it will go away, they will get over it, be better for it, I hope I will choose not to inflict that pain.

But what the heck.  I do.  Don't I?


Photo Attribution:  Oh, fuck.  That's my grandma.

Delusion, Illusion, Reason and Reality

I think my mother might have hated me.  I know she resented me, but I was never sure why.  Maybe because I was smarter than the Golden Prince and the Golden Prince was supposed to be the smartest.  Maybe because I never had to ask her to help me understand things.  I always thought my take on things (still do) is the right one for me and usually the right one.  Just the right one.

Maybe it was because I was just something she had to do, like because of the day and age she lived in, or because she was Catholic, or because nobody she had ever heard of  had just one kid, so another one was supposed to come along.  I do know that she felt she had to have another kid and it was planned at a drawing board so it was convenient for everyone.

She was pretty, much more pretty than the average bear I am led to believe,  but a child can never have an unbiased viewpoint about that.  I think she thought I was ugly.  I look at pictures of me at every age, and I think I was the cutest thing.  I would die to have had a little curly headed redhead  girl.  Instead she got her.  I only remember being teased about some really major times in my life, like getting a figure.  And God made that shit up to me. He gave me a great figure.  I feel like God knew what was going on and tried to lend a helping hand.  But now I am shaken in my belief.  

My mom died a few years ago and one of my brothers cannot get over it.  He idolizes her.  I only remember the embarrassment she caused me, singling me out for jokes in front of company, drinking until she was staggering and slurring, caring about "care" in so far only as it applied to my father.  I feel like she was never herself.  I feel like I was always myself. I feel/still feel like I had to be---that I was all I had to cling to. And it is only me that is holding me together, keeping me standing right now.

My mother left me with two horrible unsolvable problems.  No matter how strong I feel or how strong I am, I cannot solve these problems.  I can only stand here like a dessicated sponge soaking up pain from these two problems, every day, every minute of my life.  That's all I can do in my life---while I have life.

I feel strongly about karma, and as a joke, I say, what ever it was that I did to deserve this, I hope I enjoyed it. But I cannot imagine.  I do not believe I have ever hurt anyone as much as these two things are hurting me. And I cannot see that, under any circumstances or imagined scenario that I will learn or become stronger from this.  I feel like it is chipping away at my heart bit by bit with an extremely dull and cold chisel.  I know it is impossible for me to ever know the outcome or the possible rewards for living through this in my lifetime, if ever. 

I ask her, probably daily, why she did this to me.  Not that it doesn't impact other people.  It does.  And others are being terribly hurt, but it still seems like I am the focus. And it is an absolute truth that both things things have been placed here by her. I don't get it.  There is no lesson embedded in this.  It is just pain, pointless,  unnecessary pain.  I hope that is not the legacy that I leave behind me.

I receive professional advice , psychoactive meds, and counsel from wise and loving people whose views I value greatly and admire, but all I ever walk away with is that I have to make peace with the situation.  I can't.  I refuse to.  If I had a large rusty nail sticking out of my forehead I would not endeavor to ignore the discomfort, nor would I ask people to ignore the fact that a large rusty nail is sticking out of my forehead because I am being so fucking brave about it that they shouldn't call attention to it.  They should pretend it is not there.  Because I am working so hard to pretend it is not there.  No.  Pull the fucking nail out for Christ's sake. 

Panic

I surf blogs, as I have mentioned before, and many of them have the niftiest templates.  I consider that stuff way too techy for me, but today I had to fiddle around.  There are so many that offer all these free templates.  I wonder why.  If you like it you are not going to go back and pay for another are you? 

So I found one that seem just creepy and personal enough for me, liking to make statements as I do, but not wanting to be accused of trying to make a statement.  Caged, getting free, kind of gothic, kind of worn around the edges.  Anyway, it showed up all cattywhompus and I couldn't figure out how to adjust it, and then I tried to get rid of it, and was able to, but no, it was still there.  I totally feared that I would have to start over and develop a whole new site, and was worried if I could transfer my archive and it dawned on me how important these words, or this expressing, is to me. 

Finally, or at least at this moment, I think it is showing up pretty even.  I had a lot of hits today tho, and I am sure they think I have flipped.  No.  I am sure anyone that has visited here at least once already knows that. And that is probably why they keep coming back.

Anyway, I mowed the lawn yesterday, and it is rather a large lawn if you go back to the creek, which you are not supposed to because that area is supposed to be available for the proper native wetland plants to thrive and do their soaking up the water thing, but the neighbors on both sides mow to the creek, so I do not want to rock that boat, being neighbor to this family being burden enough,  and I love the endless yard kind of effect.  So do the deer and the coyotes, and the foxes. But what I am getting at is this nerve thing going on in my hand that feels like you forgot to use the pot holder when you took the cookie sheet out of the oven, but only in this very localized place between two fingers, and Fran gave me two Doctor Layton games for my birthday, so I have been on DS way too much lately, and my hand hurts like a son of a bitch, so I feel like currently God does not want me to write.  He also does not want me to pick anything up off the floor as He always makes it fall at least once and  then makes me do it again.  Aging is such pain.  Literally.

I need back story for my non-dystopian, post-apocalyptic novel.  Any suggestions?  I am on the verge here.  I promise!  It is bubbling up almost to the edge.  I know it.  And I feel that what I do will be the right thing for me to do.  That is what I should have been telling myself all along.  I don't have to be who people think I am anymore.  Maybe trying to cut back on those meds was not such a great idea.

So how do  y'all feel about the single space after the period rule change thing?  I don't really care one way or the other, but the two space thing is very deeply engrained.  Think for just a moment on this.  If I could get used to doing only one space after  the period, how much wear and tear would I be saving on that fucking nerve in my finger?