It’s so trite to start something off the way I’m about to, but here goes.
I was supposed to post on Monday but I didn’t so I’m posting today instead.
What can I tell you? It took three lines of a prescription stimulant to get me to sit at my desk and write. I wonder what you’re thinking as you read this? Perhaps you’re wondering what I look like? Or, maybe you’re wondering if this chick needs help? What if you really are interested in what I write and all you want to do is to keep reading? This final possibility is the raddest one of all because there is no greater satisfaction for a writer than to know that someone wants to read more of what they’re saying.
I don’t have a specific topic for today but maybe one will emerge if I just keep writing. The weather where I live is so shitty–as it is in most of the U.S. right now. I grew up in a place where the sun comes out every day and I’ve gotten used to it. My body and mind crave the sunshine. From where I’m at now, I don’t recall having seen the sun since February 14. Almost ten days ago…
I’ve been locked away in my apartment where it’s warm and where I can be safe from the judgement of others. Or maybe a more accurate statement is this: where I can be free of the stupidity, the arrogance, and the insensitivity of others, and of myself toward other people. Actually, neither statement is true because all I have to do is answer the phone or open my mail to be reminded of how some individuals are so tactless.
Here’s a concrete example.
My bf’s mom died two years ago. His dad started dating right away. After more than three decades of living one life with one person, he undid it all for whatever reason. Less than a year ago, he met a woman online, started dating her, and decided to move her into the home where his wife died, where her ashes are, without any regard as to how this might affect his adult children. Then he decided he was going to marry this person. Everyone will have an opinion. Mine is that at his age, you expect more thought, more deliberation, and greater concern for the feelings of others. But this hasn’t been the case for this sad trio who lost the person who completed them and held them together.
A few days ago, we received a “save the date” and I couldn’t believe how insensitive the “fiancés” are. In fact, I was appalled by their lack of tact. Do they really expect a son to return to his mother’s home to celebrate his father’s marriage to a woman he hardly knows and who has made not one attempt to get to know her boyfriend’s children (yes, a “boyfriend” in her sixties sounds so fucking ridiculous).
My anger relative to this situation stems from a deep well of anger, hurt, and resentment I have for my parents. Neither one was strong enough, or loved my siblings and I enough, to choose their children.
My mom let my dad abuse her and us without ever saying to him, “ENOUGH! YOU WILL NOT HURT MY CHILDREN!”
My dad never said to himself, “I choose my family over alcohol and I will never lay hands on them or hurt them with my words again.”
So has my boyfriend’s father chosen wrongly. Instead of holding his family together, grieving with his children, and together finding a way to continue living without Mom, he has chosen himself. He has chosen someone he doesn’t know over the two humans he helped bring into this world, and over the woman he loved for more than half his life.
And that is what people do to each other. And this is how writing about nothing becomes about something.
Until next time dearest readers.