Philosophical Meanderings While Making Dinner

I believe life is to be learned from.

I believe it is human nature to formulate and perpetuate whichever myths support your personal outlook on the world.

I believe my myths are neither superior nor inferior to the myths I am surrounded by.

I believe some people call them myths, I believe some people call them religions.

I believe that some people call them shit.

I believe that none of us really know now, do we?

I believe that the concept of unknowing makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

I believe people that are strident and militant in their beliefs make me uncomfortable.

I believe I have been here before.

I believe I will be here again.

I believe that when we die, for a brief and shining moment, we know all the answers in the universe.

I believe we will understand the reason for the existence of the cockroach.

I believe we will understand the depth and breadth of the suffering and the goodness that exists in every person.

And then, I believe, that knowledge is taken from us.

If you have led a noble life, a good life, you will be granted access to that knowledge. It will be lurking beneath your spleen, playing peek-a-boo behind your liver and common bile duct. It will exists within you and you will, at some point, realize it. You will have the ability to quiet your mind and listen to the voices of the universe. You will realize that it is more important to be still than to shout. You will realize that the universe is very large and you are very tiny. You will realize that there are so many things to learn and never enough lifetimes to remember it all.

If your existence has been more like the wake of a hurricane and, as you look over your shoulder you see the wreckage that you have left by the machinations of your choices, you will lose all that knowledge when you come around again. You will live your next life like you lived your last life. There will be pain and turmoil and you will be screaming at the blackened cosmos, all alone.

It is the examined life that breaks the cycle. It is the realization that we are but pebbles being thrown into a pond. You ripple back to me, I ripple back to you.

I believe I have been here before. I believe I will be here again.

I am thankful for the ability to listen, learn, love, hope, and trust.

And I am thankful for all my other pebbles in the pond.

They are all so beautiful.

Family Traditions

There's nature, there's nurture, and there's just plain oddities. Good oddities, but oddities nontheless.

Like finding out that you share the same mannerisms with a brother that you never grew up with and haven't seen in a coon's age.

We say the same phrases with the same inflection.

We smile the same.

We tell jokes the same.

We laugh the same.

And we appreciate haute cuisine: macaroni and tomatoes anyone?

Protecting My Soft Gooey Center

I've never been a good daughter.

I've never been a good daughter-in-law.

I've never been a good sister.

I've been been a good sister-in-law.

I've also never been a good dancer but that's a story for another day.

I'm one of those people that totally lack the warm, fuzzy cute as a kitten gene. I think I learned at a very young age that I am the only one that I can depend upon. Not getting too comfortable on the psychiatrists couch or anything, but from birth to last December, I have learned one thing very well. People fuck you over seven ways to Sunday and if you don't let them into your soft gooey center, they won't hurt you.

I think that is why I value my friends so much. I would go to the ends of the earth for my friends and as the last few months have shown, my friends feel the same way about me.

When it comes to family, I've been hurt enough. Throwing my hands up in the air and walking away is a defense mechanism that I've employed over the years to mixed success. I always thought I was refusing to allow people to use me. I thought I was refusing people the opportunity to hurt me. I'm not going to lend someone money when all they want is another drink or a hit. I'm also not going to stand around and wait to be asked a second time.

Likewise, I'm not going to stand around and put up with being treated like shit. (This statement, after 17 years of being treated like shit actually makes me laugh at my own 'full-of-shitedness').

All this leads to a phone call that I made on the day of the omnibus hearing. I've actually gotten back in touch with one of my brothers who lives in Michigan after falling out of touch with him for quite some time. (My fault. Refer to the third statement at the beginning of the post.) This is the brother that I've always been proud to call my "big brother". I've always felt a special kinship to him.

From him, I got my biological mother's telephone number.

Yeah, I'm sure you can see where this is going.

I haven't talked to her in years. The kids haven't been back to Michigan for about twelve years and as I talked to them about who we should see and where we should go, my daughter mentioned seeing her grandmother. "She's my last grandma alive.I want to try to see her."

I stopped trying to communicate with her years ago. She would email me and I would reply and then there would be silence. Then another unrelated email a few months later from her that I would reply to, complete with questions and an expectation of a reply and then there would be silence again. Any emails that I would initiate would go unanswered. I think I may have left a phone message, I can't recall.

But it was obviously a completely one sided conversation so I gave up.

I warned my daughter that it might not be a good idea but I would try. As brave as she has been through all of this, I couldn't NOT try.

But really, should I have tried to call on the Friday of the omnibus? Now that was just dumb.

Thankfully, I was alone at the time. When she answered the phone and I said "Hi mom", she demanded to know who I was in a very techy voice. I told her it was her daughter and she said that she didn't have a daughter by that name and hung up.

Well, it looks like having warm cookies and milk at grandma's is off the itinerary.

The thing that is so hard to get through to people that haven't been through a similar experience is that I feel no positive emotions toward my own biological mother. I have no feelings of love or care or protectiveness going either way. It's as if I tried to throw my arms around the door to door magazine sales woman from last week and tricked myself into feeling something.

I think my major malfunction comes from the fact that I see using the forced structure of a family as a "support' as flawed. Life is so incredibly short and telling myself that I'm supposed to make an effort to surround myself with people that will only try to hurt me and use me and expect me to help them continue on their self destructive ways MAKES ME FUCKING CRANKY.

This philosophy also spilled over into STBX's family. He would talk about being treated like shit but then he would go back for more because "they're my family".

Well, we can all see how well they raised you and how well you turned out so I guess that just proves how wrong I am.

Thomas Wolfe Was Right-Heavy Books Are Great Paper Weights

The Harkness Family will be taking a vacation this summer.

I got the time off yesterday and the last week of August will be us, piling in the car and driving back to my family in Michigan.

We haven't been back there for about twelve years.

And since I can't afford to board the dogs, we'll probably be taking them with us.

(They are currently running cyclonic circles around the living room until they are both so dizzy that they fall down).

Nothing like a grand entrance.

I sincerely don't want to take them because my sister has cats and I just don't want to be the cause of any consternation but unless someone has a better idea (all suggestions welcome but the ASPCA had better approve), I think we will have to suck it up.

I'll get to meet up with a couple of good friends from high school/college and I'll get to bore my progeny to tears with stories. (No, honest, the ONLY thing I ever did behind the ice cream store was to eat ice cream. That's why I was gone for three hours mom. And I don't know WHY my shirt is on backwards and inside out.)

But what I'm looking forward to the most is sitting up late with my sister and just shooting the breeze. Nothing fancy, nothing special.

I just feel so completely broken right now. Utterly shattered. I can put on a bullshit facade to get through the day but every time I move, I can hear the broken pieces rattling around inside of me. Lately, I've had to convince myself on a daily basis that it is worth starting over. That the modicum of energy I have at the end of the day should be spent looking toward the future.

But I've forgotten where all the pieces go. I've forgotten who I used to be and whether I want to save any of that for the future.

So, I'm going home. Just for a few days. Just to ask my family and friends the ultimate question.

Who am I?

I guess

Next Up? Daddy Dearest

Continuing on yesterday's thread, the other half of the equation in all of our lives is fathers.

Not having grown up around my father and having the only man my aunt (who raised me) was involved with be a molester, my understanding of what a healthy relationship with a man is hasn't come to light until my life blew up in December.

I've known for years that my marriage wasn't good. Having wanted to leave when the kids were little and being sneered at, something inside me curled up and hibernated for fourteen years.

I stayed. For that choice, I am guilty.

For the consequences of stbx's fucked up childhood, I am not.

Before I knew that stbx was a pedophile, I knew he was a rotten father. I told myself that he would try to get partial custody of the kids if I left. I believe this to be true to this day. He would have done it out of spite. By staying, I could at least be there to protect my kids against his sarcasm, his indifference, his obvious lack of interest in them. Had I known what kind of interest he had in in at least one of them...yeah...there we go with that 20/20 hindsight thing again.

When the kids were little, he called them "screaming balls of flesh" (granted, there were those days and nights of colic when this was an apt description). He told people that he would be more interested in them when they got older. He said it would be great if you could just give a kid a ball and send them to a corner and have them bounce it for hours on end so they would leave you alone.

There were early attempts at school conferences and school functions. But somewhere after third or fourth grade, it all stopped. As I write this sentence, I realize, that involvement with the kids stopped when the abuse started.

That is also the time that he totally withdrew from us as a family.

Seven years.

That's how long the kids have had an absentee father who sat a mere two feet from them, involved in everything online and nothing in his real life.

There were times when I tried to invite him to school functions or to something we were doing but he was always busy or acted like we were the stupid ones for actually going outside the house to have a life. In the last couple years, when I would mention "asking dad to come with us", the kids would sigh and balk. It would either be a waste of time or else he would come with us and make us all miserable with his aura of gloom and sarcasm.

As I've stated before, having been abused, I cut him even less slack for becoming an abuser. He knew where I came from. At any time, he could have sat down and either talked about his past or simply said "I need help and I can't tell you why", but he didn't. He told his manhole that he "couldn't help himself". Well, he could have helped himself. He chose not to. It was easier to use his own child for his own selfish purposes than to pick up a phone and make a call to a professional.

That's what makes this whole scenario so insidious. He has played the victim his entire life. He seeks out women that want to nurture and "help" and once again, he only has to be the ten year old child, crying to his mommy.

That will be his defense when this all goes to court. His lawyer will try to turn the tables away from what he has done and turn him into the victim that he has acted like his entire life.

Since he surrounds himself currently with people that perpetuate that myth, I'm sure he's feeling quite secure in what a terrible lot his life has been and just how much he can sway a courtroom.

And how he had no control over the mess he has created.