There are so many thoughts bound up here; lessons stippling like raindrops and sieving away about as quickly.
the dust of elders | ground upon which they walk | eternal blooming //haiku
I am peaceful now, having had that old dream come true, become false, and then, for a time, flickering in the third state, unresolved and incoherent.
Explication both settles and obliterates, it seems. Or at least, deduction without rebuttal. I wander through the shadow glade of my own, inner landscape and remember myself.
I am sad, but also content. a minore ad maius, one moves through the world only by responding to it or, lacking in it, is shaped and set into the first willing receptacle of reality, reflected.
In this pocket of warmth and safety, without which it seems I would be no further from Stewart and Perkerson and Sylvan and Dill, or Bonnie Brae than ever I was…. perfected in outer reality only, I still sit in that small room, upon the blanket on the floor, wondering how long it will be until this, too, collapses slowly into dust.
I have buried so many dreams in the hope and trust I chose to misplace in others. I have refused to learn, defiant in my conviction that eventually, all things must resolve or they dissolve and certainly no one wants that.
My mistake was being so unshakable in my belief that others yearned for resolution and reunion as I did.
Or that they would choose to be accessible, near, and with me as I always was for them.
Then, I remember – they never noticed, so they never realized there was a reason I always had an extra room… even when it was costly to do it.
Just like they never realized that, no matter how often we argued, I was always ready to listen, learn, and understand… they just stopped being interested in more than beating at me with recriminations.
I know this because they went from being attached to social appearances of at least SOME familial nature to reconstituting reality into a narrative of abuse, neglect, and trauma that, apparently, will become “Me: The Definitive Memory”, written, naturally, by people who neither bothered nor cared to know me.
Insult to injury, that. Topped off by the habitual lying, brazenly confident that proof is out of reach. They really should know me better.
I know who I am. I know what I’ve lived through. I know what I did, why I did it, and am comfortable in the conviction that I could not have done it better or differently, or I would have.
They know this too, which is why when I finally made explicit that I was willing to PROVE that their fabricated history is precisely that, they fell into silence.
I am tired of being castigated for a humanity that is natural and normal.
I am tired of being told so explicitly and maliciously that I am injurious when I have never lifted my hand against another human in anger in my life.
I am particularly weary of the tendency of some to inflate and exaggerate events in favor of their new hobby of identity-crafting.
But it’s pointless, really. One hundred years from now, no one will care or know either of our names, nor those of any of our kin.
I only care because I chose and wanted.
I do not have to endure fraud, nor the impugning of my character.
It is helpful to finally understand the negative view and motivations of others… but I will not have this costuming as admission price to a family that, for reasons I’m sure I will never understand, cannot accept my humanity as they demand everyone accept theirs.
They were not abused by me. They refused to return to me and thus, opened the door to many abuses by others.
They were not neglected by me. They refused to heed me and thus, opened the door to hazards that would otherwise have remained out of possibility.
They were not traumatized by me. They refused to deal with and resolve their anger at being temporarily re-housed while I tried to recover from the fallout of the “dot com” bust.
They were not placed in inappropriate places by me. They lived with their father until they refused to do so, refused to live with me, and wrote their own “blank check” into foster care and eventual couch-surfing homelessness.
Then they stripped. Then they became someone’s trophy. Then, finally, they were willing to return home and repair family with me.
Oh. No. That’s inaccurate. As it turns out, my husband has a screen of the social media post they didn’t hide fast enough, wherein they are giddy that someone from Seattle is coming out to “make it official”. In May.
I believe the narrative is supposed to be along the lines of, “Oh, well, I TRIED to reconcile but Mom’s just unable, unstable, etc.”
In reality, it was more like, “I’ll move in with my Mom until I can find work, then I can move in with you and we’ll budget.”
So, arrived in June, moved out in July, married in August…. and over the next few years, the slow understanding that they’re are still stuck in 2002, trying to craft a narrative that can stand beside Southern Cali soccer moms, I suppose.
I work on not being disappointed; after all, the best sign of parental success is a child that truly leaves the nest. So I’ve got that going for me, I suppose.
Given the narrative that was finally made explicit to me, I understand; it’s the same narrative I hold in relation to my progenitors. I suspect this means it’s similar across humanity. To be sure, my husband has it as well.
I wonder why it is that humans are so easily convinced their experience is unique. What an unexpected irony! It is only unique to them.