35

So I wonder what you were doing at this age? You had 3 children, the youngest was 5. How could anyone see any of it coming, we all know that train wrecks happen, we expect horrible damage and even destruction from them, but no one really counts on the subtle, snake in the grass, events that don't kill anyone but cause such upheaval.

I am about to be 35 and I have my one child, we have lost another as quietly as so many have, we hold the screams and shouts in so that our brains don't process properly over the noise.

The shadow will never leave her, it is so strange how people are people with no self esteem are desperate for such drama that they will not forsake that drama no matter how much it takes from them without giving. You were the anti-drama, I used to think you were just, bitter, now I know better. How awful to know what was right in front of you and to have it taking you under but to not be able to think enough of yourself to fight it.

Maybe some year I will stop thinking of you so much at this time of year, or at least like this.

Parenting from what you remember

So today I think I hit on an important thought. I have come to think that my parents thought of being parents as constantly being asked to say they were sorry and that everything they did was wrong.

As children my siblings and I felt very accommodated. I know I never learned to cope with feeling unhappy, or displeased. I wonder though why my mom and dad didn't try to help with closing the circle, with showing the right way to process negative emotion? I don't really remember getting the sense that a dramatic event was a bump in the road and not a ditch to get stuck in.

I have a very hard time recollecting the kind of person my father was; I think (sadly) I learned to see him through a lens my mother created. I was always exasperated with my father, he could never do anything right and I remember thinking from an early age that if he could not be counted on to do something on a consistent basis; thinks like rake leaves, clean up the yard, check the outside of the house for problems, etc. Now, he may well have done these things; what I don't remember is being taught that these were things that responsible people do and are done for their own sake.

One thing in particular I recall was an electrical outlet in our living room. At some point the outlet became unusable. Somehow the outlet was replaced and actually did work properly. The issue was that there was now face plate on the outlet. I don't know why this was; the original no longer fit, whatever. I can tell you that over 10 years later the outlet still had no cover. Now, one day my father and were arguing and I brought up the offending outlet and he shot back "well, why didn't you fix it?" At the time of this fight I was 19 and did he really think that I was capable, even at that age (how many teens do you know that should be making household repairs?) of doing this task and furthermore, no, it wasn't my job.

I know that to this day I can't recall the outcome of that argument, we accomplished nothing by it.

What a terrible, awful way to go through life, to think that no decision you make is worthwhile and will always be called into question, ridiculed, or dismissed. I am not sure how one over comes those who treat you that way; my dad never was able to.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

So oddly enough in my last post (from last year no less!) I said I had contracted to have my father's name engraved on his headstone. (It isn't even his, it is borrowed, that feels awful). So then I also said we were moving soon. We are still in Braintree and my father's name is, as yet, still not engraved. (On the borrowed stone).