Olive makes the big time...

Olive makes the big time! I sent her picture to mystery writer Janet Evanovitch's website and she was chosen as the picture used on her Facebook account. Look at the number of likes, comments, and shared(65)!

the unexpected grenade...again.

just when i think that i can pretty much take anything thrown at me, in comes the grenade.

i keep wondering what i am supposed to learn from this. well, i guess the lesson is that you just can't prepare yourself for getting blown up. it will happen. period. and then you will have to put back the pieces and move on to a different place.

in my case, i just keep rebuilding a new foxhole. i feel sort of like an infantry man in a jungle war. i dig the hole carefully. i arm myself. i put myself on alert. i spend the dark night with all of my senses on overload, waiting. waiting. waiting.

and then you move the next day to another part of the jungle, and you rebuild the foxhole. you do the same thing...dig, fortify, select the weapons, go on alert. but are you as alert as yesterday? will you miss something because this has become routine?

answer: yes, you will. and i am not sure what you could do better. the energy that is expended trying to anticipate your adversary's next move is draining. and a lot of time it isn't necessary. they weren't coming in the night for you anyway. but you were prepared, just in case.

so time passes. you patrol, night after night. it gets dull and you get numb. you get to not really worrying about it. you think you are stronger. you think you are a survivor. you start to concentrate on other things because this worry really isn't that imminent.

and in it comes.

even if something in your gut told you to be on alert, even it you knew something was disturbing the universe, you just were facing the wrong way. period. you are so stunned when you see the grenade land there that you don't have time to react or protect. and at that point, maybe you just don't want to. at least if you are blown up, you aren't expending energy in the constant daily struggle to survive your own relentless jungle war. sometimes you just gotta get out of the field.

what to do with yourself. you are wounded. stunned is a better word. and then  you go about the triage necessary to determine just how bad this wound is.

but sometimes it isn't about you getting blown up. were there others in the foxhole with you? were they injured as well? your attention has to turn to the others, the ones who were in there with you, the ones who had their own issues, but were near you, sort of having your back, but not completely. a lot of thoughts come to the fore, not the least of which is total confusion. which injury to address first? me? him? her? who goes first, whose issues are the most important at this point? who can be fixed, healed? and who is dead?

what did i learn this time when the grenade came in. actually, i learned that it didn't really hurt me that much. it was a good grenade in a way because it let me know there WAS a grenade, that it had already blown up, and a lot of others knew about it and had suffered their own injuries. it was sort of like the grenade blew up in the foxhole next to me and i slept through it. earplugs in the ears, a troubled sleep, a feeling that something wasn't right, but not sure exactly what had happened. then i see the shrapnel, and the wounds. at this point, what is done is done. i can't put the grenade back together. i can't undo the wounds. i can erase the incident. i just have to absorb the concussion i guess and move on.

what ends up happening here? instead of being more alert, i am less concerned. really. and in a way, it is a sort of relief. i am not worrying about that enemy anymore. it doesn't matter who wins, who loses. it doesn't matter. i was never going to be able to win this war because i was not willing to throw any grenades back. i threw one. it counted. and the pursuit of destruction has been relentless since then. it is sort of amazing that your own mother could be this determined to eradicate you as a person, as a piece of her life. it is mystifying not that she hs done what she has done, but how she could, as a mother, want to destroy her own child. the dermination to do that means she wins, especially when i don't fight back. i cannot win, and everyone else loses as well. there is collateral damage. does she not recognize that the innocent are injured in the pursuit of me? who would do that? i cannot fathom the single-minded determiness of a mother intent on the utter emotional destruction of her own child. i am not sure what will satisfy the desire to injury me totally, but at this point i think the end is near.

but not for me. you see, i have crawled out of that foxhole, and i am starting to dust myself off and, while i struggle to stand up, i am getting there. i am not on my feet yet. i am squatted down on the debris outside of this hole in my life. i am looking around, taking a breath. i am seeing who is injured, who needs my help...lots of thoughts:  "what can i do?" "what do you need?" " thank you for helping me!"

just random thoughts, just random acts. just living. dust and pain and strength and new eyes.

just because you are related doesn't mean...

Bad relationship outcomes weren't just limited in this last year to my everyday colleagues. Family issues continue and as of this writing I am alienated from both my mother and brother. My mother has told my son I am dead and, despite discussions with both Austin and my father and my brother, she is absolutely unrelenting in stating that she will not ever mend the fences with me.

It has been over a year and at this point I have been separated enough from her and the negativeness that I don't regard it much. It concerns me that there is a constant strain in the family. I have been fortunate enough to keep in contact with aunts and uncles and cousins. I have not gone into detail about what actually transpired conversationally between my mother and I in that last blowout. I maintain that it was between the two of us and didn't involve anyone else in the family. Unfortunately, she has decided that she needs to tell her side of things and I am left not defending myself. I don't need to. It is what it is. I think she is happy having me out of her life. She didn't want me in the first place, so this is a nice way for her to have a new beginning in the last part of her life. She is still, by all accounts, an unhappy person, but I don't have to be a part of that anymore. I no longer have to worry about pleasing her. I am sad sometimes and feel a lot rejected, especially in family related things that I am not allowed to attend. Rather, I said she can go and I will be absent as a nod to her old age. Let her be happy. She has spent most of her life unhappy and damaged. Anyone deserves to life you life happily as much as you can.

My brother is another story with a decidedly different outcome.

On again, off again. He didn't have anything to do with me because he was angry that I just didn't let my mother's words and actions just go last summer. As usual, he operated upon HIS truths and beliefs and didn't bother to get all of his facts straight. At Christmas he did send a text (I was home by myself during Christmas as I had blood clots as a result of my second knee surgery in early December.) He made an attempt to talk deep brains with me through text messaging and some other telephone conversations. The truth of the matter is that I don't much care to talk to him even when we are talking. Why? He is self oriented and has an inability to settle on what the truth is. I have heard so many versions of things that happened to him/us as children that I can't believe anything he says. He accused me of having no boundaries when it comes to sharing information, but in reality, he has forced his inconvenient truths on me numerous times despite the fact that I have told him over and over I was not interested. He doesn't care. It usually is all about him, period. He will not let go of the past and seems so focused on wanting to expose ugly things. At this stage of my life I don't see the point. Why confront people with these accusations? What possible good could come from it? Apparently, he doesn't care. He gets focused on his needs, and then it is all over. He has so many various lying personas that I never know who I am  talking to. And there is no such thing as a conversation in which he isn't the center of some sort of problem, and then that inevitably leads back to the childhood crap. How much of that do you have to hear?

He is just a fucked up person and I feel sorry for him in a lot of ways, and I don't feel sorry for him in a lot of ways. He and mom are both cut out of the same bolt of cloth. They have memories like elephants and any transgression goes into the hopper of things-to-hold-against-you-forever. They both constantly bring up incidents from the past, but my brother has so embellished them that you almost want to believe him since he has such precise detail. But therein lies the rub. Too many precise details, and then too many changes to these stories. It is interesting that I am three years older than he, yet I have virtually no memory of these incidents and certainly do not have the details ready to be reeled out at any suggestion. My conclusion is that he absolutely believes all the things he says when he says them. He has convinced himself. I am NOT convinced, and now after a lifetime of these stories, I doubt the veracity of most of them. At one point there might have been a kernel of truth to them. But over time these stories have warped into something that is hard to believe. He just doesn't have any credibility with me anymore. Not that he really ever did, but now I think it is terminal and I don't see him changing much.

a year later...

This time last year...a knee surgery, a missed vacation, a summer spent in the recliner, but a spark...

This time this year...lots of changes, and I would have to say for the most part I am a happier camper. These changes have only come in the last three months, the result of my finding myself slowly emerging from two knee surgeries with a definite lowering of pain.

Pain. 

Fifteen years of it, constantly, unrelenting. You get used to it because you don't have much choice. I was pretty resigned to it, but then all of a sudden I began to get glimpses of it slowly dissipating...

I could be walking down the halls of school those last few days and then notice that I hadn't noticed I was in pain. What a strange, exhilarating feeling, something I had forgotten about and never thought I would experience again. 

Betrayal.

Granted, the school year was ugly and I was very glad it concluded. While my classes actually weren't that bad, the circumstances under which I was teaching were stressful, confusing and just all around spirit sucking. I went into the summer break with a decided bad taste in my mouth, especially about some of the relationships that I had during the school year. I did a lot of self examination over these last two months and my conclusion is that I am unfortunately going into this year a bit combative. This is a result of my feeling as if I got taken advantage of and misinterpreted by some individuals that I had hoped would not turn out to be false friends. It happens. You adjust. I will. I won't be a patsy this year and I will speak up instead of seething and keeping silent.

Out with the old, in with the new. A big cliche, but sometimes it happens and I think to some extent that has happened to me in many ways. 

Physically, I am a lot better. My diabetes is under control. I can walk and ride my bike. I have been able to do a fair amount of yard work and landscaping this summer, although not as much as I would have liked. I have made some physical changes such as getting contacts (sort of worthless since I have to wear reading glasses), getting my hair cut at Nesbit, getting pedicures, getting a tan, getting my faced waxed. I considered and accepted the possibility of starting to date some and I have this summer. The situations are all of my liking in that I am in no position to wish for more and I don't want more. It was interesting that some men were interested in me at all since I have considered myself undesirable for a long time. I am thinking that attitude has a lot to do with that. If you like yourself a little, maybe that projects to others. I am open to that prospect now that I am not in constant pain. I am most grateful, really, really grateful. I don't think that people really can understand how life changing the retreat of pain can change a person. I am going back to work with people who really don't know any other person other than the pained person I have been for 16 years. They will have an opportunity to see me, or a changed me, this year.