I've been wanting to blog again.  I'm missing that form of communication, even as I've kept up my steady private reflection, in my diaries.

I'd forgotten, until I reviewed the last entry, made over a year ago, that I'd already announced that the original purpose of this blog had come to fruition:  I'd come to decide that while I admire the sentiments of people who proudly say, "Divorce isn't in our vocabulary", it needed to be in ours.  It needed to have been in it much earlier.  This blog was meant to help me come to a decision about whether what was wrong in our marriage was my fault, and if I could correct it if it was.  It saw me through making that decision, and then implementing it.  It saw me through physically separating, and then finally complete the legal process not quite 2 years ago--basically it was a 7-or-so year process if the time it took to come to a decision is factored in.  We were living separately for 5 years before finalizing.

The blog had other functions and gifts, besides processing my divorce and the decision leading to it.  Blogging about the divorce helped me to consider the dynamics of the personalities involved, and to realize that there did seem to be a repeating pattern, as if there were a basic template, which influences the shapes of the overlays of experience and people that manifest, mandala-like.

I've described my understandings of these in my personal writings.  But I'm out of practice in blogging, and find myself a little "tongue"-tied.  My solution will be to publish some excerpted material in my journals, which touch on some of those understandings I've gained, but haven't quite integrated:

Got a message from Gary today saying he was bringing the dog back too.  Something about needing a “break” from animals, children, ‘my mom’.  A couple of responses inside to that.  Gratitude that I am free from anything having to do with these years in Gary’s mother’s life, where she appears to be hardening into the hints she gave before of her character—which felt toxic to me then and time has shown to be just that.  By the fruits you shall know them.  I recognized the fruits long ago that were in a more latent phase (plausibly deniable), but have developed the way they appeared to be going to me all those years ago.  Gary refused to see it then and only blamed me as being ‘mean’ to his mother, even if at other times, such as after having her over for dinner or something, he’d comment on how ‘gracious’ I’d been to her.  But his internal narrative reads, despite the evidence to the contrary, that I was the aggressor in that I saw her as what she was, and it ran counter to her own narrative.  She never forgave me for that, and continues to demonstrate that by badmouthing me in front of my sons.  (which also demonstrates a total lack of regard for the feelings of her own grandsons, who apparently she doesn’t recognize as hers…she sees them only as ‘mine’, both of which objectify them and therefore she does not truly love them—for what is love but a taking someone for who they are, as opposed to only accepting them if they do pleasing/appeasing things for those who are supposed to love them unconditionally?  She reveals herself now more obviously—before it seemed only I could see it...

And without my presence there is no way that can be impugned to somehow me ‘making’ her act that way—it is clear that she is only who she is.  Sam and my sons can see her for herself.  Just like Trump’s own behavior speaks for itself. (It can’t be blamed on a liberal media:  He does things that break the norms of what has been considered to be honorable behavior.  The media reports it.)  If the truth is not flattering to the Trump administration, then it is branded as liberal fake news by Trump and supporters.  At this last portion of her life, Gary's mother’s behaves blatantly in the ways I foresaw she would.  She’s a small woman.

And, it is a relief, to not have to be dealing with her in the face of Gary’s inability to set boundaries with her and attempts to appease her.  That would be torture to be living through without Gary’s support.  I don’t believe he would have given it to me, though sometimes he kind of leans on me for support in the face of her behavior and nastiness.  He cannot deny that she is very difficult and demanding.  Had he and I truly been able to be allies in that, I could have been a meaningful help and comfort to him as he deals with the unpleasant parts of her aging (which to me seems like only an intensification of parts of her that were unpleasant in younger years too).  This of course would have required that he have the freedom to see his mother’s behavior objectively and concur with the reality that it wasn’t really normal behavior.  He seemed unable to see it for what it was, or to sustain seeing-it-for-what-it-was.  Instead, he saw me, and my seeing-it-for-what-it-was as evidence of deep wrongdoing in me.

Fun and Games—reggae

Great music playing.

I’ve just started to feel kind of rested, having a week away from the responsibilities of parenting—like the juggling of schedules with tennis, the deadline to get him to school in the morning and having to calculate it against prevailing conditions (heavy traffic on Barkerstown Rd and no Hillberry Rd alternative)—it’s a bit of a tax on my energy to have those details to contend with daily in addition to the effort to get him up and have him behave properly when he’s tired and irritable.  Then the whole homework and grade-monitoring responsibility.  Scott, I love you and giving you what you need is worth the extra effort it may cost me.  Forgive my need to be honest with myself and acknowledge that it does cost me something, and know that I am grateful to have you to make this effort on behalf of.  In other words I’d so much rather have you than to not-have the love-obligation to do right by you, even if it means I may stretch my comfort zone.  I’m grateful for you. 

Good music.

4/2/17

Sunday 1327

Scott will be coming home soon so I think I’ll use the remaining time to relax a bit…maybe reserve the vacuuming until later.

I need to write the Colorado family to let them know I will be there, most likely with Scott, and will there be a place to stay and would they like to come to the performance?

Inge came over for breakfast and left at straight-up noon.  I called my parents then, but they were just beginning to eat.  So they called back at about 1225 or so; I called them back around 1230 and then we were on the phone maybe 40 minutes.  So I am taking a break, before Scott comes home.

It’s always such an interesting visit with Inge; she really calls to my inner intellect, and I find myself making connections and associations I may not have otherwise. 

I made a parallel, that is...

Oh, man, this is the funniest bluegrass song.  I’ve got to get the name of it, and the crew that sings it.  Chris Jones and the Nightdrivers –Wolfcreek Pass

The parallel I made I attribute to my cousin Lavender Luz .  She has made Open Adoption her life's work and has published some very powerful posts about adoption from the point of view of the adoptee. An important concept she explains so well is the unique complication for the adoptee of having a "split between their biography and their biology."

I realized there was a similarity between the adopted child having a split between biology and biography with the person who is gay or transgender.  They each have a burden that is intensified by virtue of being who they are.  By virtue of being adopted, an adoptee has been shaped by other factors and demands that a person who was not adopted doesn’t have, and doesn’t have to even have as a consideration.  I was working a bit my theory that the plight of the adoptee is similar to the rest of humanity (which must ask itself a question about its own belonging) with an important exception: a history where for whatever reason a person cannot live with his/her own biological parents.  Understanding the effects that fact would have on an organism sheds a greater understanding on what all humans need.  Knowing the experience that must be created for these children in order to shield them from the effects of having been abandoned (from their perspective) by their parents, one learns that the need isn’t peculiar to adoptees—we all need it; but their particular biological/biographical split highlights that need.  It highlights what must be supplied, and it hints that even people who don’t have that split may experience other events that mimic, in a lesser way, the experience of having been not wanted.  Actions have consequences and effects.  An adoptee who was lucky enough to have a family that gave him/her the experience of being deeply loved and connected-with can basically heal that split so fully that it’s as if the split had never happened.  A family, or its circumstances, can have experiences that leave their biological child feeling abandoned—that is, having abandonment at the core of being.

Allison Krause Whiskey Lullaby

There’s the experience.  And of course, there is the organism itself—how he/she interacts with the experience.  I suppose my charged issue is about perfection; that I took to heart the overt and covert demands of my culture and parents, for perfection.  And I realized I could not do it.  The next logical step was a demand to pretend that I could, and a belief comes from that that there is something unacceptable which must be erased—my deep sense of failure came from my failure to erase the unacceptable.  Feeling critical of my parents was one of those unacceptables.  Failing to please them was the first of the unacceptables.  Feeling angry with them when I failed to please them and they were angry with me was another of the unacceptables.  Being unable to change the feelings inside that caused me to do things that displeased them was unacceptable and I felt very trapped.

I think that's it for today.