For Your Own Good

Anxiety rips my chest apart and causes pain in my

heart and

non-stop thoughts in my head about

how I can make everything better,

that kissing your boo-boos will make all the bad stuff go away and

then I realize I can’t fix everything like I used to and

you are an adult with a husband and

children and

you both need to stop acting like kids yourselves and

face up to the fact that he is mentally unstable and

my grandchildren are living in that environment and

getting more and more unstable themselves when they are faced with moving yet again and

this time without more of their stuff even though their father gets to take all of his toys and

the system that is set up to protect them does nothing,

NOTHING, and

they are left on the wayside again even though

we’ve told their teachers there is something wrong and please,

please,

please report something, anything,

so they might have a halfway decent life, even if it is in a stranger’s home, and

even if we never see them again as long as they’re safe and away from him, and

then maybe you will decide you’ve had enough and

leave him too and

start your life the way you would have had you not decided to leave home at sixteen and…

…then I take a breath.  I think that this will never change.  This story will play out over and over again, and

I need to check out.  I look at the clock. 

Twilight will not make the dark circles under my eyes any brighter. 

I love you, but this is your circus. 

You chose that monkey. 

I will help destroy him, but in doing so, you and I may be destroyed too. 

As a mother

I have to tell you

– it’s for your own good.

Days Like These

It's days like these that I realize out of the 222 friends on Facebook, I have no true, real friend.  I used to have friends that I partied with, then we grew up and apart.  I used to have friends that I worked with, then I moved to an office that doesn't foster friendships and I am alone.  I have a long-term boyfriend, but his views oppose mine and therefore I cannot even cry in front of him because of this.  What should be the happiest time of my life, is becoming a sorrow that I just can't deal with.
My daughter is in jail.  She goes for sentencing soon and is planning on leaving her husband when she is released.  I'm thrilled that she is trying to put her life together - he is the reason she has been in trouble in the last five years.  He is controlling and abusive and if he dropped dead it wouldn't hurt my feelings, in fact I would go to his funeral.  No, the part of all this is losing the kids.  By law, because my daughter is not their natural mother, and because he is a giant douche bag, we will not get visitation.  I want to see the kids and remind them that we love them, but they are being punished, by us, for stealing and are not allowed at the house right now.  My bf won't back down and I haven't asked him to.  It's important for us to follow through.  But their father has them call and ask us if they can come over and when we say no, but let's get together Sunday afternoon, he has them hang up.  The girl is eleven.  She knows what's up and how to survive.  The boy, my heart, my little soul mate, is struggling so hard.  He's trying to please a crooked father by stealing, and yet he knows it's wrong.  Before he hangs up I tell him I love him.  He doesn't answer.  I know he heard me.  I know I'm on speaker phone.  I don't know if his father will let me take them Sunday.  I don't know anything.  All I know is I miss them.  I miss the hugs, the I love you's, the holding my hand, the constant "mema this, mema that, mema can we...".
I don't know what to do.  I can't call my mom because my daughter doesn't want her to know her plans.  I don't want her to tell me what I've done wrong and what she is going to do to fix it.  I just miss those kids and the fun we had and because one asshole doesn't want to deal with them, or wants me to take them so he can party, I will lose any time I can reinforce my love for them.
God this hurts.  I don't know how much more I can take.  I don't understand why God would put these children in my life and me in theirs and then take them away from me and me from them.  I don't get it!  And the worst part is I know they don't understand why I'm not there and I will not have a chance to explain it.
I wish I had someone to talk with about it.  I can't afford counseling and I don't have any friends, not real friends, that want to deal with me and my problems.  I never thought I needed anyone and after getting burned by a couple friends I figured I was better off on my own, but I really need one right now.

Gimpy Goose

On our way to Jack’s Drive-In the other day, we came upon a group of cars stopped for no apparent reason.  As we sat and looked around we noticed a gaggle of Canadian geese were beginning to cross the road.  Where we live this usually isn’t a problem. In the city, it definitely could become one.

 

Geese in the city.

 

We were getting a little upset with the person at the front of the line when a couple geese stopped crossing and they had room and time to go, but I’m so glad they didn’t.  I looked off to the right and there were two geese left, one slightly larger than the other.  The smaller goose was very noticeably limping.  The larger one was waiting for it.  Whether it was mom, dad, or mate it waited for that little injured goose to get across before it followed.  And it was so obvious once the gimpy goose started across what it was doing.  At first it looked like it was just hanging around, picking at the ground with it’s beak, checking out the tall grass around the telephone pole.  Once that goose started crossing it was there, at attention, and following.

This goose was cleaning his wing and waiting for the hurt one.  Just nonchalantly waiting around.

I never knew geese did that.  When I realized what was happening the simple beauty of it struck me and I started crying.  It made me think.  It made me wish that we were all like those geese in that way; watching out for our weak, our hurt, instead of exploiting them and leaving them in our wake.  I know that is not everyone and I still believe most people are good, but we need to be better and the lesson from this goose will stay with me.  We need to put down our phones and tablets, and we need to hold someone’s hand, or listen, or talk to them or whatever – in order to help them to the other side of what is happening to them.

He was so slow, but he made it across to be with his family - I wish I could have gotten the other goose in the shot but that car pulled up and blocked it.

Take a moment and see what you can do to help the gimpy goose in your life.  The results might surprise you, and the surge in your heart will amaze you.

Superficiality - Guilty or Not? Or Am I Human?

I have to point out that I am spiteful and that I hold a grudge far longer than anyone I know.  That said, I’d like to talk about why.  I’m a loner.  I always have been.  I have only had one best friend at a time, starting when I was five.  I met my first best friend at our neighbor’s chicken coop.  I was watching the chickens while my dad was at the barn getting fresh milk.  This little girl comes up to me (the farmer’s granddaughter) and asks me if I want to be her best friend.  We were inseparable for seven years.  When we entered junior high she became popular and I did not.  She hung out with the cheerleaders and sports groups.  I hung out with nerds and outsiders.  What’s funny is that I never held that against her.  I still smiled and waved to her in the halls, and as we became adults we always spoke when we ran into each other.  She was the best first best friend a girl could ask for.

No, I’m not sure when I started holding grudges but it was definitely after I started dating.  In my senior year I lost my virginity and the guy I lost it to.  My best friend at the time was a geek like me.  Not such a loner (she really didn’t have the dark, sad look that I had and couldn’t pull it off), she had lost her first boyfriend through a tragic car accident.  When my ex asked her out she came to me all excited and asked if it was ok.  I told her that it would be, as long as I didn’t have to hear all the gory details.  She told me all the gory details and I promptly walked away from her- forever.  I tried to get back in touch with her later on just to see how life was treating her but she made her life sound too busy to really give me a straight answer so I never got back to her.

I have held grudges and then let them go.  This includes my brother’s ex-girlfriend.  We did everything together – shopping, partying, clubbing, heart-to-hearts – it was great and I never loved any of my friends like I loved her.  Then she decided to get married, and I was the person she asked to spend her last night as a single girl with.  Then she moved away, started having babies, and made new friends.  Did I resent that?  I guess I did.  We barely spoke and it’s only now, after several years of being back in the neighborhood, do we keep in contact and see each other.

I’ve gone through several jobs in the last couple of years.  Not because I was fired or laid off, but because the pain of going to a job where one’s voice didn’t matter anymore hurt too much and the way staff were treated was abominable.  I had been there for ten years and made some really good friends, or so I thought, until I left and worked elsewhere.  One of my very best friends, yes, I said best, didn’t even show up at my barbeque last year after I had spoken with her two days before to confirm.  At that point she was saying that she would absolutely be there.  She never showed up or called.  At this point I had been gone from that employment for one year.  I had kept in touch with them, visited, emailed, called.  I should have known something wasn’t right the last time I stopped in there.  She sat at her desk while I visited with other staff and she kept her head down.  She wouldn’t even look at me.  I never went back, and a couple weeks later she fired a woman she had worked with for years.

What bothers me is that she didn’t talk to me.  We were such good friends, or at least I thought we were.  I realize that I was no longer part of her work environment but we used to get together to eat once in a while.  We partied at each other’s home, we knew each other’s children, we even took their phone calls if the other was busy.  I don’t know if I did something wrong, or if I offended her in some way.  She took one of my other friends with her (I know this sounds very 8^th grade, but it’s how it really happened).  She brought her in to volunteer to cover for the person she fired.  That friend hasn’t really spoken to me since either, just a phone call by me at Thanksgiving.  I had also called her to see if she wanted to scrapbook with me, but she told me she couldn’t afford it, so no, she did not want to go.  She was very short with me and I knew then that I was out of the loop.

I miss my friends.  I miss the camaraderie and the silliness. The other day I realized that I had been un-friended on Facebook.  It was then that I realized that what I was doing in my life no longer mattered to her.  The other friend, the one she took with her, will speak to my boyfriend and ask him for favors, but will not call me or try to engage in conversation when we run into each other.  Not that I do, either.  Work friendships are just that, friends from work.  Once you leave you can’t go back, unless you offer to help out, and I just can’t so I lose.  The only thing is, they do too.

So am I spiteful?  I guess I am.  But I think maybe I’m a little more wary of superficial friends.  If one isn’t true, then I don’t want it.  And I guess they don’t either.