It's actually 7pm here when I am typing this. It's been a long day. I have that head cold still kicking my butt. I spent most of it doing chores. Real life getting in the way of writing time again. I could have done some writing while I was resting, but, honestly, it's hard to type when you are unconscious.
My kids are trying to talk to me about things like summoning spirits and adopting random stray cats. I'm tired but not exhausted. I just have that over full and ready to take a nap feeling. I think I ate too many carbs at dinner. I regret little because it was quite tasty. Roast chicken with mashed cauliflower was a good dinner. My cold seems to be improving because I was actually able to taste my food.
Beloved and I have been talking about things like long term care concerns for his parents. It's a topic that pulls my heart in multiple directions. I feel like we should definitely be there for their care. I feel like we should do everything in our power to help them just as they have done everything in their power to help us when we had fallen on hard times. At the same time, I feel like I am failing in my filial duty to my parents and my side of the family because we're not making any single plan to do anything of the sort for them.
I walked away because things were too toxic between them and I to do me any manner of good and I feared it would only bring harm to my children. It makes things like the questions my kids have about the family bitter in my mouth. I try to live as though they live too far away to influence our lives. I try to live as though they are just incapable of coming to my door. It's not that way, however. They just don't come around. For all the talk that was made of a desire to be in contact, they didn't reach out. They just expected me to chase them around and dance at their whims. I can't do that. I am forty with two kids and a husband. I am disabled. I run a household and attempt to run a business with my writing. I can't be like I was in my teens and early twenties, chasing after them for crumbs of attention. And it was made clear that they didn't want me there, only what I could do for them.
Now, my boys are trying to learn about the family in a larger sense. It's hard because I don't have pictures of my parents and siblings out. In fact, they're all packed away. The only picture from my wedding that is out is the one taken of Beloved and I. As far as the casual observer knows, we haven't any family beyond our children. A small shrine on the corner of a book case holds prayer cards and names of the deceased family members we were close to and of dead friends. It is small enough you'd miss it if you swept the room with a glance.
It's just easier not to have that emotional knife in the chest to look at pictures of people that we're going to have nothing more to do with going forward. It's easier to have them remain in the past or somewhere off elsewhere in the present where we don't have to deal with emotional manipulation, lies, and backstabbing. My children are starting to notice that this absence is a thing compared to their peers' experiences. They're asking questions and it is painful. I answer them factually. My parents are alive as are my siblings. They just don't come around and we don't visit them. After all, you don't want your children put into the clutches of people who gaslighted you into thinking that you were the worst human being on earth because your birth expenses were more than their monthly income and that their poverty was your fault.
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