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Am I really a person who doesn't get over anything? I thought I put all my failures behind me years ago - as they occurred. And the strange thing - I dream about my ex-family and husband all the time. Sometimes my present husband is saving me from them and all the pain they represent.
I just reread the post from May about my ex-family - where did that life go? How could I have chosen that life? Why did I marry my first husband? Why didn't I ever believe in myself?
Why aren't I loving? Why did I fail my daughter so? Why do I fail every important person in my life? Why do I fail myself?
What is the purpose of my existence? I certainly don't bless anyone, nor am I a witness any longer. I'm just inhabiting days like a stranger, and waiting for them to end. The past looks like heaven to me, when I was young and strong enough for all the nonsense that is the world.
I wait for my parents to pass away, and for time to pass away as it does without my permission. Time doesn't wait for me to figure things out or get the courage to continue. It just goes inexorably on, taking me with it, inadequate to the job.
I just reread the post from May about my ex-family - where did that life go? How could I have chosen that life? Why did I marry my first husband? Why didn't I ever believe in myself?
Why aren't I loving? Why did I fail my daughter so? Why do I fail every important person in my life? Why do I fail myself?
What is the purpose of my existence? I certainly don't bless anyone, nor am I a witness any longer. I'm just inhabiting days like a stranger, and waiting for them to end. The past looks like heaven to me, when I was young and strong enough for all the nonsense that is the world.
I wait for my parents to pass away, and for time to pass away as it does without my permission. Time doesn't wait for me to figure things out or get the courage to continue. It just goes inexorably on, taking me with it, inadequate to the job.
posted by Susan Humeston at 9:51 PM
3 Comments:
So you are more like me than I thought. You're so funny, giving me advice, telling me I should give myself credit and cut myself slack and yet look at you.
How have you failed me?
At all my job interviews in Idaho I've been asked the same question over and over "who do you admire most in your life?" and I always say you. I know that sounds cheesy, perhaps a little cliche, but its true. Maybe when I was a child I never would have said that. I would have picked a celebrity or something stupid, but not now...not with everything I know and have seen.
From everything you've told me about you as a kid I don't think you were stronger then. I think strength is a double-edged sword. It helps us hold up others and guide them, but leaves us a little more jaded and little more hollow. For all the things I've done and experienced and all that's left to come I wonder if at the end I will be an empty vessel, but thick and petrified and impenetrable by the forces of nature.
I do the same as you, but find no joy in it like you do. I sit and wait and watch my life float around me like one of those lamps that spin shapes on the walls when you light them. I feel ready whenever someone needs me, but I never feel ready when I need myself.
I tell everyone I know how much I admire you. You've made it through everything and come out brighter, smarter and deeper from it all. I can think of no one else I'd rather call to have rant at me like my own thoughts that I can't place into words. That's why I sometimes just listen and you think I'm not there....I didn't call to converse. I called to be told a story about myself.
Maybe this is out of line for me to post here and I think this may be the first time I've ever just written you my thoughts as if you were my treasured friend and not my mother, but I was bored and browsing and thought 'how sad and dreary this journal is...she sounds like me...' and I have to say something.
You've failed at nothing. Everything you've done has in its own way been a success. It successful brought you to have me, to meet my REAL father who actually cares about me, it lead you everywhere you needed to be. Isn't it you that always tells me that God has a plan...maybe he plans the hardships too, the loss, the aching... Never have you failed and especially not me. If anything I am now succeeding down my path even through the blunders.
I just hope it will lead me to the peace it lead you to.
I am without words. That is the single most beautiful thing anyone has ever written about me - and the most valuable. If I have ever been a blessing to you in anyway - you are most certainly a blessing to me in the Biblical sense - like a fulfillment. You're going to be alright - you're alright now - you're coming up from the bottom of the depths.
I also must tell you that, instead of becoming thick and impenetrable, as life comes faster and faster, I think our skin gets thinner - and perhaps that's why I have less patience with the "world" and less desire for people, more for nature.
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