A little over a month ago, I thought I had made a clear, well-reasoned decision about the fate of this blog. But, as often happens in life, circumstances and events of the past 30 days or so have combined to change my mind.
The primary event was struggling through a bout of COVID, inflicted upon me--and the rest of the family--by my oldest sister. In her infinite wisdom, and despite all kinds of media and official warnings to the contrary, she decided it would be just fine to have company at her house on Christmas morning. Company who had just recovered from "some virus." Company outside our safe little pod of family members who have been tying ourselves in knots to keep from contracting this thing. She took the risk--without consulting the rest of us--and we paid the price.
Of course, she and my brother-in-law didn't come through this unscathed. BIL was so sick he ended up in the hospital for three days. BIL suffers from Lewy Body dementia. Sister is such a control freak that she will not allow him out of her sight for more than an hour or two at a time. SHE spent the entire three days, save a couple of hours to run home and shower, camped out on a recliner in his hospital room. It was not an easy time for her by any means.
But for me, it has also been tough. I was not sick unto death or anything, but I felt like crap for over two weeks. And I'm really, really irritated about the entire situation. I feel like an asshole for being mad at my sister for getting me sick, but I just can't get past it, and that makes everything worse. I honestly feel like a trust was violated. I am trying to juggle "get over it," with acknowledging my feelings, and yearning for them to be validated by someone. Anyone.
Because here's the thing about my family. We don't go there. To the world, we would be thought of as "close." We all live within a few minutes' walk or drive from each other. We hang out together. A lot. We value our family connection, and we even love each other. But we do not share emotions on any level. My father was a very private, buttoned-up person. He was a very good man, but he just didn't open up emotionally to anyone. Ever. And, unfortunately, he passed that trait down to all of his daughters. Which has been...not a good thing. We have learned to "cope" with emotional issues in a myriad of unhealthy ways. Some of us are just good old-fashioned "stuffers." Some of us spend our lives skating across the surface, never venturing deep enough to encounter difficult emotions. Some of us stuff or skate until we explode. Some of us self-medicate.
I have struggled for years to acknowledge feelings and deal with them in a healthy way. A basic tenet of my theory has been to try and bring things out into the open and deal with them. It seems to me that letting things fester never does any good for anybody. But, let's just say, especially within my family, this idea has crashed and burned spectacularly.
So I've yearned for someone to talk to. Someone to share my deepest sadness and greatest joy. My family is not it. Has never been it. I had a "best friend" with whom I shared over twenty years of my life. She was not it, either.
Imagine having a "friendship" that lasted over two decades, yet involved no emotional bond. I think about that sometimes, and I think, "What the hell were we doing?"
The closest I ever came to making that kind of connection with other human beings was...yeah, you guessed it. The early days of AOL Journals. It seemed to me that I had landed smack in the middle of something I had yearned for all the prior 48 years of my life--an emotional and intellectual connection to...people. Of course, we now know I was utterly mistaken about that connection...indeed, whether there was ever a connection at all. Still...fifteen years beyond the collapse of that balloon--whether it was all in my head, or not--I'm still mourning its demise. That's how much it meant to me, back in the day.
And so, "Coming to Terms" has continued on, unplugged from humanity for at least the past fifteen years. And yet, I still come here. Do I merely haunt this place in lonely yearning for something long gone? Or has this blog served a purpose for me all these years?
It took this time of reflection and pulling away from my family to realize that, yes. "Coming to Terms" does serve a real and continuing purpose in my life. It may not be the place I come to communicate with other people. But it has been, and continues to be, the place where I can come with all the things that I don't/can't share with anyone in my life.
The reason that my writing has "sucked" over the past many years is that I'm not communicating with anyone. But this "crappy" writing that I've splattered here is still the story of my life. It's still words and thoughts that need to be put...somewhere...in order to try to make sense of them.
"Coming to Terms" is my somewhere.
So we will speak no more about letting it go because it no longer serves.
Of course it serves. And will keep on serving. Me. For some time, at least.
