Lessons are hard to learn. Some of them it seems I have to learn over and over, and in amongst all the other stuff is this one:
I should trust my gut, my heart. I should NOT trust my head, logic or reason.
I can be talked around to agreeing with dang near anything. Most of us can. (Hey, don't tell me you've never changed your political or religious views, or even what you like on a pizza, based on what someone else has said to you.) My gut - the thing I used to call "my knower", as in "I know this in my knower" - that's harder to fool.
Sitting around today, finding ways to fill the emptiness in this apartment after my beloved left for Afghanistan, I realized that if we'd trusted our guts, our hearts, the way we felt about it, Precious Treasure would never have left our home. Our heads got talked around. OK, I'm not ascribing evil motives here or anything. I know that Son & DIL had the best of intentions, both for PT and for us. After all, it sounds logical that a kid needs parents who can run and do and fetch and carry and jump on trampolines and like that; it sounds logical that it would be easier to make the transition from being raised by grandparents to being adopted by aunt & uncle without having to do it when said grandparents drop dead or are unable to make any decisions more complex than which side of their mouths to drool out of, and before PT gets to be a teenager when ain't nuthing gonna be easy. Sounds so very logical.
And it was so very wrong.
For us, for them, for her. Wrong for all of us. Yeah, the strains between S & DIL would have built up anyway. Yeah, PT has had more fun at water parks and swimming pools and tickle-wrestling over the last year than she would have with us. Yeah, it's been less of a physical strain for Beloved and for me not to be chasing around meeting with teachers and going to scouts and PTA and all that. It's still been wrong. PT has had more fun and less stability. S & DIL have had some lessons in how stupid parents aren't after all and less time to figure out how to get a marriage to the "working within normal parameters" stage. Beloved and I have had more time to ride the motorcycle, and less reason to get through the day without collapsing on the carpet in tears. (OK, that's me. Beloved didn't do that exactly, but he has done what passes for his equivalent of that.)
And this whole going overseas for 6 months thing? Oh, don't even get me started on that one! At least a dozen times a day - and he's only been gone 3 days - I've said (out loud and yeah, maybe my neighbors can hear me and that rat doesn't even have an ass to give anymore) "what the FUCK have we done????" Him, too.
Yeah, I know. Six months isn't forever. We're old folks and can deal with this. Mature enough to see the benefits and pull up our big girl panties and deal with it (though the elastic on mine is giving out). Yeah, yeah, right, just hang on cause we're strong enough to get through this. Even "hey, we're praying for you so everything will be OK if you just have faith." Right. Sure. Now, all you folks who've said that - without bothering to take the time to really hear the pain behind our words - YOU try it, and then you can preach to me about it. And especially all you "just have faith" folks. Know what I have faith in? I have faith that I'll get fucked over. That's the constant in my world.
That and the love that Beloved and I share.
Oh, God, how I miss that man!
No comments:
Post a Comment