2005-09-02
Click
Things have gotten really bad in my family and I just....
it's such a waste.
There was an argument presented to me, on Wednesday evening, that the city of New Orleans had not been obliterated.
The person adamantly presenting that point of view was talking down to me, convinced that rumor had it that a restaurant was open in the French Quarter, and therefore, there's no way that the city is "gone".
The person kept pushing that I was incorrect and I hung up the phone.
Click.
And for once, for the very first time ever in my life, I did not think about calling back.
It never crossed my mind.
Click.
The person to whom I was talking felt so strongly that I could not have valid information, or that I was not worthy of discussion what has become a national tragedy, that the person had to ARGUE to me that my announcement of New Orleanian devastation was wrong.
It was all the proof I needed that I am okay, that I know my world and how to navigate the information in it and that I am hardly existing on the fringe of reality.
There's this giant circle in which I live - you know - the circle of friends and family and work. Gradually, over the years, the people advising that I step back from the closeness that I crave have gotten closer and closer to the core. Now, people whom I never, ever thought would advise *click* are doing so.
I'm sad, you know? It's not what I expected to happen as I grew up. Truths that I thought, by ignoring, would just go away... they haven't gone away and they're changing the face of my family, no matter how hard I try to pretend that everything's okay to other people in the family.
I'm just not the kind of person who can bitterly fight with people who I love but don't trust. I can call ChelC names you have never even thought of and snark at her in really vile ways.
But I trust her.
To the end of time, I trust her that she knows a fight is just a fight and then the air is clear.
I can snark at Namoli and things have a way of fading back to normalcy - we end up on the phone making up a scene for a movie about talking piles of dookie who wear purple tights and walk like Sumo wrestlers and I hang up and I feel safe.
I don't get that feeling from my family. I don't feel very safe, I guess. I feel like if I bring something up, like the Hurricane and the situation this week in New Orleans, I feel like some family members might pick a fight, or to talk at me like I am not able to process information.
And from what I understand, there is someone who feels like I am not capable of processing information:
"You are not in touch with reality."
That statement is an excuse, directed at me, that serves to discredit everything I am and everything I say. It is an excuse to not have to take me seriously. It's also incredibly hurtful. God reality.
Of course I try to make things happier. We all do. If we don't, we live in a world where dead people float through flooded houses in the Crescent City and we live in a place where someone's bad mood is their entirety. Without a little faith, what is the point. Without the belief that a job, an apartment, and what you see in the mirror are good things - great things - then where do you leave yourself?
Dead, you know?
Dead.
Click.
You're no more than your own illusion and to the person who truly believes that you are not functional, you are your own delusion.
Le sigh.
It's the fact of growing up. Things are not really prone to turning out the way you expect them to. Even as you change your plan through your twenties, things don't necessarily roll the way you expect them to roll.
So you turn 31 and you finally sit down to take a nap and in the dreams that you have during that nap - there is your reality. It's swirling and brewing around you. It's fatter than you thought it would be but easier, in a way and so much more original than even you thought it could be.
But it's real, so very, very real.
Click.
arizonasarah at 9:58 a.m.