Weighing Options

I’m odd, and I know that. It’s not a bad odd, but I’m not neurotypical. Neither is my son but he seems to be a decent soul. He has self-described limited bandwidth for me, and for most people. I understand that. I think I have wider band-width but maybe I don’t.

He didn’t remember that I used to have him fly. I’d put my feet on his belly and he would hold my hands and I would lift him into the air. It was fun. Then he would stand on my hands and hold onto my feet and he learned to balance without needing to hold onto my feet.

I felt so sad that he didn’t remember that, but I think he was like six or seven when he lost interest in that.

I forget that so much was significant to me as a parent that just didn’t register to him as a child.

I wonder what my mom did that I have no memory of, but that she held close in her heart as a talisman against the darkness sometimes. I don’t know if my mom had a brain like I do though. Mine was formed in violence and neglect, and also in happy and regular times, but the violence overshadowed all of it.

The darkness finally took her. She didn’t see it that way but alcoholism is a dread fucking disease that tells you you don’t have it. It damaged her liver and then it became her escape from the terrible pain that accompanies liver disease. The irony is she said she was looking forward to coming back, which always kind of pissed me off because it’s like ‘so you could neglect some other kids?’

I hope if she did reincarnate – if that’s real – that she has no children. That she’s barren, or if she’s in a male body, that he’s sterile. But that’s not the way the Universe works.

I’m envious of people who seem to have a purpose in their lives or a passion that they were able to follow. I also don’t know what they went through to get there – and I have met people who are very driven and done the things that they set out to do, but they were uncompassionate people who think everyone can do what they did – if you just buck up.

Were that true, honey, I’d have made it. It is not from lack of trying.