I am frustrated when I am bound to people in a quasi-transactional way. Perhaps this is what divorcees feel like when they scrape at the pitiful amassments of a failed relationship... I am sure everyone wishes for the courage to just walk away.
When my father left my life I was relieved (and dismayed by his return), as I am sure he was when he stopped speaking to his father, a dollar-rankling dentist. Now that Dr. B. is dying of cancer, I must reemerge and care. He holds the carrot--he will die and leave the product of his investments for my so-called success at medical school. Why the failed attempt at generativity?
I feel sleazy, in addition to the fact that I might not be equal to the task even if all of the obstacles are cleared away. When things are inconvenient, my first impulse is to walk away, and I generally do. Why make yourself sit at a bedside when you really do not want to? Isn't it dishonest? Most people are savage in this way, and they do not expect sympathy when it is their turn.
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My relationship with most of my family is antagonistic, which is partly my fault. My avoidance there really bleeds into every aspect of my life...
If he wasn't desperate, he would not notify the daughter-in-law of his estranged son...I suppose we are all bound by desperation in its many forms, and a small mercy is yanking the manacles bit less...
When I step back and see what I have already completed and what I have left to do, it really is manageable. I should be ready mentally and emotionally, if the opportunity presents itself...I have to finish my application for the Fall 2009 program for the Master's Program in Physician Assistant. What is lacking is some medically-related volunteering and a beefed-up GRE (analytical) composite score.
This brief injection of logic came after a crying jag about wanting to die and screaming with my mother about neglected paperwork and avoidant tendencies. Naturally, I have my misgivings about this, but I think I am a fatally emotional person.
I rely and I am relied upon by my immediate family because I have too often let a stranger in to my life to be scrutinized and found lacking. Why didn't I want more from myself? I stay where I am, not only due to some circumstances and dependencies,but for this reason brought by the ironic twist in this torch I happened on the same album:
Now we live (yes we live) in a two-story house
Oh, what splendor
But there's no love about
I've got my story
And I've got mine too
How sad it is, we now live in a two-story house
How sad it is, we now live in a two-story house
Cecil Hemley from The Paris Review reproduced for educational purposes only
Witnesses
Once, quiet meant discord and pain;
My frantic mind willed hurricane
To blow away its disbelief,
But violence brought it no relief.
How does it happen that a bough
In winter stillness calms me now?
The spirit sees what it has known;
It prints its trials on leaf and stone.
So leaf and stone record for me
The ways I went unwittingly.
What did I find? What do I know
That makes the silence beckon so?
From issue no. 6 (Summer 1954)
I contemplate our mutual silence, which may be broken, at some point.
Exercise 91.
When I reflect on the original post I can come to the home truth that I was neither deserving of being launched nor was the estranged party and GI bill recipient forthcoming.
Most of his money and property were split in years long legal disputes between the son and daughter, who were not related to me.
The understanding of merit applies. One is a combination of righteous and wicked acts, and the struggle to overturn one's bad traits and sins is a lifetime's work. One may not merit to hold an esteemed position or to have children because of the crooked path one has taken in life. It may happen later, after qualitative changes and sincere repentence, and then it is understood and truly appreciated.
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