Three nights and days away from home is too much, and yet it's difficult to justify the cost of flights for much less. At this point I feel like I don't want to go there ever again, not because they're bad people or because there's any one specific problem; it's just that the anxiety and discomfort grows in me steadily so that by the time I get home I feel this melodramatic sense of relief that convinces me I've made it home from war.
Every year I have Christmas with them, I feel disappointed. And this disappointment isn't like a kid's, who wanted a new sled and didn't get one. It's something different, but maybe just as selfish. It's about the fact that the gifts they offer always show me that they don't know me at all, haven't paid much attention to anything I've said or done in my entire life. And instead of feeling grateful (or perhaps in addition to feeling grateful, because I truly do try to focus on the fact that I'm lucky lucky lucky to have a family and to have Christmas with them at all) I feel sad that they don't know me and don't seem to take in any of what I offer of myself. And I also wonder if I just haven't offered enough.
I spend a lot of time, when I'm there, trying to protect their feelings. It's a strange thing, this, because it works in a cycle that leaves me hurting and leaves them oblivious to everything. Like this: 1. One of them says something that I find hurtful; they don't realise they've hurt my feelings. 2. I feel sad, hurt, etc.. 3. I try not to act sad, hurt, etc., because I don't want to make them feel uncomfortable over the fact that they've hurt me. 4. They have no idea any of this is going on and the cycle repeats itself forever until I am back home. 5. I resolve never to go there again. 6. Until next time.
J was here when I got home, and had been staying for the last two nights. Unfortunately, most of my time away overlapped with his visit here, so I didn't get to see much of him. We all went for breakfast together and then to a movie. He told me about his two recent dates, which was awfully surprising coming from one of the shyest people in the entire world, and it was nice to hear that he's recovering from what happened with his marriage and is able to feel, once again, optimistic about relationships in the future.
J spent some time in university studying world religions, and he is someone I always enjoy talking to about God, and god, someone who doesn't claim to have answers but who knows a lot of facts and can weave them together for me, sometimes, into something I'd like to wear. Like me, he finds God where he looks in places like quantum physics, as well as in Yoga and at the pancake house and in his centre. He hears the voice too. The inside-you voice that keeps you on the rails.
He still doesn't know exactly what his future plans are, and this in itself seems like healing when it comes from a man who likes to plan out everything in minute detail. He's going to Europe in the spring, for an indefinite length of time. And then when he comes home, he is probably going to move here, to Vancouver. And stay with us while he looks for a job and a home. His sister, he hastens to add, also lives here, and he plans to lessen the burden on us by staying with her some of the time too. He still has trouble believing we want him here. But it's true. And we won't stop telling him so.
Dear Dixie, I've been thinking about you this morning. Thinking started in bed, just before Shawn called me Medusa, and it might go on all day. (It could you know and it just may.) I think about you often, actually, about how things were and how things are, and mostly I just send you my warm thoughts, hoping you catch some of them when you're outside in the yard and notice that the sun is pleasantly warm even in the winter.
I feel like I've been travelling a long time and arrived home after a long journey. My life is good.
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