Obstreperous

 There is not much in life that throws off my rhythm more than spending time with my parents; the yearly visit winds down and my cuticles are red and raw and bloody from picking at myself incessantly for several days.  The excoriation rituals do not relieve the pressure; they leave my fingers sore and throbbing. I tried to tell them about the book being published in the fall; I tried to tell them about the foreword being written by the famous guy whose name I won’t type. My mother responded by telling me about her book and her foreword (again). These moments that I feel sort of invisible, sort of flattened, I assume this feeling is just part of this relationship. We sometimes move in a better direction, but we always come back here. 

Sometimes my counsellor perspective-taking brain plays games with me. What if I make them feel bad all the time too? What if I think I am carefully protecting everyone else’s feelings and I’m actually doing a terrible job of it and they always leave feeling that I have somehow slighted them? My inside-out world mind games. You never know, though.