Fog...

 

It's foggy this morning.   My roomie has a friend over & the cats are never sure about how to handle that.  It's a strange day for me.  

Today is my sister's birthday.  I used to always call her during the holidays & wish her a happy holiday & birthday.  A ways back I called & she seemed off about it.  That was when I started accepting I was the one leading this relationship.

At one point, this was the closest person to me.  Then she wasn't.  Even then I think the relationship was  more leaning towards me wanting it.  When the separation started, I was very young.  Then life got weird & I held on to a memory.

We aren't even phone call close anymore, no more  monthly calls.  We've spoke twice this year.  Once to tell me my father had passed.  The next time surprised  me.  She called me, I was pretty sure  someone else had died, but no.  She had actually just called.  She hadn't done that in over a decade  probably won't ever again.

The thing I learned during that last conversation.  My sister was no longer that cool, long haired, 1970s girl  listening to the radio as we drove down the highway.  Now, she's an agitated conservative, anti-vaxxer.    She went from being my safe place, to being someone I'd never spoke to if I met for the 1st time today.  Times change & memories lie.  We try to see the best  & it's often wrong.  I wish this woman the best on her birthday, but I don't know her & she isn't the sister I knew.

There's my nostalgia for the year.  Take care.

Cya...

Not Bright...

 

It's not sunshiny, but at least it's not dismal.  It's nice to wake to at least some light.  May is almost over.  Until last year, I had 2 siblings who had birthdays on this date.  My oldest sister & next younger brother.  He died last year.  I wasn't close to them, but still it's a little weird.

Billie Porter said the best thing about celebrities outing themselves  as HIV+.  He said doing it helped him.  I can absolutely accept that.  If his announcement lessened his load in any manner, that's actually pretty awesome.  As long as it's not at others' expense, I'll not fault  people for lightening their burdens. So  cheers to you Mr. Porter, may your road be a little  smoother.

Cya...

Birthdays...

Today is my sister's birthday.  I used to make a notable effort to always call her either on or before the 30th to wish her a happy birthday.  She will be 52 this year.  That's so weird, because in my head she's a wild child teenager & I'm the little kid tagging along behind her.   It's really amazing how you can grow so far away from people you used to be so close to.  Amazing probably isn't the right word, but's close enough.

When I was about 8, my sister decided she'd had enough of all my mom's crap & moved out.  It really wasn't much of anything for a 15 or 16 year old to move out on their own back then.  That left me as the oldest in the house with that woman.   I took care of household chores & my two younger brothers.  Imagine leaving an eight year old to watch other children & to cook  with no adult any where nearby.  Yet, I still saw my sister fairly often.

When my sister was about 17, she married her first husband.    The marriage was hell & lasted a little under eight years.  I hated her husband with a passion.   Too bad he's still among the living.  I only saw my sister about a third of the time she was married to husband number one.  

When I was a freshmen in college, she married again & is still married to this one.  They lived a ways off & I only saw her once or twice.  After that, they moved to Seattle.  I was a junior in college when that happened & I haven't seen her since.  Still I tried to keep in contact.  That was difficult.  It was before email (which my sister doesn't do) & my sister is a lousy letter writer.

It was in the mid 1990's before I really managed to reestablish contact with her again on a fairly regular basis. It was only via phone calls, but it was something.  Over the years, I noticed that she called less & less.  It eventually turned out to be I was the one making all the calls.  We used to talk every other week or so.  Now, it's maybe every other month & I think she's fine with that.

It took me a while to admit some things.  My sister & I really weren't family anymore.  She was someone/something from my past.  One of the few things that I had managed to hold onto throughout my life.    My sister probably feels too indebted to the idea of family to just not answer the phone.  Finally, when my sister first moved out, all those years ago, I was angry.    I understood she had to get away from our mother, but that meant I was there alone.  I was never close to my other siblings, I'm still not.  The one I was close to, left.

Over time, it turned into me being the only one calling.  Her never remembering the holidays as far as I was concerned.  So, I call once in November before Thanksgiving & give my happy holidays for all those to come, knowing she won't call me.  If it took more effort than a phone call, I'd probably walk away from this altogether. Oh well, that's life.

Happy Birthday Sis...

Cya

The Social Animal

I was "raised" by alcoholic parents, a manipulative grandmother, other uninvolved adults & one well meaning, slightly older sister.  The problem with this is that while my sister managed my younger brothers & myself the best she could, she was a kid herself.  My brothers & myself were just short of feral.  We came in when we were hungry & we came in to sleep.  We weren't really taught to do much at all.

Watching my brothers & me get along was sort of like watching a mixed-age litter of kittens.  At times we could get along (usually only if mutual benefit was assured), but most often we kept our distance from each other.  When forced to be near each other, the fight was inevitable.

Concepts like responsibility, goals or just about anything social were lost to us.  We were the lords of our own fortunes, no matter how meager they may have been. We were not about to abide anyone telling us how to act or what to do.  Eventually we started to realize that we were very different from the others.  We resented that difference & the others for being different.

We became mercenary, oddly charismatic & manipulative.  Some might say we were well our ways to becoming sociopaths.  Not all people who have such persuasions are criminal, most are just anti-social.  They make great business men, politicians & lawyers.  If we wanted something, we would find a way to get & it was seldom the conventional way of doing so.  I went to college, even got a Ph.D., but it wasn't for the right reasons.  I didn't go there to learn or even to improve my life.  I went to college because I had absolutely no other place to go.  At college I could pass, blend even thrive, but it was still just a con.

In my late late thirties, my father showed back up.  I had not spoken to him sense I was sixteen.  It was not an amicable departure.  By this time I was + & on disability.  He tried to enter my brothers lives only to find them still mostly beastly.  There had been run-ins with the law & jail for both of them, prison for one.  They couldn't hold jobs, they couldn't maintain relationships & mostly didn't care about those things.  This baffled my father.

He constantly talks about how my brothers don't do this or haven't done that.  He doesn't like anything about their lives & acts like they should know better.  I finally had it & told him that no one had ever taught us to do any of that crap.  No one taught me how to cook, do laundry or even how to shave.  I learned all of that on my own often through disastrous trial & error.  I didn't get my driver's license until I was twenty-six.  I'd drove since I was twelve, but I didn't have a license.  Check books, running a household, shopping & a host of other things most people's families teach them were mine fields of experimentation for me.  Yet still my father acts like my brothers & me had some type of instruction manual for life that should've taught us everything we needed to know if we'd just bothered to read the damn thing.

I would've been ecstatic if I'd found an instruction manual.  I went through life like a stray cat, not sure to purr for attention or attack the person trying to get too close.  My brothers & me are territorial, defensive & quick to over react. If something threatens you, clobber it, so it can never do it again.  We pace, we snarl & we avoid most unpleasant situations no matter what the potential outcome.

I've been more fortunate than my brothers on this matter.  I've learned to blend better & at least act like I care about some of the social norms & niceties, but I really don't buy any of it.  I can maintain until my habits & rituals are through out of whack.  I realize that reality is fragile & things constantly threaten all paradigms.  Let something like a frozen pipe or a screwed up car come along & for a bit I'd rather just bite something than deal with anything.

Eventually I calm down & start building back up the mask of the socially well adjusted individual.  When I was younger I used to think everyone was like me & they were just faking it.  Later I decided, no it's just me & those people raised like me.  I'm no longer that certain.  Maybe were all just violent animals hiding under the facsimile of the well socialized member of society?  Watch any disaster movie, when the people are stranded or threatened, the social mores & norms go the way of the do-do bird.  Sure some of the "good" guys maintain their programming, but just barely.  And, that's only so the writers could make it looks like the just, socially entrenched individuals are somehow more moral & sanctified than those who aren't.

We are all just animals agreeing to maintain an illusion of civility, but let something become too much of a threat or present too tempting of an opportunity & that beast lying underneath will rip back into reality & do what it thinks needs to be done.  We are animals, social, sometimes civil animals, but animals all the same. Sometimes animals bite.