Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda
I wish I had a post relating to some event or at least a response to somebody else’s posting, but I don’t. This is just for the sake of posting, to break the long hiatus and for some anonymous catharsis.
It’s been hard to write for the past few weeks because my energies have been so consumed by a family drama, this one more explosive than usual. It’s been two weeks since my return from the ancestral plot, but the days crawl by so slowly that it feels much longer (and more exhausting) than that. Each day wedges a single hooked claw into the ground before dragging itself forward, its jagged belly ripping a wake of gashes in the earth. (There is refuge in melodrama. Making mountains out of molehills affirms that the obstacle in question is, in fact, a molehill. Besides, if every calamity is an apocalypse, there is no more terror in apocalypses — even the real ones.) I returned to Chicago on July 6, and just when I thought I was safe the screaming, hurling, horn-locking drama that is my mother’s legacy whizzed and sparked across fiber optic lines, fled the Northeast, and spilled into my Midwestern refuge.
It’s true: A person’s home should be their castle. But the digital age has slain that fine thought. The digital age and my own cowardice. The thought crossed my mind, as my mobile and land line rang simultaneously in a series of calls that would recur until they were answered, that I could turn off the one and unplug the other. In retrospect that is exactly what I should have done: I should have sat this round out. It wasn’t really my fight to begin with, and I didn’t have the physical or emotional energy to sustain a level counseling mode. But, ah, hindsight is 20/20. Ever have I been poor Epimetheus, enthused and then baffled, foolish enough to open the box and then too stupid to shut it.
It’s the waiting that’s killing me. The not knowing. Of course, I have strong suspicions about what she’s thinking, about what they’re all thinking, but I want to know where I stand. Yes, this suspense is purely selfish. They don’t want my help and I’m tired of efforts that go nowhere. I just want to know where I stand so I can figure out what to do next.
*sigh* The next thing to do is to wait for them to go away, fly home, rent a car, and collect my remaining belongings. Mostly I want my books. But I probably won’t do that. Instead the money should go to a vacation that doesn’t require me to play family counselor.
I wish I knew where I stood. And I wish I had known when to walk away.
