When People Slowly Disappear
The problems I've had with my parents, the problems they've had with each other and the problems they've had with themselves have become more complex and more entangled in my personal life than they should be. Their fourth quarter divorce, which I should not be involved in, has been finding its way to me. I hear about it all the time. One parent speaks badly of another. They both turn around and act like there isn't a storm going on outside. They tell me it's all in my head, as cars and trees fly past the window.
Or at least that's how it feels.
I was on the phone with my mom today and, after I hung up, I had to hold back tears. I can't have a simple conversation with her anymore. (And it's about much more than the fact that I don't like talking to people on the phone.) I keep thinking about how she used to be and how I don't see or hear half of that woman in her now. Like life has just worn her down and put someone in her place who can't fill the space that is left. It makes me sad to think about what is gone and it makes me sad to be on the phone with a woman who is passive and silent on the other end of the line, who no longer has much to say, who amits that her fridge is empty and has been like that for days. I don't know who she is. But the more serious problem is that neither does she.
I'd need another 4 posts to mourn my father. But I don't want to go there.
Our parents screw with us. Sometimes it's obvious and other times it's accidental, but, at a certain point, their personal dramas surface inside our own. Suddenly we can't escape and can't stop the demise of the people who were always supposed to be there, who were supposed to be able to survive anything. And it's scary ... I can't do anything to help them
Or at least that's how it feels.
I was on the phone with my mom today and, after I hung up, I had to hold back tears. I can't have a simple conversation with her anymore. (And it's about much more than the fact that I don't like talking to people on the phone.) I keep thinking about how she used to be and how I don't see or hear half of that woman in her now. Like life has just worn her down and put someone in her place who can't fill the space that is left. It makes me sad to think about what is gone and it makes me sad to be on the phone with a woman who is passive and silent on the other end of the line, who no longer has much to say, who amits that her fridge is empty and has been like that for days. I don't know who she is. But the more serious problem is that neither does she.
I'd need another 4 posts to mourn my father. But I don't want to go there.
Our parents screw with us. Sometimes it's obvious and other times it's accidental, but, at a certain point, their personal dramas surface inside our own. Suddenly we can't escape and can't stop the demise of the people who were always supposed to be there, who were supposed to be able to survive anything. And it's scary ... I can't do anything to help them
This entry was posted
on April 17, 2005 at 11:06 PM.
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