Instructions

Tomorrow is the last day of 2017.  As the year comes to its close, I am drawn to ponder the usuals.  What do I want, what can I draw on from the year gone by, what will I resolve?  

My thoughts go to kindness and cruelty.  For the last 2 years, I have trapped myself in a battle with myself.  Am I cruel to my mom to shut her out?  Am I kind to myself to free myself from her?  Am I a bad person to do either of those?  In the end, it turns out that I can’t handle the cruelty toward her, no matter the reasons.  So, it is unkind to both of us.  

So, I am left to figure out a way to try to be kind to both her and I.  My lifelong battle.  Being at some kind of beginning is mildly hopeful, but I have been here before, so it is a sober hope.  

I reached out to Derek’s sister to see how he is and she sent news of decline, enough so that she will not be in contact with him any longer.  It freed me.  It should maybe make me want to rush to him to support him, but it doesn’t.  He gave me up.  Then he allowed me into his life 20 years later, from a distance, only to pull away and hurt me again.  I know it is illness and not him, but I am only human.  He kept me at enough of a distance that I am now obsolete.  I don’t know how to be in his life.  The way I know to be in his life doesn’t work for him.  The way he knows to be in my life is too painful for me to imagine.  

So, I am freeing myself from him.  Not without love.  

My goals for 2018 are simple.  Be more present with my family.  Grow the company.  Lose the fucking weight.  

Oh, and finish my book.

Happy New Year