Standing Ground (with tired feet)

I had a busy comment day; not something that I can normally keep up to pace on, but I had a little break today and spent more time hanging out here in the ACoN Healing Garden than I'd normally be able to.  In that back and forth, my dialogue with the lovely mulderfan reminded me of a situation - an 'incident' if you like - that occurred about two months ago.

I took my youngest DD to her high school orientation; a poorly planned and abso-freekin'-lutely excruciating event that the school thought would best be held on a Monday night.  After work.  Two hundred fourteen year olds plus their parents, all tired, all hungry, all ready to just get this shit over with already, packed into half a gym.  The smell alone would make an NFL player want to cry.  There's only one reason to go to these things: to get the child's schedule for the upcoming school year.  And the administrator's know this and are completely willing to use that as the carrot on the stick to allow them to keep you as a captive audience to force you to listen to why the upcoming levy vote is so important and to reassure you that they care about your child's test scores almost as much as your vote.  (Also to let you know that should you vote no, your child's favorite extra-curricular activity or elective class or sport, whatever that may be, will likely be cut, just saying.)  But it's the only window they'll allow for your child to get their schedule before school starts, and who's in what class is a terribly important thing for fourteen year olds to know.

After enduring the torturous, long, boring, inane speeches from everyone who apparently means something in the land of middle-of-the-road academia, we were released from the sardine-packed bleachers.  We had high hopes, yes we did, of getting through with this thing at a decent hour.  We were op-to-mis-tic.  We were naive.

After standing in the world's longest line outside of DisneyLand, we were given the schedule.  Then we had to stand in line to pay fees for classes on the schedule.  Then we had to stand in line to be let into the hallways so that the children could find the classrooms on the schedule.  Then we had to stand in line to find out why the child had a blank period on her schedule.  Then we had to stand in line to have a photo taken for the ASB card, which we'd already paid for after standing in line at the ASB table.  Then we had to stand in line in order for the child to get a locker.

I mean, it was my version of hell; the only thing missing was the Kenny G muzak.  Chaotic, foot and hormone smelling hell.  And that's before we even stood in line to go to the damn bathroom.

One of the longest lines was the line for photos, who knows why.  We kept walking by it between standing in this line and that, and I thought that surely if we waited, that line would have to grow shorter, right?  Simple mathematics.

TWO HOURS LATER, after we'd make it through every other line and jumped through ever other hoop, the photo line was just as long, but it was the only one that we had left.  C'est la vie, thought me.  We got in line.

My DD happened to know the two girls who came to the line right behind us, so we turned and began to chat, keeping always an eye on the movement of the line ahead of us so as to keep shuffling forward like so many tired, sweaty cattle.

You know when you're standing in a line or stuck in a lane of traffic, and you're just inching forward one painful millimeter at a time and you've all but resigned yourself to the snail's pace that you're moving at, and then someone up ahead makes a sudden exit?  Suddenly you can move forward inches at a time, feet even, sometimes - gasp! - yards and meters!  Hooray!  It's sad to be reduced to that level of exultation, but I was there.

The group of people in front of us suddenly gave up and left.  We could move forward to the tune of  a space previously occupied by six bodies!  And there he was.

I haven't seen my Golden Child Younger Brother in a long time, but he looks just the same.  And there he suddenly was, six inches in front of me with a child that I assume is is stepson.  I know he was married a couple of years ago, to a woman that I've never met.  Needless to say, I didn't receive an invitation to the event.  But this place that I live is a small town, and I do keep my ear close to the ground in order to have the earliest notice possible of approaching Narc stampedes and ambushes.  So I knew about his new ready made family, without really knowing anything about them.

And here's the meat of this post - or the main veggie course if you swing that way.

I used to be terrified of running into my Former Family Members.  Seriously, I'd be in the grocery store and see someone who looked like one of them and I'd turn on a dime to head a different direction.  I reacted to even the thought of running into them viscerally.  Nausea, headache, cold chills, hot flashes, muscle weakness, shakes; basically all of the terror reactions rolled up nice and neat into a gut bomb and dropped on me.

Then I had a couple of close calls, fast moving brushes of the shoulder type of deals.  I'd get out of the public place I was and slide in my car and then think, "Hey, wasn't that....?"  I wasn't given time to react until after the fact in those situations, and I noticed that I did feel the horror reaction, but to a lesser extent.  Then I realized one day that GCYB and my nephew were right behind me in line at the convenience store of all places and I just didn't give a crap.  You can read about that here.

I saw the progression of my evolving reaction and interpretation of these events as a plus, a sign of healing, and I was grateful for that.  To feel nothing, to detach, is really the only option I have when it comes to these people.  There won't ever be any relationships there, and my acceptance of that fact as a matter of small steps has been crucial to my journey to get well.

But this was different.  It felt a bit like the brass ring.  My 'reaction' wasn't really that at all.  I didn't get nauseous or scared.  I didn't have to ponder or contemplate what I should do.  I didn't have to run away.

My thoughts went something like this: "I'm not going anywhere.  I've been waiting in lines for two hours, this is the last one and I'm not wasting one more damn minute in this place than I have to.  I haven't done anything wrong, I shouldn't have to leave, and I won't.  If I make him uncomfortable, he can leave and go to the back of the line."

I didn't doubt this course of action for a second, even when he - in a grand show of the maturity level of fledgling Narcs and Golden Children - kept turning around to make sad "oh-I-miss-you-so-much-and-if-your-mom-wasn't-such-a-bitch/devil-we-could-all-be-together" googly eyes at DD.  I just made sure to look straight at him when he tried this and he broke off contact every single time.  Gawd forbid we have a conversation.  It's better to just try to make the child feel guilty, right?

The last time I spoke to him, five-ish years ago, he told me that he "couldn't forgive me" and "couldn't talk to me without feeling too much rage to handle."  This kid held a knife at my throat when I was 16 and he was 14 because he thought my boyfriend at the time (whom we'd known for years as a family friend,) should be only his friend.  Threaten much?

Eventually, millenia later, as we began to approach the halfway point of the line, he went off to sit in some of the auditorium seats far away from us, where I could see him furiously texting away on his cell phone.  Hmmmm, I wonder what he was talking about?  I actually did laugh out loud when I saw that.  "Quick, send flying monkeys!  I need backup!"

DD and I talked about it later, and she was saddened by it, "He looked so sad!" she said.  And I calmly explained that if he were a good person, he wouldn't have cut us out of his life and then expected that she, as a child, should bare the burden of that absence by making sad faces at her, as if she had any control over it.  If he was a good person, he would have tried - as I did with him, to no avail - to build a relationship outside of the Crazymaker Clan.  (A small note:  he and his new wife and her two sons - 14 and 18- all ALSO live at the NParent's house.  It's like a fucking commune of crazy out there.)

But my point is this.  I used to be terrified of them.  Then I was scared.  Then I was sort of indifferent.  And now, as I was reminded earlier today of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut line ever, "You (they) can take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut!  You (they) can take a flying fuck at the MOOOOOOOON!"

I think it applies, and I hope they have a pleasant journey.  I'm not going anywhere.

Love,
Vanci