It’s not exactly clear to me why I write this here versus giving it to them directly. I’m sure it will be quite personal and cause at least me a great deal of discomfit if not discomfort. I wondered while driving home tonight whether I ought to meter it or not.
The answer had to be no. Certainly nothing in the way of a financial reward would have me in this place I’ve never quite been. Ready to spill out the beans as entirely as I can — not because I am ready to do so so much as because they deserve it.
I will not be a person only ready to say things when it’s too late.
Not anymore. Not after yesterday and not after today either. Just one day like these last two would have been ample prodding.
I am sorry that I can’t feel more embarrassed about the way I am. There were a few things which, taken together, convince me all this is true. That I am sorry, that I can’t do it, and that I should do it. Feel embarrassed.
And this will be pedantic at times, because I am pedantic, too. I know how to not be pedantic I just don’t know when not to be. It seems like now is a time to be very particular, even at the risk of being annoyingly so.
Embarrassed is a thing you should feel when you realize that you didn’t do something you should have done. It is typically felt most especially when you will never get another chance. Sometimes it is used to describe situations in which people do things they absolutely must have known they shouldn’t do but did anyway because they thought they could somehow spike everyone’s punch bowl and not have anyone notice until cars were crashing on the way home.
Thought they could “get away with it” or that everyone would just forgive them.
Thankfully I at least don’t have many of the latter to feel ashamed about, but I will say it has struck me recently that I’ve lived my life without being anywhere near as caring or kind to others as I could have been. My family included, though I’m sure they’ll find a way to argue with me even on that.
It wouldn’t be unfamiliar territory, at least. They’ve often attempted to rescue me from myself: a person seemingly so smart but with so very few things figured out. The collection of words I have for anything never seems to come out without a heap of gibberish along with any sense I might make.
And I feel it. At least now I feel it.
My best friend passed away this past Friday night. Only three nights ago. The second day she has been gone and any vows I might have made to live my life differently now were seemingly lost saying something I shouldn’t have said and doing something I shouldn’t have done yesterday. As if my parents — who knew her closely as well — felt any better than I did. Or felt the day was any easier to handle.
And I could have been kinder. We always could be kinder. If I didn’t learn that from my friend what did I learn? When am I going to prove it?
I love my parents and telling them is hardly sufficient. It doesn’t pass as so — at least not in my case — because there seem so many things I should have done differently were it really true. That I should still do differently if I want to believe it myself. Explaining it in a way which doesn’t require sympathy. I’ve had plenty of chances in my life and have had far more than just my share of good luck. I’ve been far more fortunate than perhaps I deserved.
But I feel now as though I’m on the back end of life. Looking back over years that have sometimes been great but not having shared what triumphs I’ve managed or celebrated my family members in particular the way I might have. Having done not much to console others when they have been down and not much to help when they’ve needed it but couldn’t or wouldn’t ask for some.
And I want to shout that stops now or vow it or do whatever a person is supposed to do when they realize things really have to change if they are to go on believing they really are the person they’d like to see themselves as being.
But won’t more days pass in which my parents do their thing and I do mine? With them asking for hardly anything from me and doing whatever they can to make my life easier and better? It seems so, but in my mind it’s only because they already view me as more lost than I have ever openly admitted to myself. I thought myself capable of just about anything.
And so I say I’m sorry I can’t feel more embarrassed about the way I am. I feel as though I’m a product both of my parents and my circumstances, and that even though I might have done better with my life I hardly know where I went wrong to begin with. How can I think my judgment is good and clear now when I’ve felt more or less the same way all my life? How can it be good when I constantly find myself looking back on things regrettably and continuing to make my vows with progressively less energy, health, and life to make them with? Time will eventually run out.
I was a person who thought he knew better from the get go. Who so consistently didn’t listen to others that it seems everyone just stopped wasting their breath on me. It’s something you can’t wish for and get back. You try to listen and you haven’t practiced so you still can’t hear what anyone is saying — if they still talk to you at all. Or you hear them but don’t know what they mean.
I’m bipolar, but does it really make that much difference? I still have two ears. I can still see what goes on around me. I haven’t found myself wondering how others do it until quite recently, but now it’s something that regularly comes up. How do they handle life? I can barely get out my door and I can see my life slipping away in part because of it.
And now my best friend and best example is gone. No more kindly visits. No shared meals, movies, games. Struggles. I can’t imagine being alone in the world and now it’s impossible to avoid being forced to do so.
I yell at my father when he won’t accept care or help? He yells at my mother for the same reason? What is my mother thinking when two people she really cares for go at one another like that the day after a good friend of hers dies? Their hearts are far older than mine and mine didn’t take it very well at 51.
And then I call him at almost ten pm? Why? Because I realize that if he dies in his sleep like my friend did I will never be able to forgive myself for the things I said? What’s wrong with me? At what point will I realize my judgment isn’t or perhaps never will be consistently good?
I’m sure my parents both ought to know I’d do anything for them, but the statement is so trite and has been so left unsaid that I don’t even know what to do with it. What did I do with my friend? Didn’t I just imagine I was the coolest most laid back person in the world to hang around despite that she might well have been visiting me in large part because she saw how sad my life has become and felt sorry for me? Have I even bothered to wonder how difficult I am for my parents to deal with at times?
And I don’t think I’m feeling sorry for myself so much as I’m trying to figure out what has happened to me. What is happening to me.
My dad loves his birds. Goes through hundreds of pounds of seed every month. In fifty pound bags that he really shouldn’t be horsing around with anymore, especially as winter comes on with ice and snow to walk on. And he carries on with the attitude, “oh bullshit. I’m going to feed my birds come hell or high water.” With the subtext whether anyone helps me or not despite that pride is not at all a thing he takes likely and that pride is the thing that stops him from asking for help more often than not. I would never say my father is stupid but it definitely is stupid to let pride interfere with others helping you with something you need or could use help with.
I wonder if he’s ever stopped to think what it would be like for me or my mother if he had a heart attack doing things he’s convinced he has to do and still refuses to ask for help with. He did ask for help taking tires out of the back of his truck, though, which is at least some evidence that he knows he has some kind of limit.
I haven’t known the same and it has hurt me repeatedly. It hurts me now, especially. I thought I would always have time to spend with my friend. I expected her to be around until sometime after I was gone. You can see me here no longer pretending that is true about my parents, who are both almost eighty.
I am thankful for and appreciative of what they have done for me and the things they continue to do — many of which I’ve probably hardly even noticed. If I could wish something for the two of them it would certainly be that they got along better, which comes closely on the heels of recognizing what others do when they love you. My mother cares too immensely about too many things and so does my father. The combination can be a recipe for disaster, since agreement about what to do about which things can regularly be a struggle. I doubt if my family is the only one which doesn’t set limits very well.
I told my father that my mother does what she does because she cares and says what she says because she loves him, but neither seems to realize the edge they place on their words at times. It is not an edge that always comes from sincerity. It sometimes comes from stubbornness and sometimes from a desire to return fire in some way, but in either case it leads to more sore hours spent from the rest none of us will ever get back. It doesn’t come from love even though the words themselves might be phrased from it.
Once you fall into the trap of convincing yourself you’re saying something out of love without checking how you’re feeling when you say it, you can easily find yourself with another day gone and with nothing but more distance from a person you care about to show for it. It isn’t a way to go on.
Perhaps if I am more appreciative of both of them it will help them to remember how to be more appreciative of one another, and if I listen better they will, too.
I don’t know that I’ve made much sense but I do know I wrote this having needed to in some way. I have tried to live my life with kindness and without malice and I think in at least those things I’ve more or less been successful. Maybe that’s in part why I said I can’t feel more embarrassed than I do for the way my life has gone. I feel my mistakes intensely and here I’ve done at least something to avoid a mistake of omission I could have made.
