Flickering Resolve

Figures.

After I get it all figured out. After I gather up all my conviction and my hurt and my pain, and I'm ready to push it in the direction I need to go, everything falls to pieces.

Outsiders would see it as everything getting better.

But it's temporary. I know it is. But it's hard all the same.

You know, whenever I think of my mom, I remember all the words she's said over the years. I remember her furies at nothing. When I try to pull up a happy memory, I get stuck with when I finally convinced her to teach me to cook, and every question I had was met with annoyance.

And then it gets funny. Because then we move onto my dad, and any of you who have been there with my previous blog know how surprising this is. Because for the past, what? Seven years? I've been at war with my dad, to the point of him throwing me into a bedpost.

But when I think of him, what do I see? Even in the midst of that huge war?

I see me, as a little girl, on a family hike back when we used to do things as a family and not as individuals. I see the steeply sloping hill; dirt, loose stones everywhere, all sliding down before me. And I see my dad holding my hand and I hear him tell me "Just take it one step at a time. You'll be okay."

And it makes me cry.

After everything, you know? No less than making my life hell.

And then helping my mother make my life even more hellish that the past seven years can't compare. They just can't.

After everything.

And one thing, one nice thing, tears my resolve to pieces and scatters it in the wind.

Stupid shelf. Stupid me. Stupid them for digging me a deeper ditch.

I don't owe them anything, but why does it feel like I owe them everything?