Oil and Water

You know I've been feeling quiet and haven't been posting with regularity. I have nothing much to say, my morning pages are similarly thin. My energy is still taken up with tasks to settle mother in to my home.

I found some of the Lifeline and the pendant on the garage floor. Maybe it is the whole idea of sustaining life that is repellent to her. No, that's not fair. It has been a task to see how sour I've become over this experiment in living. Yesterday, I was too dirt tired to look anyone in the eye when I got home.

Part of my disappointment is that though we are both well intended, we have great difficulty discussing the simplest things. I don't remember ever having a significant talk with her about anything, ever. That's at least partly what drove me to leave home at seventeen, not being able to meet on any plane except the 'what's for dinner' one. Emotional poverty. Such pain she must have had in her life, she overdosed when I was 4 or 5 and my sisters were in their late teens. She left home when I was 12 or 14. Just left a note for my dad, then came back in a couple weeks. My gut feeling is still that she is vacant and sneaky.

My work partner and I are quite separated right now, she will be leaving soon and we are spared the continued effort of pretending to be a couple in our two person department. We have a mutual friend who feels saddened to see us distanced from each other. I was relating how I felt affronted by a comment my co-worker had made and my friend observed that we were like oil and water. Of course, I'd rather that we be viewed as GOOD and EVIL but the longer I thought about the analogy the more I liked it.

And today I can apply the same analogy to my mother and me. Not good and bad, just two different substances, both liquid but distinctly separate, sharing only the margin that outlines us.

What's good about today is that there are others in my life with whom I connect. I have relationships inside and outside of program that matter a great deal to me.