driving the Natchez Trace

I have so long neglected this blog that I don't even understand the new format anymore.

So, fuck it.

I am going to write whatever I want on here.  This is my blog, after all.

I need to vent, and in order to do that I'm going to have to relieve myself of the pretend obligation that I need to be nice, educational, or accommodating to anyone who might be offended by my posts.

Frankly, I've been offending myself for not writing, because I am too caught up in trying to think of a name for a new blog.

I can't do that anymore, because here I sit, at work, in the quiet of the night at 2 a.m., crying.

This seems to be the only place where I break down.  I don't have a typical nursing job. Patients actually sleep, and I often only work with one other person.  There is lots of time to think.  Too much time.

I'm looking forward to finishing my master's degree next year and getting a dayshift job in a busy clinic.  I'll actually have other things to focus on then besides how sucky life can be...at least my life, as I'm sure some of my patients will have sadder stories to tell.

We used to be a family.  The four of us.  That's not something you just throw away.  I feel like that is a precious thing.  There are going to be problems, of course, but family is sacred.

I have never experienced what that means. My parents were divorced when I was 12, and I was shuffled around between them for awhile.  There was nothing sacred there.  My sister and I were the human pawns in their game of who could get out of paying child support.  I represented a dollar sign and an inconvenience of time.

Then I married young, at 18, and that marriage was over within 2 years.

This marriage was my chance to get it right, but I'm obviously not good at this.

My kids will never be made to feel as if they're an inconvenience.  Not from me.  I can't control what their dad does, but I've been hurting for them lately.  It's almost like I am 12 all over again, feeling their pain.  I've promised myself that I won't let them feel what I felt.  Ever.

Tonight, as I've done several other nights, I'm thinking about the outings we had together as a family.  The four of us.  The kids happy in the back of the van with DVD players.  Dad driving as I read a book in the passenger seat.  The kids running around on a hill while I take photos.  Laughing at the silly things we find on the ground, at the irony of life.

I loved every minute of those outings, except for times like when Claire walked into a spider web on a forest hike and it took awhile to console her screaming, or one of us clumsily tripped and scraped a leg, or insects crawled onto our food during a picnic (well, Brandon liked that part).

Now that I think back, I don't believe my husband was enjoying himself much.  He was faking. I was taking the photos, lost in the wonderment of what was around us, and I think he was just watching me do it, not an active participant himself, but simply going through the motions.

He told me once, toward the end, that he thought about taking photos too, but I was offended and told him to get his own hobby.  I was a jerk for that, for being possessive of my interests.  The thing was, I wanted him to have hobbies besides TV and video games, to find his own loves, and to share them with me and teach me something, not copy what I was doing.  Not do another thing that I would have to be the expert at.

I didn't take any photos of the spider webs, but the memories are there.

We're still going to have those outings that I treasure, but it will only be the three of us now.  We are sacred.