I took care of the urgent parental business.  Agencies were contacted, doctors were informed, paperwork was generated, and we all had ourselves a nice little intervention.  Mommy got the velvet hammer, the word up, the talk, the news.  And Daddy's still breathin' in front of his big-screen on his wild-eyed slide to oblivion.

My efforts this past week have been successful, insofar as getting them headed toward a place where their behavior isn't a danger to themselves or others.  If there's another incident like the one we witnessed recently, mommy and daddy will have no say in what happens next.

Their business is their business.  Some of their choices, unfortunately, have made it my business too.  It was my business when I was a day old and it's been my business ever since.  This history has made for some serious reflection on my part about honesty and holding grudges.

To someone who has not experienced abuse from one's parents, the pervasiveness and depth of injury are difficult to convey.  When you're a kid, you think it's all your fault.  And you can't put the puzzle together to save your life.  You're ashamed and alone and afraid and paralyzed.  And you're a kid, which means, essentially, to many grown-ups as well as to yourself, that you're second class.  Not quite worthy.  As you get older there develops an anxious churning urge, a need for approval that grows to immense disproportion.

The attention I've paid to pain and confusion, and paid dearly, has been such a distraction that small kindnesses and calms have often seemed other-worldly, appearing to come from out of the blue.  Larger kindnesses, sacrifices, and indeed love, directed toward me, have seemed, quite literally, unbelievable.  A sad suspicion has always lain beneath a nascent bond.  

I'm just now aware, as I struggle to put all this down as concisely and clearly as I can, that to do so is difficult because it is so familiar.

We all have our scale of pleasures and pains.  I don't propose to have suffered more than another.  It seems to me that much of my inner construction has been designed by abuse and yet I survived, ironically, because of that same psychological architecture.  I was alone and so I came to know the beauty and value of attachment.  Early on, I crawled out a window (or got shoved) into adulthood and it's a condition I've come to marvel at and feel comfortable in.  Growing up fascinates me.  It always has.  The process is so open-ended, with accomplishments offering what seems to be an infinite sequence of prizes and promise.  On good days, anyhow.

Things are changing for me.  I have a strong sense that the first half of my life has just ended.  It's not necessarily a chronological milestone -- there may be a bus with my name on it tomorrow -- but I'm feeling a palpable shift in mood these days, due mostly to the business with my parents, but also due in part to the fact that I'm an American male in my mid-forties, and in part to my work agenda for the next few years.

Exciting projects are afoot.

Moving on now.

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