hit by a lightening bolt!

After writing that entry yesterday, I kinda went to a dark place. I hadn’t really started out feeling that miserable, but when I started writing everything just seemed to turn negative.

I know there are lots of resentments in regard to my sister … I really have to deal with them. It isn’t her fault she is the favourite. Well, it is her fault. She behaves in the way that makes everyone like her … puts on a great show … says the right things.

I just say what I think and feel. Not a particularly endearing quality. I sometimes think my blunt honesty is a good thing, but I suppose deep down I know it isn’t. There has to be a happy medium. At 56 I haven’t found it. Actually, at 56 I’ve only started to realize I need to look for it.

I grew up knowing that I am no one’s favourite and that I wasn’t ever going to displace my sister from her pedestal. So I went the other way and just decided that I didn’t care.

Obviously I do or things wouldn’t bother me so much.

* * * * *

Last night when I went to bed, I thought about who I was and who I am.

When I do this, all the horrible things I’ve ever said and done are what I remember.

I acknowledge that ‘horrible’ is an overstatement. I haven’t really been horrible … Mostly I guess I’ve just been self-centered. I haven’t really ‘given’ a lot to people. I haven’t gone out of my way to ‘take’, but if someone offered something I’d accept and say ‘thanks’! So, overall I’d say I’ve received more than I’ve given.

On most levels.

The memories of my life aren’t bad … but the memories of myself aren’t good.

You know?

I was thinking of when my kids get married and I started to get all teary eyed.

Then I remembered my own wedding and how my mom started getting all weepy and was about to say something to me just as we were about to walk down the aisle.

I said ‘don’t start, Mom’.

It was a protection for myself. I knew I was making a mistake. I knew if she said anything I would have become a blubbering idiot … so I stopped her before she could get started. But it wasn’t delivered in a kind way. It was a bitchy ‘don’t start, Mom’.

I never apologized to her in life. I apologized last night.

* * * * *

I don’t think I’m a terrible person.

I don’t think, if you ask the people I work with what I’m like, that they would all say I’m a bitch. I think, for the most part they like me. They know I’m serious about work, but I’ll laugh and make jokes and chat about this and that.

I don’t think, if you ask my children, that they would say I’m a terrible mother. But, I do think that if you ask about their memories when they were kids, that they wouldn’t really have a lot of warm and fuzzies about me. Because I was angry. And I took it out on them.

I hope I’ve made it up to them and that they forgive me.

Unlike with my mother, with my children I have apologized.

* * * * *

So, last night as I was settling in to go to sleep, I thought “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if during the night there was a proverbial lightning bolt that hit me … and I became a thoughtful, considerate, kind, think-before-I-speak person that I would like to be” and I prepared myself for a night of insightful, life altering dreams.

Didn’t happen.

I did dream … a lot …

… about being taken hostage by terrorists. I was with a group of young adults. There were crowded elevators and airplanes (ah, there’s my claustrophobia!!) but I was the elder and I had to keep everyone calm, so I couldn’t allow myself to panic.

We were crowded in a hotel room and then there was this blinding light – we all thought it was a bomb going off nearby, but it turned out to be an incinerator that the terrorists had fired up.

They were looking for someone to sacrifice.

I negotiated to be the victim. I’ve lived my life … everyone else was just starting out.

As I walked to the precipice of the huge fire pit, I figured I’d probably just evaporate in the fire – like what happened to the little mouse the idiot ex tossed into the woodstove. It didn’t suffer – we were able to see through the glass – it almost went *poof* … it was there, then it wasn’t. (The event was incredibly traumatic for the kids and me. Their father argued that it was a more humane thing to do than to toss the poor thing out into the freezing winter. He might have been right … but, still traumatic.)

I woke up wondering if it would hurt …

Not quite the lightening bolt I had hoped for.

I haven’t interacted with anyone but the dog and a facebook message from my sister (who I complained about yesterday), so I can’t be sure if I’ve changed.

I suppose time will tell.

* I WISH YOU WELL! *