OffKilter

Dear Reader,

Yesterday was a bad day, a really bad day.  Fewer and farther apart, these bad days are days when my emotions, my sadness, my hurt gets the better of me and the fragile happiness that I have been building just blows away.  In what felt like a split second all those negative emotions - the dismay, the regret, the what ifs, the self-hate - rush screaming to the surface to batter at me.  

I texted a friend who spoke about how he related, how he had felt his happiness had been paper thin, derailed so easily and recognized that in me.  And, how right he was.  I haven't had more than fractured happy moments over the last decade.  I barricaded myself in, with armor and anger, determined to persevere.  

Happiness is for those who are thriving.  I held tight, with jaw clenched, back muscles tight, neck immobile.  Joy, peace, contentment and enthusiasm were emotions rarely felt and sustained only for fleeting moments.  I lived in the space of fear and anger and held myself in check.  Tamping down my anxiety, my resentment, my insecurity took all my energy and left me no space to be.  To be grateful, to be hopeful, to be passionate.  To be me. 

But now, now I spend time being genuinely happy.  Dancing making dinner, making plans with friends, riding, planning to go to horse shows.  But there is still all this unprocessed shit just beneath the surface - and my happiness is paper thin.  A fragile origami butterfly.  It fills me with light and hope, but can collapse in a split second by forces outside or inside me.  

And so, dear reader, I have two jobs in front of me.  

First, like my friend I need to focus on my own "happiness thickening" - an apt term created today.  To build layer upon layer of happiness - doing things that have meaning for me, strengthening and building connections to friends, family and community and nourishing my soul, doing that self-care thing folks always talk about.  Things like being there for my girls, good times with friends, old and new, and riding.  I've spent so very long hiding behind armor and shields that being vulnerable, being open to happiness is scary.  And, being open to happiness, leaves me open to all the unprocessed sadness, anger, hurt.  But I'd rather feel again - and feel all of it, bad and good - than go back to being locked down.  

Second, I need to tackle this inside voice that loves to shred my happiness layer and return me back to that deep, dark well that I've climbed out of.  She'll always exist, but I need to see her for who she is.  A hateful representation of the worst of all my thoughts.  Not me.  

So thank you, dear reader, for coming along with me on my journey.  And, while not that related, I wanted to share this week's them song Lizzo's "About Damn Time" lyrics... I'm feeling it right now!

Oh, I've been so down and under pressure

I'm way too fine to be this stressed, yeah

Oh, I'm not the girl I was or used to be

Uh, bitch, I might be better

Hello Dear Reader,

Had a hair appointment today, and was talking to my long time bestest hair stylist about the 'broken doll' syndrome and going back to work feeling all the discomfort of knowing that folks will wonder how broken I am - just a bit or a whole lot?  She snorted and said, "You aren't broken, you should be called Braveheart".

"Hell yeah", I said.  "Hell, yeah!"  It's been a decade, not just a year or two, of constant, almost unrelenting poundings.  It's not the suffering Olympics, my youngest is fond of reminding me.  But if it was, we'd be at least in the Canadian Nationals.  

The cardiologist last year told me that I couldn't expect to get better because I was living in a war zone.  How dramatic is that I thought... but then, well. 

Cancer, Bipolar Disorder, Gambling, Anxiety, panic attacks, brain fog, Grief, Loss, PTSD, Concussions, Menopause, hearing loss, catfishing, stiff heart syndrome, broken bones, broken hearts, blame, anger, screaming, yelling, retreating, crying.  These were all the ingredients in our home, in our refuge from the demands of life, of work.  

I've finally pulled myself out of that war zone and created a little happy place.  I'll be working for many more years than I planned.  I won't have my hoped for retirement - winters in Mexico!  Horses!  Cottage!  But eventually I'll have some version of it. And, have met new friends along the way to add to my trusted old friends.

And, more than that, I'm going to wear this like a Badge of Honour.  I started to crack badly at work - the chaos, the deep fear that our separation would push FH too far and cost him everything added to a busy and demanding time with a high-vis project culminating on the exact day of our separation.  All that guilt.  All that fear.  All that pressure on one stupid day.  I still delivered, with the help of great colleagues.  The project was a success.  

The cost though, the cost was real psychological damage.  But it really was that last tiny little straw placed on a huge pile that had been breaking my back for years.  Just like so many others with worse stories to tell, I have been through it.  But, I am OUT the other side.   Something I didn't think possible in 2021.  Feeling more myself than I have in years and years.  More confident in my abilities, in my heart, in me. 

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't also plagued with insecurities about how firm the ground I am standing on is.  Whether I am still too fragile to withstand any big bumps in the night, so I am going to take my time.

But I am also going to own this.  I'm not broken, I've been through my fire.  I'm out the other side. 

Braveheart signing off,

Hello dear reader,

It's been a long time... These little posts got me through some dark times, but how was I know how long those dark times would last?  Or how I would continue to break apart, break apart, and break apart some more but still stand?  

I've struggled between my need to over-share, my need to protect myself from those who have used this blog in the past to celebrate my weaknesses and failures and my need to protect those that I will always love, but who are also a big part in this long, dark chapter in my life. 

I started to become someone that I barely recognized.  My heart was breaking, literally and figuratively, and I forgot what it was to laugh, to feel a smile creep onto my face, unbidden.  To have muscles not in pain.  To only recognize the largest of panic attacks, because anxiety wasn't just my best friend, anxiety was now my real and true life partner.   

I'm leaving this chapter behind.  But this isn't a hallmark movie, where the curtains fly open, birds sing and the sun shines in.  This is a slow story of healing body and soul.  Muscles that haven't relaxed in years, are finally learning to be loose and I find myself smiling and looking people in the eye.  More comfortable in my skin than I have been in years.  Ending my marriage was the hardest, most heart-breaking decision of my life.  Ending my marriage and living in dread of what the cost of that decision could mean to someone that I will always love, well, that has fucked with my heart and mind more than I thought possible. 

My FH (former husband) and I separated in September, 2021 and I bought myself a new house, and started a new life, in September, 2022.  Still linked to my FH, still finding myself choking back sobs of sadness and regret, still having nightmares and panic attacks about what might become of him, I've inched towards strength and regaining my resilience.  Will I ever be as strong as I once was?  I don't think so -  but maybe that is as it should be.   Maybe all that "strength" did was keep me rooted in an unhappy, unstable, caretaking role where change was the enemy.

I forgot about the other Lisa - the one that I used to be - the one that was passionate and charismatic, and loved change.  Stay in a job for more than five years - NEVER - BORING.  Embracing new experiences, new friends.  Instead I hunkered down, pulling tighter and tighter into myself trying to ride out storm after storm after storm.  Just a facsimile, a shadow.  Cortisol levels climbing and climbing, pushed beyond fight or flight.    

The storms never stopped coming, and I would battle the waves, yanking and pulling and struggling to get everyone out of the water.  With less time between each storm, and weaker each and every time.  

It was about 16 months ago that I went in to my Doctor for a cough, and he sent me to a cardiologist.  I thought, what nonsense is this.  But he was right, the chronic stress, high blood pressure had taken a toll on my heart.  Still I couldn't conceive of change - until my friends finally broke through and woke me - and I started making grown-up and hard choices.  

Terrible choices that still give haunt to my sleep.  But now I find myself also having lovely, pleasant dreams of a different future as well.  A future filled with laughter and love.  

So, after a "burnout" break, 

I am stepping back to life, to my job, in 2023...

But... 

But... 

I'm going to resolve to protect Lisa better this time around.  For reals.  

I'm supposed to be Lisa 2.0.

Post-cancer Lisa.  More zen and accepting of all the crap that life throws at us, Lisa.  Living in the moment, and choosing happiness, Lisa.  And, I've tried to be that Lisa.  But I'm not so close and deep down inside, the thing that I really haven't been able to figure out has me out of bed tonight, tapping away at keys instead of lying in my comfy bed.

I need to be needed, and I need people to appreciate me.  That's my 'personality overlay'.  That's me.  Which is why I am crushed, catapulted down a dark well when people who are supposed to know me, blame me for what's wrong with the world. Or what's wrong in their world.

My husband has a mental health condition.  He's been diagnosed with a variety of different things at different times.  Prescribed a variety of different medications.  Some have worked a bit.  Some have worked a lot.  Some haven't worked at all.  And, he's on a rinse and repeat cycle with all of this.  First time he got sick, his family lined up squarely against me... and he joined them.  Or maybe it was vice versa and they joined him... but they were all convinced that I was the cause of all that was wrong with his world.  

I was floored by the attack.  By the vitriol, the hatred, the lack of understanding, the accusations.  And, the bizarre overstepping of boundaries by some quasi family members.  Flash forward a couple of years, and we have a more muted version of the same drama happening.   Now, of course, the toll of all that drama the first time around, all that blame the first time around, had made me sick.  Or to say it in a more fair way, amongst all that toxicity, blame and anger, I stopped caring for me while fighting with them.  So, for this rinse and repeat cycle, I'm a few months out of the end of radiation treatment and not feeling myself.  On this cycle, we have a more civil and restrained go around.  When he starts to unravel, I tell him I can't do it again.  I can't be blamed again.  And, so he left to live with his family.  

We eventually made our way back to each other again, and I made my way back to work.  And, started the Lisa 2.0 process in earnest.  Fought through panic attacks, sleepless nights, seemingly insurmountable self-doubt to get to a better version of me.  But, now we are on another rinse and repeat cycle, and the blame is back.  And, my tolerance for toxicity and anger has evaporated.  Tonight I lost myself in the anger, and I hate the way that makes me feel.  The anger is so damaging, but the hurt, the lack of understanding... I don't have the words.  This blame for his illness hits me somewhere that makes me unable to get my legs underneath me.  My balance goes, it's that feeling after the spinny rides at the amusement park, part nauseous, part dizzy, mostly struggling to stay upright.

I've been told that I need to take some responsibility - like the responsibility for the two teenagers, the nephew, the cat, dog, horse, vehicles, house isn't enough.  I've been told that HIS problems are MY fault.  I've been told that if I really showed him love, then this wouldn't happen.

My head calls bullshit, he owns his thoughts, his health, his illness and I own mine.  But my heart, well, my heart is broken.  Tomorrow, I will square my shoulders, throw my head up, smile and keep on swimming.  

But tonight, I'm going to cry.

How many of us hate the thought of disappointing someone that we care about?   I've been meeting fairly regularly with a psychologist - it began as a way for me to figure out how to get back to work with at least the illusion of sanity, and it's becoming more and more like an  archeological dig - each session digs away and we find another layer, another plateau, and another look at the reasons for my choices... made either consciously or unconsciously.

At the end of today's session, the psychologist asked me to think about something - and she said, "if you don't think you can, if you feel like it's not right, don't hesitate to tell me.  You won't disappoint me.  You don't have to do this to please me."  Thud. I felt it like a lead weight dropped from my head to my gut.  Don't worry about disappointing someone else?  About not pleasing them?

Beyond that she wouldn't judge me, lies this place where it would be okay for someone to be disappointed in me.  I built myself into this unsustainable place of trying so very hard to never disappoint.  Only to find myself failing, and crashing and careening around in these vain attempts to be this perfect version of myself.  And, the joys in life can get ruined by the shoulds that come before or after.  I SHOULD have planned something better.  Been kinder.  Be thinner.  I SHOULD find a way to be a better mother.  A better wife.  A better role model for my children.  My house SHOULD be cleaner.  My car SHOULDN'T be filled with doggy foot prints and unwashed saddle pads.  My bathrooms SHOULD be painted by now.  I SHOULD be able to get my butt into work every day like a normal person.

How I wish I could be this 'should' girl.  This girl who doesn't run into this wall of fatigue.  Who can get everything that she wants to get done, done.  Can do all the right things.  And, still carve out space for herself.  

And, who doesn't have to get angry to stand up for herself.  Who doesn't have to be pushed past her limits and turn into "the bitch" just to advocate for herself.  

I have a sneaky suspicion that I am far from alone.  A big part of this 2.0 version has been to actually believe something that a dear friend spent a year trying to get me to hear, much less believe.  Over and over he would say "it's a problem, but it's not your problem'.  And, over and over I would nod and pretend to listen, all the while trying to figure out how I should help, what I should do, what I should not do, figure out whose fault it all was.  After all,  if I wasn't helpful, who was I?

Leaving that behind has been frustratingly difficult.  It's like the christmas lights that you just threw in the box and they are all tangled up.  And, so you need to carefully tease it all apart.  Just when you think you have one strand free, another knot appears.  Mine are called Responsibility.  Fear of Disappointing.  Guilt.  Anger.  

If you need me, I'll be curled up in a corner praying for patience as I untangle 50 years of crossed lines. 

Two years ago, right when I was diagnosed with cancer, several Doctors suggested I read Gabor Mate’s book, When the Body Says No.  I wrote about the book then, about how the book made me feel like it was either my fault or my parent’s fault that I had cancer.  At the time, I couldn’t hear its message because the lines it drew were too straight, too direct.  They painted my inability to cope with stress as the reason for the Big C, and my childhood as the reason I couldn’t cope with stress.

In my blame seeking state, neither were acceptable answers.  And, I couldn't see anything but blame. Understanding without blame, without judgement was a concept my head might have been able to understand but was a foreign language to my heart. 

But now I’m finally open to hearing the message of this book – the message that we live in our bodies, and these bodies of ours are driven by our emotions.  How we see the world relates directly to how we were raised in the world.  

As the child of imperfect parents, as an imperfect mother and an imperfect wife, I have always rejected the notion that we can or should escape our accountabilities by blaming our upbringing.  But that’s been my longstanding misunderstanding, for you see, you don’t have to be a blamer to try and understand yourself, and understanding yourself starts at the beginning.  And, understanding doesn't automatically make you an unaccountable victim of circumstance, with no part in the play.          

If I’m honest, I've struggled with myself since my mother died.  And, railed against myself for being so weak.  Even writing that down makes me feel…insufficient.  Everyone’s mother dies.  Why should I be so special, so dramatic about the natural order of the world? 

Only now am I beginning to understand that it was because of the pedestal that I as on from the time I was a child, the one my mother loved to see me on, the one I clung to at all costs, that blocked my ability to listen to my body, to listen to me.

My pedestal of being the ‘good’ daughter, kind, hardworking, successful, helpful to the extreme, made even more necessary to compensate for being the ‘fat’ daughter… It was what I thought defined me.  And, whenever I would feel myself slipping off, I would clamber back up.  Brush off the dust and bruises, ignore the aches and pains – the migraines, the rashes, the asthma attacks, the hives -  all of these were just my body betraying my need to be my best and most idealized version of myself. 

My pedestal cracked to the core when my mother died.  Not only because she was the eyes through which I saw myself, but because my pedestal was built on a tripod – of my mother and father’s love and my husband’s undying commitment.  That was my base – I had my girls, my friends, I had my work – but their perception of me was my core.  Without my mother, made worse by my feeling that I had let her down in her last days, the pedestal started swaying.

Some time and spackle later, I thought that I was finding my way back.  Only to lose the next leg of the tripod – when my husband became ill, and his commitment to me wavered, my world spun.  And, I couldn’t understand why – I shielded myself in anger, I found enemies (some just, some unjust) to fight and I dragged myself forward.  Still unrelenting – still clenching my jaw and ignoring my body whining and moaning at me – I pushed through and tried to clamber back up on my tarnished and swaying pedestal. 

Is it a surprise then that I spent that year, with a growing sore on my tongue, ignoring it…wincing when I brushed my teeth but not googling what it could be?  Not saying a word to my Doctor? What could have been a simple nothing the previous year turned into surgery and radiation treatments and lifelong (albeit mild) effects. 

The Big C and recovery from treatment sent the pedestal rocking so hard that I finally had to get off.  And, it’s taken me a couple of years and lots of help to understand, finally laying BLAME aside, that the effort of understanding the WHY, understanding what makes up this pedestal I clung to, is probably the most valuable thing I’ve ever done for myself.

The pedestal has no place in my 2.0 Version of myself.  So even though I often want to clamber back up, and sometimes pop up there without even thinking, I am trying (and sometimes succeeding!) at spending more time listening to the voice I'm so used to ignoring and testing my limits with kindness instead of a stubbornly clenched jaw. 

PS.  Dear select reader - I went a wee bit off topic on this post, it was supposed to be mostly about stress... but blame and understanding your stress is at the bottom of it all and that's where I went.  But for anyone who hasn't watched Dr. Brene Brown on blame, the link is below.  I love her and she makes me think... often.  And, I've also linked Dr. Gabor Mate's book, which is insightful.  And scary.  

http://drgabormate.com/book/when-the-body-says-no

In my quest to put my little Humpty Dumpty life back together, I've been on an internal voyage in some damned choppy water.  I have to be honest, it's been challenging, interesting, demanding and far less than fun.  What's worse than having a life that looks like a shipwreck?  How about diving below the water to pick away at the pieces of the shipwreck, only to find all these clues keeping pointing right back at you?

I've been working the little system I have in place to try and rebalance my life so that I can find joy where there was stress, and peace where there was confusion and anger.  And, most importantly, trying to find a way to have the energy coming in be MORE or at least EQUAL to the energy going out.  As much as I would have loved a reason for why things are as they are, or better yet, for there to be a magic potion, there doesn't seem to be one.  And, so, if nothing changes if nothing changes, then I guess it's high time to change something.  

Almost every week, I've been seeing a psychologist and while my time with her has been filled with all of the self-help catch words that pepper our social media feeds and seem trite for the sarcastic and witty among us, it's a lot harder to brush away and ignore when the seemingly trite words need to be accompanied by some tangible action on my part.  Some change.  Take words like self-compassion.  Blech, I can't write those words without squaring my shoulders.  I immediately snort, and think about how I should just be able to put my shoulder to any challenge.  Self-compassion just sounds like granola crunching BS.  Or how about that damned oxygen mask metaphor?  Sure, sure, I think to myself.... that's fine for someone else, but not for me.

So then, the tiresome psychologist probes, why would it be good for someone else, and not for me?  Just like a fish on a line, I dangle there... caught between my brain that recognizes the stupidity of my thoughts and my heart that tells me that I need to perform.  I need to be 'all that'.  Smart, kind, hard-working, passionate.  A good mother, there when things get tough.  A loyal wife.  A great friend.  

Defined only by what others see in me.  

Oh wait a second.  That seems less than healthy... and not what I would want for my girls.  So why should I settle for it?  Is it because, rather than feeling like a valuable person in my own right, I feel like I am valuable when I am an asset to someone else's?  Is it because rather than just feeling a bit guilty when I can't or don't help someone, I feel unworthy?  I feel shame, that 'soul-eating emotion', as Carl Jung put it.   Oh dear Lord, that just seems so...unhealthy... and, just maybe, true.  

You would think that this realization would be freeing... I've been on the edges of it for such a long time and the movie version of this story would have the cloudy skies open up to a beautiful sun over a quiet and peaceful ocean.  But the opposite is true.  It's heartbreaking, and it tugs deep into my soul and plunges me down into the darkest and deepest waters.  But I trust that this plunge will be worth it... and that the life rebuilt will be better... more sustainable...more...me.

So, I've finally made it back to work.  I'm lucky enough to work with amazing, kind, brilliant and dedicated people.  But their brightness and quickness makes me blink like I'm staring into the noon sun sometimes.  Friends say that I seem like I always was.  Able to speak my mind, see the big picture.  But this return to work has been hard.  You see, a cog slipped, the cd got a scratch, a gear got stuck, and so things that I took for granted are shockingly, ridiculously hard.

Reading and writing is hard.  Writing is the worst, instead of being cathartic, instead of being able to just 'fall into' it, and let the words and thoughts flow, they get lost.  They swirl and twirl around me and as I chase one down, the follow-up, the next line is lost.  This damned post is like pouring cold molasses in a freezer.  It's there, but it won't flow.  At work, I  flew out of my office in frustration trying to capture some thoughts in a simple email.  An email that took me literally hours to write, instead of minutes.

And, then there is the reading.  I can read, I can analyze, but the stuff I read seems to keep getting filed in the wastebasket in my brain.  And, get dumped before I can go and fetch it.  So, my viewpoint is there, but what I've read is not.  

I've known for months that all was not the same.  That I wasn't the same as I was, pre-radiation, with a couple of scars to show for it.  And so I dragged my feet and dreaded returning to work.  I've spoken to my doctors, over and over again, and there is no magic potion to make this all better.  The Radiation Oncologist, when I finally saw him and told him that something wasn't right, was pretty direct.  And, quick to point out that it couldn't be the radiation.  When he turned to me and said "well, your brains aren't in your mouth", I felt like a ballon pricked by a needle.  My GP is less sure of the cause, and I know what I know about how I feel and when.  But the cause matters not. The impact is the same.  I find a bit of comfort in my kind colleague who has fought her own Big C battles and relates to this feeling of being less than before.  And, of course, I'm just supremely lucky to be working with friends... people who I trust and whose support means the world to me.

And, so I do all the things that I'm told to do and some that just help.  I see my acupuncturist, I do yoga classes with an amazingly talented and soothing instructor, I practice mindfulness, I see a psychologist.  I have a little pit crew assembled to put me back on the road.  But, I dunno.  For you see, gentle reader, I'm writing this with tears streaming down my face, and a headache pounding in the back of my skull.  It's so crazy hard to do this, you see.  I'm writing, rewriting, getting lost, rereading and getting lost again in my own muddied thoughts.  

I wasn't going to broadcast this, who wants folks to know that there's a slipped gear?  But I've got to practice this stupidly, ridiculously hard, thing.  And, this is what is top of mind to blog about... so there you have it.  Here's to hoping that this blogging practice is like a yoga practice.  It may look like crap, but I'm just going to breathe through it, and keep trying.  

It's been months and months since I finished my cancer treatment.  I've been off work for almost a year now and I ended my radiation torture months and months ago.  How naive I was thinking that I'd be back to work in November.  Or January.  Even though I couldn't eat or drink, I wanted to get back to Normal so badly and figured that if it could get that bad that fast it could get better just as quick. 

Now I wonder and worry if Normal is slipping away from me.  The physical scars are fading, the abuse heaped on those poor mouth and throat tissues is pretty well healed and I'm adjusted to my new normal.  Coca Cola still taste like sewage, I'd just as soon drink battery acid as have a glass of orange juice, but I'm pretty much put back together again.  Except this little Humpty Dumpty seems to have lost her head.  

It's so hard to explain, even to myself, what it's like to lose that edge that you had, that glimmer of brightness or quickness in your thinking.  Ideas would link for me, I'd see connections and I took my mind for granted.  I'd write, just for me, I loved to pour my heart out through my fingertips... and the words came easily.  The grammar, not so  much, but the words would just flow.  

Now...  now each word is stuck in molasses.  Thoughts don't run together, they slowly seep through a fog and get lost and swirled with other thoughts.  Reading has become a chore.  Instead of losing myself in a book, I labour through.  

I so remember that tired working mommy feeling, that overwhelmed feeling of being ON, tired, on edge and ON all the time.  Having that rolodex in my head of every appointment, every schedule, every deadline, every colleague that needed a push, every relationship to nurture.  I'd love to have the capacity, the endurance, the brain power to feel that again.  What I feel now is different, so very different.  It's a heaviness in my head and a tired that won't go.  A tired that makes you slow and stupid ... that pounds at the back of your head and sits in your bones.  I don't know where my synapses went, and what's worse, I worry that they are gone for good.  The Doctors say vaguely reassuring words, but they don't know why this happens to some people or what causes it.

For me, because I'm a complicated girl, and nothing can be simple, it's even less clear because there are three pieces to my confusion puzzle.  Is it from the radiation treatment?  Or is it that plus stress from my husband moving out due to his struggles with the ugly black dog in his head?  Or, just to kick a girl when she is down, is it the conveniently timed menopause?  

So I try and build around the edges of this foggy, grey puzzle.  Right now, this blog post is one piece of this puzzle.  If I can just put together one little corner of the puzzle, just a few pieces that would click together then maybe I'll start to believe that I can get myself put back together again... 

I have a sneaking fear that I am a drama addict.  If you knew my family, you'd find me to be not nearly as dramatic as some.  I always thought of myself as a bit of the voice of reason in my family.  A sometimes temperamental voice of reason, but still - pragmatic, counselling for forgiveness.  But, but, but... sometime over this little period of time where I was diagnosed with and treated for cancer, I realized how complicit I am in the drama that sucks the life and joy out of my family.

Some in my family have drama filled, chaotic lives rife with problems, challenges and tales of victimization.  I tried to help, but those efforts just cost me and backfired.  I tried to protect my parents from some of the drama - another futile and costly attempt.  And, so I withdrew, enough to be safe, to be above the fray.  I was just going to do my best to be as kind as possible without getting sucked into hurtful and silly arguments and exchanges.

I was on a bit of a high horse about how well I managed to stay 'above it all'.  But this summer, during my treatment, some in my family found another bit of proof that I was the 'favoured child' and I boiled over in anger.  It was good to have something to be angry about, something so much more tangible than the lurking threat of little cancer cells.  And, I seethed at their concern with themselves while I suffered through ridiculously hard radiation treatments.  

As I started to feel a bit better, and started peeking down from my high horse, I started to feel a bit stupid.  After 48 years on the planet, and sisters who have called me every name in the book and then some, how could I possibly justify being angry because they are angry?  How can I justify wasting any life energy on grievances that I can't possibly fix?  I thought I had changed my part in the play, but did I really?  

The cycle is exactly the same as it has always been, a grievance (real or imagined), they lash out, I react, I withdraw, they apologize, and we go around again.  When I was 23, my boss in my first real job, asked me to not have my family call me at work because I became too upset and agitated.  And, at 48 I allow myself to feel the same way?  

If the cycle is the same, then I haven't done a damn thing any different.  And, so I decided it was high time that I stop being a partner in the drama.  To leave my supporting role in this tragic play.  

How did it work out, you may wonder gentle reader?  Well, I just failed my first test.  Miserably and horribly.  We are in the process of clearing out my Dad's house and we all spoke up for what we wanted.  My mother's dining set, which had been her mother's before her was to go to me.  But I wasn't sure that I wanted it or would even use it.  And, said as much.  One of my sisters said she wanted it, so that was all good.  But a change in her circumstances led to conversations about storing it, about storage lockers and all forms of options.  

I felt a tug of responsibility for safeguarding the dining room set, and sent a poorly worded email and am back living in the land of drama.  Of my own creation. Doesn't seem that I learned much of anything, except that choosing to not be complicit in drama is a bit harder than it would seem to be!