white noise

I woke up this morning with the realization that I don’t have to dread it if the telephone rings. In fact, for the last three days, the world has been strangely peaceful as if a storm has finally passed leaving behind a snow covered landscape. You know that softness and serenity that lingers behind with the fallen snow? It’s how I feel although not so much surrounded by it as much as engulfed in it. It emanates from the inside and I can feel it radiate outward, passing through my heart and leaving through my fingers and toes.

I no longer feel powerless or as if I’m under constant attack. None of the problems I face today seem insurmountable. Barbie’s in the hospital. Either she’ll recover, or she won’t. We talked last July about this trip being a sort of rite of passage for her. The visit became personal for her then, and I realized it, but it has meant tormenting and bullying my father just enough to combat his resistance. I want him to have his trump card, but I also want him to know that I NEED them to be my parents, that as much as Barbie wants it, I need it and for them to play by my rules. In this case, that means allowing me to be the daughter, not the caretaker, the guardian, or the meat shield.

If Gail, my future mom-in-law, gets overly excited about some wedding detail, I sit calmly now and repeat the word “stop” until she listens to what I have to say. There are times when her energy turns frenetic and I must retreat before she exhausts me. She doesn’t get upset or take it personally, or if she does, she says something about it. We get along so well I may have to feel guilty for having a mother-in-law who’s so wicked-awesome.

I’m communicating again instead of feeling like a hostage with no power or the will to work through my own problems. My hope for the future is that I learn to recognize them for what they are much sooner than I have in the recent past. Not just recognize them, but act on them and fix them, even if that means the outcome isn’t the one I first hoped for.