I went to my parents' house today to use their CD burner, as my laptop is ancient and still thinks "CD-ROM" sounds neato and futuristic.
Two weeks ago, my dad called to tell me he and my stepmom were separating after being together for 13 years or so. He is selling the house and moving to Upstate NY to work out of his company's office in Cazenovia and Lori is moving back to Massachusetts to be with her family. That, of course, sucks. It didn't really hit me until today, when I walked in to the boxes and piles of what I know of as home. It has shattered me today. I had trouble breathing in there from trying to contain the emotions I had. That's it! There goes my home! There goes my family!
When I was a child, I hated change; fear it, loathed it, tried to sneak around it. I took my parents' divorce harder than the other kids, simply because of all the changes to endure. I didn't want to know another house, know another parent, know another address. When I was in college I embraced change: sought it, reveled in it, lavished in its freedoms. Now here I am, stupidly shaking from the fear of change once again. It is time for them to separate and I believe it will be good for my father to get out of NoVA and head north to the trout streams, the dry summers and the quiet. It will be good for Lori to get back to her family. It will be good.
What is good and right rarely is equal to what is easy and clear.
I don't want to lose my dad to those miles. It's ok if I move away, but if he does move it screws with the balance of the universe! How skewed....
I look at all the photos I have with Lori and Dad from these years and wonder where to display them. Its not like she's my mom and I have a reason to have her around the house, but there she is with me and Dad at my graduation, at my birthday, on vacation. She was family. And it's not like we're close enough that we will ever keep in touch post-breakup.
It's just another of the cogs of chaos that have been whittled into the machine of my emotional life this year. I just can't believe I'm taking it this hard.
This is jumbled, poorly written and a Class IV rapid on the stream of consciousness. Sounds about right.
1 comment:
Dude, that sucks in one of those ways that change sucks.
Especially interesting to me was the question of what to do with the pictures...
So often we have these externally-implanted notions of what we "should" do, how we "should" handle the situation, and who we "should" keep close (if even visually).
But knowing you, Spooner, you'll have whatever pictures up that you damn well please!:)
PS--I love the line "This is...a Class IV rapid on the stream of consciousness."
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