Chipper, if you’re reading this, quit sending emails. Talk to your friends. Quit reminding me how lonely you are by sending detailed lists of how fucked up I am. It’s quite as crazy as it sounds, so stop. Remember you yelling into the phone at the American Express telemarketers? While Paul and I had to listen? Yeah. I’m asking you to stop in a much quieter voice.
For the rest of you poor sods, some of whom have known her longer than I have:
I have very regretfully had to delete her user ID, as she’s threatened to use it as a soap box to announce my failings to the world (as if I don’t already do that in double handsful on a reg’lar basis, but whatevs.) She has her own blog, that she pays for, that belongs to her. But I’ve had to take that off my sidebar, at no loss to her. She’s never gotten a single booking referred from this website or she would have phoned me to tell me.
I have happy memories, and I’m going to hang on to them, because they are part of the family lore.
I’d say that one of my issues is setting boundaries, but now that I’m post menopausal and feeling my calling and surrounded by a working model of adult friendship, I’m learning how to do that. What I experienced was abuse, and nobody else ESPECIALLY NOT THE ABUSER gets to call it civil discourse and gracious hospitality. If she wants to try to talk me out of how she abused me by sending abusive emails, that’s heading over to the place where the judge gets to make the call, and I don’t want to go there. She said it was very convenient for me that Paul witnessed most of the yelling. Yes, being yelled at while there was a witness was er, convenient. Definitely convenient. That’s the word I’d use.
I should not have visited her while she was sick. But colds go away. Boundaries stay in place. I should have rented a cabin and left her to yell at her house (she does that a lot.)
And maybe I was depressed when I went, but I really don’t feel that way now. I have communed with the spirits, I have walked in the woods, and I feel like helping someone who has helped me. I’m going to help Paul with his Restorative Justice talk, and then I’m going to start writing again on Monday, since I’ve had a nice long, weird, horrible, exciting, heartening and thought-provoking break, and on Tuesday I’ll spend part of my grandson’s first birthday with him, and I’m going to paint a picture of the dream I had, where I was climbing Moore’s Falls. I will practice my mandolin and cook for my household and try out Terry’s cookie recipe which is so good I could DIE. I will write down more songs, and keep adding to the book of kind words (wrote some more in Cornwall), and prep Theo for surgery (not really but almost.)
I will check in with the editrix of awesomesauce and make a list of friends to call. I’ll do my taxes, although not before I put them off some more. I will continue to live a satisfactory life and when life hands me difficulties and worries, I’ll have friends and family who trust me, and who reciprocate my love and care and trust and appreciation with deeds of shining worth. And words spoken at a conversational volume, because candidly, that was the best thing about going to Cornwall and then getting back to town.
