Time is confusing me now. I seem to get lost in it. A scent, transporting me to another time. And sudden unprompted flashes of images from long ago, seemingly hiding around every corner, tumbling in and out of my days, blurring my present into a collage of yesterdays superimposed upon today.

What is real? What is true? What contains value, and meaning, and persists?

I could, of course, blame the times, and it plays its part. But more so I think it is being an empty nester.  Part of me is still ridiculously waiting for the life I had to be returned to me. Like a dog, in an empty house, waiting hopefully by the door, for any sound that might signal, my person has come back. But they don't live here anymore, they moved on, and away, without me. I am left behind. My only child moved away, all the way across the country. And painfully she doesn't talk to me anymore. It's been well over a year now of unanswered texts. Plus you add to that, I thought of her as my son, and now I know she is my daughter. And it becomes harder to know what is true of my own life. My memories so real to me, so dear to me, do not exist for her in the same way. She wants nothing to do with her life before. She has no affection for the child she was. I loved that child, that boy, now he is gone. I love my child, my daughter, but now she too is gone. And the pictures I have left of her, except for a few from the months before she moved away, ones where she looks mopey and sad in my presence, are ones of a child who does not exist anymore. A child in boys clothes doing this and that. In my arms on Halloween, out trick or treating. 21 years of memories, the beach, Christmases, bike riding, on and on and on. But I can't take comfort in them, can't be sentimental with pictures of the past, because that would hurt her. Her identity, her sense of self. She says, those aren't me. So these pictures make me feel farther away from the child she is today. And all I want now, is to know her now. But I can't, she wont let me. And I feel I betray her with my own memories. Yet I can't help but have the thoughts, I remember when....

 I miss her laughter. It filled the house, it filled me. Heck I even miss her mopey moments.

So my mind hopscotches through time, I will be washing dishes, or getting up in the middle of the night to feed the cat, and bits of time, like little pebbles, hit me over and over. To when she was born, to a moment when I was little, to when I was a teenager, to when she was a teenager.  An impression of the beach, when she is little, when I am little.  I am a child, I am a mom.  I am surrounded by family, I am alone. 

 I revisit the year we struggled through her transition, my fear it turns out hurting us more than anything else did. But by midway through the fourth month, I learned to breath again. And I saw that she was ok, and that life would be ok. She was home for a year after that, a year where I was supportive without all the drama of extreme worry. But since she won't talk to me at all now, I find no recourse but to believe our whole lives together exist for her only in that small window of time. 

I know I am meant to be left behind, everyone tells me so, little birds are meant to grow up, and fly away from the nest, off to their own lives, their own adventures. But she took the past away. And she isn't in my present. And I am fretful, doubtful, that she will be in my future. Though she lives and breathes in me forever. Wherever I am, she is as well. Always, forever and ever. That much she can not change. But her voice, her face, I don't even know what she looks like today, that is all lost to me.

How do I have happy memories, if the person I have those memories with, doesn't think of them as happy memories? It feels a bit like I fell asleep, and dreamed a dream of a life together, of having a family. And now I have awoken, to find the life I thought I had was merely an illusion. Our closeness, our happiness, a delusion. Just a dream. (fortunately my husband is still here, and he also fell into delusion, so we look over at each other and say, you know I remember such and such, and I thought we were happy. Do you recall anything like that? And we take comfort in that we shared the same dream; and were both shook awake. And that we are both still a bit groggy and confused.)

And all this to say, oh let me first say that I am not on the floor, as I probably have made myself sound like I have face planted into the ground, and am prone, immobile, sucking in dust and dirt. And that, that is how I will exist from now on. No, I am ok. I mean yes sometimes I wear my sadness like it's a sparkly tiara. But happiness is always around my edges, like sunlit pink gold around a grey cloud. And I feel its warmth, and light, and color, just on the other side. So I am trying to see my way forward. To walk forward, to create my life, today and tomorrow, with what I can. Not with wishes, but with purpose, and action. 

I live with ghosts, a house cluttered with the past, like my grandparents, and plenty of their stuff live in the basement. As I say that, I realize I am right next to my nana's desk and chair, and I am uncertain if there actually is a room in the house that doesn't have something of hers in it. My child still lives here, though her physical body is nowhere to be found, her presence permeates every room. A green towel that still hangs in the bathroom (I know, I know, but it needs to be there). Her cupboard in the kitchen, with her cat plates and mugs. Her room is her room (albeit there are some canned goods and pandemic prep stuff under her desk.) She is everywhere and nowhere. And I don't see a way I can change either of those things. But I don't think that is a condition that it is necessary to change, in order for me to move forward. Bit heavy dragging it all along with me, but I don't need to take big steps. And I am just the sort that doesn't like to leave anything behind.  I do however think it would be beneficial if I become more linear in time. Clear the mist a bit.

It's been awhile, thought I'd start with a winter throw back. This is the best of my multiple failed attempts to capture a flock of birds, mixing with snowflakes, WinterBirdSky. Reminds me of my writing, it was there in the air around me, swirling, flying, I could see and feel it, but capturing it, eluded me. But it was magic in the moment.

    Perhaps I have posted this photo before, but if I spend time going about looking for a photo, then I shall never get to the part where I actually write the post.

    I can't recall where I left off....In February my son insisted on quitting college, said he was depressed and even mentioned suicide, which was startling, awful. I still don't know if it was just a power play, as he was going into college on Fridays to just hang out and play video games with friends, had a group he went out to lunch with, and he seemed really happy. He had even at one point said that he was the happiest he had ever been. It was hard to get him out of the building to come home. But he knew once he said those words, he had won. All I could do was negotiate for him to finish out the year. Now he is doing the year leave of absence thing, working on making a video game (with friends from school), finishing the art site he has been working on for over a year (he keeps completely revamping it), and working on his digital drawing/painting. He works on these things daily. He still goes into school once a week to hang out and play video games. I don't really think he will go back next year, but I can always hope. The deal was that if he finished out the year and did the year leave of absence thing, then he would be free to work on his projects, without having to get a job for that year.

This was originally longer, but better keep it on the shorter for now.
I've been rambling through the bramble a bit much.

I can't believe how long it has been since I stopped by here.

Actually I am doing really well. I feel normal most of the time. That does need a little * by it though, pointing out that I haven't exactly been doing a whole heck of a lot.  I made teaching my son how to drive a priority in July, and I made sure I wasn't doing anything to compromise my ability to do that.

    I can feel my life changing, but in super slow motion. In late spring my son graduated high school.  In late August I started driving with him to and from college- he commutes to a local branch of Penn State.  He goes to college for computer science (*update late December- after first semester he switched to IST- still computers but with a lot less math required). In November he got his license (yeah!). He has decided that he still wants me in the car for awhile longer though  (and I agree)- because the commute involves some busy highway traffic. But the long range plan is that at some point he will drive himself without me also being in the car. Well that is my plan anyway, it isn't something he seems to be striving for. He feels now that he has his license, he should be able to just relax and not have to drive so much and practice, practice, practice.  But at least now I know if I ever am unable to drive, he still will be able to get to school. So that gives me some breathing room. By junior and senior year he will go to Penn State's main campus. But since he is at home now, and I still drive to and from school with him, it doesn't feel radically different from high school (for me). He is definitely changing though -becoming more social, more comfortable. He says he is the happiest he has ever been. 

My son does however talk about wanting to be an artist instead. If he wasn't enjoying hanging around the other kids so much, he would no doubt be asking to drop out and spend his days making art on the computer. I want him to have the computer science/IST degree (he picked that major ) even if he then goes on to be an artist. You know the whole having something to fall back on thing.  I want him to have work that he enjoys, and I also want him to be able to afford to eat- and not have to struggle. Especially perpetually. It is one thing to struggle for a couple of years- it is another, to always be struggling to make ends meet. 

The thing is he complains about not having enough time to do art- but the computer programming stuff he is always working on in his free time- is um his own decision-not school work. He now has two servers, I don't even understand what he is doing with them. I know he is working on creating his own site. But I don't think he needs his own servers for that. ?

Okay this post was originally scary long- so I broke it into pieces- 

There was a time when I was like..
a New year= a new me
Now I say, No way.
My New Years resolution is just to find out what works for me, and do it.
It involves trial and error and tweaking. It is not about rules. Or some program I can be on or fall off of. It is about aiming for something and finding out my best way of working toward it.

Sure the specters of ideal weight, hair color, parenting, housekeeping, wanting to be a writer, at times still haunt me. But it is starting to feel different from the way it did before.
There is no idealized version of me, tsk tsking over my shoulder. There is just the me I am now sitting here, working toward things that matter to me, and letting go (eventually) of the things that I can't control. I am breathing in the space where I am. And mostly I feel good.

My son is a senior in high school (my only child), so I value spending time with him. He plans on commuting for the first two years of college. But I am very aware that over the next several years my life will be changing.

I feel an internal shifting. I know it wont settle and land for a good long while. And okay.

I am so tired of writing software underlining my words in red.
Smidge IS a word, and I have it spelled correctly.
Leave in utero alone.
It goes on and on.
And since my spelling is horrible, I can have no confidence in it.
So I have to look up every underlined word.

Quadruple drat

Oh apparently I've totally botched distinguishing affect from effect. What is the effect of not realizing this? As I wannabe writer (and someone who doesn't like seeming an idiot) persistent bad grammar affects everything. This issue has always confused me, so I gave up using affect (at all) years ago.  I thought it meant acting- an affectation-an emotion one doesn't feel. But that is not the impression I just got. No. And the effect is that I feel stupid, that is how this affects me. Affect is a verb, which I clearly needed to have been using. Oops.

But most of what I read about it, just made me confused. The whole aardvark easy noun thing for remembering affect is a verb. And if you replace transform which is a noun for affect in a sentence and it works then that shows it is right because affect is a verb. Say what????? Though elsewhere on that site, it does say to try using-to transform- as in transforming- transformed- etc which are verbs- but that if you can use transformation then it isn't affect it is effect (that I can comprehend).

However, I am still not sure if I am using them right. Eeeerrr, boggy brain.

Darn research, and grammar, time swallowing annihilators.