In someways, it was not a difficult weekend. There were not too many demands on our time, and even if we did not accomplish a lot, we did get to spend time together.
In other ways, it was a difficult weekend. I had to make a more clearly marked separation from someone. It is not something I wanted to do, but for the sake of my family, and the long term benefit of everyone, I felt it was the only thing I could do. But that does not make any easier to do what I had to do.
Because despite it's necessity, I know what it's like to be cut off. I know what it's like to have something disintegrate, and fell the desperation that there is nothing you can do about it. To have a huge hole in your heart, and realize that anything you try to do to reach out and mend things will only make things worse. That you can't even communicate how much you are hurt.
It has made me self-conscious in all my relationships outside my immediate family. Every unanswered message, every expression I make, every interaction I have, I now question what I am doing. My mind is clouded by the guilt of what I have done, and I see my own relationships through that prism.
The curtain of shyness that I have mentioned before in other posts is starting to descend again. I find it increasingly difficult to reach out and interact.
And yet. It is theater time this weekend, with Charlotte's Web starting this Saturday, and I have volunteered to help. And so help I must, even though I prefer to withdraw. Benjamin is contributing to the play with a small part. He plays a lead character's father, and it is amazing to see how much he's grown. Just a few months ago, we were noticing he was a s tall as his mother. Now he will soon pass my height. His voice is changing. The young boy is turning into a teenager.
I helped him get a new pair of pants. We went to the men's shop, not the boys. He needed them for Cotillion, which he started up again yesterday. His class is composed of about a dozen girls and him. He has also started an acting class that is also all female except for him. When I was his age, I should have had such problems!
We watched the movie Les Miserables at long last this weekend. I thought it was good, but I think it touched Alison emotionally more deeply than it did me. I might have known too much about what was coming. What I did not expect is that the singing was non-stop, almost like an opera. I prefer to hear some dialogue now and then, and although the music wasn't bad, its constancy kind of wore me out. And I think the grinding poverty contrasted with the luxury class kind of went over the heads of most of my conservative friends who have seen it, like it did with The Great Gatsby. Oh, well.
I start work again. I feel ill prepared for the type of interactions it will demand. But guilt or not, descending curtain and all, work waits for no man. Unless you don't have to work for a living. But that's a whole other topic.
Until next time,
T. M. Strait
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