A Powerful Appetite

" You owe me." Words I thought today but thank God, did not say out loud. What an ugly realization to find that I feel like youngest son, especially, owes me for the years I have parented him. I found myself thinking, "I wouldn't have homeschooled you had I know you were going to be making these decisions. I would have sent you to school and saved myself years of not having any solitude." What a fucking martyr I am trying to play. God, the truth is ugly some days.

Thankfully dearest one has wisdom and perspective and is able to handle hard days with hard words to say without taking any of it personally. Without making any of it about him. He took me by the shoulders tonight and lovingly, but firmly, told me I had to stop taking youngest son's behaviour as being all about me. For the sake of the relationship and for my own sake, too. I wanted to hit him because the truth hurt too much. "I don't want to be grown up," I thought to myself. Then he told me I needed to get off the pity pot as well. Oh shit. I prayed that I wouldn't harden my heart to the truth. That I wouldn't put up walls because I courted self deception more than reality. Tears and more tears. This man of mine who prayed as a young boy, "God, if you give me half the wisdom of Solomon I will never want anything else." When push comes to shove he has wisdom every time.

Tonight I am feeling like I know very little. I sit here and wonder if it is going to take a severed relationship to make me truly let go and stop expecting to be in control of it all in order to be okay. I haven't the foggiest idea what to do next. It makes me feel like I have been on a dry drunk for 18 years with very little real sobriety under my belt. While I made supper I thought about how a two year old thinks the world revolves around her and has a temper tantrum as she learns that is not the way the world works.

The other night at the Ash Wednesday Mass the only word that came to me when I prayed about my Lenten journey was "appetite". Of course I right away thought of my struggles with fleshly appetites. I left it at that. Tonight I see that my appetite for power and control is far more damaging and what I need to repent of. Christ have mercy.