It's funny that when I went to paste that, it pasted itself again and again and again like a refrain. Fitting because that's what it feels like. To have that in your head and in your gut. You should be able to fix it, whatever it is!
But a lot of shit just does not work that way.
And holding that belief can make a bunch of shit worse. It drives you to impatience with other people feeling like shit when that's what they need to do right now, for instance.
Theory: Huck-For-Someone and I were very good at being happy together, but we had no idea how to be sad or mad or in turmoil. The only coping mechanism we ever figured out was sex and that can't fix everything. I would drown that motherfucker in strawberry milk before I let him be unhappy for a second, and life just doesn't work like that. He has my same refrain, turns out, only as good as what he can provide for another. I wholeheartedly felt that and believed that. That meant I was unable to see a difficult situation versus a personal failure. THAT WAS THE FAILURE, believing that it was all about whether I failed or succeeded. And now the statute of limitations has run out on it.
That's what I was thinking about when that text came in, about that feeling and how it doesn't work a lot. It's not bad, it's just not always the right tool. So I had decided that the thing I am gonna pray for the next ten days is a laughing stick. If I whip that out, you have a belly laugh so that you can't feel your shitties just for that length of laugh. It doesn't fix anything. It just lets you have/remember other feelings, not only what you are enduring.
For instance. Today is Mark's birthday. You would think that death would get you out of the stupid birthday thing, but no. My daughter got a text from his mother 'today's his birthday don't forget'. She was not going to forget. And Joyce was gonna send that text. Every year. And Mark is still dead.
Just between TJ and me, we have this wicked joke, "and Mark is still dead" when any of us get on a roll about what we have to endure / are stuck there. There are things that my daughter has to endure, like a child with special needs (and Mark is still dead). I have tried before and in my head relentlessly to remove some of what she has to endure, but that's not possible. So when her prayer today was to be able to stop feeling like she was doing nothing but enduring, I proposed hitting her with a stick that would make her feel hilarity for like one minute (?). Yes, please! She liked that idea so much that when I have the girls for sleepover this weekend, we're going to make laughing sticks. If for nothing else, you have to laugh instead of complain in the face of chores or eating vegetables (things we must endure).
At the end of the day, I decided to pray for something that would still let me provide for others. So it's not like I can ever really shake that at my core. But in the face of all of these things that all of these people have had to endure are enduring will endure, I've just kind of changed some of my mind about what I mean by "provide"
my mother bought it for me in Big Sky - uhhh ok ?? - because now that I live in Vegas, don't I have to be all about christmas?, and she thought "how readily it opened its legs might be inspiring" = laughing stick
