I used to have access to a computer in the living room and I'd often post/read blogs while watching a show. That is no longer a luxury I have, unfortunately. For the moment, I post on my own laptop with it's broken screen. It's rigged so that it displays on a cheap little 20 inch flatscreen that I purchased mostly to play old Playstation games on. Why is any of this important? I guess it leads into what I've been thinking about a lot lately. Lots of stuff has been running through my head about the idea of ownership.
I keep trying to write something meaningful and insightful about how my parents split up and stuff moved back and forth from place to place. I really can't, though. Then I tried to write something intelligent about raising someone's kid but that all kinda sounded hollow. It's incredibly hard to adjust to a different culture and mindset but that is what I'm slowly having to do and while I'm doing this, the people around me are going through their own changes.
When I first came to Arkansas, I lived with my girlfriend's family and they were completely different from the people I grew up with. I got used to them and we moved out of their house but I felt like I was very close to them. It's been about two years and every time I visit them, it's like everything has changed. The kids aren't running around in capes and hitting each other with plastic swords, they are navigating high school's treacherous waters, they are dating, they are driving!
Closer to home, I've been dating my current girlfriend for almost five years and we've lived with her daughter for almost two years and I think I am still learning new things every week. As a pseudo-parent, I have to watch how I respond and react to the kid but at the same time, I have to treat her as an adult. As a couple, we have to allow ourselves to express exactly what we're thinking without letting emotions override the communication. I've never been one to outright yell and argue but I find that the closer you are with someone, the easier it could be to be that kind of person. Based on that idea, my parents were very close to each other. So, I wrote earlier that my parents split up and I'm certainly not comparing my current relationship to the dysfunctional, stay-together-for-the-kids one they had but I keep coming closer and closer to understanding these people that have seemed so incomprehensible to me before.
I am a child of divorce but I never really asked much more from my parents beyond "Where does my stuff go now?" I always assumed they weren't married because they hated each other. Relationships are so much more complicated then that, though. I can see loving someone and not being together. I can even understand why some people will forgive a cheater, though I hope I'm never in that position. More importantly, I can see more and more of my parents beyond who they are in relation to me. It's honestly a bit unnerving to think about but I guess understanding my parents will help to understand myself in some ways.
I never really addressed the idea of ownership but I will simply say everything is impermanent. I hate to sound like a hippy but when you really come down to it, no one really owns anything. The harder you hold on to stuff, the more it stings when you lose it and it will be lost eventually. What does this mean? I don't want to believe this because I love my things, my toys and my car and my computer. It's the truth, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment