We're traveling!
It turns out, we have had many years of good times on the road. Maybe that'll be another chapter in a book someday; how doing cool things during bad times or situations isn't a bad idea. We were the same messed-up people, but wow, we have good memories of traveling together and the vibe is coming back.
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I asked Jay to plan something, anything, back when he was still pretty shut down and I was grasping for a human. He planned this bike tour down in Louisianna called the Zydeco Bike Tour. It's sort of famous in the biking world, and while I'm not biking, I'm happy to be here.
The South brings out the funk in me, and I think, anyone, right? People love Southern writers; I don't like Southern writers. Southern writers always put characters in books that have one eye, just got out of jail, are married to a cousin, have a small swamp in the backyard. I like being here and feeling it in my bones and skin, but I don't necessarily like reading about it. Go figure.
It's a good place to smoke a tiny cigar, which I did, listening to the cicadas in the giant trees with the pink, cloudy sky at night, stars coming out. The highways are elevated mostly above water, swamp shrubs and alligators. The whole state glistens when you fly in over it. We're here for five days. I plan to do much traveling and exploring on my own, writing, staying out of trouble, mostly.
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Is it possible to be happy when your Mom is sad? I'm working on that one. I journaled on the plane about this one, trying to form a plan for the next discussion we need to all have. Then realized, no, this is a containment situation, not an improvement situation. I revised Einstein's therory of insanity: doing the same thing (with the same people, who aren't changing) and expecting different results. I am open to things improving but I can't expend much energy to make that happen. I'll literally go crazy and could jeopardize my relationship with everyone involved.
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I'm surprised at how much energy I have. I have been doing these Foundation exercises as well as others. My mind is also calming down as the months and years of therapy roll by and I start making some healthy lifestyle changes on top of it. No real stress doing a big travel day today and I'm just getting started. I didn't even get much sleep last night.
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Because... I stayed up late last night talking with my nephew who was physically abused by his stepdad for several years before moving out. He is really struggling. He'd like to work but is struggling with depression, anxiety, and most-likely, PTSD. He saw a counselor a few times, but they told him they needed insurance.
It all came back to me, all of it. He was under so much stress at home, so much stress. We felt helpless to do anything. We were outside everything and assumed if something could be done, it'd be their Dad. It didn't work out that way. I look back now and still don't know what we could have done. Could we have called CPS? Why didn't their Dad do that? Why didn't we do that?
My nephew is ready to do something. I sense he is where I was a few years ago. He doesn't really know how to do anything anymore. He plays video games and listens to music. He mostly numbs out. He's a good person; he always has been. He got angry and defensive and hostile after all those years of trauma, but he sees it isn't working.
Jay and I talked about it and I think we're going to try and facilitate his counseling somehow if he's ready to make a change. I hate this country when people who want a job, but need help, are screwed all the way around. I wonder how our Republican Representative feels about a situation like this when she never has to worry about healthcare, now or ever, for herself and her family. Fuck it all. People's lives are literally hanging by a thread, and people who want help, cannot get it.
It shouldn't be this way. Tying health care to jobs, and then making it expensive, even if you have a job. We don't apply that logic to anything else; clean drinking water (should have worked harder for it!), safe roads (should have hired your own police!), free K-12 education (since when should that be free?). I don't know what kind of society we are anymore when it's obvious the citizens are on their own against oligarchs and a system of corporate interests only.
WHEW!
Ending on that. I am hopeful my nephew has made the most important step, the step not to give up and to be willing to do something to help himself. Without that, there isn't a lot of hope for change. I want to be an ally in his journey if he wants allies in his corner.
Onward toward health for all.