For someone who claims to be emotionally grounded during this time, I seem to be processing a lot of feelings via a LiveJournal blog. Hmm. Maybe I’m not as stable as I think I am.
She called. It was initially to ask me a computer question, one that I answered in about thirty seconds. But we spent about an hour on the phone.
I probably shouldn’t have prolonged the conversation, even though she would have talked with me for even longer. I told her about my step-father, but that wasn’t what we talked about. It was about "stuff": her life, my life, what we liked to cook, what Terry Pratchett books will be coming out, and so on. It gave me the kind of support I talked about in an previous blog post.
The only issue is that it’s not a good idea for me to get that kind of support from her. It uselessly spins my emotional wheels.
I suppose we have to accept the gifts the gods give us, no matter what the source.
I had the opposite reaction about an hour later, when my mother called to bring me up to date on her situation. Now I was her emotional support.
I’m pondering my feelings here. I think the issue is that while I generally gain strength and confidence giving emotional, spiritual, and psychic support to other people, I am drained when I give support to my mother. If that’s my reaction after a phone conversation, what will it be like during five days with her, without even a hotel room to retreat to?
C’mon, Bill, you can do better. This is the job you signed up for when you started calling yourself a High Priest of the Wicca, and when you clicked on that button on the Universal Life Church website. It’s also the job of being a son.
Tomorrow I go to California, to do my job. I’ll probably be blogging from there as well. We’ll see.