I think I had a "Fuck it, then" breakthrough about three weeks ago.   There has been minor fallout in my personal life and minor social contacts.

But I am writing better and more honestly than I ever have before.  

I am going to just be myself from here on in,  the stress of wearing a social burqua to protect the tiny hearts and minds of people that don't deserve it is just not providing the payoff required for that kind of effort  any more.

I think my kid deserves a mom that can speak freely and to see solidarity in the face of assholery.

 

 

 

 

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the Watchmen. 

 

After the firefight where Dorian Grey is introduced, Tom Sawyer asked him, "What are you?!?!"  And Dorian answers, as a thousand bullet holes in his flesh heal, "I am...complicated."

 

And in the Watchmen, after Rohrschak defends himself in the prison, he shouts, "You think I'm locked up in here with you?  You're locked up in here with me!"

 

And Sally Spectre tells her daughter that as she gets older, even the grimy parts of youth just get shinier in the face of the unfathomable grey looming ahead.

 

My youth isn't getting any shinier, but the prospect of defending mental weaklings from my words hurting their feelings?  I think I am done with that. 

 

I am writing a follow-up to Whiteness and Witnesses.   I think a lot of the comments helped me sort out an extremely complicated reaction I experienced to going home again for the first time in several years.  I wrote that article in response to a friend's conversation about how dealing with someone's death is not all pretty martyred saint-hood, that sometimes the process can be ugly.  I had berated my dying mother and felt bad about it since, but it was part of that awful process of dealing with it all.

 

And in the face of that ugliness, I finally was able to write about my mother and life in the south.  There is a lot more to write about there and I think I am ready to do it.

 

I wrote yesterday's post just to write about something less personal, to talk about an interesting conversation I had with a good friend about the subject.  Normal life stuff instead of the hard stuff.

 

Kind of like the haiga posts, which will resume tomorrow, along with other, more complicated writing to come. 

 

So thanks for sticking with me.