Tuesday

Shanda’s CASA case is finally moving again, with a petition for guardianship ready to be filed. Which is likely result in an adversarial process that’s months or even years long and expensive and after much fighting will merely recategorize the status quo as the interim default. I do not understand how we think this system is supposed to help.

I used to think that I would go back to CASA work after Melissa, but I’m not going to. I used to think that maybe bandaging the wounds caused by our societal mistreatment of young people would help – maybe me, or maybe them – but now it just feels like I’m participating in the same terrible system. If I’m going to drain my heart helping people it needs to at least be something I believe might work, for at least one person. Right now I feel like the best thing I could do for a lot of people in dependency court is give them some cash, their siblings addresses, and a promise to not tell anyone which way they went.

I still wonder if I did any good in the cases I worked. Other people involved sure thought I was making it worse. Which at the time I took as a sign that I was helping, but it’s really only a sign that I was disrupting their expectations of the process, and that’s not good enough. Maybe in 20 years if they’re still alive (and I am) I can ask directly. Or maybe I should relegate the whole thing to the faultier parts of my memory and hope that when it next bubbles up I’ve found a new perspective. It worked for abandoning my siblings when I left for school. Eventually. Mostly.

Shanda is having trouble with her new piercing. Her last cartilage hole took forever to heal, even compared to the 12 weeks that might be expected. She was hoping this one would go better but it’s hurting more and we’re not even a week in. So she might not be able to have any more fancy holes up her ear, which would be sad. Mine are doing okay, though I’m ready at any time to be able to lay down with headphones on. And to try colors.

I feel like I’m mostly back to normal, able to do work and show up when I need to to. Able to run my household without obvious backlog. But with Shanda’s illness and now ear pain, as yet unsuccessful efforts to reach out to SJ and to strengthen connections with A, work to manage robot parents for S, to prepare for Melissa’s impending doom and to accommodate Brian as best I can while he tries to get his shit back together, things still feel tough and reactive and lonely. I’m sharing a bunch with more people than ever, but sometimes it only makes me feel more alone, staring at my chat contact list thinking about how I don’t have anything to say in actual conversation because I’ve already shared anything of interest to everyone who might possibly care and probably several people who don’t. I suspect that’s all just a matter of perspective, but I haven’t yet figured out the one I need to make it work.

I discovered the other day that my favorite color is purple. It was when I was 4 too, but like so many other things I gave it up to protect myself. Liking things was a sure way to invite pain. There are so many societal rituals that I understand only as a cynical demand for performance with no redeeming qualities. It makes it easy for me to dismiss harmful tradition but hard for people to understand what I care about. Desire is the root of suffering, Buddha says, and so to want nothing is to be free. But I’m sick of being free and I want a favorite color. And a purple shirt.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.