Yesterday was the second day in a row I walked out of the house without important things that I needed. But I think that my meeting with local author Sara Harvey went better because I had to be all “Um, and then I was going to ask you something about… um… something” which left her a lot of room to tell me things I would have never known to ask about. We met at Crema, which is right in the shadow of Ed Baxter’s house, which I felt was a sign of good fortune.
Anyway, she was awesome and I muddled through my questions and then we got to talking about Nashville and life in general and I’ll have something up at Country Life about it soon enough. I really love listening to writers talk about their writing.
Then, hopped up on coffee, I came home and wrote up this big thing about ebooks.
And I talked to my ridiculous uncle who is all hurt and pissed off that his son and his son’s family didn’t come over for Easter. This is honestly the most difficult part of a difficult family for me to navigate. At any given moment, some Phillips has done something that makes it completely reasonable for some other Phillips to be like “fuck you, buddy.” Whatever is going on between my uncle and my cousin, I am completely sure that my uncle is at fault.
And yet, listening to him being so angry and heartbroken on the phone? Ugh, people, it was all I could do to not call my cousin up and be all “Why can’t you be nicer to your dad?”
Yes! I know! Me, who knows a million times better than that nonsense. I still wanted, more than anything, for Uncle B to not have to suffer, even if it means my cousin has to suck it up and suffer some. Or a lot.
Even though, I can tell you that, without a doubt, my cousin probably has good reasons. I don’t even need to know them and I can still state with utter confidence that my uncle is in the wrong here.
This is the part of an abusive family dynamic that really has its hooks in me. I get that you should not treat me bad. I get that I should not tolerate it. But boy oh boy do I want you to tolerate it. You know, just for the sake of the family, because that’s just how your dad is, because he’s really upset.
My god. You see what I mean? The only reason I am not an enabler is that I am too lazy to immediately bug someone which gives the humane part of me time to talk the asshole part of me out of it.
But that asshole part of me is deeply embedded and well-trained. And I guess I hadn’t really realized the extent to which that was there. But I noticed it because, in part, my dad had this weird fight with the Butcher over Easter in which my dad was all hurt that my brother was yelling at him and blaming him for everything that was wrong in his life, which I thought was weird, because I thought they were mowing the lawn. It’s not that easy to have a fight in which you yell at your dad and blame him for everything that is wrong in your life while one of you is on a loud riding mower, you know? Let alone when there’s nothing wrong with your life. I mean, the Butcher’s got it pretty good and he’s pretty damn happy.
But I felt bad because my dad was upset so I went to talk to the Butcher (Yes, I know! I know) to see if I could smooth things over and the Butcher had no idea what I was talking about. None. He, apparently, thought they were mowing the lawn, not having some referendum on my dad’s parenting.
And I apologized for sticking my nose into it and let it drop. Because I guess the asshole part of me is happy to say “your dad did something wrong, but you should make things right with him” if I’m sure your dad did something wrong, but it is a bridge too far for me to help your dad blow up some off-handed comment into Hurt Feelings: The War.
What I need to learn is to step on the impulse to get in there and fix things the second I feel it.