Family

I've been having a bad couple of days. Not for any particular reason. My emotions seem a little out of whack. I don't think ranting about the new mammogram and cervical screening regulations is going to help me any. I'm pathetically behind on NaNoWriMo, and I may just be suffering from that adrenaline drop of pretty much finishing a project (the mosaic). Then there is the added worry that the mosaic is too long, that I'm not savvy at structural engineering and the plexi will flex too much within the frame and all the glass will eventually pop off. I'm obviously having anxiety issues. I just saw my psychiatrist and said I was doing good, and now look at me. Liar. At least I only have a 3-day work week, then 5 days off to try and accomplish NaNoWriMo and finish out the mosaic. I have time, I just feel like I don't. Perhaps it is just the damn rain.

Of course to add to my mood, I met up with some friends today and saw Precious. No, I didn't cry. It hits you over the head from the get-go--there was no building up to the lows, no time to build the emotion. It left me a bit frozen. Maybe I could relate to it too much (not THAT much, but enough). I had an odd life that does not mirror Precious', but in many ways is similar when it comes to our mothers and fathers. I'm a privileged, middle-class white girl, but my eyes were opened wide at a young age to the evil that is out there and how many people will just look away when they accidentally cross paths with it.

At the end of the movie, one of my friends made a comment about how on one hand she hated the mother, but on the other hand, some people are weak and cannot change their situation (paraphrasing, I don't believe she said something as specific as that). Nothing against my friend, we are new to each other, and this was just a first thought after a heavy movie. However, her logic is what stymies so many people. They want to hate and feel compassion at the same time for people who have made a very bad choice in life that not only affected the person who made that choice, but others as well. My other friend asked where the "uplifting end" was, and that surprised me. Precious made a choice her mother chose not to make. She walked away, she left a cycle. She chose her kids and herself over family. That is what I can relate to (ok, not the part about kids, but that is one of my choices that I think is a very good one for me). My mother made a choice to stand behind her husband, to say that she put him before her children, that she made vows to him, not to us. She meant that. And some how many other adults also had some kind of misguided loyalty to not get involved. So until I escaped to college, my life was not good, and I blame both my parents for that. I have not talked to them in over a decade. I walked away, and I have never looked back, no matter how many times people act like not talking to your family is the craziest thing ever. Precious may be a bit over the top, but I feel it drives the point home that some times, your family is not who you should love, they are only the people who brought you in to this world, and it doesn't mean there is any reason to stick with them.