I am a scrap dealer in ideas. If you read something interesting here, the chances are excellent I picked it up from someone I was walking or drinking with, and threw it in the back of my head for later. These ideas show up on the page when I’m rummaging through the storage cubbies in my brain and find them obscuring the instructions for hard-boiling eggs (if I ever disappear for a week on a breakdown/bender, the tattoo I will have around my neck when I show back up will say 12 minutes, dumbass).
One of the more interesting idea cubbies is the incredibly facile (but fun anyway) Two Kinds of People bin:
The people who are use a yardstick for everything, and the people who don’t;
The people who remember all slights, and the people who let everything roll off their back;
The people who never stopped resenting their parents and are pathetic emotional cripples, and the people who made peace their parents as flawed human beings and got on with their lives.
Not-fun learning opportunity: being mighty pleased with yourself because you think you’re the latter, and finding many months into dealing with your surviving parent that you’re not as much of the latter as you thought, Miss Mental Healthypants.
What almost saves me is that the Two Kinds of People construct has no merit, so I can salve my inflamed, ashamed brain with the wisdom about continuum/process/complicated relationship blah blah blah.
But I know the truth. Like every fun-free lesson, it’s only partly about the bit I got wrong. It’s about the judging. It’s always about the judging. (Good lord, everyone’s mother made her feel chubby and incompetent. You’re a grown woman– shake it off.)
No credit until I learn the compassion, and store it where I can find it. Nuts.