High! Took a 10 mg gummie at 8pm? It is now 10:15 pm. Very High! This is what I usually start my notebook entries with, when high. It's very important to me to be aware of the time. Is what feels like a LOOONNGGG time while high, actually a 'normal' length of time or is it short? What is a 'normal' length of time??
I use lots of quotation marks and question marks. The quotation marks represent a huge variable in meanings of the word that is in quotation marks. The question marks represent a huge variable in accuracy of the statements made in that previous sentence. And the question marks also represent a huge variable of interpretations of that statement. It's not that I am afraid of being "pinned" down. It's that I am aware that there are many variables and many interpretations of the ideas that I am writing and that I embrace them all as viable meanings of what I am saying or meaning. It's like I accept that my idea is at the same time, and at once, brilliant AND been 'done' before.
That last word in quotations: another meaning for the quotations; done.....as in, not original, so....not brilliant. Past and future at the same time. Yin/Yang muthafukkas. Time is, at once, NOW and THEN. Punctuation is SO important! Punctuation sets the tempo and staccato and allegria of the cadence and importance of what I am thinking about and trying to relay in words on paper. Commas and semi-colons, dashes and dots...….oh my!!
So I actually started this day's blog because I was thinking about all the things/experiences that I treasure from my childhood, that I wanted to pass on to my child and realizing that I was not really doing a very good job of that. So I'm questioning my worth as a good mother! Well, that's not really fair. Also, am I just not supermom enough to create a protégé and to right the wrongs of the past?? Yikes! That's a lot of pressure! So...….I try to be the best version of myself for her and to be the most honest version of myself. So I don't try to follow any models, I just try to be the best version of me (whoever that is) and if I'm honest with myself and just as honest with her, then I can't really go wrong! And if it's wrong, it's the most right version of my wrong self and that's got to count for something!!
My heart is in the right place. For me. I want to be a good and honest person. I think I am as good and honest a person as I can be. And that's the best I can do. And I love her so so so much!!!
That has got to count for something.
I also try to not do the things that my parents did that really pissed me off or made me think worse of them in the end. I want my daughter to know I did my best and loved her completely. How can she turn out to be anything but a beautiful, honest, loving soul (with flaws) that most of us are. And then there are those who would say it was all complete bullshit. And they'd be right on a certain level---except I don't live that level. (Huh?)
Brackets. I love me some BRACKETS! Brackets can insert another tangent into an already tangential exercise or thought. Brackets. Is that the right spelling? That's starting to look really weird. 10:56 pm. Still pretty high. Weavin' 'n bobbin'.
I love how punctuation can set a mood or an accent or a dialect (geography), which adds so much depth to the dialogue or the characters or to the time on earth. "time on earth"??? (She's lost me now...) Yeah, 'time on earth' as in; historic era, socio/economic level, popular culture quotes. Yeah, she's cool, she can quote.....'cool stuff'. 'Cool stuff' is in the eye of the beholder!
Okay, I started this blog today because..... I was thinking about the things I cherished as a child and how I would like to pass those joys on to my daughter; except that every time I try to give her one of those cherished experiences from my childhood, I keep coming up against the big looming 'difference' of autism. Is it the autism? Or am I just a crap parent? Was I autistic as a child but undiagnosed? And therefore, my parents just made me do stuff even though I resisted? Am I the parent who gives in too soon? Or am I the parent who loves my child so fiercely that I want her to see the truth about the world so that she doesn't take decades to figure herself and the world out because she had to sift through all the bullshit first. I want my child to skip the bullshit and have the plain honest truth, so she won't have to waste the precious short time we have here on Earth---I want her to reach her potential and go beyond! I want her to shine. And I realize that being in human form we are bound to err, and to fuck up, over and over again until we learn our unique lessons. I think my heart is in the "right" place (whatever that is....which I think is LOVE). Not pity, not jealousy, not anger.
I remember the joys of eating peas from the pod straight off the vines in my aunt's HUGE farm garden....just sitting down next to a row of peas and chowing down. Delicious. I remember cross-country skiing with my parents at around 6 (?) years old. Is my memory making me a child protégé or did my parents have high expectations?? Maybe a bit of both? I can do neither of these things with my child. And not for lack of trying. She eats about 20 items of food and not all at the same time: it's about 4 or 5 things at any one time and we go on long jags of a certain central food item. Right now, spaghetti is on what seems like an endless jag. I can't remember the last time one food had this central a role-play in her menu. I love to grow vegetables and eat a fresh carrot or munch on a string bean while I water the garden. I want my daughter to know those simple pleasures. I try, but she isn't interested. Is it the autism or am I a soft parent?
I have spent so much money trying to buy the things that I wish my parents had bought me, buying her things that she has no interest in beyond the first shiny experience and which end up being sold second-hand (even though they are practically brand new!!) or piling up as my future nest-egg of old-age funds for future collectibles (or not). Am I trying to re-live my childhood as I would have rounded it out (added the things I think it was missing)? Or am I trying to engage her in something we could both get interested in because it was something I enjoyed as a child??? How do I stop my inner child from interfering with my real child?
Whoa! That was really profound! Or the premise for a literary phenom. Ha, ha. Often when I am high I come up with really great ideas for books or movies. Or I think they are at the time. When am I going to mine this gold-field??!!
Memories of helping my mom in the garden just because I loved her so much I wanted to do what she liked doing. And I learned so much and enjoyed spending time with her. I know my daughter loves me but she can't surmount that certain wiring in her brain that prevents her from stepping out of her comfort zone and enduring someone else's comfort zone. Her comfort zone is where she can be comfortable in her skin and it doesn't allow for much variance because that would definitely be uncomfortable. Don't think for a second that she is coddled. I think I do know the difference between coddling and honesty. I think that my daughter doesn't have to conform to all the old ideas of what a person should appear to be. She should know that there are lots of gray areas and someone isn't 'gospel' just because they have a title, or money. And I'm talking about everything. A man cheats on his wife--that's just wrong. That man is your father, you should know that what he did was wrong. That doesn't make him a horrible father that just makes him a horrible husband, to me. But I'm the mom, so I'm going to tell her my perspective. And I will tell her over and over that it is only my perspective and that she needs to make her own decisions. It's a roll of the dice, I guess. It could not go in my favour at all---but if I was honest, that was me being the best I could be.
And suddenly it all sounds like bullshit. But I keep plodding on; through the deep snow of perspectives and the blustery winds of emotion.
I have more, oh, so much more. So many jewels from my childhood that seem like the holy grails of life on Earth. Another time, hopefully, but now I have to raise the needle, and let the vinyl slow its rotation. Peas.