Kind of Middle-Stuck

Reading Steinbeck is like a baby being conceived. Inside me is a new creature, something new and beautiful. This creation isn't really so, but the feeling is still there. I feel as though there's a presence that is hazy-yet-simple. Sometimes we all need the haze...the feeling that you can't quite figure out life or your surroundings, and it's okay. So what am I getting at? I guess I just love the titles of Sweet Thursday.

As of late I've not spoken to either parent. Sometimes I feel myself slipping into anger towards them and then I have to slip right back out of it as if I'm a madman escaping reality. There's a non-descriptive quality to such slipping. It happens-it's gone. Is there sin in such quick non-reasoning?

I don't want to talk to my parents. What would that really accomplish? I could tell them how I've never felt such exclusion from one family and such inclusion from another. When I fall apart, my marriage family surrounds me without a thought for their own time or doings. My old one would have needed to schedule me into their feelings. I have to be careful not to slip into temptation and sin against the thought of my parents. They brought me up the way (notice there's no "only way" or "best way" typed) they knew how. Mom and dad worked-kids in school, daycare, grandparents', etc-weekends that should have been for bonding were escape pods from the weekly ho-hum. How did we mess it up so well?

I guess I think about these familial things more than I consciously realized. I don't mean to think about them. I'm scared of them. I find myself ashamed of my last name.

So my grandparents appear to be in the hospital, but I'm not sure why. Confused A called and asked that I'd call my mother. I don't have a name for her yet. It should be just as clever. Anyway, I won't call. I'm tired of calling. It's not that it's a bore or anything; honestly, it's opposite of a bore because there's so much going on in my mom's head that I'd never yawn at trying to figure it out. I just don't want to keep putting myself out there and get disappointed. A thought occurred to me the other day: might God want me to keep trying for the sake and soul of my mom/to show her love can exist between two people who have a bitter taste for one another? I wish I knew. Maybe I should pray that I knew. Wishing is for fools.

I wonder what's become of Confused A. Where is he living and what passes his time? Does he pick up his dilapidated Bible with old church bulletins and attempt to read? Does the beach call his name more frequently? Is Jezebel there or has she left his disappointed self? How great is the shame of his sin or is he aware of its truest consequences? Will he realize Eli's future depended on at least one true Helton, and when he grows up, the only Heltons he'll be able to trust are his own parents who probably don't want the name anyway?

What to Right Here?

It would appear that I didn't know how to spell. Well, I do. Let me explain.

My parents have become statistics in the area of marriage failure. They have never shown a lot of love towards one another-at least publicly-and divorce was never too hard to swallow. Now they're working towards the big D, even though we boys don't see an actual movement in that area except for a split in living together. My father got an apartment...at the age of 57. My mom's keeping the house. That house is an empty tomb.

So how is this situation to be righted? Except for God helping them reconcile, my parents are lost. *Sigh* What repercussions will this have for everyone around them? I can already tell Tim is troubled because he's caught in the middle. Matt is farther away and shows a heavy passivity. I'm somewhere in the middle: neither harmed externally nor escaping the separation's full effects. Sometimes when I'm driving to work at three in the morning, I find myself trapped, thinking of their marriage. My sleep is disrupted often as I ponder over my position in it all. Who knew I'd be so affected over my parents fulfilling what I always knew they'd do.

Eli won't know his grandparents well from here on out. I won't allow it. Sometime in the future, if he desires to know them or about them, Cari and I will then discuss with him how to further the options. Until then, I'm too worn out from this mess to continue any relations from my family to them.