Violences

All sort of petty violences add up; the evil done between family members, lovers, strangers: passive-aggressiveness, verbal abuse, physical, sexual, the careless slight and the intentional avoidance.
Every day violence is committed somewhere. Faraway in a place where people are fighting for their lives with guns and a multitude of other weapons, or close to home in the silences that strangle.
Something dies in us when we are afflicted by the violence of others: A sense of security, a comfortableness in the world.

So many types of violence; the overt, the almost intangible but insidious that makes us doubt, neglect, betrayal. "Twenty ways to leave your lover"; how to hurt someone, we are good at it, well practiced. We know just what to do when we want to cut the deepest. But we always have the choice to hold back, to not harm and to find solutions other ways. Not everyone takes that opportunity.

I'm not Jesus, I will not forgive all abuses. I don't think that's what the story really meant when he sacrificed himself. I hope he was trying to instruct us that life often calls for us to sacrifice, but we can make the choice as to how much is too much, and when we need to stand our own ground. I do not believe it makes me a bad person to leave unacceptable acts unforgiven, it's a "truth" I learned to live with.

I refuse to give up my home in the world to people strangled by their own pain, too selfish and afflicted to see anything else. These are legion, unfortunately, and we run into them in many places in our lives.

How did life prepare me for this?

Life only prepares us for more...not any particular, just more.
When you find yourself a provider of care for the people who raised you it can be crazy busy, emotionally taxing, frustrating, sad, anger can play a role too. I mean who picked me for this? Isn't this supposed to be all planned out, aren't parents the ones who had the plan when we were kids?
What will my plan be? Will I ever be in a position to make one?
Questions like these are detours, there's really nothing left to do but accept the issues that arise and deal with them as best I can. That was something, as I may have said before, that I learned in theology school. Life/god wants a response. That's what I am here to do, respond to life with all the gifts I've been given, learned, and earned.
And when it comes to caring for parents you love profoundly and problematically (or some combination like that depending on yours)it crystallizes some aspects in your life - clarifying as it also causes you to neglect really important things too.

It's hard to maintain the juggling act of all aspects of my life, and all the aspects of theirs. I've dropped some important stuff for me, that I need to pick up. But the when and how of it will not become clear for a while.