patience is a grueling virtue

Many years ago my dad asked me not to publish some things out of respect while my mom was still alive. After she died ten years ago, I decided to respect my dad and not publish those things until he died, as well.

I have been extremely patient.

Family secrets are terrible burdens. Truths can send ripples across hundreds, even thousands of miles.

The biggest secrets are the strangest of all. Keeping them destroys, telling them destroys. Not sure destruction of those kinds of secrets is a bad thing, but the people learning them are still messed up enough not to understand. We all know how fragile things can be on holidays. One wrong ill-timed 'joke' can send a holiday reeling over a cliff.

I've had a lot of time to think things through, sift things down, assess and evaluate, learn the differences between public pettiness and actual hidden toxicity, and exactly why both truth and forgiveness are important.

It's complicated.

My dad knew her dad. The revelation that blew me over last week left me abandoned in a desert with occasional tumbleweeds blowing by. I remember he said something. Was I 12? 14? What was it he said, and why did that memory scream through my brain without letting me have the words with it?

My dad said something to me at one point in my life that sealed my decision to burn a box at another point in my life.

I'm dangling like an old kite on a lonely wire strung across a desert watching a tumbleweed roll by once in awhile.

Interesting visual, given where that was said. And a communication line I can't access.

Something about my dad has sent me spiraling through time cutting out vital parts of my memories, and the trail of clues I've left myself across blogs over the years now glow like neon when I look back.

Experiencing life itself is so metaphorical. Are we sure we're even really here doing this? It's like we are our own movies we're watching.