Disillusioned

This is the third try at this post. If it doesn’t work, I give up on it.

I’m disillusioned.

Interesting word. To have one’s illusions removed.

Brenda and I have been meeting quite a bit.

Last week there was a meeting with various agencies. She was there, but I took the lead. She is subdued about decisions for the boys now.

On Tuesday the boys and I, Brenda and her mom, went out for Chinese food, Jeremiah’s choice. She and I shared the cost for his present. It was odd, all of us together in the restaurant, and then cake at home.

Yesterday she was here for a meeting with another case worker for another agency. Again, I took the lead.

We are trying to plot Jeremiah’s future.

After the meeting yesterday she became hurt and angry. She took control of one of the issues dealing with Jeremiah. She registered him online for summer camp, insists she will take care of his medical form with its accompanying doctor visit.

I waited for her outside.

She came out, still flustered, and had a tough time for a moment there. Began to cry. complained how God is unfair in giving us so many challenges.

I softened my body language, showed concern...

And then snapped out of it.

“Brenda. When you are upset, I put myself aside. I want to make you feel better. I want you to be happy. So I shove myself aside, my feelings aside. I don’t think about what is best for me. Because I love you.

“That isn’t right.

“I might still care a great deal for you, but I’m the one who should be upset, and I can’t afford to put myself aside for you. If you feel bad, I’m sorry, but I have to take care of myself now. Don’t complain to me.

“You left and none of this is your problem. It’s mine.

“I’m raising these boys. I feed them. I run this house. I care for them and I love them.

“I don’t need your self pity.”

Brenda is helping me. And it feels like the things she choses to do are simply taken over by her... but it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that once I let her do everything, and that was a mistake. Now, when she chooses something she wants to do, I get to consider it. My call.

Brenda is like all of us... a mixed up, confusing mess.

It would be easy to paint Brenda in a bad light, but that isn’t reality.

Just about any reality is colored by our views, how we feel about things, people...

We think we see things that aren’t there.

Illusions.

I’m disillusioned.

I know now the future I thought I saw was merely an illusion.

I’m not sure how I feel about ever finding such illusions again.