I still wouldn’t get rid of this blog.
I end up coming back to it eventually. Might be a month, or a year, or even longer. I actually re-read what I’ve written, and it reminds me of who I was when I wrote it. Invariably, it’s someone other than who I am now.
There’s a lot I haven’t written in here this year. Doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, or that it didn’t matter.
I’ve done a bit of self censoring this year — mostly because I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to say, how to say it, or indeed, should I just keep my mouth shut?
I’ve quietly acknowledged the end of my friendship with Ben. Took nearly 20 years, but we’re finally so radically different I can’t find common ground. Even more, I don’t think I want to look. By this point in my life there are just a few people from the old days I still talk to. Funny how they’re not the people who were closest to me growing up. Apparently my parents were right about the kind of people I was surrounding my self with.
I walked away from a friendship with Pia — her fault, my fault, whatever. Doesn’t make her a bad person, but I also don’t regret my decision. I’ll leave that as it stands, and I may come back to it later.
I cut all ties with Cindy. That I don’t regret at all, and I’d do again in a second. It actually came down to a single question.
She said ‘I don’t want children, therefore my partner should be willing to get a vasectomy.’ — What?? Her logic was this: It’s more complicated for a girl (she’d be in the hospital for a few days), and it’s reversible (in some cases) for guys.
I was flabbergasted. If you don’t want children, and you’re not married, isn’t it your responsibility to take drastic steps like that? Moreover, I don’t think it’s appropriate to call your boyfriend “a selfish bastard” for not wanting to go through with a procedure like that. I asked her to repeat herself please, and when she did I repeated it back and said “Is this actually how you feel?”. She said “absolutely”.
Ok. Delete/block/ban/ignore forever. Apparently she’s insane. I don’t want that kind of crazy in my life. Not directly, not indirectly, not ever. That’s the kind of nuts you can’t hit with logic. I still get really angry when I think about the kind of ego that feeds that train of thought.
I did get a chance to reconnect with Liz this year, and that’s been fantastic. She’s finally seeing her life start progressing, mostly as a result of her efforts. We manage a dinner every few weeks (Christina and I, and Liz and her boyfriend DJ), and it’s a great chance to get out together in a social situation.
The work year has been better. Last year was horrible, and for a while I really worried we wouldn’t recover from it. This year the work started flooding in. It’s calmed down a little, but that has led to a bit of time off (which I really need apparently, it’s been 4 years since my last official vacation — getting laid off from Flock doesn’t count!).
I’ve almost dragged us back out of debt, and if I can manage to keep a steady flow of work going we’ll be squared away by the new year. Just in time for some very expensive visits to the fertility doctor, to flip a coin and see if we’re going to fill this house with children or not. (It’s actually 50/50 odds, which is apparently all you can buy for 10K).
I’ve also been working on my diplomatic skills with in-laws. By that I mean, I think I’ve managed to earn the title of “most hated son-in-law”. That’s due to a combination of unrepentant stubbornness, a really bad attitude about people pushing my wife around, and a determination to do what I say.
This has resulted in Tyler staying in the United States, and not being forced to return to our house against his will. It’s also meant he couldn’t come here and use it as a springboard into homelessness, or as a way of dodging the responsibilities that come with growing up.
This means his aunt and uncle have been “forced” to take action, and make his decisions for him again. I use “forced” in this way because it isn’t a case of them doing it out of honest generosity. If it was, they wouldn’t be moaning about how it’s such an imposition, and his aunt wouldn’t keep doing things designed to limit his future options, as well as curtail his present.
Grandparents resent the fact we chose to let him make his own decisions. They ignore the simple fact that he was making his own decisions, and nothing shy of actual violence would’ve kept him from pushing for those things. We literally tried everything else, and his relatives are discovering that too, as they go over the same ground we traveled. I’m still pretty bitter about the whole situation to be honest, they’ve made our lives hellish two years running, just before school starts. It’s just served to enforce my determination that they NOT be involved if we’re able to have children of our own.
We’ll make the right decisions, or we won’t, but it’ll be our choices that guide the outcome, not theirs.
We’ll send photos.
That covers everything I actually want to say this time around, I’ll write again at least one more time this year.