Why I Fell Off The Blog

It's my mother's fault.

Actually, it's my own damn fault for allowing my mother to screw with my head again, but I get a wee bit of glee trying to pin it on Mommy Dearest. I sometimes live in the Land of Delusion. It's not such a bad place but I only like to visit every now and then, as it's never very sunny there.

Anyhoo...it went down like this:

A few days after writing the blog, "A Letter To My Sister," I was coming out of the semi-annual appointment to have my sparkly whites cleaned and rotated. As I was fastening my seatbelt, I looked down at my phone and noticed that Middle Sister had left a message. As is my modus operandi, instead of listening to the message, I just picked up the phone and dialed her number.

Me: Hey, Middle Sister! I just saw that you called. I was in the dentist's office. What's up?

Middle Sister: The. Shit. Has. Hit. The. Fan.

Me: What? What's going on?

Middle Sister: Are you sitting down?

Oy.

I shan't go into all of the gory details because, quite frankly, I still don't know them all and don't care to. The long and the short of it is that our estranged older sister (Let's call her, Crazy, shall we?) who has wanted nothing to do with our family for decades and who tries to pretend we don't exist and who most likely tells all of her friends that she's an only child who was adopted by elderly philanthropists who kicked the bucket shortly after her adoption... read my blog. She then, with all of the self righteous indignation she could muster, (which is a shit load by the way, as she is well practiced) called my estranged father to attempt to obtain a phone number for Little Sister, whom, by my best guess hadn't heard from Crazy in about fifteen years.

Reflecting back, I'd received a phone call from my father about a week before but hadn't picked up due to not having enough brain power at that particular moment to deal with that particular piece of history.

Apparently, after not reaching me, our pater familias (who by the way hadn't attempted contact with me in over two years) called Middle Sister and asked for Little Sister's phone number, which he promptly passed on to Crazy.

Whew! You still with me here?

Crazy then jumped on her white high horse and rode from New Mexico to Oklahoma to blaze in and save the day. She convinced Little Sister that she needed a new beginning (which had been offered to her on numerous occassions by numerous people) and then proceeded to pack Little Sister's shit, load it into a U-Haul and ride off into the sunset.

Well, Bessie bar the door. My mama's baby done up and left her.

So, for the first time since my car wreck in December of 2007, Mommy Dearest called me.

Me: Hello?

Mommy Dearest: Hello, Amy. I know it's been a long time since I've called and that I don't talk to you very often, but (chuckling uncomfortably) I guess there's a reason for that.

Me: I suppose there is.

And it all went to hell from there.

She then proceed to alternately berate me for "betraying" Little Sister by penning such a horrible letter and posting it on my blog, and make statements such as, "Well, I guess something good has come out of it because Little Sister has a place to live and is being taken care of."

Ultimately, I was condemded for my wicked, wicked betrayal, no matter the good she percieved it may have wrought. I reverted right back into the berated child with no self confidence and no voice.

As she repeated the word, "betrayal" for the upteenth time, Grown Up Amy finally had enough. I stopped Mommy Dearest mid lecture and said, "I'm not keeping your secrets any more. These were my thoughts that I put into writing and put on my blog.I spoke my truth. I didn't use Little Sister's name and I used a picture that was twenty years old. The only reason you even know about it is because Crazy stalks my blog for some insane reason. I have no room left in my life for this chaos."

And that's that.

I've spent the past couple of months trying to mentally regroup. I had to figure out exactly what it was that made me want to find a cave and do nothing but sleep and talk to bats. The desire to write was zapped from me instantly after that call. Bats seemed like a reasonable alternative to family.

It's all been sorted and re-sorted and compartmentalized. I allowed myself to momentarily lose the voice I've worked so hard at trying to tune and that just pissed me off. I also allowed criticism of something I wrote to affect my desire to write. Tsk, tsk.

Almost daily for two months I thought about subjects about which to write and then summarily dismissed each of them. Nothing seemed to fit, nothing seemed to flow. By the time I finally sat down to write, my brain cells seemed to have forgotten the routine. In the middle of all of this re-grouping, I'd been asked to do some freelance work and I spent a few hours hacking away at some content for a legal website. I submitted my writing and to date, have not heard back from them. My confidence in Self, is battered a bit. Okay. It's smashed into a billion bits. Damn lawyers.

To say "I'm back," might be pushing it a little. I want to be back. I want to write. It's what I truly enjoy doing. I never intended for people to read what I wrote, but have been so thrilled that people have read my ramblings and that they have reached out and commiserated and shared their stories with me. It has been so enlightening to hear so many common voices from seemingly vastly different people and it has strengthened my faith in humanity. So, stroke by stroke, I will regain my voice and I will sound my barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world!! Or maybe just over the Land of Blog. But, you get my drift.