Meandering Thoughts on the change of season, Pumpkin Spice, Letting Go

I started writing this as a post in a FB group I participate in. They have daily topics to post or comment on. Some light-hearted, some heavy.The topic today was all things pumpkin spice, but there was also a post this week about letting go. So it converged all in one.

I spared sharing this lengthy writing in the group. I'm not sure any still read these, but it has always been about the process and catharsis or transferring thoughts and feelings to words, eve if only for myself. Only time will tell what place today's thoughts have played in my life.

Here it is:

"Pumpkin Spice..... and everything else Thursday (and a really long post, per usual)

Pumpkin Pie is a hard one to beat. My Grandma would make hers from scratch. To spend one more day with her in her kitchen 💭 The questions I'd ask, the stories I'd tell, the good food we'd share.....❤️

I much prefer gingerbread for the holidays. I look forward every year to the time my boys will be over and we'll attempt to build whatever house design they are wanting for the year and the kitchen will smell amazing.

 I take my non-pie pumpkin spice foods in small doses. I like the extract on the days I make PSL. Good either in foam or a few drops right in when I'm feeling lazy.

I ran across pumpkin soup years ago and it's become part of other holiday traditions. The recipe is tucked away in one of my 'holy books' aka recipes from here, there, everywhere.
_____

Thank you to all those who've shared their 'letting go' stories this week in our group. I appreciate the vulnerability, courage shown, and the love this group can show one another.

Letting go, unfortunately, takes much more than a day; and it is too often not as triumphant as shutting a door and walking away. It is often ugly, painful, and a process of finding the balm to ease the cuts and bruises. I'm glad for the reminder, that, at some point, they can become faded scars and lessons learned.

It's been just over a year since we buried Mom. I knew when she was gone my family would further dissolve. She wasn't really the glue, but a complex, delicate web of intricate obligations that managed to bring 7 kids/factions together on occasion. I suspect it was respect for my father that really kept us as distantly engaged as we were.

There were insights she finally shared at the end, but so much that will never be answered. One of our last conversations was a final attempt to see if she'd engage and talk about other people in our large family tree that might have been gay. Even at the end, she still couldn't see the whole of me and I let go of that hope. I'm not angry. Her choice and her loss to not see her son for who he is.

She carried so much pain and trauma for so many years; it was so unnecessary. Another cycle I hope to break.

In true fashion, and wielding the title 'trustee,' my oldest brother wasted no time in asserting himself back in my world. For years, I've tried to mend the fences the childhood  sexual, and later physical and emotional, abuse at his hands destroyed. Even months before Mom's death, I tried to extend an olive branch (but cautiously).

When the accusations started flying about the 'why' I had stepped in as hospice caretaker (a job everyone else refused) I was done trying to repair what I didn't break.

*I loved my mother, as complicated as that was. Even after 15 years estranged, she deserved more than dying alone in some facility. Caring for her was as simple as that.*

It's not lost on me that my ex-wife (also trustee) has hitched herself to this wagon. It was useful for her to despise my brother and his abuse when we were trying to 'win' in our marriage; it's now useful for her ego (and pocketbook) to join forces with him. Yet another part of the emerging pattern of people I have allowed in my life.

I look at the man my father was, the values he lived....I'm lost as to whether my siblings had the same dad.

As things continued to devolve as my mom's house was cleaned and estate liquidated, I began backing away.

Unfortunately for so many of us that come out, and look for healthy paths in our own lives, our families can't accept the shift in roles we may play in the family. It was too much for my family to have the little brother not just sit and silently take it, as I had for decades before coming out.

I was done with the attempts to control, my brother's attempt to hide his deeds, and the unhealthy dynamic I'd have to accept should I stay.

Letting go has also meant standing up. I've stopped trying to pick up the pieces and glue things back together. It's OK that things stay shattered.

I recently hired an attorney to take over and finalize/facilitate all that remains unsettled (and withheld) in my mom's estate. The financial cost will likely not be recouped in this process. If that is the result, I will be OK.

However, the hope and goal is to show that I'm no longer just going to accept this unhealthy dynamic in my life. I'm no longer the punching bag nor the peacemaker for others' wars. I'm content with that outcome. I'm content with letting go of relationships that were lost decades ago.

As news of my hiring an attorney to take over settling this reached the fam, I received a text from my sister stating she was blocking me and hoped I'd find happiness one day

 

OK

She hadn't been in my life for years. I wanted to respond 'thanks for all the great talks and good times we never had,' but I felt that was better served as a rhetorical laugh with myself.

The last 2 years have been some of the toughest. There's been much pain, but that hasn't meant there was no happiness either.

Letting go of a partner I loved (un-reciprocated) with my whole being, a family I hoped one day could be my own again, and friends that only added weight to life has been a slow dance turn-out from an embrace I realize never really existed. It's been like watching a ship slowly fade into the horizon awaking to see I'm standing in a desert and it was only a mirage.

https://unsplash.com/photos/BreAvBaE0DI?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink
   

I've spent most of this week alone; Self-sheltered. I've not responded to texts I normally would have, not taken calls, not reached out. Partially healthy, partially not.

It's been Life for 2 years. Some of the most painful, most exhausting, but some of the most honest, and some of the most refining. There are days I wish the refining would take a break; the fire would extinguish.

There are moments of happiness, but there tends to be more growing contentment than anything. That works for now. I'll never be the version of "happy" others think I could or should be according to their religion. Their happiness isn't mine, nor mine theirs. I understand the sentiment after being raised in a culture where happiness was supposed to have uniformity, but they should stop wishing for that.

I'm listening to Aubrey and her version of Moon River. It's melancholingly optimistic.

For now I'll be a drifter "off to see the world. There's such a lot of world to see."

There is no guaranteeing that there will be a diamond in the end for the refining.

I have hope."