ive been feeling kind of hopeless. like there are so many problems, and it will be so long before they will potentially get fixed. if they get fixed. maybe its because im not doing anything that has tangible results. the discussion group is really good, and helps me rethink my thoughts and semi-forces me to read that book. which is actually a really good book, but i have a short attention span. i find a new book and forget about the old one all the time. but the results there are really personal. and some day they may build into something more concrete, but that day has not yet arrived.then with the liberty players.. well i love being a part of this rad guerilla theater, but the results are so immeasurable. what we are fighting is so big, though... i guess im used to really focused activism that has to have tangible results. we did a bunch of work all with this one goal in mind (say, changing the legislature on some issue) and now we can see that we failed or succeeded and to what degree (say, the legislature is better than it would have been without our work but not as good as it could be).
and today i get an email from my half-brother asking me not to send him any more anti-war stuff because he is for the war on terrorism. im not really sure what us going into iraq supposedly has to do with terrorism, but i wrote that i wouldnt send him any more emails. but i also said that it made me sad, that he was another of the deceited, fears-flamed-and-taken-advantage-of. the war in iraq is about the bush family and their corporate bed-buddies securing the oil fields in iraq for the gain of wealth and power. its not about american, or even iraqi safety. click here for more information on that.
last night at about three am i called my dad. he was in this time, and we talked for over an hour. i was absolutely honest and i yelled at him and i cried and i almost hung up in despair several times. he tried to end the conversation several times, but i wouldnt let him. he tried to tell me "there was something else going on" as a reason for me being upset, and i didnt let him get away with that either. he asked if i wasnt pregnant. no, im not.
he told me he didnt have my contact information, thats why he didnt call. i said that was bullshit because i emailed everyone like three times letting them know that info. he said he cut out his email. i said there was no way in hell i could have known that the method of communication we had succesfully been using was then invalid, since he sent no warning email stating he would do that. i said even so, he could have easily called my mom who always knows where i was. i said i couldnt fucking believe he had called my brother like five times since i'd returned and never called me once, so his shit about having a disabled wife and mother to take care of as reasons why he didnt have time wasnt going to fly. i said i couldnt fucking believe i had to hear about my grandma being in the hospital from nathan. he said i should have been checking in. i said that a normal human being taking care of someone other people care about would update them if conditions moved from the status quo into something more urgent. i couldnt fucking believe he didnt want to let me know he was moving to nebraska, that he'd actually sold the house and wasnt just talking about it any more. that he didnt want to see me before he moved to bumfuck. that he would call my brother for help but not me. i said i thought we were getting better, that we were going to have a good relationship. what we communicated about in senegal made me have faith in that. but then i come back from another fucking continent and he doesnt call me for bullshit reasons.
in the end he admitted that when he didnt hear from me right away, he just got stubborn about it - like if i wasnt going to contact him he wasnt going to contact me. i told him i thought it was ridiculous, that he has thirty-two years of life on me. he was supposed to be mature and etc.
he asked what he was supposed to do about it. i said all i wanted him to do was say that he was sorry. he said, i apologize. i dont know how or if thats different from saying im sorry. but i, in theory, accepted it. i said i'd help him move today. but i never answered my phone when people called me. i was tired and hungover. my emotions and words the previous night had all been real, but the impulse to call him at three in the morning was the alcohol. and i didnt want him to see me hungover. i didnt want him to think that it was the alcohol that was talking and crying and swearing last night. because it wasnt. maybe it was the alcohol that allowed me to not hold anything back. and im glad i didnt. if we are going to have a relationship, i cant hold things back. ive done that all my life, unconsciously, then consciously. in the name of getting along, in the name of upholding the image of me that he had created in his mind. in the name of not getting into it with him, because he is stubborn as hell and circularly logical and full of story changes if he starts to be proven wrong. but now that i see things a little different, id rather just be honest. id rather hope there is a chance of a real understanding and mutual respect. and if there isnt, id rather just know that and end it. i cant handle emotional limbo. i told him that, too.
