I have good news and bad news. The good news is my cast is off. As I originally suspected based on my first viewing of the scar from the second surgery it is not nearly as ugly as the first scar. I am currently in a splint brace and am no longer condemned to the plastic bag procedure for protecting the cast. I can shower with relative ease. My wrist is stiff and though the wrist is swollen the rest of my arm is unbelievably small compared to my other arm. The ache did not magically go away with the removal of the cast because (and here is the bad news) the pins were not removed. It seems that due to the internal nature of the pins and my Doctors fear that he may have to �go digging� for them I am going to have to suffer one more surgical procedure. It will not be very invasive (in fact I will probably be in recovery longer than surgery) and seems a waste of general anesthetic but that is what he wants. This means I am in insurance purgatory. This is the time between your Doctors determination that you need a medical treatment and the insurance company�s agreement to pay for it. It could take as long as a couple of weeks so true freedom escapes me. Still the worst of the chains are off and I have only a minor inconvenience so I can�t complain (well I could but who really cares?).

I am disturbed, however, about some information I received from my mother this morning. In case I haven�t mentioned this before (to be honest I don�t think I have) my parents are currently raising my idiot brother�s kids. Their mother left them unceremoniously when my nephew was quite young and, at the time, in foster care due to neglect and my niece was an infant. When my mother declared she would not get custody of the children she said, and I quote, �that�s ok, I can make more�. This act of reproduction she proceeded to do to the tune of five more. Today all five of the children are in foster care facing (thankfully) adoption and the Mom (along with her husband, the father of the five) is in jail for criminal neglect and molestation of her children. My idiot brother (35) who has never cut the umbilical cord lives close to my parents whom often pay his bills and are, as I said, raising his kids.

Back to the disturbing news, the growing pains of adolescence have struck with a vengeance and now my young nephew and niece are faced with all that troubled time bring in spades. Not only are they cursed with an idiot for a father and an absent uncaring mother but try as they might my parents are only a reminder of just how very different they are from the kids around them. This is not an unusual feeling. I had a relatively normal family unit and I still felt unbelievably different and disconnected (a feeling that continues at varying levels even today) but for them there is all the more between them and the rest of the world. My nephew is talking about suicide, not outwardly, which is even more disturbing, but to his sister. She is being harassed at school the way I was but the difference is she is not me. She will fight back (and she can be mean) which could lead to severe consequences. My Mother looks to me for advice.

It is funny, my mother was a parent before, this is her second time around and she is asking me what to do. I don�t have children and have been often dismissed as incapable of knowing anything about parenting and my own mother turns to me for advice. I wish I could wave a magic want and show them the future. The people most cruel and powerful in high school were the most pitiful at the ten year reunion. All the skinny popular girls got fat, the fat girls got skinny, the football hero�s were fat and middle class and the geeks that were the butt of all the jokes were working for lots of money having graduated from places like MIT. They drove expensive cars and, in many cases, had outgrown their awkwardness and become quite attractive men. In ten years none of it matters. Heck in one year after high school it was all just a life time away as college became my new world and a whole new set of concerns replaced whether Joanne and Jennifer liked me or not. People have only as much power over you as you give them and you can take that power away in a heartbeat. Today if someone is silly enough to say the things that the girls in high school said I laugh in their face. Their opinion of me is of no concern to me. I have all the friends I can truly be a friend to and the rest of the world must get along without me.

How do you instill that in a child? How do you show them that this is temporary and not worth hurting those who love you by leaving them with a feeling that they couldn�t take care of you, that you didn�t feel loved enough by them to stay and see things through, that you didn�t trust them when they told you that this is temporary, high school is four years but to a teenager it is a lifetime. Unfortunately it is a life time that many children don�t survive. How do I protect my children (for they are as much mine as my heart makes them) from the sad little children who attack for reasons only known to them and most often having nothing to do with their prey? And how do I keep my children from being predator or prey?

Just when you think you are free someone slaps the chains back on. Of course I must remember that I choose the chains I carry. I create my own prison and thus I have the power to open the door and set myself free. Compassion is a double edged sword, it gives you forgiveness but it requires you to take up the troubles of those you love. It is this knowledge that leaves me standing on the edge of becoming a parent, still why do I harbor the flickering hope every month that the choice will be made for me? Why do I feel the little let down when I find that I haven�t had an �accident�? Why am I so obsessed with this?

My cast is off and physically I am enjoying some freedom but it seems my mind is still immobilized as effectively as my wrist was these past few weeks.

Too much thinking, me thinks.

I wish you Peace

~alison~

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