Let out a lot of steam. I thought that the big deal for me would have been the dream I had last week where I shot myself in the back of the head  multiple times only to not die and have to walk around with this inexplicable gaping hole in the back of my head.
(It was agreed on that, despite a lack of experience with this type of dream, death in a dream means change (as it does in tarot), and my inability to die reflects a difficulty changing.)

Instead, I focused on the grandparents and just how absolutely ridiculous their impromptu visit from down south has been. On my dark, starlit drive home from Circle, all I could think was that I should really start writing a biography focusing on my dad’s parents and how their behavior has shaped my life through their treatment of my parents. I could fictionalize it; there is plenty of material there. Just the few anecdotes that Dad has told me, and then the couple that Auntie managed to tell me in a more lucid moment, are enough to form a picture of Dad’s childhood. Then I have all of Mom’s stories about how things were before Mom and Dad were married, how Grandmere treated her, and then how she treated my Grammy.

It’s a story I’d never thought to tell.
If my grandparents hadn’t so weakened my mother’s psyche and resolve, I am certain that she would have been a different woman, a different mother. I’ve blamed her for so long for the way she treated me growing up, for the strange way that she has always acted. I know that she would have been a little odd no matter what…it’s just who she simply was. I think that things would have been vastly different, though, if Grandmere and Grandpere had been different people. They alienate so many people, and inadvertently separated me from my father’s family for my entire childhood. I used to ride my bike to Auntie’s house a few blocks over just to visit, and even that seemed illicit and forbidden.

I need to plot it out, though, the story. I might end up writing a bunch of anecdotes and then redrafting it into a single piece. We’ll see.

In other Circle revelations, Heather is a Dar Williams fan. She wants to sing “When I Was a Boy” with me.

We did something that we are calling a “Gifting Circle,” where we turn to the person next to us and “gift” a word…which is actually a “quality.” To Tara I gifted Grace, and to Marlene, Hope.
From Marlene, I received Inspiration, and from Tara, Self-Acceptance. It’s strange that Tara wanted to gift that to me,  because she came in after my “share.” During my “share,” I had mentioned that I recently acquired Paul McKenna’s I Can Make You Confident, complete with guided hypnosis CD. I wonder if I simply exude a lack of confidence, or if instead it is simply something we all need a little bit more of.

All in all, I’m really glad that I went to Circle. I was a little uptight about it earlier in the day and kind of wanted just to be with my young man. He is applying for a job that might afford us a great deal less time together. However, it might better afford us a place of our own, which would then afford us more time together, and it would all even out. That is what he has told me, and I am trying to keep it in mind and worry a little bit less.

Perhaps that is my goal for the moment: to worry a little bit less.