...

It just doesn't get easier, does it?

I'm here in the kitchen, after work, chopping prepping cleaning mixing cooking for Thanksgiving...alone. Got my kitchen candles burning, jazz standards playing, big ol happy apron on, and now a big kahlua and coffee, lovely birthday roses I was given from a sweet friend...and while often I can hide the empty feelings inside of those things, it's not working tonight.

Daughter had jokingly said that for my birthday she'd make sure to not pull any bitch stuff. Yeah. Well, I did hope.
Not so much.
She came downstairs and the best she could do was glare. I started to feel uncomfortable moving around or singing, she wouldn't talk...I finally said that she could go upstairs if she wanted, it was okay, which was obviously the meanest thing EVER. Yes, just that way. My response to the ensuing drama was to then to let her know that if she wanted to stay the attitude had to dial down. I was trying hard to be up and happy and not feel ridiculous, like a little girl pretending to take care of her family and cook a feast for...what?
I didn't say that part to her, but she left.

Every Thanksgiving eve since the year before the divorce I feel like an Eleanor Rigby. Truly.

I'm family bent. I'm not a career girl, but I want and like to work. I'm wired to take care and nurture, as most women are, while leaving those wings free to stretch. I don't believe in not being attached to the person you're involved with, but I never want to smother them. Anyway.

She went upstairs, and after a bit I went up to see if I could help with whatever is bothering her.
Nope.
Stating why it mattered to me, I'm met with "you just want to make me feel like shit".
Wow.
Familiar words.
And not even close to any spot of reality. I was hoping for neither of us to feel like shit. That was the objective.

I can't figure out any better how to keep the emotions just on me and to make no confrontational, charged, personal statements any better than I do. Man, I've been trained in, and trained others, in this stuff, it's second nature most times. Unless the other person is out for a confrontation.

So, I finished my position, asked one more time if we could do this together, with a movie, did she want a pizza...? Whatever? Got shot down, said ok, let her know that anytime she changed her mind, if she did, she'd be welcome, and left the room.
I'm sitting here now, working on getting the heart for this back into me.
I've got to figure it out somehow, how to be okay with the aloneness at times like this...I've quite likely got many years ahead of me dealing with the same thing, it's easier to focus on finding that way to be okay in case, well, you know...and while I know well how to be alone, don't like it, but know it and am ok with it, finding the purpose in this is what I can't seem to figure out.

And here comes a wagging pup, she always knows. And now the other, while the first starts dropping her toys on my lap.
Good doggies.
Guess I'll get back to it now. The purpose of it will show itself someday.