Oh, hey. There's a gas leak outside and we're not allowed to leave the building.

I have often lamented my lack of Rebecca nearby as I would lean on you far too much for help sorting through the piles of crap stacked about my life. But I do not picture you in LA, whereas I can easily see you in Baltimore. Wherever the future takes you.

JZ, I feel about forgiveness as many others around here do (huh, fancy that!). I don't think forgiveness is always owed to those who have wronged us. You don't have to do the hard emotional work of forgiving someone who has never bothered to ask for it, even if they are dying. But it seems like what you want is closure, to be able to bury your anger and not carry it with you after she's dead. But that's about you and what you need, which seems far more the way to think about it. It sounds like you are already moving in that direction, towards taking stock and letting go.

It IS PMM's birthday! Happy birthday, Plei!

That's what forgiveness always is to people like my grandmother: they don't care how you feel, they just want to be absolved of all wrongdoing. Forgiveness means they don't have to change.

That's what forgiveness is to a lot of people, unfortunately. Which is why I don't forgive easily. I'll move on from whatever hurt or wrong they've done me and work on not giving whatever it was power and space in my life, but I won't forgive.

I killed Natter with sex toys.

It's PMM's birthday today, right?

This post cracked me up.

And many happy returns to Plei (and if it's the wrong day, happy Juneteenth to us all)

I am down for bungalows or farmhouse. My college dorm was a U-shaped building full of basically bedrooms that opened up onto a shared courtroom, and had a shared laundry room and lounge, and that actually suited me really well - space I could retreat to of my own, and shared space to be social in.

It is funny to me that I am coming from a place of NOT achieving my goals AT ALL but still in the same "So what now?" bardo state as Zen and her people.

That sounds like such a bizarro definition of forgiveness to me. Huh.

Thanks, all - I definitely don't feel I owe *her* forgiveness; my unforgiveness is a weight on me alone, and the moral obligation is infinitely more to my faith and the centrality of giving and accepting forgiveness than to Rage!Nurse, who doesn't think she needs it and wouldn't know what to do with it.

If I'm right and there's an afterlife and a Guardian thereof, she's going to have to come to her own reckoning with the way she was -- that's on her, and it's her story, not mine (to roughly paraphrase Aslan, nobody is told any story but her own). And if I'm wrong, then there's no reckoning and my hanging onto and nursing my grievance (not tending to the wounds, but worrying at them to keep them fresh and raw) is even more utterly pointless.

My story is how I dealt and continue to deal with it, and I really don't like the part of the story where I have to face that piece of me that still wants to punch and kick and laugh meanly at her and ruin her last living moments. That piece of me is fairly shitty and poisonous -- she's responding to real and vile harm, but she's still poison. Gotta figure out how to get her to either unclench her fists from this badness she's got a chokehold on or just tantrum herself out until it's all vented.

eta: Jilli, yeah. My mom loves to quote a long-ago mentor who told her, "Forgive by all means, but don't ever forget. Forgive the people who've hurt you, but don't give them the chance to need your forgiveness again."

That's a fine thing to want to work on, JZ, but there's no timetable for it. And I think "love your enemy" goes for the parts of yourself you don't like as well as other people, for what that's worth.

Hippo birdies to Plei!

It turns out that the recruiter was waiting for me to contact her even though she said she'd contact me. Okay! I'm glad I sent her an email yesterday, because I would like to get details on start dates and such so I can plan out the next few months of my life.

That piece of me is fairly shitty and poisonous -- she's responding to real and vile harm, but she's still poison.

That part is so hard. Righteous anger feels so good in the moment but you can't make it your precious.

Man, catching up on emails from yesterday afternoon tricked me into thinking it was much later in the day than it actually is.