reality

Outside of loneliness, my least favorite emotion is powerlessness. I realize that, more than anything, avoiding that sensation is what motivates much of my actions. In many ways, I think loneliness is a result, or symptom, of powerlessness. I know my resistance to many rules and authorities is in response to the powerless sensation.
Yesterday was such a day. I had an IEP meeting with the family of the girl that I blogged about before—the one where they sent her away and changed their phone number. Well, they’ve done it again, only not changed their number—sent her away to her other members of her abusive/neglectful family without warning or preamble. Never mind that that this will make over three solid weeks of school you are letting her miss—making her miss. One of the parts that gets me the most is seeing grandma sit there and play the victim and talk about the strength and moral standing of her ‘parenting skills’ and how the girl doesn’t respond. I had gone off on grandma during conferences a few weeks ago, but I did so calmly and intentionally. Last night, I wasn’t so clam or intentional. I scoffed her claims openly and threw back her assertions—my voice trembling in anger and my face flushed with heat. At one point, the social worker tried to break in and say that she wasn’t so sure we needed to go there. I continued.
All night I felt sick. I would forget why I was feeling so guilty, so stressed, so weighted down. Then, I’d remember. Long, long, long ago, I learned to leave things at work and not take them home. And on the rare occasions I couldn’t shake it, I’d go home to Chad and was able to focus on our lives, on things I delusionally thought I had control over or a say in. Last night, there was no escaping it, and my empty home and arms only amplified everything. We, all of us, think we have control over our destiny, but we are dependent on those around us—their choices affect every molecule of us. Their declarations of love and promises of forever fly away in search of the next fun adventure. The arms that are to protect us become the ones that leave us shivering in the cold. The strength that is supposed to be poured into a little girl is denied and in weakness and selfishness, they create and foster and broken and abused child who is becoming a hardened and an angry danger to others around her.
So I sit. So I pace. So I scream. So I rage. So I pray. So I fight. I hold onto a love that has deemed me unworthy. I fight for a child who has no one else in her corner (truly, no one else). I cling to a belief that things can be better, can be right. All in impotence. All in delusion. All in an attempt to control and change my little world. Even attempt to ‘give it to Him.’
Whatever.
Pinocchio may have become a real boy, but all it really meant was that his strings became transparent to him alone.