You know all that shit I wrote earlier about making progress and whatnot? Yeah, you can throw that shit right out the window. I am constantly spiraling down my vortex of self-loathing, and I am pretty much going along for the ride. Remember the sitting of the kids I did Friday night? Yeah, well, I snapped on Saturday.
First, let me say that I only had one rule for my niece as she was growing up: Do not break your head. I figured anything else was fixable. She got a kick out of that, but she was a really good kid. High-energy and high-spirited, but not destructive or pushy. As I’ve said, we sat for hours making up long, complicated stories about being fairies or wizards or other ethereal creatures. Now that she is twelve (and looks twenty), she really has grown into a lovely young woman.
When the boys came along, I had to start making up rules on the fly. Most of them included “No” or “Don’t” and some form of banishment from hitting me/throwing things at me. As I’ve said before, for someone with PTSD, this is a recipe for disaster. Until recently, I had to sit on the aisle seat in a theatre or the end seat at a restaurant in order to have easy access to the exit (I still prefer that seat, but it’s not imperative). You can probably see where I am going with this.
Let me give you some background. I was born in the Year of the Boar so I collect pigs. Stuffed pigs, glass pigs, ceramic pigs, wooden pigs, piggy banks, jade pigs, etc. I have had pig socks and pig slippers before, and I currently have a pair of boxers with grumpy pigs on them. To that end, I have a giant stuffed pig (about three feet tall and two feet wide) that only has one eye because SOMEBODY who shall remain nameless (*cough, not Raven, cough*) likes to scratch his claws on it, and my nephews love this giant pig. Of course they do! It’s a giant pig. Anyway, the time before last they were at my house, they decided it would be great fun to swing the pig around and throw it at me. You can imagine that I, on the other hand, vehemently disagreed that this was a good idea.