Distractions

I was pretty grumpy by the time Jessica got home. My mom had left another message--apparently "I'm going to leave you alone" means for about a day.

Mom said she had a new perspective on homosexuality. That maybe you could be born with it, she didn't know, but we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, and would I please call her. I haven't. It makes my stomach hurt to think about calling her, so I'm not calling, and I'm not thinking about it.


It did occur to me--and this is what I stewed over while painting the bathroom (which looks awesome, by the way)--that she seems to think that I just up and decided to leave the church and go gay one day. No forethought, no consideration about what it means for my eternal soul, etc. I wonder whether spelling out why I left the church and how long it took me and how difficult it was, complete with my reasoning, would help. I kind of doubt it. At any rate, I'm not going to talk to her about it until it doesn't make my stomach hurt.

I think that's what makes me most sad--to know that my mom is so blinded by her beliefs that she has no faith in me.

It's funny--she occasionally has told me she's impressed with me--that I can crochet and knit better than her, for example, or figure out how to fix my own washing machine. Once I got tired of email forwards of some ultra-conservative political nature, and I wrote a rebuttal and sent it to her. She was impressed with my logic and ability to communicate ideas, and was proud of that, but still didn't agree. Generally speaking, I keep my mouth shut about those sorts of things, but I did get some satisfaction from knowing that she at least could see my logic. Maybe I should send a note explaining my stance. I'm not sure if I could keep some poison from seeping through, though.

So I'll send a note to my brother and his fiance apologizing for not going for Thanksgiving and letting them know we'd like to visit them in Connecticut instead.

But back to distractions, which is what I started to write about. We went to dinner and a movie last night because I really, really wanted to be distracted. We went to the bar that has the best burgers in the county, ran into an acquaintance, watched some SyFy movie with closed captions while we ate ("Hey! That's the Borg queen!" when we saw one of the actors), then saw RED at the theater. It was a happy distraction, and it worked.

So today I shall work harder at distracting myself rather than stewing and see where it gets me.

Perhaps I'll carry my journal around with me while I bake bread and make notes of things I want to do and places I want to visit.