Blog entry for:

with whom to be truthful is ME!
a bit of grammar repair there and i am ready to roll on down the path of honesty via perhaps what might seem a tangential and unconnected route. thinking about what this weekend has done for me and my relationship with my Dad, as well as considering what i have done in the past, even before that very first time, that changed me forever, i have a bit of remorse and am more than a little ashamed. i will not go onto my litany of evil today, as this is neither the time nor the forum to express that particular laundry list. no what i will go into today is how i arrived at where i am this morning.
last night as i went over my TENTH STEP gig, i saw that one of the feelings i keep tripping over is remorse for my past. i generally have put my past into perspective, so bumping into this wall feels sort of weird. when i was walking to the coffee shop with my cousin, i said i regretted cutting off my cousins and family in Montana for all those years, and i do not think he quite got what i was saying, as we were never close as kids. we were city rats that showed up periodically to see our country cousins, so growing up our interactions were few and brief. that set the pattern for my adult life, as i was far from willing to come up to a place that felt alien and isolated to me, to see people i barely knew. weddings and funerals were the only events that dragged me up to Montana. when i arrived, it was a process to get to know my cousins again and try and get some sense of who they were. more importantly, use enough to feed my need and not let them catch on to what i was doing.
getting clean, changed a whole lot for me, and on the trip to Chinook, for my grandma Beulah's i finally caught a glimpse of something that could be: a willingness to be a part of their lives and more importantly let them into mine. as my dad and his brothers age, i am finding the time i spend up here, increasingly more important to me. all of a sudden there feels as if there is not enough time, to learn what i need to learn from those men, or to be a part of my family's life. my fear of commitment, committing to being here for my cousins as well as my immediate family, is finally being overridden by my desire to have them play a larger role in my life. it is true that Bozeman offers more of an attraction than Chinook, to draw me up to Montana, BUT, and yes it is a big one, i would go to Chinook to spend time with my family today.
back to the honest prayer theme? well not really. what i see i need to be honest about today, is what i feel and my gratitude at having a weekend with whatever part of my family can make it here. i did not ask for this feeling in any sort of prayer and i will will accept it as part of my day and the man i am becoming, after all, is that not what this journey is all about?

∞ DT ∞