anotherlook

Sorry that I have not posted lately but I have been re-evaluating me. I am the type of person who is very cognitive of people around me. I grew up with a sister and two brothers in a home with a mom and dad. I raised two kids, have been married twice but for the last fifteen years I have lived by myself and have greatly enjoyed my solitude. I had just begun to come back into myself, being cleansed of the vibrations of all of those people I have lived up close and personal with and had come back to writing, something I have not done in years.

Then, bam, I get the “pleasure” of having my 17 year old granddaughter come live with me. This is the reason I have not written anything lately. What an interesting age for a girl. She does not believe that her granny knows anything about life as “she” knows it because I am so much older than her and maybe if I had not stepped away/ran away from “office” work and decided to become a school bus driver for a while, I would be a little out of touch with youth today.

However, as a direct result of having hung out with some sixty plus, wild teenagers, on a daily basis, on a school bus with me playing temporary guide to the minds of some of these kids, I came to truly feel the phrase “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” In turn I have applied that saying as I have looked around the world and realized that these words are evidence of the totality of mankind’s existence.

While we have built better housing, harnessed energy from the very ground we walk on, sent men to the moon, created bigger, better everything, been able to communicate the predicted behavior of certain individuals, as well as prevent certain illnesses, we the people are still the same as the curious, manipulated Eve, the perplexed and enthralled Adam whose union spawned the good child Abel and the jealous hearted child Cain and so it was then, so shall it be now and forever.

Mankind, it appears, can change all around himself, in the physical world, but what motivates him from within, never changes; the picture of how we deal with each other, our basic needs of survival, the feelings of love, hate, insecurities, loneliness; what makes us happy and what leads us to despair, these things never change and are inherent in each and every one of us to various degrees.

It is hard for me to live with another person. I feel their pains, their frustrations too personally. Their thoughts become my thoughts and sometimes I can look into their eyes and know. Over the years of living and working with others, I have learned this is not a good trait to have. To get to this point of observation you need to cling to things that are verbalized, read body language and facial expressions and sometimes read between lines that are sometimes obscured by words not relevant. Nobody wants you this up close and personal and will do and say things to throw you off target of them.

My daughter was good for not looking me in the eye during certain conversations and while I knew something was amiss, I could not see her eyes to determine just what was amiss – I did not trip too much on this until later in life because basically, I trusted who she was, a responsible, work oriented, obedient child. She is still responsible and work oriented but has not been “obedient” in many years; but there was a dark side in her that I only felt but did not see – now that we are estranged totally, I am hosting her 17 year old daughter who incidentally, is so much like her mother at that age I am forever calling her by her mother’s name because her basic vibration is so, so familiar to me.

Needless to say this past month or so has been a very interesting step back into a past I thought I had left behind. Dealing with my granddaughter at an age where she “knows” she is grown, having not raised her to this point yet knowing to a great degree where her head is and taking into consideration that young folks of today have no real concept of what “respect” means, it has been confrontational, emotional, stressful to say the least.

She has even used the “F” word to me and I was about to send her back but we are growing in understanding, hopefully, and although, I do not get the opportunity to use my computer anymore and my thoughts and feelings are tinged with the essence of my granddaughters’ thoughts and feelings, I hope to get more times like this time so that I can occasionally write an article or two or maybe share my experience with dealing with a 17 year old or just dealing with living with someone after all these years.

How easy it makes your life when you can just hand your responsibilities off onto someone else and feel comfortable with that decision even when you yourself cannot stand the person you have just given responsibility of your child to. Life is very curious indeed the way things sometimes work out. To be 17 years old and think you know the real deal - how refreshing.

And That’s The Way I See It!!