What am I supposed to be learning?

A question of exasperation.

Content Warning

😿 Hey, folks. This episode makes reference to suicidal ideations and firearms. Jayel is okay.
❓ Also, question mark warning: I asked a lot of questions.

Pema Chödrön, a Buddhist nun, once said (paraphrasing) things will come back to us over and over again until we have learned all that there is to learn from them.

Could it be argued that waking up in a prison bathroom with a strange man every morning is something coming back to me over and over again? If so, what is there for me to learn each day?

After that, I am okay.

Is it not so much the element of waking up with my head just six or seven feet away from an open and lid-free toilet bowl with a sink attached as it is waking up surrounded by concertina wire in one of Florida's secured, gated bed and breakfast communities that I should be taking my lesson or lessons from?

How about the memories?
What is the series of memories of the last year of my adoptive father's life meant to teach me?
Running to live somewhere that was ultimately bad for me in order to get out from under his thumb was at least a quick set of lessons to learn from, and I learned that a quarter century or so ago. So it's probably not that. Hmm...

So many questions...

Is it the grief that I've "poorly" expressed to others in the past at his passing? Possibly. I never really had a usable model for grieving the loss of someone -- his approach is the one I mirrored the most. Stolid was the face he showed the world most of the time, so I was much like him. I do grieve, but, well... I don't fall down in the aisle screaming and howling at funerals. I'm just quiet about it.

Is it the grudgingly admitted gratitude for him knowing just how much to piss me off when he was alive, which in turn pushed me to graduate from high school because I would not have survived his "being correct" in his statement of "You will never graduate school"? Perhaps. Knowledge of this irritant helped me to turn other people's doubts into the fuel I needed to do exactly what people have said I can't manage.

Is it the quiet thankfulness for when he admitted that's exactly what he had done, playing me like a song? Perhaps so. Like above, it helped me to see around the corner and try to maintain a small lead on the doubters and haters.

Is it the belated acknowledgment of (or perhaps the newly discovered) awe of a man who in his sixties built rooms onto our tiny house (that he also built) with no help, no construction crew, just his hands, his old school tools, and his know-how (there was no such thing as YouTube, much less Google!), and the pain of being there as he was reduced to a frail 77-year-old shadow of its former self? I would say at least in part, yes. I've related to one of my loved ones the thought of being bested by someone who had to work without the technological advantages we have in this day and age, and why it fuels my want to build that container home I've hinted at.

Is it the memory of my adoptive mother screaming my name for help when my father got off what would become his deathbed, struggling to get to his pistol, and she had to hold him back as all faith escaped his mind in his desperation to alleviate one man's suffering? Strikingly, yes. It showed me a small chink in the old man's armor, that underneath it he is as capable of failure as I am. It opened my eyes to humanity, to a fact that I have worked to learn. I am of a nature to grow older and die. A little kid me wouldn't accept that. 18-year-old me didn't want to accept it. 40-something me does not like some aspects of it, but knows that is how it goes.

Is it the quiet, subdued phone call I got at work that one November night, of my mother asking me when am I scheduled to come home? The memories of me telling mom that if she needs me, I am sure my boss will understand, and her follow-up of son, it's almost his time to go, he's really, really bad off even then? The tears I suppressed as I called my boss and said, "My dad's about to die. I need to get home ASAP," and being told go home, take care of your mother? The tears I suppress even right now as I type this post a quarter of a century later, reliving this in my mind on loop? Yes. It teaches me that in this moment, I did not learn from that teachable moment, here are some lessons.

Is this lesson about stored pain? Stored emotions in general?

Or perhaps, is it an unexpected opportunity to harvest new insights about myself, about the world I live in, a chance for the purging fires to roll through, opening up room for the love in places that decades ago only saw the thorny bristles of anger and ignorance flourish? I think this is what it was, so I gently label it "learning" and let it drift gently on its way.

This afternoon's maths problems are for you, Dad.