What's going on with my dad???

I know, you can't answer that question.  I had to ask it, though.  He and I had a nice conversation about a month ago, but since then there just hasnt been much interaction between the two of us.  It's really beginning to BOTHER me.  I try to jump start conversations via email with him, but he responds with a sentence, maybe.  Sometimes it's not even a full sentence.  He's never rude, but the responses he gives are something you'd get from someone you just met off the street, not someone you used to talk with weekly and joke and fart around with.

I understand he's adjusting.  Fine.  He's had 4 months to adjust, though.  WTF?  It's starting to hurt my feelings now, you know?  I've brought up with him in the recent past that it seemed he was holding back and not interacting with me as he used to and he said he was just working things out for himself and he'd do better.  That was back in November, though.

I mean, I know better than to expect him to move as quickly through this maze of emotions as I have.  Still, I'm not seeing much of an effort on his part to keep up our relationship.  It's all me.  I do the contacting, the calling, the emailing.  In fact, I just emailed him my first little writing assignment last night asking him for a critique.  I've done this in the past with him and he's all about offering compliments when they are appropriate and bashing the hell out of my work when appropriate, but his response to my assignment was "sounds like a sad story."  Damn, he said nothing else, didnt even bother to capitalize the first word of his jacked up sentence.

Am I doing something wrong?  Am I going about this the wrong way with him?  At this point, I feel like I've done all I can do and I don't really care much for putting more of myself out there for him to ignore.  I don't want to lose my relationship with my dad, but I'm no masochist either and I don't want to continue just asking to be disrespected.

Your thoughts?

Gag. Retch. Puke.

Today I did my normal seminary run and one of the girls I picked up handed a book to my daughter to read.  It is apparently some LDS teen romance novel, complete with a picture of the SLC temple in the background.  Wonderful.

Of course, in the split second I realized what kind of book it was fifty thousand thoughts flew through my head.  It went something like this:

"Ahh, neat, the indoctrination never ends."
"Haha!  It's not an adventure novel or Greek mythology!"
"It looks like a girly, romance, church fiction book.  Excellent, she hates that stuff."
"Oh, look.  She's making that 'Eww, it's dog shit!' face while profusely thanking the girl."
"Whew."
"Why am I making such a big deal of this?  The kid's happy with her decision to stay in the church and forcing her out would make her fight back even more."
"I need a beer."
"Dammit, I'm driving."
"Double dammit, I drank the last one in the fridge a few days ago."

...all that, and my day has barely started.  Anyways, whatever.  My kid is intelligent.  She'll figure things out eventually with my help.

Hola.

Hey, guess what?  Over the last month or so I've found my favorite alcoholic beverage.  I wasn't able to find anymore of that pumpkin ale (although I didn't really look all that hard for it), so I figured I'd better find something that's easily accessible from my local store as a good replacement.  I've found that I like Land Shark.  I didn't like it much at first, but it's kind of grown on me. 

Why beer, especially when I've got a complex about looking uncouth with regards to alcohol?  Pretty much it all boils down to how much effort it takes to open the damn bottle.  Even with a proper corkscrew, wine is more of a hassle to open in my opinion.  I've got a knack for effing relatively easy things up, so I'd rather just stack the odds in my favor.  I love the long neck beer bottles.  Just a flick of the metal tool thingy and the top is off.  I love it. :)

Another topic...Okay, so I'm still working on the anger thing.  I'd like get through this phase quickly, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly out of my control.  I just don't want to lose months or years of my life wading through the anger.  I want to be easier going about what former ward members/former LDS friends say about/to me regarding my lifestyle change.  I'm working on it, but it's just not in my nature to let that kind of stuff roll off my back.  I'm the kind of person that gets her feelings hurt and usually holds it in until I reach a breaking point at which time I end up taking people out with chain saws and heavy artillery.  I've got to learn how to manage that.

I want to feel "normal" again.

I've been thinking about how nice it was back when I was oblivious to the truth.  Sure, I had my challenges like everyone else, but back then there was a supposed "reason" for my challenges, a big picture that I just didn't have a clear understanding of.  The upside to my current non-blissful ignorance is that the challenges I had before don't seem so challenging.  The downside is that those challenges are overshadowed by the fact that there is no real big picture anymore, you know?

Maybe I'm just PMS-ing.

Which gets me to thinking about good old JS.  I hope with "every fiber of my being" that his wives' cycles synched up and they all got PMS-y on him every damn month.  I hope they were just too embarrassed/scared to write in their journals about how they beat the shit out of that man on a monthly basis.

Yeah.  That makes me feel a little better.

Time to move forward...

I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out what I can actively do to get rid of this anger.  At this point, I honestly think it boils down to moving forward and not looking back and dwelling on the pain.  Of course, that's so much easier said than done, but I can't see me making any progress until I take steps to let this anger go. 

I think this is going to translate to using my free time more wisely.  While its important to allow myself some anger, as I know it is an important part of the healing process, I think allowing myself to get ridiculously worked up is not good.  I need to pick up my old habits again and put aside my church research for the time being.  I think I've allowed it to get far too out of hand.  I just need to try to go back to being the productive person I used to be. 

I used to read voraciously, and I was actually working on writing my first fiction novel before all of this happened.  Also, school starts tomorrow and that will help me get back into my groove, as well.  I've got one semester left (this one) to goof off and enjoy myself before my turn on the waiting list for the RN program out here rolls around, so I don't want to waste my free time stewing over judgmental TBMs or moronic church leaders.

What I'm hoping this translates to is a more uplifting blog (YAY!)  and perhaps some nice off-topic posts since one of my fluffy classes this semester is a fiction writing class that will no doubt have lots of fun assignments that I'll want to share. :)

Okay.   So, life is good.  Everything is going to be okay.  I'm allowed to get mad, but I'm not allowed to develop an ulcer or dream about running over obnoxious TBMs anymore. :)

It's 2:33 a.m. and I'm still FUMING...gotta get this rage under control.

Yeah, you know how I said the only TBM that responded to my facebook post was the sweetest, kindest friend?  Well, she ended up unfriending me AND blocking me AND erasing all of her 10+ posts.  The ouchiest part of that is that she and I had been emailing eachother privately throughout the time she was posting.  Things took a turn when I revealed to her that I had already sent my resignation letter in to SLC.  That's when she stopped emailing and shortley thereafter deleted the posts, etcetera.  The weird thing is that a few minutes ago when I finally decided to turn the computer back on and distract myself from my anger (since it was keeping me from sleeping), I saw that there was another post on there from her.  I don't get it.  She was previously off my FB list and I couldn't locate her before.  Anyways, I was so pissed off I reverted to my 8th grade self and deleted her post before I read it and unfriended and blocked her.  How's that for maturity on my part?  I swear, sometimes I embarrass myself.

Well, what's done is done.  I think my FB experiment was useful, though.  I've learned for myself that eventually my TBM friends will desert me for fear of me dragging them down to hell with me.  A friend of mine from Postmo has been telling me this for quite a while now, but I kept thinking I was one of the lucky few that wouldn't have that same experience. 

This is, of course, the main reason for my anger.  You know, I got through the fact that the church was a load of crap pretty well.  It sucked, but I adjusted and found my happy place more or less.  My big source of all-things-shitty now is dealing with the backlash from my LDS friends/acquaintances. 

Dammit.  This is the same level of anger I felt when I was going through my divorce.  This is so STUPID.

Facebook Post Challenge

I was thinking the other day about how it just took one red flag (by the name of polyandry) to get me rolling on my research.  So, I posted something yesterday to kind of plant some seeds of doubt in the minds of the few LDS friends I have left on FB. 

Here's what I posted: "I'm going to risk a few friendships here, but I'd like to know if anyone out there knows what the term "polyandry" means...and how Joseph Smith is connected with it. Just do a little bit of research." 

You know what bugs me?  The only TBM that responded was the sweetest person on the face of the earth, who has stuck by me throughout my journey out of the church (basically, someone I really, really don't want to hurt)...and the handful of other TBMs did SQUAT.  No responses from them.  My hopes are that they were paying attention to the post and multiple responding posts from my fellow postmos.  My fear, though, is that they simply hit the "ignore" button in which case no seeds were planted.