Seeking Inspiration

Wow, looking back things got worse, but then they got better.  Yay.

My niece is living with us now.  Sister of niece who lived with us a few years ago.

In high school, I knew a couple different kids.  "I'm living with my aunt" or "I live with my grandparents."  Without going into detail on their personal lives, I would think, "How can their parents do that?  It seems like there should be some way to work things out.  The kid comes first.  What a terrible parent to let their kid go."  Now my brother is one of those parents.

But the thing is, he's not a bad guy.  Quite the opposite, he's a good guy; or at least that's the way I've always seen him.  You can't blame the person he is with for his choices because in the end, the person he is with is his choice, too.  So, I've categorized my feelings for his girlfriend and, well, I tried to be friends with her, but in the end I felt like she was trying to be friends with me and I was somehow cast in the part of the bad guy.  I can't be the pawn in some political power play between his past and his present so I side with the one who didn't ask me to choose and let everything else go.

Still, I can't quite figure out how I feel about brother right now.  His happiness seems to have come before his children's somehow, and yet - he's still a good guy.  In certain ways.  With that frame, is that possible?  Of course people are complex...

Meanwhile, his kids need out because they aren't trusted, supported.  Even emotional and financial support is lost in favor, I suppose, of making them independent, but unwillingness to help your kids for the urgent things like school fees (or even food, and clothing if they move out before they graduate High School) appears nothing more than selfish.  I have seen and heard enough on this subject to know it is true without taking the kids' word for it.

My own child is 11.  I have no practice for this.  I love these kids, but I am just not sure I know how to do it right.  I worry enough about doing it right for my pre-teen.

I try to be straight forward with these guys, but I have a feeling it comes of very weird because, again, no practice.  Our family does not come from the school of straight forward by any stretch of the imagination.

Well, I don't care what is said about me because I'm comfortable with my choices.  I spend very little time and energy defending myself because even if my actions aren't perfect, I know I made them with the best of intentions.  Always.  Which in my mind I see me saying "I don't care what is said" and thinking that is something someone says when they do care so take that as you will.  In honesty, I guess there are certain things said about me that get back to me and piss me off, but that's also something I have to become comfortable with.

I just feel so overwhelmed sometimes.

I haven't done an obscure art project for a long time and I think maybe it will help with this creative constipation I'm having.  Ideas running rampant, but I can't form anything.  I say obscure art because any artist or art teacher would probably say it's crap.  I'm not exactly talented, but sometimes converting to the visual medium opens the non-visual part of my brain.  Seeking inspiration...