pawned tender_square it took everything inside her in that moment to not get angry. “it felt like you pawned me off on your dad all day, just so you could get away,” he sulked. her dad was adamant about assembling their new bedframe. “you should use what i know while you still can,” he said to them, eager to be useful in retirement. her father was the man with capable hands who could fix or restore just about anything; she didn’t want to think about how his mind was slowly sabotaging his senses. when her parents arrived at their new home, her dad went into the bedroom immediately to get to work, and her husband joined him. she turned to her mother. “i don’t have any coffee in the house; should we go out and pick a little something up for everyone?” her mother drove. and as she looked out across the expanse of city she was born in, she realized it was the first time the two of them had been alone together for five years. five years. their last solo excursion was to a craft shop before her wedding, to find glass stones to fill the vases of faux floral arrangements. the remembered the bags of pebbles were heavy in her hands as she waited in the check-out line. her second marriage was becoming akin to those pebbles; each day she added a new stone to what contained her. some she admired for their clarity, others frustrated her with their opaqueness. their lightness was deceiving. who knew such little rocks could make a mass? she weighted her options carefully. “i don’t like what you said about feeling ‘pawned off’ with my dad,” she measured. “he’s your dad too. it actually made me really happy to see you spending time together today.” “he was having a hard time with the directions, and i didn’t want to shame him,” he explained. he was frustrated by how long the process took because of all the misdirection. her father had put the wrong screws into the wrong sections, and her husband had tried to gently point this out. her father was exhausted. “these directions are written in chinese!” he talked about bringing parts of the bedframe home to sand new holes so the screws would fit. her husband was alarmed. the furniture movers said the setup would be easy, and she felt insensitive now for how often she said to her father and her husband, “you guys are *still* working?” she wasn’t used to seeing her dad this way, she forgot he was ill. and he was a proud man. “i don’t know about you,” her mother said, “but i’m typically the one that assembles furniture. is it like that in your house?” she nodded in reply. she and her mother let them be when they wouldn’t take a break to eat the snacks they’d brought back. and so they busied themselves with other tasks, like picking up the internet modem from the post office. in the car, the two of them cried over how similar the men they married were. she wore her mother’s wedding rings and often felt like a failure in the face of their 40-year union; how did anyone do it? was there something broken in her? and her mother went on to explain things about the nature of her life that gave her daughter a newfound appreciation for her strength. it was a strength she needed to be nearer to in the years and moves to come. 211228 ... tender_square "he's never struck me as someone who takes control because that’s the way he thinks it ought to be," her therapist explained. "but more that the control comes from a place of anxiety, where he can't manage the thought of being alone." "yes!" she said emphatically. "that's what my mother said—that she felt that he exhibited more control as i tried to do more things on my own." there was a pause in the room. she looked down at her hands in her lap. her therapist always left the space for her to resume speaking. "the thing is," she said, meeting her therapist’s eyes again, "i think about my role in this, what i've allowed. i've always known an element of control was there, but i think i accepted it because that's how i thought the relationship worked." "well, and it can be that it wasn’t *all* bad." "how so?" "when the two of you first got together, there was this all-encompassing connection and creativity in your relationship. it seemed that's how two of you decided to block out the world in order to stay sober, in order to do what was important to you," her therapist explained. "those boundaries, or control mechanisms, allowed you to pursue what was important to you." "it's funny that you say that," she said. "because while in conversation with someone i love, i said that exact thing, that, in some respects, my husband's control helped me establish better relationships with my family." "yeah, it's not that it was a bad thing necessarily," her therapist went on. "it's just that whatever was functioning in your relationship is no longer serving you now. when you first came into working with me, we were tackling tough questions about your family, and that's hardly ever a topic in our sessions now." she considered this. it was true that the contents of her sessions had dramatically shifted in the intervening years, and became more about her and her wants and desires and dreams, less about the obligations she felt to others. her therapist continued. "the questions you were asking were: am i allowed to step away from the chaos that is happening within my family? am i allowed to take care of myself in the midst of their trauma?" she interjected, "am i allowed to flourish?" "exactly," her therapist said. the tears welled up in her eyes. she reached for a tissue on the table beside her. "the more time i spend back home, the more i realize that i'm ready to step back into what’s going on with my family," she said. "which is not to say that i want things to go back to the way they were—absolutely not—but more that, if they did, i know that i would be able to handle it. i'm stronger now than i was before." her therapist nodded sympathetically. "i fled home," she cried. "fled. because i couldn’t deal with it. and now this willingness to go back is what i think is going to cause issues in my marriage. because he doesn’t want to go back there." "why not?" "because it interferes with his idea of stability; if i step back into that supporting role with my family, it affects him by extension." she wondered if maybe this was what she was waiting for the universe to unfold for her by staying put. as she meditated later that evening, she cried realizing just how much her husband had done for her: he had helped her get sober. he had helped her find her creativity again. he had helped her set stronger boundaries with her family. she had been unable to accomplish those things on her own—she had tried. and perhaps this was the purpose of her relationship, these were the things she needed to learn from him in order to be a stronger version of herself. but what was her purpose with him? for a moment, she doubted that she brought much, if anything, to her husband's life. but she told herself that was false, that was a way of diminishing herself out of guilt and shame. there were things he needed to learn from their relationship, yes, but she prayed betrayal wasn’t one of the lessons. 211230 what's it to you? who go blather from