Old Habits and All That

Is there anything quite like family to get one really worked up? I talked with my little brother today about my upcoming visit to the fam, and I performed my predictably overwrought worry about him, his education, and any-and-everything-family. I've been thinking that he should develop a study plan for next year -- eleventh grade -- and broached the subject with him. I emphasized that he would want a less stressful year than last, and, as he himself brought up, that junior year is often difficult. On the face of it, not the worst thing to talk about. But it felt like so many conversations we've had before. Fundamentally, I come into such discussions in bad faith. At least, I don't get very far before I get so caught up in hyper-awareness about being too didactic that I feel a great weight upon me of having made yet another false start. Like a pendulum, however, I then regret that I let such hang-ups abort what is an important discussion about education. By the time I realize that I'm back in the same place I've been so many times, I've invested a great deal of time and emotion in a swirling phantasmagoria of familial threats, frustrations, and helplessness. Feels like one big swindle; like an addict lurching back to the always and ever down. We are, by the way, long off the phone by the time these episodes come to an end.

This reminds me, too, that this sort of hand-wringing about things never changing used to be much more common in my life. This old record had many tracks, and always the same f'ing song. Take any other frustrated hope and I could go through the same song and dance about being trapped in a hopeless loop. The pattern is familiar to me, and it does indeed take me back to another time in my life. At the same time, it also brings me straight up to 5 p.m. on June 25, 2010. So...I have a relationship I need to work on. Unsure how to proceed.