Sunday, October 18, 2015

81.Accepting Not Accepting
Tara was sitting in the group room by herself when I walked back to my office after lunch.  She looked like she wanted to punch someone.  As I approached, she said, "Amanda and her father watched that movie about the college professor with early onset Alzheimers. They never do anything together. They don't eat together, they don't talk a lot, and they sure as hell don't share a blanket, laughing and crying over some stupid story!"  

She was shaking with anger. Tara resented her family for dealing with his diagnosis better than she was. Resenting their acceptance left Tara feeling petty and small. 

"Acceptance is not a competition," I said. "Besides, we're all better at accepting some things and not so good at accepting others." It took a while for her to calm down as we talked about things hard to accept. We wound our way from the serious to the silly, from cancer to endless lists on the bottom of every webpage.

"Six ways noisy toys shorten your life," I said. "They left off buying a friend's kid a loud toy could get you killed."

"Ten celebrities who were actually aliens," she added. "Can't accept there were only ten."

Today I will accept some things are easier than others to accept. 


Writing My New Story © 2015 by Ken Montrose

(Just a reminder: Writing My New Story is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to anyone you might know is purely coincidental.)

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