Dear Mrsatroxi,

I’m not happy.

I haven’t been real happy for awhile now. Six months?

The only good thing about this unhappiness is it is situational.

I know where it comes from! Hooray!

Except…

There’s nothing I can do about the Something, at least, not right now.

It’s shocking and disheartening how something so unimportant can color my entire life, can turn into a big huge gaping oozing pustule of a wound that can’t be ignored won’t go away and makes me tired and bitter and sad and angry and hate myself for being myself.

But this is good. It’s good because I’m ready, and I’m willing. I’m on a cusp, I’m looking ahead, and I’ve got more than a foot out that damn door. I know what I want, I know what I don’t want.

I’m ready, ready for what’s next.

This is a photograph of my GrandMom, with some guy. Really, nobody knows who he is.

This is my Mother’s mother, I wrote a little bit about her here.

I love this picture. Her dress, the silk stockings, her stylish shoes, her haircut. I love the blueberries and peaches (or are they raspberries and apples?) on the table behind her, and the lovely cheap car in the background. I’m fascinated by the too short tie on the man, and why on earth he thought a hat that light-colored went with his suit. By their shadows and the light, I try to figure what time of day it was. Why was a gas station a good place to take a picture? Why did they want to remember that particular moment?

My Mother once told one of my siblings that she likes it when I take her shopping, because she feels like a little girl again with me. She said she feels this way because I am so much like her mother was when she was young. In temperament.

She said she was patient and kind and generous and happy.

I hope so.

I don’t have anything nice to say about anything right now, so I thought I’d post a nice picture.

That’s a happy little girl right there.

It was cold and the sun was in my eyes, and that barrette was pulling the hell out of my hair.

Looks like a happy Daddy, too.