Dream and Disclaimer

Dream:

Had a doozy last night. Bleh....I just tried to type out the whole thing and it's just too boring and weird. I'll sum up. The kicker is that Jeff and I were watching "Gone With the Wind" at my mom's house. Then we got in our van and started driving. When we got in, I immediately lit up a cigarette. I took a couple of puffs and turned to Jeff and said, "Oh my god...look what I'm doing!!!" He then said, "Oh no! Put it out!! Hey - you were smoking all through that movie!" Then I said, "I was, wasn't I??? How could I do that??" And then a couple more crazy things and I woke up.

Here's what I think - we are leaving Saturday to go visit Jeff's parents in St. Louis. My mom is coming with us for a complicated reason that's not interesting enough to get into. I must be a little worried about being cooped up with a smoker in my van. That being said, let's get to the disclaimer part of this post.

She says she is NOT going to smoke in my van, but that we will have to make stops. I said that she can sit in the way back and smoke near the vents - it's fine with me. I need to learn to be around smokers without breaking down. (HEY! I went to lunch with a friend today and she smoked 2 or 3 cigs right across the table and I did fine!! YAY ME!). Also I don't want to be stopping anymore than Noah requires (because he is ultimately in charge of everything - I fear). But she insists that she will not smoke in my van because if doing so makes me start smoking again then it will be PERCEIVED TO BE all her fault that I started again just as it is all her fault that I started in the first place. (Note - she doesn't think this is true...but some people do.)

DISCLAIMER: It is not, nor was it ever, my mother's fault that I was a smoker. I made a decision on my own to start and keep smoking. Furthermore, if I start smoking again, it will still not be her fault. I make my own decisions and take credit for my own mistakes AND victories.

She's probably going to be mad that I wrote about her. But seriously - I don't blame her for me smoking. To blame my mom for my smoking is insulting to both of us. It makes her some kind of weird hybrid of Mommie Dearest and Svengali and it makes me a completely spineless mama's girl who can't think for herself. No thanks.

I also do not blame the media or movies or any other kind of outside force. If the movies I watched as a teenager turned me into a smoker, how did I ever manage to survive anything I saw on Looney Tunes??? I never once believed that I could walk off a cliff, hold up a "YIKES!" sign, plummet to the ground, and live to chase that wretched roadrunner another day. Gimme a break. Oh no!! I said "gimme a break" it must be Nell Carter exerting her evil influence through the TV. (10,000 bonus points to those that know what I'm talking about.)

This seems a rather long post just to assuage my mom, but that's not even really the point. I hate that our society doesn't want anyone to be responsible for their own life. Anything bad that someone does is because of some sort of external influence (bad parents, bad school, bad racist patriarchal society, bad politicans, etc.) - not because that someone is DELIBERATELY making bad choices. Also if anyone does something good they have to give all the credit to someone else.

I accept that there are people who touch our lives for better or worse. The proof of that are these Chantix blogs. But at the end of the day, we each make our OWN decisions. We can look at the actions and experience of others, but there is still an internal thought process that goes on to either accept as good or reject as bad those actions. As a mother it's so hard to instill personal responsibility into a child. They always want to push the blame away from themselves. I'm constantly trying to get my children (mostly Dylan given the ages) to see how THEIR decisions lead to certain outcomes - it wasn't their friends, or their teachers, or whatever. I think the reason it's so hard to do this is because of the way our society is now. It's a constant battle.

Anyway...I didn't mean to go on and on....it's just something I feel very strongly about. As to this trip - we're leaving early Saturday morning and will not be back until the following Saturday. Jeff's parents do not have internet (I may die) so I will not be posting until I return. Hope you all have a lovely first week of October. And if you don't - well what the hell....blame it on me. :)