Awash

I have just returned from my birthplace where my mother, for the first time, expressed regret about having sent my brother and me abroad at such a young age.

"If I were to do it all over again," she said, pain washing over her face. "I wouldn't."

We are 30 years too late. What does one do with that?

I learned this week that Denisse would not be joining us for Thanksgiving, the first time ever. Denisse just got married last December. She and her then fiancé had always come to Thanksgiving dinner at my brother's.

I couldn't deal. Life progresses, people grow. Denisse is finally welcome in Enzo's* family circle. I should be glad. Instead my abandonment issue kicks in. I don't like change. I'll miss her.

And besides, who is going to make green bean casserole?

This while missing my parents like I have never missed them before. I've engendered this theory that all these years I have not allowed myself to miss my parents. I don't think about them much. The disconnect allows me to live my life and let years go by without visiting them. The pain otherwise would be too great to bear.

In the past year or two I have started really identifying with being an INFJ, the "rarest" personality archetype in the Myer-Briggs model. MBTI has fallen out of favor over the years, largely discredited in the psychology industry for being a valid paradigm. It has helped me, however, tremendously. Reading about how INFJ's feel and think makes me understand and accept how I've always felt and thought. And I don't feel so alone anymore.

This and being an HSP, too. Now I don't have to feel apologetic or less.


*Not his real name