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11/07/2004 Entry: "One week to age barrier..." The countdown clock is ticking... Next weekend I turn 36. Due to Sawa's birthday on the same weekend (which is why she's my Scorpion Sistah!), my party isn't until the weekend after next, so don't worry, you didn't miss it. You can still come! The age of 36 was supposed to be the end of my time limit (self-imposed) on fixing what was wrong with me. The theory was, it took the first 18 years of my life to screw me up, and it will take another 18 years to fix it. I'd say the job is 80% done. There's still some issues about my physical health that need some serious work, a few maturity issues, and those will have to wait until CR is out and on his own a scant four years from now. I have to still survive his teenaged years, but so far, it hasn't been bad at all. Some of the things that surprise me and make me grin is I'll be 40 when CR is in his first year in college. If he actually does follow his dream to become a vet, I'll be in my late 40s when he accomplishes that. And Christine's younger than me! Our "empty nest" life will be starting while most of our friends are still wrestling with toddlers and little kids. With the death of my grandmother this year, my hatred towards my dad just sort of petered away, which was a very big step and major crossing point in my life I had been working on for the last 5 or so years. That was one thing that took forEVER to work through. I have finally accepted him as a stranger in my life, he never loved me, and never will. I am okay with that. He doesn't hate me, he doesn't even THINK about me, so why should I even think about him? It's over. I gave him a chance, but I have to move on. Over the years, all the bad stuff he did to me will be reduced to a footnote in my life, and when people ask me about Arvid, I'll say, "He was in the house I lived in while growing up, and we never got along. I don't know what eventually happened to him. My life started when I moved into the FanTek house at age 18." I don't even feel a pang of sadness anymore when I say that aloud. It feels good to be free. I am sure there will be a few times I'll still relive some awful thing he did, but even with all the bad things that happened this year, those flashbacks get farther and farther between episodes. This blog helped. It felt like, if I wrote it down, I could let it go. The tapes helped, too. They helped mend a bridge back to my past in many ways I never could have imagined. I still have a lot of them to go through, and I'll recount them here as I promised earlier.