"Families are about love overcoming emotional torture."

So I've agreed to go to lunch with my estranged aunt when I'm back in town this month. I'm not sure how I should feel about it. She and my dad have never gotten along (which is actually putting it mildly; when they were ten, she chased by dad around the kitchen with a can opener and tore a six inch gash in his forearm) and it got a heck of a lot worse as they got older. I don't think she ever really liked my dad. And, for a while when I was younger, she made me not like him, either. That, for me, was the worst thing. The inexcusable thing. She convinced me that my dad was a bad person (even though he wasn't) and I was young enough to fall for it. It still twists my guts to think about.

But I guess she's been going through some things lately -- a little life retrospective -- and she and my parents had lunch together about a month ago. They told me she was "willing to try." I don't know what that means. I don't know what constitutes her version of "trying." But, I figure, going to lunch and listening to what she has to say has got to be better than carrying around all this anger towards her. So I'm going to go. And we'll see what happens.

Also, tomorrow is my first day off in, like, six weeks. I'm not going to do aaaanything.:D