Dallas, Texas

"JR, you have to talk to me. You have to tell me what you're thinking, otherwise you're going to continue to be angry with me and I'm not going to have any idea why. I apologised for what I think are my biggest mistakes, but you're still holding a grudge and I don't know why. Please, talk to me". Sitting silently, JR repeated his mother's words in his mind before turning his thoughts to Doctor Williams and what he had told him about making an effort to respond to his mother's effort to engage him in conversation; for anything to change he had to be a participant, not a spectator. It was ok for him to be angry, his feelings were completely valid, whatever they were, but there was also no harm in listening and taking the opportunity to discuss the past. Tilting his glass and watching the brown liquid swirling around inside, he considered how to respond to her prompt; he didn't have to pretend everything was fine, but he did have to say something. Sighing heavily, he swallowed the contents of his glass and placed it down on the side table before looking at his mother and breaking the silence.

"Mama, I don't blame you or hate you for allowing daddy to take me under his wing and teach me the business, I'm sure you know my feelings about Ewing Oil, for all the grief it's given me I do love the oil business and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else. What I do blame you and him for and find it difficult to understand and even consider forgiving you for is how you let him treat me and how you treated me outside of business, alone and in comparison to Gary and Bobby. I was important when it came to being daddy's heir and the future president of Ewing Oil, but the minute the focus moved away from business into a personal sphere, I was either forgotten or treated completely unequally for no reason, and I'm angry about that, I have been for a long time. Do you know how it feels to be a young boy and to want to try to do something different but be told you have no time for such nonsense, only to watch your brothers do exactly the same thing without issue? Or to work hard at something and achieve greatness only to have your achievement overshadowed by something miniscule and insignificant? Do you know how it feels to have the one thing you were promised was to be yours and yours alone slowly chipped away at and given to your brother for nothing? To see the privileges you had to work hard for given out as if they were rights? Do you know how it feels to regarded as useful for only one thing, to have the responsibility and expectation of that weighing on your shoulders all the time, and have to fight every step of the way to move even an inch out of that box? Do you know what it's like to make a few mistakes and have your world collapse around you and have nowhere and no one to turn to? I don't think you do, and that's the problem; you never see things from my perspective, you never have. Clearly I was very young when you stopped showing any care for my wellbeing, because I don't remember the last time you treated me even remotely like you treat Gary and Bobby. My memories of being a boy aren't the best when it comes to parental love, and being a father myself now, that's not good enough. It's not enough for you to just apologise for your behaviour and it's too much to expect me to just forgive you and move on like nothing happened; it's not that simple and I want you to understand that before asking me what you can do to stop me from holding a grudge".

"I don't hate you or daddy as people and I'm not so self-absorbed that I can't admit that I've made mistakes myself, but I do hate the way I was and still am treated and I do blame you and daddy for a lot of the reasons behind why I feel the way I do. I blame you, I blame daddy, I blame myself, and I can't just move on to the forgiveness stage, it's just not who I am. I need someone to blame, I need someone I can pin my thoughts and feelings on, I need there to be a reason for things taking place, and I need there to be some kind of consequences for the injustices in my life. I don't know how Sue Ellen forgave me for my mistakes, it's hard as hell to just forgive and move on without dwelling on the negatives, it's not something I think I can do. I need you to change and stop treating me like a second-class citizen, but more than that, I think I need you to go back and change the past, which I know is ridiculous because nobody has that power, so I'm setting myself up for disappointment…"

"Anyway, I don't know if I'm making any sense, Doctor Williams told me to just talk and tell you how I feel, so I'm trying, but it's damn hard. This frustration had been building inside me for decades and it's not easy to put it in to words to communicate to you, let alone actually tell you exactly what you can do to turn the situation around". Thinking about it, he knew it was also difficult because he didn't have anyone guiding his thoughts; he hated Doctor Williams sometimes, he was nosy as hell, but the man did seem to understand the human psyche well and was good at asking the right questions to lead a conversation. In contrast, he was just voicing his thoughts haphazardly and hoping his point was getting through to his mother. What he needed from her was more than words though, he needed to see actions and real changes and have someone erase all of his bad memories, but he wasn't sure that was possible. His mother didn't seem to quite understand how deeply her words and actions had cut him and how much it was going to take to 'fix' the situation, worse than that though was the absolute understanding of the past as something that was unable to be changed. No matter how much he wanted to forgive and forget, he couldn't, and he was beginning to realise it was difficult to deal with anything personal alone. He hated how weak and pathetic he felt; JR Ewing was strong, powerful, and in control, but he could be taken down by a conversation with his mother? It sounded ridiculous, but he was beginning to realise it was true. He had agreed to have a conversation alone with his mother, but now that he was actually in the moment, he wished he hadn't. He wasn't sure what the conversation could really accomplish, he had no direction and had just admitted that he wasn't sure he could ever forgive his parents. What he did know was he was angry, hurt, confused, and in need of some kind of guidance; he probably needed Doctor Williams' advice, but he sure as hell wasn't going to admit that aloud.

To be continued…