Hi Again

I know it's been a couple of weeks ~ I'll claim the first two do to just complete exhaustion, and the last two because things are pretty fucked up here, and I'd hoped to come back and be able to say "Thank you so much for your kind thoughts" and then move on to happier things.  But I don't seem to have any happier things, right now.  Which is not just to say that I'm f'ed up (although I am): there's a whole bunch of family shit that's gone down that's beyond messed up, and somewhere between my grief and the situation and everybody else's grief and confusion and all of our individual issues, it feels like my family is basically coming apart at the seams.  Not that those stitches were all that tight two months ago, but they just sort of burst the week of my grandmother's funeral, and I'm at a complete loss as to how to pull them back together again. 

I don't even know where I am or what I'm doing,  at this point, besides making it through the next fucking minute without falling apart.  And I'm not always doing a bang up job on that, to be honest.  I'm back at our house, but it's not home - it really never was, only maybe I was better at pretending before I watched my grandmother die and realized that I need to do more than mark my time here.  I can't seem to talk to anybody without causing a secondhand fight, can't seem to get anybody to listen to me at all, can't seem to connect with the people who've offered to help, even when I want to (and I don't always want to: it seems like too much explaining, mostly).  I feel like exploding just about every minute of every day, or, I feel completely absent and numb - it's one or the other, seems like.  

My dad threw my sister and brother-in-law out of the house, the night before my grandmother's funeral.  Nobody told me what the hell was going on, because, I don't know they thought I would be too upset to notice that people weren't talking to each other?  I don't know.  So I got the lowlights third and fourth hand, then when I tried to talk to people, it was a disaster and didn't make anything any clearer for them or for me. 

My mom left my dad, then came back, but only because she didn't have anywhere else to go, and then, later, because she wouldn't leave my sister and brother-in-law in the house with just him.  This was all in the days immediately after we had just buried my grandmother, so I will admit that I did not have all cylinders going.  I mostly wanted (still want) to curl up in a ball and ignore everything, because it takes so much energy, and I am plum out. 

My dad says the stress of being targeted at work (and, yes, he is being targeted at work) made him snap and... a whole load of bullshit that basically means it's not his fault, but maybe yes, he might admit that he was wrong and 'an asshole' (What he won't cop to, is that this happens All The Damn Time, and nobody feels safe around him/trusts him anymore because he's a bully).  My sister & brother-in-law immediately started looking for a new place, because, hell: who wants to live like that?  They've been thrown out twice in the matter of a year for Doing. Nothing. Wrong.  And let's be clear - they didn't do shit, he just took it out on them.  I told my mother while I was still at Grandmother's house, that I didn't want to be here either... that I would be looking for a new place as soon as I could. {Of course, that was because I forgot that I couldn't place emotional well-being above money, health and other issues without there being major sacrifices of money and health and other things, but I'm still determined to do it}  My mother told him she was leaving too, although it would be better for everybody if HE just left.  He refused/refuses to leave.

So today my sister and brother-in-law are signing a lease for their new place, at the worst possible time for them bc my sister is trying to wean off her meds so that they can get pregnant, and she could really use some backup (which is just when you should be forced to move away from people who can back you up).  She's hurt and mad at my mom for her response to this whole ball of bullshit, which I can't seem to talk to either of them about, because their both freezing me out when it comes to that.  She might even be mad at me, and since she's the one who reads this blog I'm only going to say that I hope she's not, because I feel like I'm on her side, but if she is, I hope she'll tell me so I can try to fix it.

My dad and I had a whole discussion about how mad I am at him the other day, and how it's his fault that SisterJ & B-I-L are moving and that I'm looking for a place, and that Mom is probably looking for a place too, and when my mom asked him what he got out of it he told her that he "has a big heart but doesn't use it."  Which was said once, in the midst of a three hour discussion about how badly he is screwing things up and all the things he is ruining by his behavior, and how hard it's going to be once he realizes how badly he's damaged people he's supposed to care about and how I'm too old for this shit and I'm just not sticking around anymore to watch him bully people (or to be bullied) and how he's being completely selfish, but that's what we all expect him to be at this point, so that we don't even talk to him about our shit anymore and a huge rant about how he's a total hypocrite and totally ignores the people in our family and expects us to be there for him and how he never fucking listens ... anyways.  What he took out of all of that was me saying he had a big heart, which just proves my point about him never listening, and that I really need to get the hell out of here.

Mom and I have talked - or sort of talked - about what she's going to do: she says she's going and she's done, and all of that.  But I don't know: she still seems undecided to me, and I don't know how much of that is the fact that she's changing her meds, and she's still grieving for my grandmother, too, and she seems to be leaning waaay closer to the numb side of things than I am.  Of course, complicating all of that is the fact that she's my PCA, and she does a lot more for me than the hours the state provides for her, which is pretty simple when you're living in the same house, but a hell of a lot more complicated once I find somewhere else to live.

Which doesn't even mention that moving changes everything for me, financially - I have to notify the SSI people, and Mass Health (my insurance) and the PCA program, and everybody does a whole new evaluation and yippee: more energy I don't have.  Plus, I can't afford any place to actually live on what my SSI is currently, so I have to apply for housing stipends, which means that the already complicated task of finding accessible housing (and granted, I can use non-100%accessible bathrooms, which puts me a step above other househunters with disabilities) all that much more complicated, because now I have to look for accessible housing that takes waivers/stipends from the government.  It's so much fun so far!

But here's the thing, as every fucking thing seems to crumble around me (which you could tell only by the fact that I've cursed like five times in this post, when I usually don't ever), I learned a lot about myself this summer, being with Grandmother during those five months.  I learned that I can handle a lot more shit than I thought I could, even if I have to breakdown in tears when nobody is looking.  And even if I shouldn't have to handle any of this, because it's all ridiculous and I don't want to have to deal with it, because it's hard: even though it's ridiculous and hard and stressful and I Don't Want To, I'm going to be able to do it.   I'm going to drag myself and my family through it, and eventually we'll all come out the other side, having met the challenge.

Being a grown-up sure does suck, you guys.