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.
Showing posts with label Moving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moving. Show all posts
Saturday, October 06, 2012
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Let me tell you something...
(said in my very best Fire Marshall Bill voice): I just don't know what to tell you.
My head is full of so many things it is like a buzzing, humming swirling hive of activity. There isn't any space unoccupied by some new terror or old enemy or flashing through like lightening bolts or scrolling through like a news crawl - "This just in: You are Still Hurting! And reports are coming in of even more affected areas - Devastation spreads! Stay tuned to this channel for further developments."
Basically, the inside of my head is on overload, and that makes it kind of difficult to weed out enough (logical, legible & un-loopy enough ) bits and pieces to write something. Anything. Anything at all that doesn't wind up reading like the inside of my head - a lot of words and letters that are seemingly unconnected and yet make entirely too much sense.
So that's where my head is at. My body, at present, is camping on the Pull Out Couch of Death (tm) at my grandmother's house. Again. As I was laying on it in the dark last night, I was thinking back: I didn't have a lot of sleepovers here as a child (probably because our houses were about 3 minutes apart from each other), but occasionally, when my dad was on leave from the Navy, my brother and I would stay for a night or a weekend. We must have slept on this very same pull out couch, because there's no way this thing is less than 30 years old, although the one we slept in seemed huge to me then, and this thing feels like a postage stamp now, compared to my queen sized cloud of awesome at home.
I can remember laying on this very same bed, in the almost total dark - my brother beside me, his foot twitching back and forth as it does every time he goes to sleep; the street light shining in through the cracks in the shades, just enough light to keep it from being pitch dark; an intense and eerie quiet all around that never seemed to happen at my house no matter what time it was - and being petrified of the odd shadows, the different creaks and groans of the house, the ticking of the clock.
I must have been under ten (maybe even more like 5 or 6), but the memory came back to me so clearly last night - just the feeling of absolute, frozen, "I can't go to sleep because I might never wake up" terror. I was sometimes (ok, maybe most of the time) anxious as a child, and once my brain latched on to something - even if I knew it was ridiculous, outlandish, and totally improbable - I just couldn't let it go. It would swirl around in there like a tornado, picking up bits and pieces of other worries and wishes and whatevers as it spun ever faster and grew bigger until I thought I would explode from it. (This is not that different from how I am now, come to think of it: I guess we don't grow out of as many things as we would like to believe we do.)
The fears of my ten year old self seemed laughable last night - the creaks of an old house are nothing compared to the strains of an older life.
I have been staying here for four days, as the sibling switching that occurs at my house has required a new paint job in one particular room, and I don't know how much longer I'll stay. My grandmother has been in the hospital for all of those four days, and we don't know how much longer she'll stay there, either.
On Friday night, my uncle heard a thump upstairs in her room, and he went up to check on her, and found her on the floor, tangled in her blankets. When he got to her, he realized he couldn't understand what she was saying, so he got down on the floor and took a good look at her face, and saw that the left side was drooping. I think everybody recognizes that symptom as what it turned out to be - my Grandmother had had a stroke.
As it turns out, she had what is (apparently) the best kind of stroke - a mini-stroke, a temporary stroke, a Transient Ischemic Attack. At the hospital, they were able to treat her quickly, and she has since recovered to about 85% of her normal self - her speech returned quickly, the drooping went away, she is able to breathe and swallow and sit up and stand all on her own. The only physical signs of her stroke are a large bruise - which takes up a quarter of her face - she got when she fell out of bed, and some lingering weakness and swelling in her left leg, that the doctors are pretty sure will go down on its own.
She is bored and frustrated by her lack of control at the hospital (I come by it naturally, see?), and she's tired because "the people who work here have no respect for night time hours," and she's a little bit embarrassed and scared, I think, too, which she has shown by being pissed at my uncle for making the call to the ambulance in the first place. But she's herself, and she's ready to come home, and she doesn't understand what's taking them so long to let her go.
She's alright, is what I'm saying: She's doing a lot better than the doctors said she would be doing, and excellent as far as I'm concerned. But here's the thing - my brain just can't shut it off. It's got this worry wrapped up in the tornado now, this huge "She's 93 years old" funnel cloud full of "But what if"s and "I'll stay here forever if you need me to" and "I can't handle this" and "God I hate hospitals, even if her room is better than most hotel rooms I've stayed in, why the hell does it have a fake fireplace" and "Holy shit, I really can't do this again" and a million more swirling swishing sounds and sights and memories and realities and fears.
It makes me long for the worries of ten year old me, that's for sure.
In the meantime I try to be helpful: try to answer the phone and pass out the updates to the family scattered around the country; try to convince UJ that I can make dinner for myself - and for him - and that if he needs to stay at the hospital all day, I'll be fine; try to make the doctors who come into her room speak louder because she doesn't have her hearing aids in and she needs them for a reason; try to ask questions and think of solutions (the rugs at home can all come up, if that's what we need to do/the pull out couch needs a much better mattress if she's thinking of sleeping on it long term) to all the little issues that are popping up; try to rub lotion on her back because I also come by my sensitive skin naturally, and whatever they wash the sheets in has given her a rash (even though the lotion she uses to soothe her sensitive skin leaves my sensitive skin raw, red and burning); try to do something - ANYTHING - to make myself of use, and to give me something else to focus on, a stopper to keep that tornado from spinning so fast that it carries me away with it.
My head is full of so many things it is like a buzzing, humming swirling hive of activity. There isn't any space unoccupied by some new terror or old enemy or
Basically, the inside of my head is on overload, and that makes it kind of difficult to weed out enough (logical, legible & un-loopy enough ) bits and pieces to write something. Anything. Anything at all that doesn't wind up reading like the inside of my head - a lot of words and letters that are seemingly unconnected and yet make entirely too much sense.
So that's where my head is at. My body, at present, is camping on the Pull Out Couch of Death (tm) at my grandmother's house. Again. As I was laying on it in the dark last night, I was thinking back: I didn't have a lot of sleepovers here as a child (probably because our houses were about 3 minutes apart from each other), but occasionally, when my dad was on leave from the Navy, my brother and I would stay for a night or a weekend. We must have slept on this very same pull out couch, because there's no way this thing is less than 30 years old, although the one we slept in seemed huge to me then, and this thing feels like a postage stamp now, compared to my queen sized cloud of awesome at home.
I can remember laying on this very same bed, in the almost total dark - my brother beside me, his foot twitching back and forth as it does every time he goes to sleep; the street light shining in through the cracks in the shades, just enough light to keep it from being pitch dark; an intense and eerie quiet all around that never seemed to happen at my house no matter what time it was - and being petrified of the odd shadows, the different creaks and groans of the house, the ticking of the clock.
I must have been under ten (maybe even more like 5 or 6), but the memory came back to me so clearly last night - just the feeling of absolute, frozen, "I can't go to sleep because I might never wake up" terror. I was sometimes (ok, maybe most of the time) anxious as a child, and once my brain latched on to something - even if I knew it was ridiculous, outlandish, and totally improbable - I just couldn't let it go. It would swirl around in there like a tornado, picking up bits and pieces of other worries and wishes and whatevers as it spun ever faster and grew bigger until I thought I would explode from it. (This is not that different from how I am now, come to think of it: I guess we don't grow out of as many things as we would like to believe we do.)
The fears of my ten year old self seemed laughable last night - the creaks of an old house are nothing compared to the strains of an older life.
I have been staying here for four days, as the sibling switching that occurs at my house has required a new paint job in one particular room, and I don't know how much longer I'll stay. My grandmother has been in the hospital for all of those four days, and we don't know how much longer she'll stay there, either.
On Friday night, my uncle heard a thump upstairs in her room, and he went up to check on her, and found her on the floor, tangled in her blankets. When he got to her, he realized he couldn't understand what she was saying, so he got down on the floor and took a good look at her face, and saw that the left side was drooping. I think everybody recognizes that symptom as what it turned out to be - my Grandmother had had a stroke.
As it turns out, she had what is (apparently) the best kind of stroke - a mini-stroke, a temporary stroke, a Transient Ischemic Attack. At the hospital, they were able to treat her quickly, and she has since recovered to about 85% of her normal self - her speech returned quickly, the drooping went away, she is able to breathe and swallow and sit up and stand all on her own. The only physical signs of her stroke are a large bruise - which takes up a quarter of her face - she got when she fell out of bed, and some lingering weakness and swelling in her left leg, that the doctors are pretty sure will go down on its own.
She is bored and frustrated by her lack of control at the hospital (I come by it naturally, see?), and she's tired because "the people who work here have no respect for night time hours," and she's a little bit embarrassed and scared, I think, too, which she has shown by being pissed at my uncle for making the call to the ambulance in the first place. But she's herself, and she's ready to come home, and she doesn't understand what's taking them so long to let her go.
She's alright, is what I'm saying: She's doing a lot better than the doctors said she would be doing, and excellent as far as I'm concerned. But here's the thing - my brain just can't shut it off. It's got this worry wrapped up in the tornado now, this huge "She's 93 years old" funnel cloud full of "But what if"s and "I'll stay here forever if you need me to" and "I can't handle this" and "God I hate hospitals, even if her room is better than most hotel rooms I've stayed in, why the hell does it have a fake fireplace" and "Holy shit, I really can't do this again" and a million more swirling swishing sounds and sights and memories and realities and fears.
It makes me long for the worries of ten year old me, that's for sure.
In the meantime I try to be helpful: try to answer the phone and pass out the updates to the family scattered around the country; try to convince UJ that I can make dinner for myself - and for him - and that if he needs to stay at the hospital all day, I'll be fine; try to make the doctors who come into her room speak louder because she doesn't have her hearing aids in and she needs them for a reason; try to ask questions and think of solutions (the rugs at home can all come up, if that's what we need to do/the pull out couch needs a much better mattress if she's thinking of sleeping on it long term) to all the little issues that are popping up; try to rub lotion on her back because I also come by my sensitive skin naturally, and whatever they wash the sheets in has given her a rash (even though the lotion she uses to soothe her sensitive skin leaves my sensitive skin raw, red and burning); try to do something - ANYTHING - to make myself of use, and to give me something else to focus on, a stopper to keep that tornado from spinning so fast that it carries me away with it.
Friday, August 21, 2009
A little catching up...
Here is something people must forget about the whole concept of moving: once you are in the new place, you have to find a spot for all the things you've brought with you.
Or, if people don't, at least we did.
Right now, we are still living slightly bare bones - big furniture that the movers brought over (couches, beds, refrigerators), plus the personal care stuff you don't go anywhere without, some clothes, a couple of tables and bookcases and what not. But next week, we're getting our storage pods back, and now we have to figure out where the hell everything goes. Of course, I am "not supposed to worry about that", but since I am the only damn one who actually worries about things ahead of time, I have, of course, been worrying about that.
People who can get up and move things if the location of something doesn't suit them don't exactly think about what it means to not be able to do that. So that, if I have them set up my room (or the library, which I am still totally claiming as mostly mine) in one way and it doesn't work for me? Then I have to wait till everybody - or enough bodies, anyways - can make the time to come over here and help me again. And that is a party and a half.
So I've been skootching my bed (on wheels) from spot to spot, trying to decide where I get the least amount of sun glaring off the white house next door; trying to see how long the cords for my computer run, and how to make space for my printer; wondering where all of my crafty stuff is ever going to fit... all that kind of stuff. It's not high stress, but it takes a working brain, and some days I barely have that.
In other news, Harry Potter 7 is no longer playing at the only movie theater in our neck of the woods where I can watch movies, so I'll have to wait for Netflix for that one; my Wednesday appointment with Zach almost ended with me being hospitalized because of my know-nothing of a PCP, who told me that my intense ear pain was just some excess fluid in my ears - 3 weeks ago! - and was (shockingly) wrong. Instead I now have a double ear infection and a sinus infection and they've left me severely dehydrated and with quite the elevated numbers - Zach thinks it's probably not a good idea to see her anymore, which I knew way back last September, but Mass Health disagreed. Of course, now I've actually moved, so they can't give me crap about picking somebody closer, but still... grr I hate picking new doctors; And lastly, in happy news I haven't shared yet, my oldest sister -SisterS - is going to be a mama again (13 years after Oldest Nephew), and is due in the beginning of December: I am very excited, even if the little man will live too far away from us (They're up in Cow Hampshire, about 2 hours away). So, now I have to come up with a new name for Youngest Nephew, I guess... or something like that.
Anyways... that's what's happening in our little world, where it's been in the 90s all week (I got a blister on my arm after being outside with the kids - WITH SPF 85 on - for about 25 minutes. I was in the shade. Screw you, antibiotics and your "you may be more sensitive to the sun" warnings) and where the weather man is right this minute telling us about a tornado watch we are under until 9:00 and how Hurricane Bill might cause flooding this weekend.
Why did we decide to stay in Massachusetts again? Cuz it sure wasn't the weather. (Actually, I tend to like our weather, but this week has been ri-dic-u-lous.)
Oh, and I have a new banner: how do you like it?
Or, if people don't, at least we did.
Right now, we are still living slightly bare bones - big furniture that the movers brought over (couches, beds, refrigerators), plus the personal care stuff you don't go anywhere without, some clothes, a couple of tables and bookcases and what not. But next week, we're getting our storage pods back, and now we have to figure out where the hell everything goes. Of course, I am "not supposed to worry about that", but since I am the only damn one who actually worries about things ahead of time, I have, of course, been worrying about that.
People who can get up and move things if the location of something doesn't suit them don't exactly think about what it means to not be able to do that. So that, if I have them set up my room (or the library, which I am still totally claiming as mostly mine) in one way and it doesn't work for me? Then I have to wait till everybody - or enough bodies, anyways - can make the time to come over here and help me again. And that is a party and a half.
So I've been skootching my bed (on wheels) from spot to spot, trying to decide where I get the least amount of sun glaring off the white house next door; trying to see how long the cords for my computer run, and how to make space for my printer; wondering where all of my crafty stuff is ever going to fit... all that kind of stuff. It's not high stress, but it takes a working brain, and some days I barely have that.
In other news, Harry Potter 7 is no longer playing at the only movie theater in our neck of the woods where I can watch movies, so I'll have to wait for Netflix for that one; my Wednesday appointment with Zach almost ended with me being hospitalized because of my know-nothing of a PCP, who told me that my intense ear pain was just some excess fluid in my ears - 3 weeks ago! - and was (shockingly) wrong. Instead I now have a double ear infection and a sinus infection and they've left me severely dehydrated and with quite the elevated numbers - Zach thinks it's probably not a good idea to see her anymore, which I knew way back last September, but Mass Health disagreed. Of course, now I've actually moved, so they can't give me crap about picking somebody closer, but still... grr I hate picking new doctors; And lastly, in happy news I haven't shared yet, my oldest sister -SisterS - is going to be a mama again (13 years after Oldest Nephew), and is due in the beginning of December: I am very excited, even if the little man will live too far away from us (They're up in Cow Hampshire, about 2 hours away). So, now I have to come up with a new name for Youngest Nephew, I guess... or something like that.
Anyways... that's what's happening in our little world, where it's been in the 90s all week (I got a blister on my arm after being outside with the kids - WITH SPF 85 on - for about 25 minutes. I was in the shade. Screw you, antibiotics and your "you may be more sensitive to the sun" warnings) and where the weather man is right this minute telling us about a tornado watch we are under until 9:00 and how Hurricane Bill might cause flooding this weekend.
Why did we decide to stay in Massachusetts again? Cuz it sure wasn't the weather. (Actually, I tend to like our weather, but this week has been ri-dic-u-lous.)
Oh, and I have a new banner: how do you like it?
Friday, August 14, 2009
Little update...
Thanks for the well wishes, guys: I really appreciate it.
It's been kind of crazy here this week, and I'm feeling more than a bit worn out today. So far the post-move flare has not been ferocious, amping things up only a notch or two as far as pain goes. Which, of course, is horrible. If your pain goes from an 8 to a 9, that's a big deal. But, I had so feared a 10+++++, that I think I'm dealing pretty well with what I've actually got.
I do have a comfy, cozy new bed to retreat to, which has been helpful. (I even wrote a post about it, and if I can get my crap together long enough today to take a picture, I'll post it.) I am slowly adjusting to the new smells and sounds, which has been difficult. As far as sound goes, it's mostly just a lot of "Holy crap - who slammed that door? Is that someone coming in the porch, or just the floor creaking? Why is the bathroom right next to my room?" and new street noises like fools who set off fire works after 10:00 at night. Not so big a deal, really.
But the smells, oh the smells. There's the "odorfree" paint, that STILL smells even though it's been three months. Yes, it is less than it would normally be, but don't try to tell me it's odorless... there's a smell. There's the ocean breeze that occassionally makes its way up the hill, my neighbor's insistance on using some sort of stain on his new steps, and then there's the mystery smell, that seems to come in only in my window. UGH. My current theory is that the previous owners buried a body in the side yard before they moved, and that is why there is a cup of vanilla extract sitting on my windowsill right this minute.
Smells, the front porch 'ramp' (that is steep enough to qualify for a mountain), and the bathroom (No sink? Toilet in front of the door? Haven't you people ever used a bathroom before??) have been my biggest challenges so far, but I am settling in, slowly and surely.
Mum and I have been working our way through this season of So You Think You Can Dance? - don't tell us who won - and adding grab bars & curtains in the bathroom. I've already figured out that the den gets the best breezes and the front porch gets the least amount of sun after 10 AM.
I know that some of our neighbors have children, some have dogs, and we all need a new sidewalk. I know that the library is only 1/2 accessible, and the half that is are the children's rooms. And that there's only one local pharmacy that's open 24 hours (and, of course, it's not mine).
I'm finding that the house is awfully quiet a lot of the time, and that, because it is so big, people can disappear. I am not used to being so far from everyone - in our old house, there were 7 rooms - all on one level, all close together. You could hear people talking in every other room, if you wanted to. Here, there are 7 rooms on my floor, and now there's this whole upstairs that I've only seen on video, a front porch and a back porch, with doors and steps I can't climb. There's a basement and a garage, and a yard I haven't checked out yet.
I'm both excited that there's so much left to explore and overwhelmed, because who knows when I'll get to it.
I'm trying to approach it as if I have all the time in the world - trying to change my attitude from this being 'the new house' into this being our 'forever' house. If we're here for the long haul - the foreseeable future, let's say - then I've got plenty of time and I can just be calm about it. Of course it's unsettling to be living out of a suitcase, or to be faced with piles of boxes that you have to sort through, but I'm really trying to enjoy the process here - and that does not come naturally to me. It's a real effort, because as much as I'd like to be DONE, I have to just take some deep breaths and try to let things unfold at a pace I can handle.
We'll all see how well I do.
As always, thanks for caring.
It's been kind of crazy here this week, and I'm feeling more than a bit worn out today. So far the post-move flare has not been ferocious, amping things up only a notch or two as far as pain goes. Which, of course, is horrible. If your pain goes from an 8 to a 9, that's a big deal. But, I had so feared a 10+++++, that I think I'm dealing pretty well with what I've actually got.
I do have a comfy, cozy new bed to retreat to, which has been helpful. (I even wrote a post about it, and if I can get my crap together long enough today to take a picture, I'll post it.) I am slowly adjusting to the new smells and sounds, which has been difficult. As far as sound goes, it's mostly just a lot of "Holy crap - who slammed that door? Is that someone coming in the porch, or just the floor creaking? Why is the bathroom right next to my room?" and new street noises like fools who set off fire works after 10:00 at night. Not so big a deal, really.
But the smells, oh the smells. There's the "odorfree" paint, that STILL smells even though it's been three months. Yes, it is less than it would normally be, but don't try to tell me it's odorless... there's a smell. There's the ocean breeze that occassionally makes its way up the hill, my neighbor's insistance on using some sort of stain on his new steps, and then there's the mystery smell, that seems to come in only in my window. UGH. My current theory is that the previous owners buried a body in the side yard before they moved, and that is why there is a cup of vanilla extract sitting on my windowsill right this minute.
Smells, the front porch 'ramp' (that is steep enough to qualify for a mountain), and the bathroom (No sink? Toilet in front of the door? Haven't you people ever used a bathroom before??) have been my biggest challenges so far, but I am settling in, slowly and surely.
Mum and I have been working our way through this season of So You Think You Can Dance? - don't tell us who won - and adding grab bars & curtains in the bathroom. I've already figured out that the den gets the best breezes and the front porch gets the least amount of sun after 10 AM.
I know that some of our neighbors have children, some have dogs, and we all need a new sidewalk. I know that the library is only 1/2 accessible, and the half that is are the children's rooms. And that there's only one local pharmacy that's open 24 hours (and, of course, it's not mine).
I'm finding that the house is awfully quiet a lot of the time, and that, because it is so big, people can disappear. I am not used to being so far from everyone - in our old house, there were 7 rooms - all on one level, all close together. You could hear people talking in every other room, if you wanted to. Here, there are 7 rooms on my floor, and now there's this whole upstairs that I've only seen on video, a front porch and a back porch, with doors and steps I can't climb. There's a basement and a garage, and a yard I haven't checked out yet.
I'm both excited that there's so much left to explore and overwhelmed, because who knows when I'll get to it.
I'm trying to approach it as if I have all the time in the world - trying to change my attitude from this being 'the new house' into this being our 'forever' house. If we're here for the long haul - the foreseeable future, let's say - then I've got plenty of time and I can just be calm about it. Of course it's unsettling to be living out of a suitcase, or to be faced with piles of boxes that you have to sort through, but I'm really trying to enjoy the process here - and that does not come naturally to me. It's a real effort, because as much as I'd like to be DONE, I have to just take some deep breaths and try to let things unfold at a pace I can handle.
We'll all see how well I do.
As always, thanks for caring.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Yes.
Yes, I am finally in the new house.
and
Yes, I finally have internet (that I don't have to stick the computer outside the window to steal from the neighbors) again.
and
Yes, I am doing mostly ok, although there are still L.O.T.S. of issues.
and
Yes, I hope to be back blogging (with whole sentences, and - gasp! - perhaps even paragraphs) very soon.
because
Yes, I am missing writing, and reading, and visiting with all of you.
but, also
Yes, I am just too wiped out for that to be today.
and
Yes, I finally have internet (that I don't have to stick the computer outside the window to steal from the neighbors) again.
and
Yes, I am doing mostly ok, although there are still L.O.T.S. of issues.
and
Yes, I hope to be back blogging (with whole sentences, and - gasp! - perhaps even paragraphs) very soon.
because
Yes, I am missing writing, and reading, and visiting with all of you.
but, also
Yes, I am just too wiped out for that to be today.
Friday, July 31, 2009
*
I spend most nights like this: Back and forth, back and forth in the rocking chair. Wishing it wasn't just me I am attempting to soothe to sleep. One foot down on the floor, the other leg kneels on the Pull Out Couch Of Death (Tm), and I shift my weight onto the "bed". Where I have to lay diagonally, because that's the only way I'm not poking into one sharp spring or another, one crease in the 'mattress' or the next. I bring my pillows with me, back and forth, back and forth. From the chair to the couch, and back again, all night long.
And tonight is to be my last night. Tomorrow, I make for 'home.' The new house, at any rate, since it feels like nothing to me yet, just a place where I'm supposed to live my life.
And for all my complaining, about how long the process has taken and how much it has hurt that my being 'home' has not been seen as a priority by those who are supposed to care the most; and about the Pull Out Couch of Death (Tm) and what it means for my pain levels; and about having to behave as 'company', when I am clearly not in company form - for all that, I have had such an enjoyable summer here. And I find myself sad to have to go.
I knew I would be - I always am. Even an afternoon visit to Grandmother's house is something I attempt to stretch into an invitation to dinner, a chance for tea and dessert, some Jeopardy! companionship. And I've been here for 3 months now - almost exactly - and it's been a long three months, healthwise. But heartwise is another story.
I know that I'll be the one making her cry tomorrow, and that makes me cry tonight. Of course, this all seems maudlin and dramatic, considering we have gone from 3 minutes down the road to 15 -20 minutes up the street of a thousand red lights, but it's 1 in the morning, I've been running a fever for 5 days, and I am moving to a new home base: I'm going to let myself get a little maudlin, just because.
I've been trying to write the thank you cards I am leaving behind, and cannot think of how to say it: how to show just how grateful I am. The cards themselves will be scoffed at, I know: Uncle Jack will shake his head and say how it was nothing, how I was more of a help than a hindrance - and neither of us is gracious enough to just take the thanks as it is meant... uncomfortable with praise, my uncle is. And Grandmother has told me a thousand times how much she's enjoyed our time together: I just want her to believe that my heart's a thousand times fuller because of the past 90 days too.
Unable to think of how to say it, I sit and rock, back and forth, back and forth. I turned on the computer for the stated purpose of putting this down somewhere - That 90 nights on the Pull Out Couch of Death - FM pain and all, sinus infection (IN THE EAR) and all, grumpy uncles and all, having to answer the question about what's for dinner 90 times and all - were well worth it.
Because I got to sit out on the front porch and hear about how my Great-Great-Great Grandfather went to enlist for the Civil War and got swept off a bridge in a flash flood, never making it to battle, never making it back home. And witness firsthand how Uncle Jack's mood lightens when SisterK finally comes home from a night out. And watch my distinguished, stately, proper Grandmother try to throw a lounge chair at the neighbor's cat. And I got to (had to) be vulnerable and scared, and see how some of the strongest people in my life deal with their vulnerability, and mine. And teach Uncle Jack how to attach files to e-mail and thrill Grandmother by knowing all the words to Lydia the Tattooed Lady. And see Youngest Nephew play catch with his Great Uncle, and Lil Girl clop around in her Great-Grandmother's shoes.
Because I've been loved. And lucky.
Because I can not make it make sense to them, in, you know, sentences and things, I sit here and type. Rocking back and forth, looking back and forth, and hoping that I'll always be this lucky.
* I could not think of an appropriate title for this one (see above, re: Fever, Ear, 1 AM, etc). Only the lines from I'll Love You Forever kept coming into my head(because of all the 'back and forth' talk): "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living my baby you'll be," but some people (ok: most people) seem to think that that book, while attempting to be positive and heartwarming, is also a little... stalker-y. So I didn't use that as the title, but I had to fit it in somewhere. All of my life, in one way or another, must relate back to a children's book, apparently. :shrug:
And tonight is to be my last night. Tomorrow, I make for 'home.' The new house, at any rate, since it feels like nothing to me yet, just a place where I'm supposed to live my life.
And for all my complaining, about how long the process has taken and how much it has hurt that my being 'home' has not been seen as a priority by those who are supposed to care the most; and about the Pull Out Couch of Death (Tm) and what it means for my pain levels; and about having to behave as 'company', when I am clearly not in company form - for all that, I have had such an enjoyable summer here. And I find myself sad to have to go.
I knew I would be - I always am. Even an afternoon visit to Grandmother's house is something I attempt to stretch into an invitation to dinner, a chance for tea and dessert, some Jeopardy! companionship. And I've been here for 3 months now - almost exactly - and it's been a long three months, healthwise. But heartwise is another story.
I know that I'll be the one making her cry tomorrow, and that makes me cry tonight. Of course, this all seems maudlin and dramatic, considering we have gone from 3 minutes down the road to 15 -20 minutes up the street of a thousand red lights, but it's 1 in the morning, I've been running a fever for 5 days, and I am moving to a new home base: I'm going to let myself get a little maudlin, just because.
I've been trying to write the thank you cards I am leaving behind, and cannot think of how to say it: how to show just how grateful I am. The cards themselves will be scoffed at, I know: Uncle Jack will shake his head and say how it was nothing, how I was more of a help than a hindrance - and neither of us is gracious enough to just take the thanks as it is meant... uncomfortable with praise, my uncle is. And Grandmother has told me a thousand times how much she's enjoyed our time together: I just want her to believe that my heart's a thousand times fuller because of the past 90 days too.
Unable to think of how to say it, I sit and rock, back and forth, back and forth. I turned on the computer for the stated purpose of putting this down somewhere - That 90 nights on the Pull Out Couch of Death - FM pain and all, sinus infection (IN THE EAR) and all, grumpy uncles and all, having to answer the question about what's for dinner 90 times and all - were well worth it.
Because I got to sit out on the front porch and hear about how my Great-Great-Great Grandfather went to enlist for the Civil War and got swept off a bridge in a flash flood, never making it to battle, never making it back home. And witness firsthand how Uncle Jack's mood lightens when SisterK finally comes home from a night out. And watch my distinguished, stately, proper Grandmother try to throw a lounge chair at the neighbor's cat. And I got to (had to) be vulnerable and scared, and see how some of the strongest people in my life deal with their vulnerability, and mine. And teach Uncle Jack how to attach files to e-mail and thrill Grandmother by knowing all the words to Lydia the Tattooed Lady. And see Youngest Nephew play catch with his Great Uncle, and Lil Girl clop around in her Great-Grandmother's shoes.
Because I've been loved. And lucky.
Because I can not make it make sense to them, in, you know, sentences and things, I sit here and type. Rocking back and forth, looking back and forth, and hoping that I'll always be this lucky.
* I could not think of an appropriate title for this one (see above, re: Fever, Ear, 1 AM, etc). Only the lines from I'll Love You Forever kept coming into my head(because of all the 'back and forth' talk): "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living my baby you'll be," but some people (ok: most people) seem to think that that book, while attempting to be positive and heartwarming, is also a little... stalker-y. So I didn't use that as the title, but I had to fit it in somewhere. All of my life, in one way or another, must relate back to a children's book, apparently. :shrug:
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
So you know how I was going to be all "The summer of Grandmother = Yay!"
Yeah, well that was until the sinus infection I've been fighting off for weeks decided to migrate to my EAR (not exactly, but close enough), and I can't talk (or eat. Or swallow.) without wanting to carve out the inside of my ear. So, I'm miserable, and I'm miserable company...Grandmother - "You seem depressed." Answer I want to give - "That's because someone is sticking something hot and sharp into my ear!" Answer that is acceptable to give: "No, ma'am, just sore." Grandmother - "You just need Lil Girl to cheer you up" Answer I want to give - "Thank all the gods and goddesses that those kids are on vacation, because right about now I'd be trying to sell them on Craigslist." Answer that is acceptable to give - "No, I'd be pretty miserable and then so would the kids."
And I just want my own bed, in my own room, where I can turn on the damn air conditioner before 3 in the afternoon (Why?), and where I can get away with just eating mashed potatoes and bananas all day, and where there's soup so I don't have to, and where Mom knows me well enough to know that this is not my mad face or my depressed face, this is my HOLY JEBUS WHY THE ...WHO THE HELL GETS A SINUS INFECTION IN THEIR EAR face.
So, yeah: I'm supposed to be on a kid-less vacation this week, enjoying my time with the lovely people I am staying with, and instead I feel like an emo harpy who sits in the dark room and watches reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu all day. Awesome. I'm sure they'll want me to visit All The Time.
Blah.
Yeah, well that was until the sinus infection I've been fighting off for weeks decided to migrate to my EAR (not exactly, but close enough), and I can't talk (or eat. Or swallow.) without wanting to carve out the inside of my ear. So, I'm miserable, and I'm miserable company...Grandmother - "You seem depressed." Answer I want to give - "That's because someone is sticking something hot and sharp into my ear!" Answer that is acceptable to give: "No, ma'am, just sore." Grandmother - "You just need Lil Girl to cheer you up" Answer I want to give - "Thank all the gods and goddesses that those kids are on vacation, because right about now I'd be trying to sell them on Craigslist." Answer that is acceptable to give - "No, I'd be pretty miserable and then so would the kids."
And I just want my own bed, in my own room, where I can turn on the damn air conditioner before 3 in the afternoon (Why?), and where I can get away with just eating mashed potatoes and bananas all day, and where there's soup so I don't have to, and where Mom knows me well enough to know that this is not my mad face or my depressed face, this is my HOLY JEBUS WHY THE ...WHO THE HELL GETS A SINUS INFECTION IN THEIR EAR face.
So, yeah: I'm supposed to be on a kid-less vacation this week, enjoying my time with the lovely people I am staying with, and instead I feel like an emo harpy who sits in the dark room and watches reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu all day. Awesome. I'm sure they'll want me to visit All The Time.
Blah.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Friday, July 03, 2009
Did you ever see that movie...?
In other news, Yes, I am still at Grandmother's. No, I do not want to talk about it right now. Except to say - Did you ever see The Money Pit? It was always one of my Dad's favorite movies, and anything that made my dad laugh hard enough to cry was in frequent viewing rotation in our house.
It's about a couple who buy their "dream house" and how the house then crumbles around down around them, making the couple crazy bit by plastered bit. It's a hilarious movie, if only because Tom Hanks does that little barking laugh thing that he does, and I find that pretty dang funny. Here's the laugh:
Anyways, during the movie, there's a running gag: each of the workmen (contractors, plumbers, electricians) who come to work on the house all promise that their work will be completed in "two weeks". Months pass, work continues, and yet, always the reply is "two weeks." The "two weeks" quote became one of our family sayings, whatever we'd all say when somebody asks us how long what we're doing is going to take and we really have no frickin idea. It's really come around to bite me on the ass though, this time. Because I've been hearing "this weekend" for the past 2 months. So "this weekend" is really just code for "two weeks". It's not as funny when it's true.
But the scene where Walter (Tom Hanks' character) is stuck in the rug? Always funny. Always. (Sorry, the only clip I could find was of very poor quality.)
It's about a couple who buy their "dream house" and how the house then crumbles around down around them, making the couple crazy bit by plastered bit. It's a hilarious movie, if only because Tom Hanks does that little barking laugh thing that he does, and I find that pretty dang funny. Here's the laugh:
Anyways, during the movie, there's a running gag: each of the workmen (contractors, plumbers, electricians) who come to work on the house all promise that their work will be completed in "two weeks". Months pass, work continues, and yet, always the reply is "two weeks." The "two weeks" quote became one of our family sayings, whatever we'd all say when somebody asks us how long what we're doing is going to take and we really have no frickin idea. It's really come around to bite me on the ass though, this time. Because I've been hearing "this weekend" for the past 2 months. So "this weekend" is really just code for "two weeks". It's not as funny when it's true.
But the scene where Walter (Tom Hanks' character) is stuck in the rug? Always funny. Always. (Sorry, the only clip I could find was of very poor quality.)
Saturday, June 20, 2009
A little bit on the whiny side, I'm sorry to say.
Every phone call with my mother ends the same way now: with her telling me about the work that's still not done, and me trying to think of something to say that isn't twisted and harsh and bitter.
I don't like it, and I know it's not her fault that things are moving so slowly, and I know that I am lucky to have a place to be that is safe and warm and where I am loved and I know it's just stupid & useless to feel sorry for myself, but I do.
I feel like I don't have a place.
I just don't belong anywhere -
As much as I love it here, and spending time with my grandmother and sister and uncle is amazing and wonderful and great;
As much as I know that Mum and Dad are working and painting and scraping and getting estimates 4 days out of the week;
As much as I know that this is all temporary and eventually, there'll be a house I can get in and out of, with a brand new cozy bed I just paid a lot of money for, and a bathtub I can take showers in and a kitchen I can cook in and a room where I can let the kids just play and not have to worry about them breaking something that's 115 years old or waking somebody up from a much needed nap.
As much as all that is true, right now?
At this moment?
I feel ...like those days are still too far away.
like I've overstayed my welcome, no matter what they say
like nobody who's supposed to care, actually cares enough to do the things that I can't do for myself. Or to find out how I'm doing, or to even think that I might be upset by the way things are playing out.
And, wow, am I upset.
I'm angry, even.
I'm shocked at how angry I am - that people can't be trusted to do even the simplest things, that time keeps passing, that I'm so useless, that I keep getting worse, that nobody seems to be worried besides me. I'm angry at myself, and I'm angry at just about everybody else.
Not all the time, not even most of the time... but today. Today I am.
I know it's because I'm feeling so much worse, and because the longer I stay here the harder it gets to pretend I'm still ok, and because the harder it is to pretend, the more I cause the people here to worry, or to go out of their way, and the more I feel like a big fat burden.
And also? Because I am just so sick of pretending.
I'm at the point where I can't hide the fact that I get tired halfway through making a sandwich and have to lay down for 3 hours. At the point where wearing a bra 24 hours a day - for modesty's sake - is no longer an option (hell, most days, it's not even an option to put it on at all) and I almost don't even care that they know I haven't taken a shower in almost 2 weeks. At the point where they can see that I save every last drop of energy for those two days when the Lil Girl (&/or her big brother) is here, and the rest of the time recuperating.
It's all the little stuff that doesn't matter when I'm at home, that matters big time here. And it only matters because I let it: I know that my grandmother doesn't think any less of me because I have greasy hair, or that my uncle is going to be thinking I'm lazy because I just can't clean up those dishes I left in the sink.
But I'm not without pride. I don't like people, even the people closest to me, to know how much I can't do, to see how much help I need to make it through the day. It's not a choice, though, when I'm staying here. It feels like all of my flaws, all of my faults and failures, are on display, all day, everyday.
And even though this rant is full of angst and all 'poor me', I know it'll pass soon. I'm already embarrassed that I even wrote it, because reading it back for errors makes me sound petty and like I don't appreciate all I have. I do. I really do.
But I'm not going to pretend it never happened, I'm not going to keep on pretending, at least here, that I'm not bothered by the fact that I still have no home. Or the fact that the majority (not all, but most) of my siblings have only contacted me in the past two months when they needed me to do something for them, and then promptly forgot that I exist. Or the fact that, at 30 years old, I have to constantly eat food I don't like because I can't just fix my own or watch the news b/c if I don't stay in the living room till 11:00, I'll cause people to worry.
I'm going to give myself this space to not have to bite my tongue or to not have to use my "I'm totally fine and can socialize like a normal person" voice.
And then I'm going to take a deep breath and open the door again, and try to convince my uncle that he'd really just like to order a pizza tonight.
As always, thanks for listening.
I don't like it, and I know it's not her fault that things are moving so slowly, and I know that I am lucky to have a place to be that is safe and warm and where I am loved and I know it's just stupid & useless to feel sorry for myself, but I do.
I feel like I don't have a place.
I just don't belong anywhere -
As much as I love it here, and spending time with my grandmother and sister and uncle is amazing and wonderful and great;
As much as I know that Mum and Dad are working and painting and scraping and getting estimates 4 days out of the week;
As much as I know that this is all temporary and eventually, there'll be a house I can get in and out of, with a brand new cozy bed I just paid a lot of money for, and a bathtub I can take showers in and a kitchen I can cook in and a room where I can let the kids just play and not have to worry about them breaking something that's 115 years old or waking somebody up from a much needed nap.
As much as all that is true, right now?
At this moment?
I feel ...like those days are still too far away.
like I've overstayed my welcome, no matter what they say
like nobody who's supposed to care, actually cares enough to do the things that I can't do for myself. Or to find out how I'm doing, or to even think that I might be upset by the way things are playing out.
And, wow, am I upset.
I'm angry, even.
I'm shocked at how angry I am - that people can't be trusted to do even the simplest things, that time keeps passing, that I'm so useless, that I keep getting worse, that nobody seems to be worried besides me. I'm angry at myself, and I'm angry at just about everybody else.
Not all the time, not even most of the time... but today. Today I am.
I know it's because I'm feeling so much worse, and because the longer I stay here the harder it gets to pretend I'm still ok, and because the harder it is to pretend, the more I cause the people here to worry, or to go out of their way, and the more I feel like a big fat burden.
And also? Because I am just so sick of pretending.
I'm at the point where I can't hide the fact that I get tired halfway through making a sandwich and have to lay down for 3 hours. At the point where wearing a bra 24 hours a day - for modesty's sake - is no longer an option (hell, most days, it's not even an option to put it on at all) and I almost don't even care that they know I haven't taken a shower in almost 2 weeks. At the point where they can see that I save every last drop of energy for those two days when the Lil Girl (&/or her big brother) is here, and the rest of the time recuperating.
It's all the little stuff that doesn't matter when I'm at home, that matters big time here. And it only matters because I let it: I know that my grandmother doesn't think any less of me because I have greasy hair, or that my uncle is going to be thinking I'm lazy because I just can't clean up those dishes I left in the sink.
But I'm not without pride. I don't like people, even the people closest to me, to know how much I can't do, to see how much help I need to make it through the day. It's not a choice, though, when I'm staying here. It feels like all of my flaws, all of my faults and failures, are on display, all day, everyday.
And even though this rant is full of angst and all 'poor me', I know it'll pass soon. I'm already embarrassed that I even wrote it, because reading it back for errors makes me sound petty and like I don't appreciate all I have. I do. I really do.
But I'm not going to pretend it never happened, I'm not going to keep on pretending, at least here, that I'm not bothered by the fact that I still have no home. Or the fact that the majority (not all, but most) of my siblings have only contacted me in the past two months when they needed me to do something for them, and then promptly forgot that I exist. Or the fact that, at 30 years old, I have to constantly eat food I don't like because I can't just fix my own or watch the news b/c if I don't stay in the living room till 11:00, I'll cause people to worry.
I'm going to give myself this space to not have to bite my tongue or to not have to use my "I'm totally fine and can socialize like a normal person" voice.
And then I'm going to take a deep breath and open the door again, and try to convince my uncle that he'd really just like to order a pizza tonight.
As always, thanks for listening.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
I know posting is still light,
but it's probably just because everything else feels so heavy.
I'm struggling to get things accomplished here, in the limbo of my grandmother's house, faced with new challenges and none of the old comforts. Which is not to say I'm not enjoying the new - and unique - comforts I'm lucky enough to get here: it's just that they're not what I'm used to, and so I find myself unsure how to balance having someone to talk to till the sun comes up with my need for laying in the dark for hours. Trying to decide if it's worth it to sit on the porch for an hour feeling the beautiful breeze and remembering every summer I've ever lived through, if the price is going to be a complete in ability to move for hours afterwords.
I suppose it's just that I had a routine, and now I have to figure out a whole new one, and then I'm going to have to figure out another new one in a few weeks when I can finally move into our new house.
I don't know what the point of this post is, except to tell you that I am still here. Figuring it out, getting through the days.
Hope the day you are getting through is treating you kindly.
Mine is.
I'm struggling to get things accomplished here, in the limbo of my grandmother's house, faced with new challenges and none of the old comforts. Which is not to say I'm not enjoying the new - and unique - comforts I'm lucky enough to get here: it's just that they're not what I'm used to, and so I find myself unsure how to balance having someone to talk to till the sun comes up with my need for laying in the dark for hours. Trying to decide if it's worth it to sit on the porch for an hour feeling the beautiful breeze and remembering every summer I've ever lived through, if the price is going to be a complete in ability to move for hours afterwords.
I suppose it's just that I had a routine, and now I have to figure out a whole new one, and then I'm going to have to figure out another new one in a few weeks when I can finally move into our new house.
I don't know what the point of this post is, except to tell you that I am still here. Figuring it out, getting through the days.
Hope the day you are getting through is treating you kindly.
Mine is.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
So, where have I been?
Well, on April 30th, we finally sold our house. The weeks leading up to that day were fraught with millions of tiny little details that had to get attended to, more than one overly emotional scene, and an impossible to measure amount of exhaustion. I'm sure that this is true for anyone who is selling and moving out of their family home, but I have to say that, for me, it was both surprisingly easy in some unexpected ways and intensely, intimately difficult in others. But by the time we finally got to the point of passing the papers (2 days and 1000 little-things-going-wrong-at-the-same-time later), I was ready to be done. I had said my goodbyes and packed up all my memories along with my belongings, and I was ready to move on.
Since the 28th of April, and the final big cleaning push of the old house, I've been staying - gladly and thankfully - at my grandmother's house. I've had a (mostly) fabulous time, getting to spend time with Grandmother and UJ, watching Lil Girl get to know them better - and watching them enjoy her as much as I do -, and just really enjoying my visit. But that's the thing - it's just a visit. I'm not home. I'm not in my own bed, with my own things, in a place where it's ok to just lie still all day without setting off all kinds of alarm bells for other people. (Mum knows that on bad days I don't so much as roll over: Grandmother thinks it's cause for emergency interventions, and should she call the doctor?)
It's just not my place, and the longer I stay - and I'm nowhere near the end of my stay, as illness and injury, as well as a few siblings who seem to have forgotten our new address, have contributed to the new house not even being a quarter of the way ready for me to move in - the harder it becomes for me to keep up the energy required for being in proper 'guest' mode. It's exhausting just to deal with my normal pain, and then you have to add in the fact that there are no showers here, so there's none of that temporary relief (though I did escape last week to a hotel room for a shower, and I'll do it again next week too), plus the fact that I'm sleeping on a pull out sofa bed, which isn't exactly the leading contender in comfort; plus all the additional work I have to do to get myself through the day - breakfast at the table, getting to the bathroom on my own, transferring from the chair to the couch to the chair to the bed a lot more times a day, the fact that any of the stuff I have to do is just a little bit more complicated because none of the things I need are set up to be right on hand, like they are at home: well, it's been a challenge, is all I can say.
And, yes, I know that I don't have to be in 'guest' mode all the time, but it's what I do. I'm surprised at how much I manage to 'hide,' about how much I feel I have to hide, so that nobody knows how bad it really is. This might be ok if I'm only seeing people for short periods of time, but long term? It's impossible. And I'm finding it scary, how vulnerable I feel, even though I know that Grandmother and UJ love me and they're my family. I don't know why it's so hard to show them how much pain I'm really in, but it is. It's like I'm letting them down, not being the person they expect me to be, or like I'm hurting them by showing them the truly overwhelming nature of my illnesses.
I've had to cut out things like my breathing doctor appointments, because trying to get in and out of the house once a week - which means climbing down 3 or 4 steps, into and out of the car here and there, then there and here, then climbing back up the 3 or 4 steps - was just too difficult and cancelled out any benefit I may have been getting from the appointment in the first place. I've learned that there are somethings I thought I couldn't do that I actually can - hello, idiot: If you have smaller containers of orange juice or soda, you can pour them for yourself, and not have to wait for somebody else to do it for you! - and somethings that I need help with that I just am too embarrassed to have anyone but Mum do (and that I totally need to get over that).
I'm pretty sure I need to find another PCA, too: to handle all these little things I need help with when Mum is too busy to do them. Of course, this is, in effect, demoting my mother, and I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to do that yet, so that's obviously easier said than done. But there are a lot of things that are falling through the cracks because she's busy with the remodeling, and they are things that would make it easier for me to function, so I should be at least attempting to find somebody to cover for her. Instead, I'm trying to struggle through on my own, and I'm not sure how much longer I can do that.
But, that is where I have been - struggling to get through the everyday a little bit more, which means that my google reader has read "1000+ new posts" everyday since I've been here, that my gmail has gone unanswered, and my blog has been neglected. I do think I'm doing better at hiding less, not trying so hard to make it seem like I can do things that I really don't have the energy to do (Basically because I hit a wall, which is not unusual for me - push too hard, hit an impenetrable wall of fatigue and pain. Repeat as necessary until you get it through your thick skull that you JUST CAN'T DO EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO DO, you dope. Oh, and also? You have no immune system, so stop pretending that you haven't caught that sinus infection - you have. It's living in your face. Call the doctor and get a Zpack already. KThnxBye!) This should translate into a schedule closer to what I'm used to - which means more puter time, because I don't have any energy to do anything else.
Although I'm not passing up on the hour long talks with Grandmother & UJ - one of my favorite low/no energy activities, and one which I'm happy to be able to indulge in to my heart's content right now.
Since the 28th of April, and the final big cleaning push of the old house, I've been staying - gladly and thankfully - at my grandmother's house. I've had a (mostly) fabulous time, getting to spend time with Grandmother and UJ, watching Lil Girl get to know them better - and watching them enjoy her as much as I do -, and just really enjoying my visit. But that's the thing - it's just a visit. I'm not home. I'm not in my own bed, with my own things, in a place where it's ok to just lie still all day without setting off all kinds of alarm bells for other people. (Mum knows that on bad days I don't so much as roll over: Grandmother thinks it's cause for emergency interventions, and should she call the doctor?)
It's just not my place, and the longer I stay - and I'm nowhere near the end of my stay, as illness and injury, as well as a few siblings who seem to have forgotten our new address, have contributed to the new house not even being a quarter of the way ready for me to move in - the harder it becomes for me to keep up the energy required for being in proper 'guest' mode. It's exhausting just to deal with my normal pain, and then you have to add in the fact that there are no showers here, so there's none of that temporary relief (though I did escape last week to a hotel room for a shower, and I'll do it again next week too), plus the fact that I'm sleeping on a pull out sofa bed, which isn't exactly the leading contender in comfort; plus all the additional work I have to do to get myself through the day - breakfast at the table, getting to the bathroom on my own, transferring from the chair to the couch to the chair to the bed a lot more times a day, the fact that any of the stuff I have to do is just a little bit more complicated because none of the things I need are set up to be right on hand, like they are at home: well, it's been a challenge, is all I can say.
And, yes, I know that I don't have to be in 'guest' mode all the time, but it's what I do. I'm surprised at how much I manage to 'hide,' about how much I feel I have to hide, so that nobody knows how bad it really is. This might be ok if I'm only seeing people for short periods of time, but long term? It's impossible. And I'm finding it scary, how vulnerable I feel, even though I know that Grandmother and UJ love me and they're my family. I don't know why it's so hard to show them how much pain I'm really in, but it is. It's like I'm letting them down, not being the person they expect me to be, or like I'm hurting them by showing them the truly overwhelming nature of my illnesses.
I've had to cut out things like my breathing doctor appointments, because trying to get in and out of the house once a week - which means climbing down 3 or 4 steps, into and out of the car here and there, then there and here, then climbing back up the 3 or 4 steps - was just too difficult and cancelled out any benefit I may have been getting from the appointment in the first place. I've learned that there are somethings I thought I couldn't do that I actually can - hello, idiot: If you have smaller containers of orange juice or soda, you can pour them for yourself, and not have to wait for somebody else to do it for you! - and somethings that I need help with that I just am too embarrassed to have anyone but Mum do (and that I totally need to get over that).
I'm pretty sure I need to find another PCA, too: to handle all these little things I need help with when Mum is too busy to do them. Of course, this is, in effect, demoting my mother, and I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to do that yet, so that's obviously easier said than done. But there are a lot of things that are falling through the cracks because she's busy with the remodeling, and they are things that would make it easier for me to function, so I should be at least attempting to find somebody to cover for her. Instead, I'm trying to struggle through on my own, and I'm not sure how much longer I can do that.
But, that is where I have been - struggling to get through the everyday a little bit more, which means that my google reader has read "1000+ new posts" everyday since I've been here, that my gmail has gone unanswered, and my blog has been neglected. I do think I'm doing better at hiding less, not trying so hard to make it seem like I can do things that I really don't have the energy to do (Basically because I hit a wall, which is not unusual for me - push too hard, hit an impenetrable wall of fatigue and pain. Repeat as necessary until you get it through your thick skull that you JUST CAN'T DO EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO DO, you dope. Oh, and also? You have no immune system, so stop pretending that you haven't caught that sinus infection - you have. It's living in your face. Call the doctor and get a Zpack already. KThnxBye!) This should translate into a schedule closer to what I'm used to - which means more puter time, because I don't have any energy to do anything else.
Although I'm not passing up on the hour long talks with Grandmother & UJ - one of my favorite low/no energy activities, and one which I'm happy to be able to indulge in to my heart's content right now.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Everybody says
"Just call when you need help: I'll be there."
But it's not true. They won't, all. Or they'll come and not help, or they'll come and make things worse. Or they show up the first day, but they don't show up the next time. Or they just get sick of helping.
And that's one of the things that sucks most about having chronic, disabling illnesses: There are just some things that you can't do on your own.
So you ask for help, and you're supposed to be - you are, even - grateful for what you get. But it's not always what you need, you know. It certainly isn't always what you'd like.
Sometimes, it'd be nice not to have to ask. Sometimes, it'd be nice if people just put 2 and 2 together and realized it equaled 4 without you having to call and tell them so.
Sometimes it'd be nice if people just showed up, ready to work. And didn't fight with you about the work you needed them to do, or amongst themselves over who was doing the most work. If they didn't fall asleep in the middle of the job, or stop often to text their friends. If they were genuinely pleased to be able to help you out, instead of making you feel like the least capable adult of their acquaintance. If they showed up when they said they were going to, and stayed till the work was finished.
If they realized that asking for help is sometimes just as hard as giving it.
And while I do have a few people who've come and helped and don't make me regret asking, and a few people I probably could've asked that would've helped better, overall, this whole 'getting people to help you move' thing has been horrid.
Considering that my siblings often make promises they then fail to keep, I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.
This moving thing - it's a big deal. And yet, it's also not. It's not even the scariest thing that'll be happening in our family that day, so let's all just take some deep breaths and motor on through, shall we?
I stopped talking about the whole moving process here for a while because it was overwhelming me, really... I couldn't think about it one second more, so I used this place as an escape hatch, but it's been running our lives for months now. A year with the house on the market, 4 feverish months of searching every open house, and, now that we're down to our last week (!) here, it's all coming to a head: number of storage units (so far), 2; number of rooms empty, 0; days left till all rooms must be empty, 9.
We're not even halfway through this process - we've got to get the rest out, the new house --- we finally found one, thank the goddess --- cleaned and repaired and painted, and then move all of the stuff into the new house. And yet, 90% of our 'helpers' are petering out, everybody is cranky and tired and some are acting worse than the soon-to-be-3 year-old.
It's crazy and sad, and we all just want to be done with it, but we're not. And it's pissing me off that my some of my siblings, who have accumulated upwards of 13 moves in the past 16 years - all of which my mother helped with - don't see this as their responsibility too. Even the one that lives here seems to think it's optional. I know they each have their own lives, I know it's grueling work that nobody really wants to do, but I can promise you that once we're all moved in, there isn't a one of them who won't want to have dinner there on a summer Sunday.
And it'd be nice if they'd remember that this Sunday, and pitch in a little bit more, without making me feel like I've asked for the impossible.
:sigh:
But it's not true. They won't, all. Or they'll come and not help, or they'll come and make things worse. Or they show up the first day, but they don't show up the next time. Or they just get sick of helping.
And that's one of the things that sucks most about having chronic, disabling illnesses: There are just some things that you can't do on your own.
So you ask for help, and you're supposed to be - you are, even - grateful for what you get. But it's not always what you need, you know. It certainly isn't always what you'd like.
Sometimes, it'd be nice not to have to ask. Sometimes, it'd be nice if people just put 2 and 2 together and realized it equaled 4 without you having to call and tell them so.
Sometimes it'd be nice if people just showed up, ready to work. And didn't fight with you about the work you needed them to do, or amongst themselves over who was doing the most work. If they didn't fall asleep in the middle of the job, or stop often to text their friends. If they were genuinely pleased to be able to help you out, instead of making you feel like the least capable adult of their acquaintance. If they showed up when they said they were going to, and stayed till the work was finished.
If they realized that asking for help is sometimes just as hard as giving it.
And while I do have a few people who've come and helped and don't make me regret asking, and a few people I probably could've asked that would've helped better, overall, this whole 'getting people to help you move' thing has been horrid.
Considering that my siblings often make promises they then fail to keep, I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.
This moving thing - it's a big deal. And yet, it's also not. It's not even the scariest thing that'll be happening in our family that day, so let's all just take some deep breaths and motor on through, shall we?
I stopped talking about the whole moving process here for a while because it was overwhelming me, really... I couldn't think about it one second more, so I used this place as an escape hatch, but it's been running our lives for months now. A year with the house on the market, 4 feverish months of searching every open house, and, now that we're down to our last week (!) here, it's all coming to a head: number of storage units (so far), 2; number of rooms empty, 0; days left till all rooms must be empty, 9.
We're not even halfway through this process - we've got to get the rest out, the new house --- we finally found one, thank the goddess --- cleaned and repaired and painted, and then move all of the stuff into the new house. And yet, 90% of our 'helpers' are petering out, everybody is cranky and tired and some are acting worse than the soon-to-be-3 year-old.
It's crazy and sad, and we all just want to be done with it, but we're not. And it's pissing me off that my some of my siblings, who have accumulated upwards of 13 moves in the past 16 years - all of which my mother helped with - don't see this as their responsibility too. Even the one that lives here seems to think it's optional. I know they each have their own lives, I know it's grueling work that nobody really wants to do, but I can promise you that once we're all moved in, there isn't a one of them who won't want to have dinner there on a summer Sunday.
And it'd be nice if they'd remember that this Sunday, and pitch in a little bit more, without making me feel like I've asked for the impossible.
:sigh:
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Looking for the next imaginary place
as we start the last final few weeks here.
We're amping up the packing, finding all sorts of memories hidden unexpectedly in corners, in trash bags shoved in the back-beyond of closets, in endless foot high stacks of papers. Every breeze that blows in the window carries a reminder of some long ago day when we chased each other around the tiny tree or sat on the back porch listening to the rain. Every curve in the wall is a place long forgotten - the third step down that was our favorite place for telling secrets (apparently, acoustics was not our best subject at age 8), the hole in the floor between the parlor and sun parlor that we used to think hid a secret room. Random sounds combine into the first songs she taught me to play on the piano, the dripping of the pipes overhead as I played with my dollhouse in our dank dark cellar, the off tempo clock that only half ticked as I spent another lazy afternoon visiting the Green Gables. Even ordinary smells seem to hold extraordinary pockets of memories these days - the brand new tube of Crest toothpaste in the bathroom reveals the Easter eve night we had a sleepover upstairs, and in that moment, I could almost still swear that I'd truly seen the Easter Bunny that night.
Everywhere I look there's another story I'm afraid I'll forget again, another little piece of who we were, here. Then. I tenderly pick up each one, put it in my pocket, my dented and patched up boxes, my recycled Rubbermaid containers, and I wrap them in bubble wrap, cushion them in cotton, do anything I can to make sure that they'll survive the trip.
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We're amping up the packing, finding all sorts of memories hidden unexpectedly in corners, in trash bags shoved in the back-beyond of closets, in endless foot high stacks of papers. Every breeze that blows in the window carries a reminder of some long ago day when we chased each other around the tiny tree or sat on the back porch listening to the rain. Every curve in the wall is a place long forgotten - the third step down that was our favorite place for telling secrets (apparently, acoustics was not our best subject at age 8), the hole in the floor between the parlor and sun parlor that we used to think hid a secret room. Random sounds combine into the first songs she taught me to play on the piano, the dripping of the pipes overhead as I played with my dollhouse in our dank dark cellar, the off tempo clock that only half ticked as I spent another lazy afternoon visiting the Green Gables. Even ordinary smells seem to hold extraordinary pockets of memories these days - the brand new tube of Crest toothpaste in the bathroom reveals the Easter eve night we had a sleepover upstairs, and in that moment, I could almost still swear that I'd truly seen the Easter Bunny that night.
Everywhere I look there's another story I'm afraid I'll forget again, another little piece of who we were, here. Then. I tenderly pick up each one, put it in my pocket, my dented and patched up boxes, my recycled Rubbermaid containers, and I wrap them in bubble wrap, cushion them in cotton, do anything I can to make sure that they'll survive the trip.
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Andrew Largeman: You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew Largeman: You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day ...one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you, kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.
From the movie Garden State
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Speaking of fools...
**** Hey Sister of Mine - This is probably not a post you want to read, unless you feel like crying or being pumped full of rage. It's about the PUS. Feel free to skip. (This goes for anybody, of course, but my sister especially). I'd rather not write it, to be honest, but it's probably a wiser option than waiting till one of them comes by and kicking them in the face. Which is what I feel like doing. So; writing it is. ****
The PUS are just about all moved out now, with just their part of the cellar and what the realtor calls 'a few odds and ends' left upstairs to take with them. I can not fully explain how amazing it feels to be in this house and not be afraid of having to leave because of something they've done that will make me more ill. Or how it brings me peace to be able to take Lil Girl outside to draw with sidewalk chalk and not have to worry about someone pulling into the driveway and shooting us dirty looks, or worse, attempting to talk to me. It is bittersweet, to the extreme, to have this house be almost the way it always should have been - ours.
Only Nana is missing.
And she has been on heavy on my mind lately as we move into this final month of our residence here, how could she not be?
Her best friend came over to visit us yesterday. Because she's afraid that we'll move too far for her to come again, the visit was full of unnecessary goodbyes, (as we aren't moving anymore than 30 minutes away no matter what) but she also spent a good deal of time rehashing old hurts: cursing the PUS for all they did to Nana, cursing Nana for putting up with it, wishing she'd been able to convince her to do something about it. It was like listening to my own soul talking, especially when she said
"If we could've found a way, she'd probably still be alive today."
To outsiders, this statement makes no sense, I'm sure. An overreaction, perhaps, or wishful thinking to the extreme. But to me, it is a mere fact --> my grandmother, no spring chicken when she died at 84, would most likely have had a longer (and most definitely a happier) life if she hadn't had to battle everyday for just the air she breathed.
Stress, we all know, is aging. It's detrimental to your body on a cellular level. It hurts physically and emotionally. And my Nana lived in a soul crushingly stressful environment. It wasn't even just stress, it wasn't ordinary familial tension - she lived in a place where she was abused, everyday.
It takes a lot for me to write that. To know that it is true and to know that there were choices we all made - choices that I made - that enabled that abuse to continue.
I hope that in all my life, I will never do anything that I could regret more than not doing what I know was right. I hope that I would be strong enough, now, to know that having her mad at me for calling the cops - over and over again, if necessary - would be preferable to not having her at all.
"She wasn't beaten to death," you might say, "She died of cancer." And you would be right. She did. She did die of cancer, but she also died because her environment was toxic; because her son and his 'family' poisoned her everyday.
By ignoring her. By making her feel worthless and stupid and vile. By treating her as if she were little more than a bank - a bank where loans never had to be repaid and interest was never charged and you could insult the clerks at will. By hurting her heart and allowing their children to say that she wasn't their grandmother, or that they'd never really loved her. By screaming at her and calling her hideous names. By not caring for her when she was so obviously sick, and not caring enough to let anyone else have the chance to care for her either. By bullying her into believing all the wretched things they said about her (or us), and threatening her if she dared to stand up for herself (or us). By treating her as though she was invisible - by showing her that her opinion meant so little it didn't deserve to be heard, that her presence meant so little it wasn't even worth noting. By making it so that no one else could stand to come to her house, since it meant being in their presence, since it meant having to sit by seething while she was belittled or being belittled themselves.
(I would say here, in order to keep myself from becoming completely enraged, all over again, and because I am listening to the Harry Potter books on cassette tape, that she was Dobby, and they never gave her so much as a sock. If that makes sense to you, I think we should be friends:) )
They poisoned her, as sure as if they'd been feeding her arsenic, and 22 years worth is a lot of arsenic to swallow. It's a long time, and a lot of damage, and if every day you're living on a battlefield, using all your strength and energy to fight off poisons, you don't have any extra resources when you need them.
And that's really what happened to her - she just didn't have the resources she needed for that next battle, and it happened to be against a foe she couldn't best.
I'm not saying she wouldn't have had cancer. I'm not even saying she would have survived the cancer, really. I'm just saying that she would've had a better shot at doing so if she didn't have to also survive her 'son' and the rest of the PUS.
You may disagree, and I haven't written it before because, well... it sounds so stupid written down like that, even to me. But they wore her down, they wore down her spirit and her energy and her self, and when she got sick, she needed all those things and didn't have them. So yeah: I think that the damage they've done is immeasurable. And I am damn glad to see them go.
But today, alone in the house, as I heard the footsteps of Hippobeast PUS (the daughter - who's 22 now & who was one of Nana's frequent tormentors) thump on the back steps, I had a moment of "What's to stop me?"
My anger was so clear and sharp and focused that if I were capable of climbing the stairs, Ithinkknow, in that moment, I absolutely would have. I wanted to yell at her. To tell her how evil I think she really is; to tell her the truth.
We haven't talked in over 12 years, and I assume that she thinks I am as horrific as I think she is, but in that moment I just wanted to be able to look her in the face and say: "Listen, you need to hear this from somebody, and it sure as shit ain't going to be your fucked up parents that tell you because they're even more delusional than you are. So hear this clearly, and know that it is true - YOU are wrong.
All those things you did, at first because your parents did them, and then later just because you could? The hateful things you said and the punishing ways you acted? Were wrong. Were evil and hurtful and poisonous and led directly to the dissolution of our 'family' and to Nana's death. And you can never make that better.
I can't go back and do the right thing - I can't go back and call the cops when I should've or actually send that letter to the lawyer the way I wanted to, and that will always haunt me. But you can't go back either, you can't undue the harm you did, the hurt you've caused, and I can't let you leave this house without letting you know that I hope it haunts you. Because it should."
It's probably good that I can't climb the stairs, because even as I was thinking about how great it would be to deliver this truth to her in person, I didn't, for a second, imagine that she would just sit there and let me say all of that to her. And that would've pissed me off even more, and things would most likely have escalated. (Although, seriously? Giving her the chance to punch me might have been worth any increase in pain because you know I would've called the cops then, friends.)
And by the time she plodded her way back down the stairs, I had calmed down enough to return to my Harry Potter and plot about how to 'accidentally' aim a Cruciatus Curse at them all instead, but the wanting is still there. Because I know that they still think they didn't do anything wrong.
That they will never think they did anything wrong - that they were the victims of a family that turned their backs on them, as opposed to the perpetrators that caused a family to be shattered.
And that's not okay with me. But I'm just going to have to let it go.
So, even though we still don't know where we'll be, I am definitely looking forward to thirty days from today, when I won't have to see them again. Or hear their false voices again, or suffer under their hands ever again.
And then? I shall have to settle for the Obliteration Charm instead, wiping them from my life once and for all.
The PUS are just about all moved out now, with just their part of the cellar and what the realtor calls 'a few odds and ends' left upstairs to take with them. I can not fully explain how amazing it feels to be in this house and not be afraid of having to leave because of something they've done that will make me more ill. Or how it brings me peace to be able to take Lil Girl outside to draw with sidewalk chalk and not have to worry about someone pulling into the driveway and shooting us dirty looks, or worse, attempting to talk to me. It is bittersweet, to the extreme, to have this house be almost the way it always should have been - ours.
Only Nana is missing.
And she has been on heavy on my mind lately as we move into this final month of our residence here, how could she not be?
Her best friend came over to visit us yesterday. Because she's afraid that we'll move too far for her to come again, the visit was full of unnecessary goodbyes, (as we aren't moving anymore than 30 minutes away no matter what) but she also spent a good deal of time rehashing old hurts: cursing the PUS for all they did to Nana, cursing Nana for putting up with it, wishing she'd been able to convince her to do something about it. It was like listening to my own soul talking, especially when she said
"If we could've found a way, she'd probably still be alive today."
To outsiders, this statement makes no sense, I'm sure. An overreaction, perhaps, or wishful thinking to the extreme. But to me, it is a mere fact --> my grandmother, no spring chicken when she died at 84, would most likely have had a longer (and most definitely a happier) life if she hadn't had to battle everyday for just the air she breathed.
Stress, we all know, is aging. It's detrimental to your body on a cellular level. It hurts physically and emotionally. And my Nana lived in a soul crushingly stressful environment. It wasn't even just stress, it wasn't ordinary familial tension - she lived in a place where she was abused, everyday.
It takes a lot for me to write that. To know that it is true and to know that there were choices we all made - choices that I made - that enabled that abuse to continue.
I hope that in all my life, I will never do anything that I could regret more than not doing what I know was right. I hope that I would be strong enough, now, to know that having her mad at me for calling the cops - over and over again, if necessary - would be preferable to not having her at all.
"She wasn't beaten to death," you might say, "She died of cancer." And you would be right. She did. She did die of cancer, but she also died because her environment was toxic; because her son and his 'family' poisoned her everyday.
By ignoring her. By making her feel worthless and stupid and vile. By treating her as if she were little more than a bank - a bank where loans never had to be repaid and interest was never charged and you could insult the clerks at will. By hurting her heart and allowing their children to say that she wasn't their grandmother, or that they'd never really loved her. By screaming at her and calling her hideous names. By not caring for her when she was so obviously sick, and not caring enough to let anyone else have the chance to care for her either. By bullying her into believing all the wretched things they said about her (or us), and threatening her if she dared to stand up for herself (or us). By treating her as though she was invisible - by showing her that her opinion meant so little it didn't deserve to be heard, that her presence meant so little it wasn't even worth noting. By making it so that no one else could stand to come to her house, since it meant being in their presence, since it meant having to sit by seething while she was belittled or being belittled themselves.
(I would say here, in order to keep myself from becoming completely enraged, all over again, and because I am listening to the Harry Potter books on cassette tape, that she was Dobby, and they never gave her so much as a sock. If that makes sense to you, I think we should be friends:) )
They poisoned her, as sure as if they'd been feeding her arsenic, and 22 years worth is a lot of arsenic to swallow. It's a long time, and a lot of damage, and if every day you're living on a battlefield, using all your strength and energy to fight off poisons, you don't have any extra resources when you need them.
And that's really what happened to her - she just didn't have the resources she needed for that next battle, and it happened to be against a foe she couldn't best.
I'm not saying she wouldn't have had cancer. I'm not even saying she would have survived the cancer, really. I'm just saying that she would've had a better shot at doing so if she didn't have to also survive her 'son' and the rest of the PUS.
You may disagree, and I haven't written it before because, well... it sounds so stupid written down like that, even to me. But they wore her down, they wore down her spirit and her energy and her self, and when she got sick, she needed all those things and didn't have them. So yeah: I think that the damage they've done is immeasurable. And I am damn glad to see them go.
But today, alone in the house, as I heard the footsteps of Hippobeast PUS (the daughter - who's 22 now & who was one of Nana's frequent tormentors) thump on the back steps, I had a moment of "What's to stop me?"
My anger was so clear and sharp and focused that if I were capable of climbing the stairs, I
We haven't talked in over 12 years, and I assume that she thinks I am as horrific as I think she is, but in that moment I just wanted to be able to look her in the face and say: "Listen, you need to hear this from somebody, and it sure as shit ain't going to be your fucked up parents that tell you because they're even more delusional than you are. So hear this clearly, and know that it is true - YOU are wrong.
All those things you did, at first because your parents did them, and then later just because you could? The hateful things you said and the punishing ways you acted? Were wrong. Were evil and hurtful and poisonous and led directly to the dissolution of our 'family' and to Nana's death. And you can never make that better.
I can't go back and do the right thing - I can't go back and call the cops when I should've or actually send that letter to the lawyer the way I wanted to, and that will always haunt me. But you can't go back either, you can't undue the harm you did, the hurt you've caused, and I can't let you leave this house without letting you know that I hope it haunts you. Because it should."
It's probably good that I can't climb the stairs, because even as I was thinking about how great it would be to deliver this truth to her in person, I didn't, for a second, imagine that she would just sit there and let me say all of that to her. And that would've pissed me off even more, and things would most likely have escalated. (Although, seriously? Giving her the chance to punch me might have been worth any increase in pain because you know I would've called the cops then, friends.)
And by the time she plodded her way back down the stairs, I had calmed down enough to return to my Harry Potter and plot about how to 'accidentally' aim a Cruciatus Curse at them all instead, but the wanting is still there. Because I know that they still think they didn't do anything wrong.
That they will never think they did anything wrong - that they were the victims of a family that turned their backs on them, as opposed to the perpetrators that caused a family to be shattered.
And that's not okay with me. But I'm just going to have to let it go.
So, even though we still don't know where we'll be, I am definitely looking forward to thirty days from today, when I won't have to see them again. Or hear their false voices again, or suffer under their hands ever again.
And then? I shall have to settle for the Obliteration Charm instead, wiping them from my life once and for all.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Tomorrow I have to make phone calls
which I hate. I also have my 'breathing lesson' session (which I have to remember to post about, because I keep forgetting), I should try to pack up something and my parents are having a house inspected in case we want to buy it.
All this house buying is beyond stressful - for all of us - and I can't think about it anymore tonight. Tonight I'm going to watch The Amazing Race and a really geeky Family Guy and then I'm going to listen to my audiobook some more. (Am in love with audiobooks: this is very dangerous!)
Anyways, I know the posting around here has been link heavy lately, but that's just because there are so many interesting things that other people are saying that I think you should see. Hopefully, this week, I will also say interesting things my own self, which would be a nice change of pace, I'm sure.
Hope your weekend was as you wanted it to be. Talk to you tomorrow!
All this house buying is beyond stressful - for all of us - and I can't think about it anymore tonight. Tonight I'm going to watch The Amazing Race and a really geeky Family Guy and then I'm going to listen to my audiobook some more. (Am in love with audiobooks: this is very dangerous!)
Anyways, I know the posting around here has been link heavy lately, but that's just because there are so many interesting things that other people are saying that I think you should see. Hopefully, this week, I will also say interesting things my own self, which would be a nice change of pace, I'm sure.
Hope your weekend was as you wanted it to be. Talk to you tomorrow!
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Are you kidding me?
I am still recuperating from my Dr. appointment, and a weekend spend packing/wrangling the family as they move things into the storage unit, so I'm just going to give you a few high/lowlights from my draft folder:
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How ridiculous is this? A mother in England is given a ticket because she parked illegally to revive her child after he turned blue. That's absurd.
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If You Like Julia Quinn over at dearauthor.
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from Forgrace.org
Determination & Perseverance
We, with steadfastness and a “never-give-up”
attitude, work diligently to meet the promise of this
organization. “No” does not stand in our way, nor make us timid. Climbing the highest peak is a challenge we take on with great vitality and vigor. (from their philosophy)
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How ridiculous is this? A mother in England is given a ticket because she parked illegally to revive her child after he turned blue. That's absurd.
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In their defense, these books taught the girls the cardinal rule of womanhood– when choosing between a handsome, wealthy, and open-minded duke who will still respect you in the morning and a pimply faced teenage boy whose hands have been god-knows-where, always choose the duke. Even if he only exists in the pages of a book.
If You Like Julia Quinn over at dearauthor.
---------------------------------------------------------------
from Forgrace.org
Determination & Perseverance
We, with steadfastness and a “never-give-up”
attitude, work diligently to meet the promise of this
organization. “No” does not stand in our way, nor make us timid. Climbing the highest peak is a challenge we take on with great vitality and vigor. (from their philosophy)
Sunday, March 15, 2009
As nice as it is
to have the extra month in the house (since we still, you know, have NOWHERE TO LIVE), I could do without the additional PUS time.
Although watching as they drop a big screen tv was certainly a plus.
Although watching as they
Monday, March 09, 2009
Weather
If you read any other New England area blogs, you know that Mother Nature taunted us with spring this weekend only to turn around and dump snow on us again today. It doesn't bother me so much - air pressure...and its relation to the sinus pressure I feel in my face is much more important to me - but every time it snows now, I keep thinking "This is our last snowfall here"
As if we were moving to, you know Aruba, rather than - oh wait: WE STILL DON'T KNOW - but it will be in Massachusetts and likely not more than 20 minutes in any direction, you big baby.
But there's this tree outside my mother's room that gets beautifully heavy with snow, and I think about the three blizzards - and at least 3000 snowfalls - I've watched burden that tree's limbs. I think about how excited my little sisters were the first time it snowed enough to reach the bottom of the swings in the backyard swing set, and how I pretended to be totally nonchalant about it when they begged me to take them out - I was probably 12, and totally too cool for school - but then I dug in with both feet when we got out there. (Which, btw - when snow reaches the bottom of a swing, do you know what that makes it? A chair, basically. Not as much fun as you'd think.) I think about how the year I finally got my own room - which later wound up being the year I got sick and had to stay in bed for 37,000 hours - was the year that tinsel like icicles formed outside the window by my bed and how I used to stare at them for hours while the reflection of car lights made them glitter, hoping that things would just Get Better.
Of course, then I also have to think about the year we painted the radiators (in the summer!) and when the heat came up that winter, the hideous, ever present smell. And the fact that the holey kitchen ceiling continues to drip in new and inconvenient places when the snow is heavy on the roof. Or how, in the spring, the tree in the schoolyard next door drips these Very Aggravating yellow buds onto every available surface. And the smell of the hydrangeas that grow in the front yard - and the humongous bees that live in them. Or about 14 million other ways that this house? Just doesn't work for us.
It'll be nice to have something that does. (Now we just need to find one.)
As if we were moving to, you know Aruba, rather than - oh wait: WE STILL DON'T KNOW - but it will be in Massachusetts and likely not more than 20 minutes in any direction, you big baby.
But there's this tree outside my mother's room that gets beautifully heavy with snow, and I think about the three blizzards - and at least 3000 snowfalls - I've watched burden that tree's limbs. I think about how excited my little sisters were the first time it snowed enough to reach the bottom of the swings in the backyard swing set, and how I pretended to be totally nonchalant about it when they begged me to take them out - I was probably 12, and totally too cool for school - but then I dug in with both feet when we got out there. (Which, btw - when snow reaches the bottom of a swing, do you know what that makes it? A chair, basically. Not as much fun as you'd think.) I think about how the year I finally got my own room - which later wound up being the year I got sick and had to stay in bed for 37,000 hours - was the year that tinsel like icicles formed outside the window by my bed and how I used to stare at them for hours while the reflection of car lights made them glitter, hoping that things would just Get Better.
Of course, then I also have to think about the year we painted the radiators (in the summer!) and when the heat came up that winter, the hideous, ever present smell. And the fact that the holey kitchen ceiling continues to drip in new and inconvenient places when the snow is heavy on the roof. Or how, in the spring, the tree in the schoolyard next door drips these Very Aggravating yellow buds onto every available surface. And the smell of the hydrangeas that grow in the front yard - and the humongous bees that live in them. Or about 14 million other ways that this house? Just doesn't work for us.
It'll be nice to have something that does. (Now we just need to find one.)
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Points of interest (ish)
For Lent, I am giving up not posting every day: It's my own personal NaBloPoMo! Basically, bad things happen in my brain when I don't have a place to blurt it all out, and since you all are kind enough to come back and listen, I should do my best to post as regularly as possible. And we all know that I do better if I feel I have to post, so I'm signing up for posting everyday till Easter Sunday, and committing to it right here on this nice bloggy thing. If When I make it, I will let myself get a little treat. Must think of good treat. Feel free to offer your suggestions below.
For my first post, I'm going to attempt the dazzling and death-defying bullet point post (oh! ah!):
For my first post, I'm going to attempt the dazzling and death-defying bullet point post (oh! ah!):
- My parents may have found a house that they like enough to buy. They're going to the bank today to talk about putting down an offer so that they can get an inspection done. The only opinion I have about it is that it has a lot of stairs outside so that I cannot get in, and this does not please me. This whole house buying situation is showing me just how deep my control freak nature is - I am very uncomfortable buying a house I haven't been in, knowing I will have to live there for the foreseeable future. It's scary.
- Come to think of it, the house buying/having to move is bringing up a lot of issues that I'm not entirely comfortable with - the fact that I can't just go buy myself an apartment and have to keep living with my parents; the fact that my parents are not good with money and I just want to take it away from them (perhaps an allowance?); the idea that we've sold our 'family home' - it's been in our family for over 100 years, although it was originally a family run business. My great-grandparents moved here when Nana was just an infant, so from 1923 - 2009 my family has lived here. That's a lot of history to just be giving up on. And sometimes it does feel like we're giving it up. (I know we're not, it's just the closer it gets, the more I realize that this is forever.); the fear that my brother is trying to figure out a way to move with us into this new house (he didn't come out and say it, but he sure was asking a lot of questions about the house's finished basement, and the fact that it has it's own bathroom seemed important to him) because things are not going well with Soon-to-be (?) Sister-In-Law. A lot of things.
- We took my grandmother to lunch last week and she met three people she knew in the restaurant. I met 0. I was so happy for her, because she never goes out, really, and was so excited, but there was still a little piece of me that was jealous. Of my 92 year old Grandmother. Nice.
- I still haven't packed much of anything: A couple of boxes, but there's nowhere to put anything else, so why bother?
- Lil Girl is potty training and doing really well - no accidents at all yesterday. She came wearing big girl 'underwheres' (she says it like it's got that little h in it), and seeing them made me kinda sad, cuz she's the baby.
- This does not mean that we want another baby to take care of, so the universe should not see it as me putting out a call to any of my siblings. We are - none of us - in a position to have any (more) kids right now. I'd like to be, but that's a whole nother post.
- A little update from Friday's post about my TBR challenge - I suck at reading things I'm 'supposed' to be reading. If a new PBS book comes in the mail, I put it at the top of the pile - although I have cut down a lot on PBS incoming books, because I am trying to get rid of books, I still will say yes to a wish list book if it becomes available. And then when it gets here, because I know it's been on my list for so long, I read it first. I am totally counting this because it's been in my virtual TBR for longer than some of these books have been in my physical TBR. Counting it.
- I learned two new things while typing this post - how to do bullet points and strikethroughs on HTML. This makes me ridiculously happy.
That's all I've got for you right now... Check back in soon, because it's going to be a long Lent. :)
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