What a lotta rigamarole

Hi Stephen, how are you today? I hope all is well in your life and family.

Mine, on the other hand, is getting very cumbersome and frankly I feel like packing a bag and running away from everything and everybody.  Other than that, life is peachy.

I haven't been sleeping well lately. Lots of reasons.  Just have too much going on in my head right now. My brain doesn't want to shut off at night.  Maybe I've been drinking too much caffeine lately, I dunno.

Florence, God love her, is driving me to drink.  She's sliding over the abyss of Alzheimers faster and faster, and the gap between us is growing larger and larger, and it's making me feel so helpless, as though I am the one sliding over the cliff into some kind of lost world of chaos instead of her.  It is the most frustrating, and painful, thing I have ever encountered in my 43 years of life on this planet.  It makes me more and more convinced that I never want to get old like she is, I never want to go through that shit, I never want to put my family through that either.

Everybody's family has some kind of dysfunctional shit going on, at various times, and Pete's family is no different.  His stupid brother-in-law (and Florence's lawyer who made out her will) are working together to give Pete (and me) the hardest time possible about living in this new house of ours.  Florence GAVE Pete money to help buy the house, but they are coming forth with legal papers to sign, to make Pete pay it all back--OR---they could sue and take the house away.

This leaves ME feeling like, wow, just when I finally FINALLY thought I could relax and enjoy life... NOPE!! SORRY!! NO SUCH LUCK!!  So I'm ready to just pack a bag and leave, then they can all fight over the fucking house and do whatever they want with it.  I don't have to be here to witness it.  But I have been busting my ASS for the past 3.5 months since we moved in, to get this place unpacked, painted, settled and looking NICE---but now, these same people who are causing us grief are coming here for Florence's birthday party---at least, that is the EXCUSE---the real reason is to scrape us over the coals and pick out every little thing with a fine toothed comb that they can find WRONG with the place, and with us, so that they can justify taking it all away later on if they so desire.

Pete says, "Oh, they can't take anything away, your name and mine are on the title, they can't do anything about it, Mom's name is nowhere on this house, and so legally they have nothing they can do." But I think Pete is too cocky and arrogant for his own good sometimes, Mr. Know-It-All, when in fact, he knows virtually nothing about what lawyers can do---other than divorce lawyers of course.

Then his stupid sister is driving me bonkers, always wanting ME to call HER, "when mom is having a GOOD day," so that she can then call her mother (Florence) to have a conversation "that doesn't upset her."  Jesus CHRIST, how OLD is this bitch??  I mean COME ON, she's older than Pete, in her late 50's, and she's acting like a fucking CHILD about calling her own MOTHER???  WTF??  I'm supposed to babysit her, and protect her from the real world of Alzheimers, I guess, and that's MY responsibility HOW exactly??  Would someone PLEASE explain to me, why the fuck I am the one who has to call HER when she is perfectly capable of picking up the goddamned phone and calling her mother 24/7?!

This not only pisses me off, it makes me want to run away from them all. Like I have got nothing BETTER to do than to decide "when Florence is having a GOOD day," (which is RARE), so that her 50-something daughter can be protected from the "big bad disease that upsets her."  FUCK THAT. Get over yourself, honey, this is life, and life sucks, and that's just the way it is.  DEAL WITH IT.  I am one of those "tough love" types of people, suck it up, get over yourself, get on with it, move it or lose it.  I'm NOT the coddling type.  She wants to be coddled, go find an adopted NORMAL mother who doesn't have Alzheimers, and PRETEND she's the only mother you've ever had.  Go play games ELSEWHERE, I have no interest in it whatsoever.  So, fuck her, I'm not calling her.  Ever.  Sorry.

So, the pressure is on, and I'm buckling under it already.  We've got 5 weeks, until this stupid party, in which time Pete expects every box in the garage to be completely unpacked, and half of each one put into a yard sale pile, THEN plan and get things set for the yard sale, (a week before the party of course, because my life isn't chaotic enough around here), and THEN run around like a chicken with my head cut off the last week to get this place lookin' like Spiffy Spiffington in every room, every corner, every crack and crevice. Plus plan a menu. Plus make food items. Plus a million other things to do.

All by myself.

I told Pete last night, during a venting conversation where I felt near tears about all this, that I needed him to help me deal with all this stuff, and NOT just focus on HIS shit like he has been most of the time.  He just HAD to go buy sand to fill his new horseshoe pits, for example, rather than clear the upstairs landing of all his comic book boxes that are clogging up MY SPACE, which would be helpful to ME.  His priorities revolve around him, his interests, and his belongings, and that's IT.   He's very selfish, and it's starting to really wear thin on me.  So I told him I need his help, and he ends the conversation with, "Well, I have some long hours coming at work this week, a big deadline is coming soon..." translation: "Sorry, you're on your own, I'm too busy with MY STUFF and MY JOB and MY WORK, and that takes priority over YOU."

I lay there crying after he left. Thanks a fucking lot. Hope your job keeps you warm at night.

My mother, for example, has been living in a cramped, crowded basement full of HIS MOTHER'S SHIT, for 3.5 months.  She's been confined to one room, her bedroom, because she has NO ROOM to spread out, NO ROOM to unpack anything, and NOWHERE to put things away.  So, HE is bitching that she "hasn't bothered" to unpack her own stuff, so why should he bother helping?  I very nearly said, "Because your RETARDED MOTHER hasn't unpacked a fucking thing of HER OWN either, so why the hell should I help HER do anything?"  And SHE HAS ROOM TO DO IT. TWO ROOMS IN FACT.  So, if it were HIS mother living down there, you can BET your ass he would have had it all spick and span way before now, to make HER as comfortable as possible.  But not MY mom.  Oh no. And does he even realize, or CARE, how that makes MY MOM FEEL??  He doesn't have a clue.

We haven't even been married one full year, (officially, according to our wedding last July), but already I've been dealing with this for 3 years, and I'm so fed up with taking care of his mother every day, all day, 24/7, that I just want to rip her head off and step on it a few hundred times.  Ya know?  I guess, according to my mom who has over 20 years of home care experience, that is normal for a caregiver to feel such things from time to time, so I shouldn't beat myself up over it.  But I feel guilty when I feel that way, and lately that's ALL I've been feeling...."Good, I'll stuff her with food, then she'll sleep the rest of the goddamned afternoon so I can have time to do OTHER stuff that needs to be done." Or, "Good, now that breakfast is over, she'll be out for at least 2-3 hours, that'll give me time to go grocery shopping." Or, "Good, she'll plant her ass in front of the t.v. for an hour while I do some laundry and wash some dishes."  It's like, anything ELSE that can distract her, is peaceful for ME, ya know?

I told her yesterday, in no uncertain terms, that I am sick and tired of constantly giving her pep talks, that SHE has to work at making HERSELF happy because I don't have the energy anymore, I don't have the time anymore, and frankly I have lost interest in it altogether.  It's HER responsibility to change her own thinking and get happy.  She can't keep passively aggressively coming to me in tears expecting me to cheer her up every goddamned day, all that does is kill ME slowly.  I told her, "You and my mom are both SAD SACKS lately, and I'm sick of it, all it does is wear ME down, and cause ME to be sad, I'm super empathic, and when people around me are not happy, it drags ME into being unhappy too."

I'm sure she won't remember one fucking word of what I said.

Anyway, then my stupid bitch sisters are on my case, I just wrote to them explaining that mom has stopped smoking, (she used Chantix and it worked in one week), and that she's feeling down and needs some encouragement and support---and I'm fucking depleted from dealing with Flo's poor me bullshit--- so then they automatically jump to the conclusion that I have FORCED my mother to quit, and how DARE I take that away from her, when she has NO CHOICE in the matter because she lives with me?!

I had to count to 50....not just 10....before I could answer the email.  My mother has CHOSEN to listen to the DOCTOR'S warning that if she continues smoking, she'll have to be admitted into the hospital.  She could have CHOSEN to ignore every word the doctor said.  But she didn't. She has CHOSEN to follow those instructions, even though she feels lousy about it right now, she knows it's for her own good, and I have nothing to do with it.  I just wanted THEM to show her some added pep talks, y'know?
Because I don't have any left to give.  Stupid me, though, I should have known better than to ask any favors of my sisters.  They just automatically shoot the messenger, because it's me.  Every fucking time.

So, instead of typically avoiding the whole thing by telling them "nevermind," I shot them back.  Right between the eyes.  And now they bleed, (figuratively), and whine, and carry on, calling ME the bad guy. I told them both, "Mom is a loner, she needs time to work through this, so don't take it personally if she doesn't want to talk on the phone for awhile." Then they both balk at this, "she's never NOT wanted to talk to us BEFORE moving in with you...strange how she doesn't want to NOW..."  As if I have any control over who my mother talks to on the phone!!  I finally shot them with a bazooka, in the face.... "Well, sisters, let me tell you why mom doesn't want to talk to you right now..." and I proceeded to mention how my sister in England "doesn't want my mom's dog to piddle on her new carpets when she comes to live with them..." which my mother heard as, "You'll have to either give the dog away or kill him before you come live with us."  He's fucking OLD, she cannot control HIS bladder, and neither can HE.  Buy some PET ODOR ELIMINATOR spray, and FUCK OFF.  So my mom said, "I guess I just won't go live with her after all, then, because I'm not killing my dog or giving him away."

Then, I told them that at my nephew's graduation party, my mom was hurt because in the scrapbook my sister made of his life photos, from birth until graduation, only ONE photo of my mother was in it....whereas, there were half a dozen or more photos of my DAD and his new wife, with Josh.  That STINGS, and yet my sister is oblivious to this fact.  She has no fucking clue how that upset her.

So let them both lick their wounds, that's the truth of why my mother is not talking to them right now, and too fucking bad if that hurts THEIR feelings.  Choke on it.  I'm all done being nice.

SIGH....sorry to rant and rave and vent on you like this, Steve, I really don't like doing that to people. Usually I stick to myself and write it in my diary, but since I haven't got TIME to keep a diary anymore, and since I've got nobody to really talk to about any of it, and a husband who is oblivious, I figure you're the lucky slob who gets to read it like a captive audience sitting in front of your computer every day.

So, between my 2 mom's, my hubby, and both of our stupid-ass families, I'm about ready to run away.

Sometimes I wish I could just die peacefully in my sleep at night, and never wake up again.  Yeah yeah I know, that's the typical passive aggressive death wish, it's pathetic, and I hate even thinking it.  But we all think it from time to time, don't we.  If I ever had to choose between going blind and deaf, I would choose blind, because I've seen enough man's inhumanity toward man to last me 10 lifetimes, and I know what "blue" is, so fuck it, take my eyeballs away and let me just HEAR stuff.  And when I HEAR things like "I love you," it helps me get through the day.  When I hear things like, "I'll be working late a lot in the next couple weeks," it makes me feel like, "Sorry chick, you're on your own, sionara," and that puts me in a rotten mood of depression and anger.

So here I am.  Part of me wants to pack the car, and go to Michigan to stay with my best friend for awhile, just to get the hell away from these dysfunctional people who treat me so shitty all the time. Pete's all "you just jump every time your sisters' say to jump, don't you?" and automatically assumes that I only want to clear my mom's basement because THEY are coming to the party to check us out. Well, that's wrong, and I told him so, because I had started clearing the basement BEFORE any of this transpired with my sisters, and I told him it's because HIS MOTHER'S SHIT DOES NOT BELONG IN MY MOTHER'S LIVING SPACE, and THAT IS THAT.  So get it the fuck OUT of there, and let my mother have her apartment so she can cheer the fuck up and BOTH mom's can just leave me the hell alone for awhile.

My life is shit.  I have always hated my life, since I was a young kid.  Every day, every night, (especially those lonely nights when I was single), every happy moment, every sad moment, I've hated it all.  I hated my own wedding because it didn't happen like I wanted it to.  I hated leaving DC because I didn't want to.  I hated moving TO DC because I needed a job and had no choice, and it upset my family.  I hated going to college, because I was so far away.  I hated my hometown because it sucked, and still does.  I have hated my dad forever, I hate my whole fucking world.

I can't focus on MY web site, MY interior design assignments, MY promise to transcribe stuff for the people who created my web site, MY OFFICE, or MY SPACE in this house.  MY STUFF DOESN'T MATTER TO ANYBODY AROUND ME...they just take take take, all the time, and I have nothing left to give.  My stuff has to wait until all THEIR stuff is taken care of, which never leaves ME any time or energy for ME.

I've lost me.

And because I just want to die and get it overwith, part of me doesn't even miss me one bit.

That makes absolutely no goddamned sense, and I know it.  Sorry Steve, this is a bad day for me. I'll go for now, but don't worry, life has a way of working itself out eventually.  I'm just fed up and need to be ME for awhile, even if those who claim to 'love me' won't allow it.

----Rebecca