Some weeks can be too full.

Some weeks can be too full. The birthday party was a success. A couple of kids that said they were coming didn’t show, and that delayed our start time, but “All’s well that ends well.” I discovered that the Littleton Jungle Quest is not as large or all well staffed as the Thornton location, but I don’t hesitate to climb a ladder when I see a kid about to plunge to their death unable to fasten their carabiner, so we managed just fine.

I think M got a charge out of being one of the experienced kids, and she was eager to try just about everything.

The day after the party was a gorgeous warm sunny day, and I was inspired to finally get our bikes ready for the season. M has been riding her bike all along, but I didn’t have mine and I hadn’t put together the Trailer Bike that I’d bought. Sunday we went down to pick up my bike and spent an extra hour or so playing “Who has their head up their butt” with the store employees, involving conflicting phone calls, lost messages, hidden storage areas, and less than helpful website instructions, but at last we left with my bike. I declined their help loading onto my Rav. M and I secured it to the roof rack with bungie cords and we brought it home. But then we had to go out again because that place didn’t have bike helmets and after all the brainwashing instructions I had given my daughter about wearing her helmet, I certainly had to wear one.

Then we came home and I took the bike trailer out of the box and discovered that I did not have two of the allen wrenches that I needed to put it together. I have almost every other tool you can think of, since I used to have an old house that I constantly worked on, but after opening boxes and looking through all my tools, it was back in the car for trip number 3.

Can I just say how much I really do enjoy walking through a Lowes or Home Depot? M does too. It took us a while to find the tools I needed, but they were only 4 dollars, so I was pretty happy. Then I spent a while toiling away on the driveway putting together the Trailer Bike. I had to send one of the annoying little boys in the neighborhood away because he was driving me crazy as I was trying to read and follow the directions. I only have to put up with that from my own child; I read the manual, I know this. I got it all put together except for the last step, when I discovered that the tube that holds the bike seat had gotten just a little smushed in transit. Just enough that the seat pole wouldn’t slide into the hole. I said a few bad words and set about doing what I do best – finding something to work that was never meant for that purpose. I amused my neighbor for a few minutes while I beat on the bike’s shaft saying more bad words until I was able to force the bike seat’s pole in. Go ahead and joke; I’ll wait.

We went for a celebratory spin around the neighborhood and I got thumbs up from several envious parents. The huge orange flag on the back of it made sure that we looked stylin’.

The next day my head cold came roaring back with a vengeance, and I was laid flat for the day feeling like I’d been run over by a truck. Green boogers. ‘Nuff said. This was not how M had planned to spend her Spring Break, but stuff happens. I spent a couple more days feeling like death. I almost never get sick, but when I do it seems like it makes up for it with intensity.

Wednesday I had a second interview with a promising company. It was one of the most bizarre interviews I’ve ever been in, though, and I discovered near the end that the guy didn’t know which position I was there for; he is apparently getting promoted and is also replacing himself, so his strange reaction to me was – I hope – not entirely indicative of my chances for the job I was actually trying to get. Jeez!

Thursday I got the periodontal surgery I was so looking forward to, and I must say, if you have to get periodontal surgery, the new laser procedure is a BIG improvement over the old method. Still… Ow. And the prescriptions that went along with it were not cheap. Fortunately, a couple days later I am feeling pretty good.

After all that you’d think it would be enough, but I got a call from my father on Thursday that a family member died. It was not unexpected, as he had been in a fairly sharp decline, healthwise, for the past year. Personally, I just thought it was a shame because this guy will not be missed. He was a real piece of work, and had royally pissed off or alienated just about everyone he’d ever come into contact with, including his children. He’d left behind a legacy of failed business ventures, broken relationships, money borrowed and not paid back, health issues that were created and/or exacerbated by his own neglect and abuse of his body, and “creative” endeavors that were not met with the appreciation and respect that he made sure everyone knew he thought he deserved. He and I never liked each other but somehow he had it in his head that we did, and that it was my fault that our relationship went sour. I thought for decades that he was delusional.

It seems like a life lesson and a reminder to use this time wisely. Don’t be an asshole. Take responsibility for your own shit. Don’t blame others for your own failings. Appreciate the people in your life who are willing to put up with you and give you second chances. Grow some self –awareness. Grow out of your self-absorption (it stops being attractive in the single digits). Find something worthwhile to spend your time and your energy on, and do it with your best effort. Life is too short to do everything half-assed. Be kind to your body – you’re going to need it longer than you think. And if you are lucky enough to have people in this world who love you, for fuck’s sake, live in such a way that they aren’t relieved to see you go.  That is all.

Only Words

Something was bothering me last night and I could not get the noise in my head to stop so that I could go to sleep, so I ended up staying up a lot later than I wanted to. One of the things that I was thinking about was how much it bothered me how my parents talk to people.

I had the opportunity to spend some time on Sunday with some of my Colorado friends, and got to listen to Andy, and bask in the glow of the lovely atmosphere that surrounded me as I sat there in their yard and enjoyed the company. My daughter was running around with the other kids, I was talking to other grownups and laughing and listening to the conversations, and it was all so pleasant and healthy and fun that I really had a warm, peaceful feeling inside. I thought, yes, this is what you went through all of it for; this is what you came back for.

My parents both have a snide, snipe-ey way of talking that is not only mean spirited, but I realize has made me feel on the defensive all of my life. Even when I think they are trying to be nice, they just can’t help getting some little dig in, or belittling something, or making you feel foolish and small. It sucks the life out of the room. I have so many problems with my folks that I can’t begin to explain them all, but this one comes across every time we communicate with each other. My father called me the other day to tell me that he was sending M a present. (Because his name in his handwriting on the package wouldn’t tell me that) and he asked me how the job hunting is going.

When I said I hadn’t started looking yet, he made a sound, and then he said “I guess you’re living off your looks!”

Yeah, we wrapped up the call after that.

It isn’t just that my father himself never did what I did – when he went to college, he only worked in the summers, and for the most part my mother supported them – that’s why my grandmother (his mom) raised me. Even when he went to get his Master’s, he took a sabbatical from his teaching job and concentrated on school for that whole year. He had zero to do with us kids, and let my mother do everything. Through all of his adult life, he sat down to meals someone else prepared, put on clothes someone else washed, and lived in a house that someone else took care of. Okay, he mowed the lawn, etc., but only until his kids were big enough to take over.

I have had a job since I was eleven years old. I have never taken a class, until last month, ever in my life, without also having a job at the same time. I saved my money very diligently over the past few years, while I was also paying for M’s daycare, paying for all of my University costs and also paying off my old student loans, paying off my car, and feeding and clothing myself and my baby by myself.

I chose to stop working at the end of June. It is now the end of the first week of September. For him to minimize my hard work and my discipline like that is just so hurtful and unnecessary, I can’t even express.

They say they are so proud of me, but I don’t feel it behind their words. There has always been the undercurrent that makes me feel bad. I am so glad to be at a distance again from them!

I developed some really bad habits growing up in their house, and one of them is my sarcasm. It started off with me just trying to be funny, to distract people from the violence and anger in our house, and to hide behind. It morphed along the way because I was not the pretty, submissive, compliant girl that the society I grew up in told me I was supposed to be. There are times that my mouth gets me in trouble, and I say things that are hurtful. When my target is a bully, or an arrogant asshole, or someone who is taking advantage of others, I don’t regret the caustic things I have said. I don’t mind being the one person in the room willing to say what everyone is thinking. But the times that I have let my mouth run to the point that I have made someone feel like my parents make me feel, I truly feel sorry.

Yosemite - Part 1

I reserved a campsite in Tuolumne in February. Each time I’ve gone with my father to Yosemite in the past several years, I’ve wondered if it would be the last time. This time, I’m pretty sure it is the last time, until it is time to sprinkle his ashes there. I think it has been over 40 years since we stayed in a campsite, though.

My mother rarely went to Yosemite. She always had an excuse not to go, but the truth is, she isn’t the outdoor type. She gardens, but that’s the extent of it. I can count on one hand the times I can remember her being there, aside from when we lived there as Ranger’s Family. Even then, we had beds, a wood burning stove, refrigeration, and laundry facilities. She had a reason to go this time.

Out of the thick miasma of my childhood, Yosemite was the magical place that provided a safe haven, an escape, a positive experience. The smell of the place touches the innermost part of my soul. It is there that I formed my deep abiding love of tall trees, altitude, soaring granite peaks, and crystal clear ice cold water. Everything else is judged in comparison to the impressions that Yosemite made in my brain. It is there that I learned my outdoor skills, which are substantial, and my ability to enjoy myself even while dirty, cold, smelly, and without gadgets or toys or material distractions to entertain me. It has served me well.

I want my daughter to know the places that I love, and this was her second trip to Yosemite, although she doesn’t remember the first one. She has heard the lore of camping, and more than anything, she wanted to roast marshmallows over an open fire and make S’mores. (You can’t come from generations of Girl Scouts and not want S’mores. I’m pretty sure it’s a rule.)

We lucked out and had a beautiful spot. It was far from the road and other campers, yet not so far from the bathrooms that my mother was worried. It got cold at night (about 30 degrees) and the firewood that my dad brought was pretty “wet”; it didn’t burn well. I have good gear and just replaced my tent, got a new sleeping bag for M and brought a great inflatable mattress to sleep on, so we were comfortable, although M was surprised by the cold.
My dad is very bad at what my daughter calls “co-opertating” and I have to constantly choose whether to try to argue with him about something or just resign myself to coping with whatever problem comes up because of his obstinate stubbornness. The wood was one of those things. He insists on doing things his way, and will fight you if you try to interject your own opinion or method. Since I knew my and my daughter’s survival was not at stake, I left the wood to him, though I had my doubts, and in the same way, let my mother bring countless things she didn’t need and she had to fuss over.

The one thing I insisted on having my way about was the food. I have found ways to have great food on very rugged backpacking trips and since we were in a campsite, I wasn’t going to skimp, since weight wasn’t an issue. If I let my parents have their way with the camp food it would have been a disaster, so I persuaded my mother to let me choose the meals, and I argued with my father about how to cook them. It is crazy how much trouble I have to go through to make myself heard. But when it came to the food, I was willing to battle.

So, on the first night we had Rocky Mountain Salmon, corn on the cob, and field greens salad, which they declared fabulous (it was) once it was finally on their plates. The next night we had marinated Tri-tip and grill cooked potatoes and onions, with the rest of the salad. The beef took forever because my father insisted on using this rinky-dink self-contained grill thing that my mother had bought, that although it lighted and burned impressively, never got hot enough. By the time they relented and let me put in over the fire, it must have been an hour, and then it took another 45 minutes or so to cook. Still, it tasted good. The last night, reason prevailed and we went to the Tuolumne Lodge dining room. I loved it and it would have been a lot of fun had I been there with other company. The food is really good and the atmosphere is a perfect blend of funky and fancy. The people at the other tables were interesting and diverse. (By the way, the Lodge is one of the places you can get a shower, should you want one)

I’ll post more as soon as I can. I'm packing for my move, but I'm sure I'll need breaks.

Petit tempete

A little tempest has blown in this morning. My father has one sibling, a younger brother. This brother as always been unstable, irresponsible, and undependable. When I was a kid, we went backpacking in Yosemite pretty regularly. It was always a core group, with peripheral characters that changed out frequently, depending on circumstances. The core group was my dad, his brother, my half brother, and me. Being the youngest and the only girl did not grant me any special treatment. My uncle was constantly doing things to annoy me. He has always thought I was a bitch because I didn’t think he was funny, charming, or particularly smart. He thinks the rest of the world sees him this way. He’s wrong.

When I was around eleven, we went on one trip that was one of the more memorable ones. This time we had a larger group than usual, because several people that didn’t normally go were joining us, and these folks were not seasoned backpackers. Our routine when we arrived at the trailhead was to evenly distribute the food weight among the people that could carry a pack. I was one of those. My uncle that time had brought along a glass gallon jug of white wine. He handed it to me, expecting me to carry it in my hands to the camp. I told him to pound sand. An argument ensued. I won. He was pissed at me the whole trip.

That was the tone of our relationship. He has a past littered with failed marriages, abandoned projects, grand schemes, alienated relatives, and broken promises. The last time our paths crossed, he did something so heinous that I refuse to see or speak to him again.

This morning I overheard my father talking to someone on the phone about his brother. I could tell from his voice that it was serious. I know my dad’s “crisis voice.” Apparently, his brother had just been discharged from the VA hospital, was talking to my dad on his cell, and telling him how bad his blood pressure was and how bad he felt. Then the call ended abruptly and my dad couldn’t call him back. He was searching through the numerous little pieces of paper on his desk with scribbled notes in his spectacularly bad handwriting, trying to find the one with his brother’s phone number on it.

My uncle can’t see very well anymore. He’s never taken care of himself and has been diabetic, like his father and his son, most of his life. Long ago he lost all of his teeth, he doesn’t take his meds regularly, he doesn’t eat right or do any of the other things that he needs to do, and consequently, time and kharma have caught up with him and now he is REALLY falling apart.
He’d recently gotten a new phone, and read the number incorrectly off of it to my dad. He hadn’t given anyone else, including his only son, the number. He lives hours from anyone (this includes my dad) who still gives a shit about him.

My dad was starting to panic because he couldn’t call his brother back. I interrupted him to show him that his cell phone had the number in it; he just needed to access his “recent calls” and hit “send”. This was a revelation to my dad, but by the time he called him back with the right number, his brother wasn’t answering. So, I helped my dad Google the San Jose Police department so he could ask someone to do a welfare check on my uncle. This was accomplished, and information was exchanged, and surprisingly fast, he got a call back from my uncle’s apartment manager saying the paramedics had taken him to the local hospital. We Googled that too, and got their number for Admitting.

Due to the state of the emergency room at that hospital (excuse me; Medical Center), he’s not yet “in the computer,” and so my dad hasn’t been able to find out yet how his brother is doing. But at least he isn’t still imagining him collapsed on the floor of his seedy by-the-week apartment, all alone.
Technology can help you or hinder you. But only people can make a difference.

Update: My uncle was taken to Palo Alto, not Santa Clara, and subsequently discharged (again). My cousin told my dad that the last time he talked to him, he was waiting for a taxi to take him back to San Jose. My uncle still hasn't called my dad.

Hanging on in quiet desperation

Learn: to gain knowledge or understanding of or skill in by study, instruction, or experience.

My father has always been simple and straightforward. I could tell that he found fatherhood burdensome and unpleasant. He spent very little time in our company and found every excuse to be absent. He even built himself an “office” in the detached garage with a recliner and a tv, and spent hours in there with the door closed. Since he was violent and critical when he was around us, that was probably for the best.

My mother, on the other hand, is a confusing and complicated person. She got emotionally stuck as a little girl with a huge gaping hole that she has never been able to fill. She is passive-aggressive and needy and manipulative.

When I was little, I yearned for my mother to be strong, to be protective of me, to advocate for me. I longed for a father who could express affection and interest in me. When I realized that was never going to happen, it was a source of a lot of self-doubt and pain. I thought it was because of my own shortcomings that I didn’t deserve that from a parent. It took a lot of work on my part to understand that it was the result of a cruel twist of fate: my parents really shouldn’t have been parents. They had no ability to parent and no desire to change. Every horrible thing that went wrong was outside of themselves and beyond their control, in their eyes. They got married because that is what you did. They had children for the same reason. Certainly not out of a desire to be responsible for another person’s life and upbringing. I think they thought of children and family as something to be endured.

Time and repeated experiences have not resulted in change except a sort of reduction in intensity. You can’t really talk to my mother about anything serious, because she won’t or can’t offer any of her own insight. When it comes to the past, especially, she will stubbornly and consistently stick to the trite old “I did the best I could,” no matter how lame or patently ridiculous that excuse is revealed to be.

For a long time, what I wanted more than anything was for her to tell me how she felt about the things that happened and what she understood about them now. I wanted to have a conversation that included honesty: “this is what I did and this is why, and this is what I learned from it”

But that isn’t going to ever happen. I am the kind of person who needs to understand, and she is the kind of person who only wants to forget; to skim along the surface and avoid any “unpleasantness” and “discomfort” at all cost.

It seems sad to me that my parents are now in their seventies and have no real connections in their lives. The few friends they have they rarely see and mostly they keep busy with things like bridge and gardening and golf. My father runs away to Reno as often as he can and my mother shops for things she doesn’t need. He will keep distancing and she will keep grasping until the end.

“Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way” – Pink Floyd

Mother's Day Brunch in the Mining Camp

My father has good intentions, sometimes. He had it in his head that this year he should take my mother, me, and my daughter to a Mother’s Day brunch. He’s never done this before, but since we’ll be leaving soon I figured I’d just go along with it, knowing we’ll probably never do this again.
He has zero sense of what constitutes quality. My mother – when she’s allowed to intervene – usually mediates his choices, but there have been some spectacular exceptions. His sporadic presents usually come from the gift shop of whatever casino he is spending time at. He is the pawn of salespeople.
So I knew going to brunch today would be iffy. M wanted to wear her new cotton sun dress and pigtails. She looked adorable. I put on a pair of linen pants and a simple sleeveless top and some sandals. I’ve been sick all week and I wanted to look presentable. I shouldn’t have bothered. If I’d have been wearing a football jersey and a pair of cutoffs I would have been overdressed.
It took a half hour to drive there. As it turns out, he wasn’t able to find this place in the yellow pages or the local directory he uses, so my mother suggested he look online. (hahahahahaha) While driving, these little details came out, plus the fact that a bridge friend of his had NOT recommended it but had told him where it was. Approximately. He said we had reservations for 11:30.
The drive took us past state forest land and was very pretty for several miles, then we drove by lots of modest summer homes and trailer parks. Past the mini mart and the post office and fire station, and past the feed store. Then, he found it. I was speechless. It was an old wood building, housing a bar and this restaurant. We had a little trouble finding the way in, but when we did, the door opened into a narrow dark high ceilinged room with wood tables and bench seats. Seated at three of the tables were fat older people in shorts, eating off of blue enameled camping plates. A waitress squeezed by and said to sit anywhere. (so much for those reservations)
The buffet was apparently behind a door in the back. We sat down, looking around, and the people in the room looked at us. After a while, a man with shaking hands came out with his big fist full of cutlery, and told us to help ourselves to the food and that someone could bring us juice and water. Then he said that Bloody Mary Joe was working today since it was so “busy.” I asked if that meant I could get a bloody mary and he said yes! My father ordered a bloody mary too and my mother asked for a mimosa. We all got up to fill our plates.
Ok, I used to work second jobs as a server and bartender, and I’ve done Mother’s Day brunches, so I guess you could say I have a certain set of expectations, but good god. I circled the buffet a couple times, trying to find things that looked safe and that M would eat. There were some colorless shrimp on a plate, mini muffins and sweet rolls cut in half, something in a warming pan they called eggs benedict, some overcooked bacon and dry scrambled eggs, and some sliced fruit and a warm cheesecake.
My dad eats very fast, and for once, we were all ready to go when he was. I sucked down my bloody and his (he didn’t like how “spicy” it was). The mining motif while we ate, surrounded by the descendents of those desperate men, made for a rather quiet meal. I looked at the bars on the windows and wondered what they were protecting. The guy who gave us our forks brought around a single red carnation for each “mother” – and my father remarked that he’d understood that the mother’s were going to get “flowers” – plural. He said this after being there for the whole brunch. I wonder where he gets his information.
Happy Mother’s Day!

First be who you really are

“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.”

This statement made me ponder how I have lived my life. Certainly, I spent a great deal of time in my younger years trying to accumulate the trappings I thought I was supposed to have. Lately I have faced blame for having been in over my head with my financial obligations, primarily from my parents, who helped me by giving me money and cosigning my mortgage when I was younger.

The part they don’t talk about is that they did this with full knowledge of my (then) husband’s lack of employment stability and a pretty fair idea of his general lack of character. Add to this that I had debt at the time and was only making about $16000 a year. There was no way we could afford the house we bought and when we divorced a few years later I was even less able to manage the burden. But I thought I had to. I struggled for years, miserable and flailing around making things worse, thinking I was a failure, trying on my own and without a clue how things really worked, to fulfill my responsibilities.

What they also don’t talk about is how strongly they stressed the “you made your bed, now lie in it” philosophy, which they conveniently promoted along with the unsaid “do as I say and not as I do” credo. Not to mention the crazy abusive home they raised us in and the way that added to and aggravated my situation.

Which is to say – how come a young 25 year old with a dental assisting job and a looming divorce is solely to blame, but a couple of college graduates in their 50s with so much more experience are not equally responsible for creating this mess?

I am nearing the age they were then, and I would not loan my daughter money when she clearly wasn’t managing what she already had, and I would not help her get further in debt by helping her sign up for a mortgage she couldn’t afford. They always say that they did the things they did because they loved us. It isn’t that simple, and it wasn’t that clean. They were always happy to take credit for my successes and assign blame for my failures, and never acknowledge that they had a part in anything. They will never concede that just like helping someone commit a crime is called being an accessory, they were as complicit as the banks in helping me take on a financial obligation I had no hope of meeting, and probably everyone but me knew it at the time.

I no longer accept all the responsibility for not being able to magically turn things around. My ex-husband walked away without a scratch, my parents’ loss was pretty minimal in the long run, and me? I have three more years until I can really put it all behind me and I will likely never be able to make up the loss. All those years of having two and three jobs at a time, taking roommates, and taking classes to further my education and training did a lot to make me a stronger person, but not a richer one. I worked hard and rearranged it so that the debt was in my name alone, protecting them from themselves. Yes, I screwed up, but I also paid dearly for profoundly bad advice, manipulation, and even some fraud. I learned every single thing the hardest way possible.

It’s funny, but I became a lot happier once I quit worrying about disappointing everyone and finally faced the grim, stark reality of my situation. It is liberating to live in the real world. That is something my parents will never understand. Whatever happens from now on will be better, no matter how it turns out, because my decisions are no longer based on desperation. And that is a wonderful thing.

Mean Old Man

It was a particularly difficult weekend.

Why do I forget sometimes that my father is such a mean man? I really, really think that this illness of my mother's is kharma. For both of them.

It just sucks that - as ever - my daughter and I are being sucked into the cosmic black hole that is their life.

My father turns out all the lights. While we are in the room. No, this is not because he is senile. He’s always been this kind of bastard. My four year old daughter, who is a remarkable, smart, and wonderful child, goes around with a flashlight. My parents allocated one whole shelf in their refrigerator to me and my daughter – and I keep anything that won’t fit out in my refrigerator in the garage. I share the freezer part of mine with them. My father – now that he has been forced to (gasp!) feed himself – has put all kinds of big stuff out in my refrigerator in the garage. I mentioned it to him this morning and he denied it.

The laundry is in the pool room (yes, they have a pool table they never use. It is now covered with a ping pong table top that they never use. I fold laundry on it.) The pool room is not heated, and has been about 40 degrees. I turned a space heater on down there this weekend so I would be able to fold laundry in relative comfort. My father came down and turned it off. Yes, he knew why it was on.

My mother’s tea kettle died and I bought her a new one. She hasn’t been out of bed in 4 weeks and so I told my father about it, and he said he uses the microwave because it is “easier.” But he had taken the old one to his workshop to try to fix it, apparently, with no success. So he just decided they don’t need one?

*sigh*

I wouldn't treat - I haven't treated - people I thoroughly dislike the way that my parents treat me. And they think what they show their children is love. It is confusing to be around. It really is. I wish it wasn't. I don't know if that is a sign that I've still got normal healthy impulses or a sign that I am irrevocably damaged.

Either way, nineteen weeks, and then I can go on a long vacation and then move.

Mom is sick

It’s been a hellish 3 weeks. I didn’t mean to let so much time go by. I keep thinking all I’m doing is bitching and moaning, when what I intended to do was document my current situation and the move and the transition. This whole time living here is such a “time out of time” kind of time, in a way.

But then my mother got a really bad respiratory thing, that kept her in bed for 5 days, and that was unusual in itself, but then she was hospitalized! I don’t think she’s ever been hospitalized for an illness (for some other things, but not being sick). She was there from Monday until Thursday last week, and when she came home it was right back to bed.

My dad is having a hard time feeding himself. That’s not as tragic as it sounds; he’s having a hard time because he’s never had to do it. My mother scurries around him cleaning and cooking and shopping and doing, and Dad spends a lot of time watching bad TV. Now that she’s bedridden, and I am not available, he’s had to fend for himself, poor baby. First it consisted of eating all the leftovers in the refrigerator, then a lot of sandwiches, and finally he went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of Marie Callendar frozen dinners. I’ve watched him carefully reading the back of the box for directions on how to microwave them.

If he hadn’t always been such a bully, such a short-tempered, impatient, self-absorbed know-it-all, I’d feel kind of sorry for him. He has stated petulantly more than once “I can’t go anywhere,” and self-righteously “I’ve got one person to take care of, I can’t deal with anything else!” (This last one after I found my daughter in the cold, dark pool room watching Harry Potter without so much as a throw around her, let alone the space heater on that my nephew used down there.) He has complained about having to do a load of laundry and of being “up all night” because of my mother.

He says these things to me – the one person in the house who has a full time job, and hour-plus each way commute, a full course load of homework, and a four year old. And there is no sense of irony, whatsoever.

The ties that bind

The weather finally turned sunny around here and as it happens I am stuck inside trying frantically to complete a very long paper for school. I think the transition I’ve been working on is there, at last, and so I took a break to shower and check the news. M is still in her jammies and watching one of her Dora the Explorer DVDs, but it is Sunday, so why not?

I’ve been feeling my deep well of sadness rise to the surface in the past week, and again, fighting tears in any moments that I find myself alone. My parents and I do not have an emotional or intellectual connection – something that I’ve struggled with all my life. It is difficult to accept, for some reason. I feel sure that they think that they love me, whatever that means to them, but I know that they don’t know me or understand or accept me at all, and that hurts. My friend S points out to me that I probably scare my mother, and I think he is right. She is a painfully traditional, weak, and insecure woman who is overwhelmed by the need to seek approval from some nebulous external “other.” I find her exhausting to be around. She is so needy, and yet treats me – has always treated me – as if I were 3. I think even at 3 I found this insulting. No matter what I have done throughout my life (and I’ve done a lot) my parents react to me as if I were a disabled idiot. That doesn’t stop them from asking for my help with their computer problems (constantly) but it prevents them from listening to my words. About anything. Interacting with my parents is a profoundly lonely experience.
Being here is a constant reminder that I don’t have what most people think of as a healthy family. The only family member that I ever had a connection with died a long time ago. Many of my family members are unbelievably toxic and abusive. Most of them are completely uninvolved and uninterested in the others. (I have an uncle that moved to Colorado some time after I did that never made contact on his own or ever saw my house. And I lived there for nearly 20 years.) It was just one more thing that made me different from “everybody else” growing up. As an adult, intellectually I know that my experience is not that unusual, but emotionally it still bothers me.

The Escape

I am nearly finished with my classes (after this one I have only 3 left!) and then I'll have my BA in English. That is incredible, to me. When it became clear, in the spring of 2005, that I'd have to leave, I thought long and hard about my options. The most important consideration, as far as I was concerned, was that I had a year old baby and whatever I chose had to be in her best interest. All of my other options sounded better for ME, but not for her. So, I packed up most of my feelings along with what remained of my stuff after I gave away or sold most of it, and moved a thousand miles. I had two black labs and a baby. I moved in with my parents.

I'd watched my parents with my nephew when he was little, and I knew that as long as she was little, that they would dote on her. They had a house with a large room and a bathroom available, and a fenced yard. They were willing to have us. That was enough. It would be safe*, it allow me to keep a consistent pattern with my child, my dogs would be okay, and I'd be able to work on what I needed to work on. (*for her)

We arrived in July of 2005. I found a good daycare for M, a job for myself, and enrolled in classes, determined to finally get my Bachelor's degree. I was right; M has been doing great. I've managed to pay off my car and my student loans and will be able to move back without any financial debt hanging over my head. I've been able to save some money.

The toll on me, living here with my parents (and others - more later) has been hard. I knew it would be, I thought I'd be able to deal with it. I've been incredibly busy, but I had to stay focused and keep at it. I've also been incredibly lucky in that I've made some really good friends that have helped in a big way to preserve my sanity. More than anything, watching my daughter thrive, I know that I made a good choice.

But oh, do I long to escape. I've been so depressed, and lonely, and sad. All of the things I do to make myself feel good are out of reach. I have felt for a long time that tears are just under the surface, and that I have grief that is waiting for its chance to be processed.

But, as my dear friend S reminds me, I have a plan. My last class will be finished at the end of June. I have saved money, I know where I'm going, and I have resources. My beloved dogs are both gone now, but that does make the move simpler. And M isn't a baby any more, and is much easier to take care of.

I can do this.