A Little Story

It’s rare for me nowadays to have much time to myself, but when it does happen, being alone with my own thoughts is either therapeutic or a slowly unfolding disaster, there is no in-between.

So here’s a little story:

At midnight on New Years Eve Day, my home flooded due to the electric company digging directly into a main water pipe. Nice job, guys.

Chaos ensued. My 26-year-old neighbor/son I never knew I wanted was a fucking lifesaver. He held me together, he talked me down, he spent $70 at Wal-Mart to buy a 6 gallon wet vac that didn’t even come close to keeping up with the amount of liquid rushing into my living room. We all finally gave up the fight. I had my 21-year-old daughter take our two dogs up to her room at 3am and I slept on my neighbors couch (ah, because of that fear of mine of being alone).

My boyfriend came over after reading my slew of messages and the photos that I had sent to him. He went to take a gander at my house and then came back over to me. He had tears in his eyes. He was quite sad for ME.

For me. He was crying for me, what the fuck? I am so not used to any man giving much of a shit about anything terrible that happens to me. I hugged him tight, I let him help me. I even somehow managed to stay awake to usher in 2019 with him. He fed me Taco Bell.

I slept 3 hours out of 48. Damn, I was exhausted, but so grateful for all of the help I received cleaning up the carnage.

But alas, I woke up at 4pm New Years Day so depressed and dare I say thinking about suicide again. I am so tired of that fucker, sincerely. I mean, for fuck sake already, give it a rest, brain chemicals.

My daughter took me out to dinner and insisted that I order an alcoholic beverage.

The utility director came to my house yesterday to personally hand me a check for $5,500.00. I lost my dryer, my dishwasher, all of my living room carpet, a bookcase, a throw-rug, a few blankets and towels.

And to compensate me for what he called an “inconvenience fee.”

More like a 72 hour panic attack, dude.

It’s traumatic watching water (thankfully not sewer water) filling your home and coming at you like a wrecking ball. The money is nice and all (I am still in a bit of shock over having that sort of cash in my checking account) but to be honest, I am not even sure where to start.

A dryer is important. That is first, I don’t want to run out of underwear.

I suck at making decisions, I am also a master at procrastination. I suppose that it’ll all come out in the wash somehow.

We Must Confront Our Bullshit

It’s been over a year now since it’s been just my daughter and our two dogs living under one roof together. I fought for almost two months to get my cheater husband to move out. He didn’t want to leave (nowhere to go, he said) and holy fuck, it was such an awkward and extremely stressful time in my life.

Actually, he was the bringer of stress and chaos, drama and bullshit, for many years. I put up with all of it because of 3 main reasons:

1. He was the love of my life, wasn’t he?
2. I’d invested so many years of my life to the relationship.
3. I became complacent.

The level of stress in my life has gone down considerably since he’s been gone. That isn’t to say that I don’t continue to have stress, because that’s just a part of life.

Ah, knowing when to stay or go. It’s different for everyone, I’d reckon.

I wish that I had kicked his ass out long before I did, but there’s no such thing as a time machine. If so, I’d have one in my bedroom.

He left behind tons of memories (good and awful) and I’m still in the process of sifting through them, one by one. Some people tell me to just forget about him, but I know that if I don’t allow myself to deal with these thoughts and emotions, I will never heal.

Um, I want to heal.

I will not do what I did the first time around when I left my daughters father and then proceeded to hit the floor running. That was part of the recipe for my 2011 mental breakdown.

We must confront our bullshit or else we’ll continue to step in it.

Abbey  11/29/18

Spirit in the Sky

You look like you just found out that Santa isn’t real, the old lady said to me from her plush, queen-sized bed.

I was only supposed to be cooking meals, helping her eat and take her medicine, not give her a sponge bath and transfer her to a toilet-chair. I didn’t have the training to be a home health aide, the job I applied for was a helper/companion.

I had been mislead and lied to. I would report the agency the next day.

I will never forget this woman, who was 93, quite frail and basically dying. Her rich son was across the country doing his thing, while she festered away with inadequate caregivers.

Imagine her anger, the fear that she must have had. She had nothing good to say about him, complaining to me while I did my best to wash her rail-thin body.

Afterward, I took her vein-ridden hand and sincerely apologized for my lack of knowledge.

It isn’t your fault, at least you care, she said. Most of these girls who come into my home are rude and treat me like dirt.

She looked away and I saw tears in her milky blue eyes.

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It’s official now, my entire family is aware that my mom is not getting any better, but instead worse. My guess is that this is her last holiday season.

I’m in auto-bot mode, just doing what I can to make her life more bearable. I’ll worry about myself afterwards.

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I don’t believe in Santa.

If I was able to see that 93-year-old woman again, I’d tell her that grief is the consequence of love and that the people in our lives are not infallible. We trust the wrong individuals, relationships can be broken in just 2 seconds and in the end, the only person we truly have in this lifetime is ourselves.

I would also tell her what a complete piece of shit her son is for leaving her alone with strangers like he did while she lay dying in her condo.

I’d also thank her for the experience, because I would never fucking do that to my mom. I’ll be there with her until she leaves this place for the spirit in the sky.

Ring, Damn It

I’m sitting here waiting for my boyfriend of 5 months to call me, like he always does after he gets off from work. His hours vary, so I just go about my business with an ear out for his special ringtone that I’ve assigned to him.

But as the minutes tick by, I start to get anxious, just like I did when I was a young girl, waiting for my dad to come home from his weekly Tuesday evening out. He (now deceased over 30 years) was the king of introverts and loved his alone time. He’d even go to movies all by himself, which I admire greatly.

The anxiety? Yeah, that stuff runs in my veins.

Maybe today is the day that my boyfriend dumps me, I start to think. Or else he got hurt while cutting tomatoes or something like that. My mind is a hatchery for negative thought eggs that smell like sulfur when they crack open.

Being in a new relationship after being cheated on and emotionally manipulated, abused and used for 15 years…let’s just say that my baggage is heavy and my self-esteem is as delicate as a house of cards, my mental health is teetering.

Scorn & Sage

I start each day knowing that I’ll come face to face with something that will remind me of my cheating husband. I still haven’t filed for divorce and I’m not exactly sure why. I haven’t had any contact with him at all since January and I don’t know where he’s living currently, although I have a suspicion that it’s with another woman. Lord knows that he can’t hack it on his fucking own. I was always the one who paid the bills and made sure that we continued to have a roof over our heads.

He wouldn’t know an electric bill if it bit him in his fat, disgusting ass.

The days continue though, full of landmines. Spending fifteen years with someone, you tend to gather tons of relationship tidbits. A song, a saying, a certain food…I’ll never be able to listen to Led Zep again without wanting to puke my guts out.

The restaurant we frequently had dinner at burned down and I was actually glad that it was gone, his easy conversation and fake smiles smoldering in the ashes of someone else’s worst nightmare.

The owner is rebuilding down the street, so my guilt isn’t as heavy, but I still feel like a total asshole for smiling like a fool when I first heard. I pray that their pork chops stay moist and delicious.

I have some sage to cleanse my house. I’ve never done anything like it before, I’m just your average middle-aged, scorned woman who wants to rid her home of evil, smelly, perverted energy.

Abbey Normal  11/1/2018