Oh gosh, where do I begin.
1. Sometime in between the last update about Dad and now, Doug got a hold of me again to tell me Dad was back in the hospital. Apparently Carrie went over to his place and he was in bed with a bloody nose. Upon further investigation it appears he fell and broke his nose and was still conscious but did not use his Life Alert. (For those of you who don’t know, that’s a remote thingie you wear as a necklace and if you fall, you can click a button on the remote thingie and it will alert whoever you set it to alert.) Doug immediately went to “Dad really is trying to kill himself” which was not at all abated by Carrie’s informing him that Dad had just bought two new bottles of bourbon. He had had a bottle and a half remaining the last time previous to this that he went into the hospital. Less than two weeks had intervened. More like less than one but I could be fuzzy on that by now so take it with a grain of salt. Still not helping Doug to know about that.
Part of me wants to call Dad up and chew him a new asshole. 75% of me knows it will accomplish jack shit. And forget me moving back down there. Then he’d resent me monitoring his drinking habits. Or not monitoring, if he was hoping to have me back down there as an excuse to quit. Either way, I can’t win, and the sad part is that a win for me would have been a win for him too because who exactly is at war here? Shouldn’t be anybody, I would think. Jesus fuck.
(Familiar theme. A win for me with Thea would have been a win for Thea. A win for me with Matt would have been a win for Matt. Why are people such jackasses about this? I don’t go around wanting to hurt people as my default state of existence; if what I’m wanting for you sounds disagreeable, it’s time you looked at your own propensity for self-harm. For five fucking seconds could you let go of your pride and let the Wookiee win? No? Well suffer, then. I’m done. This is just too much fucking effort to expend to accomplish exactly fuck-all.)
2. My former stepmother’s brother, Dale, called two nights ago. First time I’ve conversed with him since about 2005-ish. I think? Might have been longer. We were never in regular communication anyway, but if he and Reba were getting along pretty well, I’d hear from him more often. So anyway, this time I was out driving and I get this call from Mississippi. I’ve been getting a lot of bullshit spam text messages from organizations that don’t know what a woman is anymore but nonetheless want women to have the right to choose; it’s election season, we’re about to vote on whether to amend legal abortion into the Ohio constitution, and a strange number could be anyone, really. So I let it go to voice mail. I am pretty sure my voice mail announcement says to text me instead of leaving a voice mail message, because my voice mail doesn’t work for shit 90% of the time and I prefer texting anyway. Thus. I will say this for him: he follows instructions. At least sometimes.
He’s a year younger than Dad and he’s going through that time of life we all get to look forward to where our friends are dropping like flies. He’s a Vietnam War vet and so are a lot of his friends, so the dropping like flies is particularly tragic and gruesome. It is probably far too late to put the inventor of Agent Orange on trial for crimes against humanity, but that doesn’t mean I don’t REALLY want to.
I’m not sure what else this was about, only want to mark that it was weird. Two notes:
[a] At one point I offered to pass his info on to Doug. He doesn’t think Doug will want to talk with him. The reason he thinks Doug will not want to talk with him is because years ago, Dale made a pass at Moriah, Doug’s ex-wife. I was not clear on whether she was an ex at the time. All I know is Dale says she flirted with him, so he reciprocated. Doug was fairly peeved about it, Dale said. Okay, if they were already broken up, I suppose it depends on how soon after the breakup it was but I suspect this was more “Oh EW, Uncle Dale, she’s young enough to be your daughter” than any single other issue, really. But if Doug and Moriah were still together at the time, or were only recently split up, YEAH, there are going to be issues. And dude? She’s young enough to be your daughter. AND she’s mother to your great-nephew and great-niece. Jesus Christ.
(And don’t think it didn’t cross my mind, between that and some other things he said, to wonder why he wanted to talk my ear off for more than an hour. I mean, he knows I’m not related to him. They think they are so mysterious, but at the end of the day they all follow a fucking script. Well, you stay down there in Gulfport, m’man. Fine by me.)
[b] I have long been suspicious of Reba’s current husband, Rick. Some things Doug told me about how Rick treated him years ago, and my own observations of Reba’s and Rick’s dynamic together, got me wondering if Rick wasn’t a tad possessive of his wife. Controlling, maybe. Now here comes Dale telling me Rick “fixed” Dale’s motorcycle in such a way that it would have killed Dale to ride it. Dale knew enough to understand what he was seeing when the “repair” was completed and got it to his personal mechanic, thereby dodging a metaphorical bullet. But he hasn’t been around Rick since, from the sound of it. Yeah, solidarity. I don’t want to be around Rick either. The little bit of time I stayed at his place in the month after I got Mike arrested in ’99, it felt like camping out on a minefield, never mind walking across one. If Reba’s favorite hobby was nitpicking everything I did, Rick raised it to a goddamn art form. Using Reba as his mouthpiece, mind you. I don’t even want to know how he’d be if I went back there.
(You wonder why I never turned to family after I walked out of Dad’s house this last time. Oh, my sweet summer child.)
…
I have been seriously lax on some hobby pursuits lately. If you’ve noticed, don’t worry: I’m aware. I am in this weird place, mentally, where even though I feel better over time, I still feel bad too, if that makes any sense. I have enough trouble managing my time but if I’m depressed, forget it. Everything gets overwhelming. I have had a LOT of “what’s the fucking point” moments in the past six months in particular. I don’t know where I go from here.
It’s weird. My life falling apart two years ago was horrific, BUT, I needed the kick in the ass to start standing on my own two feet. It was well past time. I hated losing nearly everything to resale shops and that fucking clown, BUT, my life was too cluttered. I have no idea what to do with my life, BUT, it’s become clear I was too willing to let others direct me and I forgot to figure out my life for myself. I’m poor, BUT, by most metrics my life has actually improved. Even my driving is a hell of a lot better. You should have seen me when I first started doing it for a living after a long, long time not getting around much because either I didn’t have a car or I was too broke. The sheer number of near-catastrophes I had. I have no fucking right to still be here, I will tell you what. [knocks on head] But now I have a much, much better mental map for where things are in town, and I am much more competent at getting there. Life is so fucking weird.
But there is still this inner brat that wonders why the fuck I ever do anything if it’s just going to be in a vacuum. To be fair, no one gave a shit what I did when there were still people in my life, either, unless they thought they could get something out of it. So I don’t know why I give half a fuck whether anyone notices me now. It’s just going to be more opportunistic fucking ingrates after my very last-ever available fuck to give. The growing season’s over, y’all. Move on.
