Wednesday, September 25, 2013

The Purpose Driven Life

If you were to ask me what I had done in my twenties I would have to reply, "Nothing.  Nothing at all."  What I did was go to work, wash dishes, shop for groceries, fold laundry and sweep the floor.  That's it.  That is life.  For people before me it was get up, milk the cows, feed the goats, churn the butter, change the diapers.  Day after day after endless day.

I really do not understand the point of all this.  Where does one find joy in doing the same damn thing every single day?  What purpose does it serve other than to survive or help others survive?  If all we're doing is surviving, what is there to living?

I'm not saying each day should a magical time at Disneyland, but I do not understand why we were put on this earth for such redundancy.  What purpose does that serve?

In spite of my views on the purpose of life in general I can say that my life serves more purpose than some others.  For some, their daily redundancy is to get up, take the pills, make sure the TV doesn't get up and run away, drink some beers, fall asleep.  Not only do I know people that take to this daily behavior (and enjoy it) but I have them IN MY FAMILY! 

On the one hand I think, "Why do you get to be so lazy and zoned out while I go off to a job I hate?"  On the other hand I think to myself, "Well, at least I am contributing to society and am only 15 pounds over weight instead of 150." 

What good does any of it do?  There seems to be no point to any of it.  In the past, you worked the fields until you were dead.  In today's American society you work to pay your bills that never end and then you die.  Surely, there is no parade.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Jealously

I've been watching a lot of the older episodes of The Big Bang Theory.  If you don't know the show, most of the characters are really, really smart.  The more I watch, the more jealous I become.  I find myself wishing that I had been born smart.  Oh, I'm smart in the general sense of speaking.  But I am terrible at math and I don't "get" things right away.  I am mechanically inept.  If I had been born smart like the characters on the TV show, my life might have turned out quite different.  I wouldn't be working at a dry cleaners, for example, developing six tumors at once.

Shawn has over the years developed a way of talking down to me, or taking out his frustrations on me when things aren't going his way.  I'll spare you the details but we recently had to work together and it started all over again.  The last time he became nasty with me for no apparent reason I wrote him a letter because it was the only way, I felt, that I'd be allowed to speak without being yelled at or interupted.  Let me put it this way, if he had treated me like this early on, I would have never married him. 

Shawn sometimes has a way of making me like the dumbest thing that ever lived and it makes me not only angry but also I feel about myself.  He refuses to drive if we're going together and yet criticizes my driving every step of the way and acts like I am the worst driver on the freaking planet.

Let me mention here that Shawn is absent minded, very forgetful and does dumb ALL THE TIME.  I don't treat him like a 2 year old for it by any means.  I'm the one that crosses the Ts and dots the Is.  It's what I do.  I took 2 days off from work--TWO--a Friday and a Monday.  Shawn was gone for most of Monday and when I got to work on Tuesday I was relieved.  I cannot tell you how many vacations I've taken and have been glad--SO GLAD--to go back to work.  And I really hate that fuckin' place.

It go to wondering if he's running some kind of internal experiment on how long I'll put up with this kind of stuff.  Go ahead, do it some more and just see long I'll take it.  Last time I pointed out to him that I am the only one on this earth that he treats this way.  Not only that, I am the only one of this earth that helps him so much.  A good part of my day--every day--is spent cleaning up after him, cooking for him and so on, but I help him with the business as well and no one in his family or circle of friends spends as much on this business as I do.  And so I get treated like a dumb 2 year old.

It got me to thinking this morning (not the first time) that if anything were to happen between us I'd be royally fucked.  I make $10.35 per hour which translates into $9.07 after taxes.  I can't pay the bills on my own.  I'd been thinking of what I could do (for the last 5 years) to get out of my job and thought maybe this time I'll actually speak to a college counselor and explain I have no skills, no money, little free time and I have no idea what to do.  I need to make more money.  I need to prepare for the day Shawn gets sick from inhaling plasma dust and paint fumes. 

I have to do something.  I continue to wish for something to happen because I feel stuck and honestly, I don't know what to do.  My skills are limited because I hate people and math.  I cannot sit in front of a computer for more than an hour before I start to ache all over and my head's about to explode.  I start thinking about the corners I've backed myself into and I give up and merely wish for something good to happen to me.

But I know it won't just fall out of the sky.  I have no rich relatives.  I rarely play the lottery because it's not meant for me to win.  And so I continue to wish I had been born smart, gone to college before I could legally work and set myself on a different path, one where I was self-sufficient and not dependent on a single soul.

Is this what was meant to be?  To be married to what has become a verbally abusive husband, stuck in this house and working a dead end job where the guy hired 4 years ago makes more than me?  Shawn had better not ever ask me to quit my job to work full time for him.  Either I'd feel so bad about myself that I'd commit suicide or I'd kill him.  Either outcome is bad.  I need a job that has more take home pay so I can get out of this hole.

Monday, September 23, 2013

Stuck

I am not normally the jealous sort of person.  I have been lately.  I've been feeling jealously all the time and I hate myself for it.  I used to be happy just to have a bed and full belly and lately I've been jealous of everybody for everything.

When Darrell moved in with my cousin Tammy, I visited her house once.  She never married, became a nurse and bought her own house.  I was really jealous of her house; it was beautiful.  I was jealous also because it was spotless--because she had no spouse to louse it up and make it dirty and cluttered. 

I wish I could be seventeen again and know what I know now.  I'd go to school, get a good paying job and a house with no carpet.  I wish people were afraid of me the way they're afraid of Monica on friends.  Her house is a land where no one can spill.  I wish I had a buddy I could go to Zumba classes with, maybe running in the park.  I wish I had a small enconomy sized car that cost only $30 to fill the tank (thanks girl who ran the stop sign & totalled my Mazda--THANKS!!)

I can't go back.  I cannot change things.  I sometimes feel too stupid (and too broke) to go back to school.  The constant clutter and dirtiness drives me crazy.  It makes me insane to search for a pair of scissors that should be IN THAT DRAWER!!!!!!  I cannot stand this feeling of being stuck with no options, no way to change things. 

Jesus said, "I came that you might have and enjoy life." 
When does that begin?

Lent

The last two times I visited, Darrell was walking by himself, sitting at the table & smoking pot and cigarettes.  Mom reminded me that in her little book it mentions how a person nearing death will get a sudden burst of energy just before the end.  Though knowing Darrell, a fleeting burst could last a month.

He hasn't eaten a single bite of food in over a month.  "How long can a person live without food?" Mom asked me.  Well, we know Jesus went a full 40 days and 40 nights without food and now we commemorate that event by giving up cookies for a month.  I once read a comparison on fat & skinny women in a magazine.  If one of each land on a deserted island with no food, the skinny woman would die first because the fat woman's body would feed on itself.  Makes sense.  When Darrell was eating, he ate as much as he could as often as he could, whatever he damn well pleased.  Mom figured he was trying to enjoy ice cream while he still could.

Now he's vomiting his liquid medicines but still not in much pain, which is good of course.  His estranged wife is still sniffing around, my guess hoping he'll make it to the 3rd of next month so his disability will kick in and she can smoke it away in a little glass pipe.

And people wonder why I don't trust anyone anymore.

I hugged Darrell goodbye as we were leaving and he was just skin and bones.  It's easy to see in his arms and legs but to hug him and not feel a little fat here and there was weird.  I am too wondering how long a person can actually live without food in their belly.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Family Matters

I know how I write when I don't feel like writing.  It's bad, very bad.  Well, now is one of those times so settle in, readers.  Monday afternoon we arrived at my parents house.  We sat with Mom in the kitchen, ate pizza and chatted a bit.  Shawn helped Mom get Darrell get into the bathroom, sat him on the toilet and watched as Darrell promptly fell asleep.

I gratefully thanked him for that.  It's not every day you have to help an in-law onto the toilet and idly stand nearby to make sure they don't fall off.  Later, Darrell sat in a wheeled chair (not a wheel chair, a sor of stool like chair with small wheels on the legs) and slept.  His breathing was labored.  He'd take three breaths.....he stopped.  His belly didn't move, nor did breath enter his lungs.  And just as suddenly as it stopped, it started again for three more breaths and it stopped again for several seconds. 

"Is that normal?" I mouthed to my mother with tears in my eyes.  She nodded solemly.  As we were preparing to leave many hours later Darrell's estranged wife (only unestranged around the time his disability payment reaches his cash card--a very long & tiresome story) and his two sons arrived.  As we opened the doors to our vehicle, Molly, Mom's silly, stupid dog came bounding across the front lawn.  Lately, this is not so uncommon as she has been prone to find a way through the fence of the biggest backyard in the county and make for the streets.

"MOLLY!" Shawn hollered as she reached the gravel road.  I whistled and called to her, standing a bit behind Shawn.  Molly ran like a cougar, fast and swift straight to Shawn, suddenly turned and came straight to me where she promptly sat and begged with her eyes.

To the backyard we went and tried as best we could to plug up her new hole.  I had a few words with the youngest son and we left.  I cried silently almost the whole way.  I stared at the beautiful clouds int he sky, some half full with rain.  Darrell has always said it would rain when he died.  We laughed at this because it rarely ever rains.

Today is Thursday and Darrell is still alive.  He's tired and ready to let go.  He hasn't eaten in days, nor has he peed.  But he can still kind of talk if you are concentrating very very hard on his muffled noises.  He has no teeth and his face has slid so much, it affects his chatter now.  With no energy left to even help him sit up, his manner of speaking requires your entire focus.

His own sons drove 2.5 hours to hang outside and drink beer and smoke whatever it is they smoke.  One I think has quit that mess, but none the less, was conquered by peer pressure of his brother and step-mother to party outside or to go off miles into nowhere to hung for arrow heads.  I am no fan of the wife.  She shows up around the 3rd of each month and whatever money Darrell has given her winds up in a crack pipe, I'm sure.  I could say the same for the eldest son as well, most likely.

Between the three amigos there and my parents, there was more drama than was needed, as is always the case with a family matter.  Just so I am clear with my 2 or 3 readers, I personally do not care if I ever see any of them again as long as I live and most of us here feel the same.  Maybe Darrell wasn't the perfect father to them.  Certainly, he wasn't a fantastic uncle.  But I have gotten to know him again and I found that I love him again, all past transgressions forgotten and forgiven, I had begun to see Darrell in a new light, after his anxiety was controlled by drugs, of course.  To be fair, most nurses I've spoken to say that sort of meanness is quite common in a body fighting death.

I'm not sure God hears my prayers any longer.  I have prayed for Shawn to quit smoking for that last I don't know how many years.  I have been praying for Darrell to go quickly, quietly, painlessly and peacefully.  He's done things that probably deserves punishment, but how much longer must we go on to be punished for watching it?  What has my mother done to deserve this?  Again?!

Monday, September 2, 2013

Dreams

Bob has been in the hospital with a heart thing since Wednesday but that's another post for another time. 

Saturday August 31, 2013
Shawn and I made the weekly drive to Mom's house and Mom told me Darrell may not have another weekend and I should go talk to him.  "I don't know what to say," I replied.  So I went to the living room where he lay on the couch, drowsy and slipping into the morphine and again, I just didn't know what to say.  This is my mom's brother and yet I only just got to know him, only because he's been dying for months.

So I stared at him as he eyelids fluttered gently, accepting sleep.

Monday Septempter 2, 2013, Labor Day

I woke up very late.  6:30 in the morning is about 2 hours later than I normally get up.  When I sleep too much, I feel foggy and tired instead of the normal get up and go, go, go.  I'd had a very strange dream.  We were all in a time very long ago.  Darrell was very dirty and was being washed in a large puddle.  He was either being washed or baptized, I wasn't sure.  For some reason, I knew he was being prepared to be crucified, literally, on a cross.

I sat on the ground so I was eye level with Darrell, who was lying int he water propped on his elbow.  I began to weep and he looked at me as though he couldn't see through the fog of the drugs.  I think it was mom (It was someone I knew for sure) that came up with a large modern hammer and waved it int he air announcing, "Really?  You really think it's good that someone left this out in front of Darrell?  I mean, honestly!"  It was as if Darrell didn't know what was in store.


Back in reality, Darrell had said he wasn't going to be here on Monday.  Mom called me crying and I figured that was it.  She said Kathy had come by this morning and said Darrell may have less than 24 hours.  Shawn had taken my vehicle to the shop to get caught up a little.  He'd gotten a bit behind after Bob being in the hospital.  I told Mom when it was too hot for Shawn to work, we'd be charged to take Bob's oldest son back to Waco.  This of course, is another story in which no one cares what we have going on, if we have the gas, whicle everyone else sits around watching television.  No, not everyone.  There are however, some others who have absolutely nothing to do that could take my nephew back to school.

Anyway, it doesn't matter now.  It will be very late in the afternoon until I can get out there now.  I pray it is quick so Darrell no longer has to suffer.  I have been trying to figure out my dream all day and I don't know what it means.  Usually I think dreams are mostly nonsense and there's no use trying to figure it out.  This one was particularly strange, however.