Patients

Being in a hospital is weird.  No...being a patient in a hospital is weird.  My whole world is reduced to a very small white sterile thing.  It's a series of small events that become huge.  Milestones to look forward to every day.  I joked yesterday that my whole day revolves around mealtimes.  8, 12, 5.  The food is miserable, but it's still one of the more interesting things to happen.  Other things I look forward to are my shower at night, the 'changing of the guard' when I get to meet my new nurse for the day/night.  I've been here long enough to develop favorite nurses.

The big thing is people.  Having people here is a weird thing, too.  On one hand, I fucking deliriously love seeing a familiar face walking through my door.  On the other hand, I feel and look like shit, so there's an element of being self conscious, like I have to be "on" for them.  When I was on the morphine and Dilaudid, it was extremely difficult, but now that I'm clean and sober, so to speak, it's easier.  When I'm at my best, long exposure to most people exhaust me.  Irv is an easy presence, he's the exception.  He can chill and read the paper or watch TV all day, not needing small talk, or to fuss. Luiz is uneasy here, and yesterday with him sitting around all day, plus Alden, I felt a little claustrophobic.   Jake came to visit, and I was so happy to see him, but that was one of those bad nights, blurry with pain meds and pain, I don't remember a whole lot.  When my mother is here, she fusses, she hassles the nurses, but she's a professional visitor, so if I need something, she gets it...in spades.

I like walking around the hallway, but since I wear street clothes, the nurses think I'm gonna bolt. I joke with them, but I'm seriously not.  I know why I'm here.

That's another thing.  I'm *here*.  It sunk in last night.  Tuesday was a morphine blur.  Yesterday was a giant hang over, but sort of a day to let it all soak in.  I didn't have much stuff here, clothes or recreational stuff.  Last night, though...Irv left around 10, and it was teary.  Just thinking about it, I'm all teary.  He goes home, sleeps in our bed.  I stay here and don't sleep.  But it doesn't look like I'm going home soon...and by soon I mean tomorrow.  There's a weird level of acceptance, where I'm like, yeah, I need clothes...yeah I need my toiletries...fuck, I need my netbook.

Timebomb Meltdown

After that post, we met our friend Jon at the bar. I was a little high, and starting to get drunk.  I was happy to see him, but it's not really my crowd, so I sat fussing with my iThing while Irv joked and talked. Oh, and I was drinking, hard and fast. Irv made me eat something to slow down.  I was chatting with Todd, and convinced him to join me, so he came all the way from South River.  Good guy.  As an aside, he's the platonic dude friend I need.  He can show up and hang out at the drop of a dime, is unjudgemental, cool, intelligent, artistic and can drink me under the table.  Easy on the eyes, too.  Anyway, he turns up and my night is improved a hundred percent.  But, when there's Todd, there's shots.  To make a long story short, and this is why I value the guy so much, I had a major meltdown, and he didn't so much as bat an eye.

We had a jolly time, me and Todd, drinking, sharing secrets, talking shit about the strangers at the bar, scoping out the women.  Irv was having a blast with Jon and that whole crowd. I thought for a bit that things were getting better.  We left on a high.  Then I kept drinking.  Till I puked in the yard.  Then I kept going. Till Irv somehow broke our entire handle of Jim Beam on the table.  Apparently, it got all over me, and I locked myself in the laundry room having a temper tantrum, screaming and crying.  This I don't remember at all. I threatened to walk across the house naked.  Luiz, apparently had to hold me, naked, wrapped in a shawl, so I wouldn't go staggering out into public.  They got me into one of my many sundresses, and that's all I remember....and apparently, I kept going with Fireball.  I have no recollection of most of that, besides fuzzy shutterclicks. Total fucking meltdown.  I woke up feeling like hot death in a mug.  I just opened my eyes. and wanted to burst into tears.  Irv laid in bed with me, all morning, rubbing my back and patting me. Luiz joined in, and for an hour I was in heaven, but felt too fucking grey and drawn out to appreciate it.  My guys holding me, talking me through...whatever.  Irv said I looked like I just wanted to find a corner and curl up to cry.  He nailed it. I still feel like that.

I shouldn't have drank.  I should have stuck to the greens.  I still need therapy, I think.  I feel better than yesterday, but only because my whole day was spent moving slowly, avoiding people, sleeping.  I've been verging on tears the whole day.  I feel the moisture sitting heavy in my lower lids, as I type this. If I blink hard, they'll spill.

My week starts tomorrow, but at least I'm easing into it, spending time with Michele.  One of the few people I can stand for more than ten minutes at a clip right now.

Needs

I'm still not ready for people. I'm in a funk.  I called out of work yesterday, and today. I'm really not ready to open up, empathize, and help people tackle their issues.  Fragile. That's a good word for it. I'm feeling fragile. I couldn't really pin it down, till today.  Irv helped me frame it in language.  I'm still sort of bummed about my father, and his open hostility towards me.  We pulled some cards together, and now I can sort of see his reasons, but that doesn't magically fix how I feel.

I'm such an introvert, just spending a week straight with other people is enough to ruin me for the whole next week, especially this trip, where Alden was in our room.  I didn't have one moment of time alone, except bathroom time, and even that was always hurried.  Rushing to do the next thing, feeling obligated to not sit in our room alone, but go to Chris or Dad's room and socialize with the family. I can only do so much of that in the best of times.  Add dealing with my father who was hostile, grouchy, demanding, demeaning, anxious, mean, sexist, and generally miserable and on a mission to make the rest of us miserable...and I can't even.  We got home the day before yesterday, and I still don't feel fully myself, or "home".

I'm roaming around here, trying to stay drunk or high all day, and on the verge of tears, when I'm not.  I've got no motivation to do anything that I love. No urge to seek out my friends and loved ones to talk to them. I'm fucking lost right now.  Maybe a few more days in isolation will help. Maybe the cards we read today will get a self-dialog going, so that I can work through this.  Just touching the sore subject of my parentage/my father's issues with females (which means issues with me), and my mother, is enough to make me burst into frustrated tears.  I always said I was thoroughly happy not knowing where I came from, but every year, the mystery gets more and more...mysterious. More and more little slips and revelations.  Details come to light, but they only provoke more questions.  I'm not even being deliberately vague right now, but I don't even think I have the stamina to tackle the issue head on. I will. I'm trying to get myself there.

It's five pm. I called out of work. I have plans to go to a birthday party of a dear friend...a half hour ago. I'm still unshowered, and thoroughly dreading the evening.

I need therapy.  I need silence. I need answers. I need to understand.  I need to recharge.  I need a good cry.  I need to find the tears first.  I need to find the words.  I need to get back on the horse and tackle life head on.  Fuck.

I'm making it a point to paint every day, no matter how busy or shitty the day is.  It's helping un-mire me from the bullshit mundane productivity.  Like, every day, I have time set aside to create something totally frivolous, whose only job is to be cool, and or interesting to look at.  It's a few hours of calm quiet time every day.

There's something distinctly satisfying about laying down strokes of color, and watching some meaningless little metal or resin chunk take form into a tiny little character with a story and a sort of life in my imagination.

I'm deeply satisfied seeing my skill develop and my techniques refine with each miniature.  I practice grounding and centering to become ultra calm and steady, every time I pick  up a brush.  It's both fast and slow. Painting something the size of a quarter requires an absolute stillness of self.  It's fast in a way, too. I can cover a lot of space in a small amount of time. I can see improvements from one miniature to the next.  Things slow down in details.   I feel like this really helps hone my focus.  Painting requires razor focus. Only in this hobby will I spend an hour perfecting inside the mouth of a creature whose head isn't even as big as my thumbnail. When people are talking to me, I fuck up.  When there's loud noises, I fuck up.  Hopefully, one day I can even focus through big distractions.

I started doing this on a whim a few years ago.  It's turned into a necessary thing, and I feel like the positive benefits of dedicating myself to painting every day, spilling over into the rest of my life.

Something about getting high on a Saturday morning makes me check all my email dilligently.  Then I stumble across one from Good Vibrations. They're having a sale.  Suddenly, it doesn't seem strange to blow $50 on anal toys, to get free shipping.  I actually sat there and contemplated it for a long few minutes.

This keeps boinging around in my head:

"People don't have to be nice to you just because you order them to."

This is fundamentally what's wrong with my mother. She thinks she can treat people any way she feels like treating them (which is usually like shit, let's get that straight) and because she's...I don't know, her, that everyone automatically needs to respect her, and be kind to her.  It's the worst kind of entitlement.  That's what I'm facing and fighting.  I think that's a theme that stretches back in my life, back to early childhood.  Demanding respect, while simultaneously slapping me in the face, both figuratively and literally.  Demanding kindness and care for herself, while giving back nothing but negativity and abuse.

This is what makes my stomach flip into knots.  This is what brings out pure, unmitigated hate.  This is what makes me angry.  This is what makes me cry furious tears.  This is what makes me watch her walk down my driveway, and not feel too upset if I see the last of her.

Then, on the other hand, she's my mother, and I'm the last person in the world that she has, so I naturally feel protective towards her.  But, she knows I'm it. She knows I'm all the family she's got.  She knows I'm the only person in the world that gives a shit about her.  So, why does she treat me like she does?  Because she has done it like this for my whole life, and because I have let her.

I'm still dealing with this.  I guess it took more than one blog entry.

The week has been weird.  Today has been really weird. Well, that's not fair either, it's a fairly normal day, till she showed up.  My mother was here.  We had to kick her out of the house, and now she's sad.

She comes here while I'm on the phone, and hangs around.  That's fine. So, when I get off the phone, she chats me up about her usual bullshit, the house, money, insurance. She's nosy and bossy, like normal, but I can field that.  Last time she was here, she was just plain nasty to everyone, and I haven't forgotten.  She talks about wanting a smartphone, so I encourage her to get a Windows phone which is absolutely dummy proof, and has all the features she needs.  But she cuts me off, and goes on and on to say that they guy at the Verizon store thinks she should not only get a phone, but also a tablet, and all this horseshit.  I asked if she really needed all that, because she also has a laptop and a desktop.  She's like "but I want something to keep me busy when I'm sitting in Perth Amboy!"  So, I tried explaining what wifi is, and how a tablet needs wifi, and she kept cutting me off, so I said "fine, you're right. You're absolutely right, you know best what you want."  And I was prepared to end it there.

Then she started shouting. I let her shout at me.  I maintained that she's right, and nothing I can say or do would ever sway her.  Luiz just told me, in watching that, I went out of my way to be peaceful to her.  Luiz interjected at one point by saying "even if you ask for her opinion, nothing Lisa says or has said at least since I've known you has ever changed your mind."  So, she starts shouting at Luiz.  Luiz was like "are you paying bills in this house? What have you done for us lately that gives you a right to yell at us?"  Something like that.  Anyway, it escalated, and she was being really nasty to Luiz, and I walked her out the door.  I calmly explained, while she was still yelling, that she comes here with a chip on her shoulder, on some war path, and she treats Alden and Luiz like shit, and they don't have to take it, and neither do I.  I explained that I don't hate her, and she's free to call or stop by any time, if she feels like being civil, but she doesn't have the fucking right to push around anyone in my household.  She went on about how Alden disrespects her, and I ended the conversation with, "Listen.  If you're not nice to Alden, he doesn't have to listen to you.  Period.  You treat him like shit, don't expect him to be receptive in any way.  I dealt with your shit when I was his age, because I had to. You treated me like shit, and I was forced to respect you because you're my mother, but you're not his mother, and he doesn't have to take shit from you."

I try to do right by him. I try to teach him he doesn't need to take shit from anyone, if they don't respect him.  I spent too many years of my life being mentally and physically abused, and I'm not gonna lie, I'm still damaged.  I work every day in small ways to fix myself, but I feel like my energy is best spent raising Alden not to be damaged and abused and walked all over, by people.  Love your grandmother when she's loving, but when she's abusive, you don't have to take it. Always love her, because she's family, but walk away when she starts her shit.  I've been working my whole life for that.  I still take her shit.

I feel shaken at having to confront her like that, but I'm turning over a new leaf.  My house has been the site of a lot of negativity lately, and I'm taking huge steps to clean it out.  I don't need her shoveling more of it on us.

Normally, this would send me flying to my bottle of vodka, to steady the old nerves, but I think I'm turning a corner on drinking, too.  After last weekend, I'm dialing it back.  I've been drinking far too much, far too often, and I think it's because I'm dealing with some unresolved issues, lots of anger, and fuck...it's just easier, when all this stuff surfaces, to just party the issues away.  I suppose that should be its own whole blog post.

Right now, I'm hungry, mentally and physically exhausted, and tired of people's shit.