Today was apparently my breaking point and it was set off by something stupid. I got up to make my lunch. Well to warm up my lunch because I haven’t really cooked since Thanksgiving. Anyway, I get there and the sauce for my lunch is missing. I didn’t throw it away which leaves only one other person in the spot that could have. When I inquire about it, I get the standard I know I did something but don’t want to tell you I did it because you have asked me not to do shit like this about a million times response: I don’t know. I am not sure why that was less acceptable today than any other day but today it was not gonna work. Well I wasn’t initially. I figured it out later but back to this fucked up conversation.
We go round and about and as always the verdict is I’m just mad for no reason and she’s never going to do it again. We both know that’s not true so I left and went and ate. Within five minutes of me finishing that meal I was in literal tears. I threw away my actual trash and came back to my room. I meant to start writing then but I tried to play a game first so I could calm down and it didn’t work. I just ended up crying harder and that’s when everything hit me.
For the better part of the last 14 years and 11 months (we’ll be at the fifteen year mark at Christmas provided I have not had a stroke or heart attack and died), my entire life has been about making her life more comfortable. Making sure that my job alone could handle 90 percent of the bills, adjusting to her random mood swings and conversations she has with other people that I should magically know about, about not having certain conversation with my brother or his family so she maintain some fragile ass illusion about who or what she is, and allowing her to be as autonomous as she wants to be. Which to be clear is super autonomous when it comes to spending her money but not when it comes to making travel plans, cooking dinner, taking her shopping physically, managing her medications, talking with her doctors, taking care of the house, or handle any of her insurance or medical decision making. That has meant that for the better part of 14 years and 11 months I have had to work like a grown up, handle all the demands of what that means, take care of myself, take care of her, pretend I’m having something that is a completely fulfilling relationship, and not just say fuck it and bounce.
I have asked myself repeatedly why my dad didn’t make it but she did. I have felt horrible each time but dad took care of himself and she did not. By that I mean when we encouraged him to go to the doctor, watch what he ate or whatever he did those things. It didn’t matter. Within a year of whatever it was emerging he was gone. In the last 16 years she has had a seizure while driving (16 years ago), brain tumor removed (15 years ago), pancreatitis so bad she damn near died (2 years ago), and pneumonia so intense she damn near died again (like a month ago). Each one of those times, because of her demands or recovery process I have had to turn into a home health nurse learning a whole lot of shit outside of my areas of expertise and then what questions to ask because telling her is borderline useless because she won’t be doing any of them while simultaneously still being her daughter and not get angry when I can’t even do my job because she will not be okay for the four hours I need to be at my office. To be clear she’d physically be fine but she’d call and complain so much there would be literally no work getting done.
I’m sure you are wondering what any of that has to do with anything else and I will tell you that now. Every plan for myself has to think through the possible reactions she will have and the accommodations I will have to make to the thing I want to do in order to make her okay with it initially. I’m always going to say initially because two years later she will swear she agreed to nothing and backing it up with dates, conversations, and the like will not help you well me in the slightest. I have said before that my mother is spoiled, and I have done myself no favors in humoring as much as I have with her, but it was that or having screaming matches with the person who birthed me. That’s a mind fuck I do not enjoy and y’all know I love a good mind fuck. I want to love her and her love me and us giggle like we do sometimes. Those sometimes require my silence and my acquiescence with foolishness more often than it should. I realized something else too. My grandmother was probably not much different in retrospect but she had 30 plus other grandchildren to disperse that need on plus the 10 living children she had at the time. My mother has me and my brother and my brother has the good fortune of being the youngest and a boy. A boy who married someone that my mom kinda can’t stand so she doesn’t want to visit or speak to him very much.
And there are days I’m super happy for him and them because clearly I have no husband or kids. Today however I’m kinda in a rage about that too. Yes, his life has its own demands but he has someone to share that with and he has kids that love him. I have exes and teddy bears. And I don’t really want to accumulate too many more of either of them. I’d like a partner that I could curl up with each evening and laugh through whatever fuckery she has brought into my life and how we can both manage work and divide and conquer her weirdness for the next day. I had that briefly with Mr. Good Nyhte. But that came with different baggage for him and I and both he and his predecessor, Roaming Soldier, had to deal with her outbursts directed at me and whatever failings I was displaying as a daughter in that moment. Both of them were irate and tried to defend me but that NEVER goes over well for future reference. Since then I just haven’t introduced her to anyone because she’s both super eager and super judgemental and both of those states of being are exhausting as fuck.
I’ve almost signed up for two BDSM dating sites over the last few days and have not pulled the trigger because we can’t spend time here. Our bedrooms are too close together and the walls are thin. Plus she needy and there’s no promise that even if there was more room that she would give me more space. I appreciate that life may not ever turn out the way you hoped but this isn’t even on the radar of things I was daydreaming about as a kid. I was convinced I’d be a step mom by now. Married to a nice man who already had kids and I’d be the cool supportive step mom that I never completely had growing up. Again something I had briefly with RS and GN but it’s gone now. Plus we never made it to the alter for totally different reasons. And now I’m about to start crying again. I’ve resolved to just get through the rest of this year but I’m putting it out to the universe, that I would really like a break from this version of reality. I’m going to ask for more acceptance of her because she’s not going anywhere. I’m going to ask for the right man to come along and not any man cause that won’t work. He needs to be understanding of this weird living situation, taller than me, preferably Black but if you look like Ryan Pavey, Jason Mamoa, or grown ass Brad Pitt let’s talk, who has a career that he loves so he can appreciate me loving mine, is funny, is smart, loves music, food, books, sports, and traveling to new places to collect passport stamps and new memories, and who maybe has a kid or two that needs a bonus mom. He doesn’t need to live locally but he needs to have good communication skills and can handle small gestures of affection both given and received. I doubt that man is reading this blog but if you know someone send him my way. Time for dinner and more purple margaritas and an early bedtime since I have to give a talk tomorrow.