Joey is doing great. He still has issues and bad habits, but with time they will be resolved – I’m confident of it. One very sad thing - when he went to the vet, she called our attention to a scar on his back. When his fur is pulled back a small heart shaped branding scar is revealed. Seriously! Someone branded my dog with a heart. What kind of sadistic fuck would do that to a puppy? It enrages me. The rancher says it was probably a tennis ball branding iron that was used on him. Wow.
And today I’m just feeling enraged about everything anyway. The house. Two unbelievably messy, spoiled adult girls living with me whom I’ve obviously raised poorly because they are over-the-top disgusting. And Patrick’s words ring in my ears. “You shouldn’t complain about your children – you are so lucky to have them, and they are doing so well in so many ways.” Yeah, whatever. Today, he can have them. He’s got a house with six bedrooms. They can move in with him and he can experience the joy of parenthood.
He will be woken from a sound sleep by the sound of their arguing, or their beer drinking revelry on the porch with friends. In the morning as they sleep until well after noon, he will discover presents left him in the kitchen he cleaned the night before: food encrusted plates, dishes everywhere, take out containers all over, sticky spills and spoiled food that should have been put away. He will clean up after them and remind himself just how precious they are. On his way to the bathroom he will pick his way over dirty laundry inexplicably trailed down the hall and he will be repulsed to see underwear with dirty menstrual pads left in plain view. He will try and attend to his morning hygiene but he won’t be able to find the toothpaste or any towels which have taken up new residence in their rooms. The sink he washes up in will be crusted with spit toothpaste and pale green blobs of phlegm that have hardened. If he braves their rooms to rescue a towel, he will see all the coffee cups and glasses he’s been missing, half filled with moldy liquids and plates with half eaten food in random places. And don’t get me started on the bugs.
I used to be a robot tyrant. I made rules and enforced them. I had a clean bathroom because, if something was left on the counter, I threw it away, even if it was a brand new bottle of something expensive. I waged war against my messy children. Now I’m nicer and apparently a pushover. Most days I just can’t muster a head of anger – I’m just not that angry a person anymore. But now, I have no standards – I’ve given up. I just sigh a lot. And I get taken advantage of. So today I’m thinking anger might have been the ticket after all. Why did I think it was such a bad thing? It got results.
And really why now…..why such negativity? I’ve been hell bent on being positive and forward moving – life affirming, joy embracing. My mother used to wail, “There is no joy in this world!” She said it often and loudly, screaming to the gods for an answer to her misery. For a while she probably yelled it a dozen times a day until it got to be farcical. She knew she was ridiculous and so it finally became a joke and a family catch phrase whenever anything went wrong. I think we presented her with a container of liquid Joy dish detergent at one point, or perhaps she bought it for herself and made an altar to it, happy at last that she had "Joy" in her life. Today, this week, this period of my life, I understand my mother’s rantings. There is little joy in my life and without joy, life is a drudge, barely worth living.
It’s finally sinking in - something all of you have already known for a while. I’m like the accident victim who doesn’t know they’ve been mortally wounded. They have been shot in the head and they’re gushing blood but for some reason their body hasn’t gotten the death message yet. Or maybe they have been impaled by a picket from a fence and the paramedics know that, once the picket is removed, death will be instantaneous. But for a while, the body will continue to function around the picket. The picket applies pressure to the organs it has penetrated, keeping hemorrhaging at bay.
What you know, that I have not admitted to myself before today, is that he left me – he is gone. He really left me. He didn’t choose me. He came, he saw, he conquered, he didn’t want what he conquered, he left. That simple. I have been left. Being left - for me it is my oldest and darkest fear and nightmare come true. Thank God for therapy…..this is unbelievably hard.
As your post only a day later states, there is unbelieavable beauty everywhere in the world and as adults, we spiral down into depression and self pity. Have you ever taken Landmark classes? I don't believe in everything they teach, but there is one concept I believe in... what happens to us day today simply means....NOTHING. There is no meaning behind a fact or an incident. It is just something that happened. It is how you react to it and how you dwell on it and what you learn that matters.
ReplyDeletePatrick came. Patrick went. It happened. What does it mean? Nothing other then he was around for awhile.
Are you worse off then you were 3 months ago? No. As a matter of fact, you're a little smarter and have a puppy. Sounds to me like things are better over the long run.
I know emotions are not an "on/off" switch, but I take the engineer inside me and fall back on logic and step by step methodolgy when I have to. Sometimes it is the right thing to do.
By the way, my two teenage boys have rooms that are undoubtably worse. I'll lay money down on that bet. That's why God invented doors that close.
Take care,
Tom
Between the bitch on the broom and the pushover is the adult who enforces boundaries and is intolerant of excuses. My mother was certainly imperfect, but I never left messes anywhere... because she simply would not allow it. And to this day, even if my house seems to me a "mess", my friends swing by and say, "you're kidding".
ReplyDeleteYeah Patrick didn't choose you. Thankfully. For all the men who "dream of children", there's a reason most of them don't adopt (or contract a surrogate)... because they know deep down that on their own, they just might not be able to handle single parenthood.
Think about that.
As for the girls, they're women - treat them as such. If they can't respect the space which you provide for them, perhaps they'd feel more at home living under a viaduct.