it's really all about sleep. I can't. so I drink. years ago, that was the problem, that was the solution. so now, it's the same. so I quit. I quit for days. and what happens is that first I can't sleep. and then next I sleep very shallowly. and then, there are the nightmares. and after that, if I can get that far, there are dreams that I can't figure out.  and I haven't gotten past that for a few months now. I think I could deal with the rest of it if I knew I could sleep. should I ask for help? the last person I asked had me, oh take 10 trazadone if you want to. is that healthy? and I did sleep. but the deductible on the insurance  meant that I couldn't see her anymore, had no help anymore. it's still about sleep.

Feeling angry and discontent. feeling like nobody understands that as old friends fall away, I feel less and less like I know who I am. found out that the neighbors that share a garden with us, are also selling out and moving away. combine this with how I don't know how I fit at church anymore, and that I have no real life friends, I know that the past is now invalid. I need a future. I need new friends. I have new neighbors, and that might be a place to start. I wish, wish that I felt comfortable finding a new church also, one with a decent music program. one with a few members. one that didn't feel like it's dying. but then where is home?

I think the problem is that nobody needs me. if I decide to just sit on the couch and do absolutely nothing, nothing happens. nothing at all. nothing bad, nothing good. just nothing. if I do no laundry, well, neither does my husband, but he does not care if he stinks, he just wears the same clothes. son does nothing either. nobody pushes him, nobody pushes me either. nobody needs me, therefore my existence does not matter. I can keep on killing myself with bourbon if I want to. there is nobody to care.

so, tomorrow my second parents are moving. They have lived in their house 10 years longer than my parents did in this house, and I have never known a time when they weren't there. Their youngest child, their only daughter has been my friend since I was 11 and she was 9, and she is moving them into a retirement home closer to her house.

It's her choice. it's not the one I made, but she's not me. She has a life, I didn't at the time, or even since. I don't blame her, I'm just really, really fucking sad. It was her house I ran to when it all got too much for me here, when the ridicule and the physical  assault got too much. Her parents were, and continue to be in love, mine did not even tolerate each other very well most of the time. They were mean and I think they hated me. Hers were loving, supportive. They had time for her. And they talked to me.

They have been there for me since my parents died. I have hid at their house most days for at least a little while. We have shared food, and if I was short a couple of eggs, that's who I called. She taught me to make Italian food. I made her soup, and sometimes chicken if she needed it. I used my nursing skills to tend to Mr Murphy's life threatening wound. I shoveled their sidewalks and took out their trash. I calmed frantic Fran when she needed it. and tomorrow, they will be gone.

Just a few miles up the road, but I don't have a car or a driver's license. also, I'm a drunk.  and they are in their 80's. and the only time their daughter ever calls me is when she needs me to do something for them, and if they aren't there, she won't ever call me again and I will lose yet another friend. so she'll be gone too.  this is too hard.

I just went and asked my husband for comfort. instead, he tried to justify to me the decisions she made. I don't care about that, I just want someone to hold me and listen to me and hand me a hanky because I can't fucking stop crying about this. he's drunk and stoned and I am not. and I am jealous. I feel like nobody understands me or anything about what I might need. And that makes me pathetic, and a loser, and tomorrow, I'm going to buy some more bourbon, because, well, Jim Beam, he gets it. or he doesn't care. one way or another, I'll be looking out my bedroom window into a dark house for the first time tomorrow night. no more accidentally left on light in the kitchen. no more light in Mr Murphy's room when he gets up late to go to the bathroom. they will be one more set of people that will be lost to me, and I will keep on forgetting who I am, or who I used to be, and no way of figuring out who I might be in the future. lost again.

So, my first husb and gave me herpes. and I've been married for 14 years, and before that I was single for 11 years, and I never told. I just made sure that I never let anybody touch me when I had a sore. I never ever told anybody, but last night I told my husband. What would he think after all these years of me not telling?  All he did was ask me if it hurt. and what did I need. It's sad, just really sad. I spent all day drunk yet again. What the hell is wrong with me? and then got called out by my son. I did the laundry, I made dinner, I helped him replace the brakes on the car, and I got yelled at for being drunk. so what? and now I hate myself even more than I did before.

Disgruntled

So disgruntled. People just pick up and go. They have cars, they have passports. They have money, and they just go. Me, trapped in this house. Me, trapped in my head. I just want out. But I don't know how to get out.

I want to go to Disney World. I want to go on a cruise. I want to go to Ireland, to Scotland. Hell, I want to go to California. I want to see my grandchildren in North Carolina. I want to meet my mother in Seattle. I can't even go to fucking Wal Mart. I hate being so isolated, but I also hate asking people for things, like charity. I beg my husband to take me somewhere, anywhere on his day off, but all he wants is to sit on the sofa and smoke pot. Since he is the only income in this household, I don't feel like I can insist. If he wants to sit around and get fucked up on his day off, why should he consider stuck me? And he doesn't. He's disgusting, the odd combinations of clothes he wears, his lack of personal hygiene, but yet he bought roses. He put my mom on the potty when I couldn't.  I don't know how to insist.

I had to stand it, somehow. I had to make decisions. I had to get my mother back in bed in the middle of the night when she got up to go to the bathroom and forgot she needed a walker. My parents moved back into the master bedroom together for the first time in many years so dad could help her in the night. But he never woke when she got up, only when she fell. I never got an entire night's sleep because somebody always needed something in the night. And, I continued to drink.

Finally, it all got the better of me, and I quit. I asked my son to take care of the parents for a couple of days so I could puke and shake and sweat and so forth. He agreed, so I did it. Cold turkey. and it sucked big time. but I did it. and about a week later, things started to go to hell.

Later, a doctor told me that it was a known thing, psychotic break after quitting drinking. I don't remember a whole lot about that time, but apparently I was doing weird stuff. I applied for a loan to get a new roof for our house. I yelled at the coin man. I couldn't write or spell or dial a phone. I ended up in the psychiatric hospital, taken once by my son, once by my friend Alan, and I was so weird. Even before the initial diagnosis of bipolar years before, I was never so screwed up. Even after I got out of the hospital, I was really no better. None of the anti-psychotic drugs worked. None of the sedatives worked. Nothing. So I got put back in the hospital. Calmed down after a while, went to follow up rehab. Back in the hospital. back to follow up rehab. and then my dad died, all of a sudden. I went to tell him dinner was ready one night and found him with a mouthful of blood, struggling to breathe. Two hours later, he was dead.

I was fine, I dealt. And then my mother really lost her mind. And my brother decided that I had the nursing training and the availability to care for her all by myself.

My son worked overnight, so he was asleep all day. My husband has a brain injury and accompanying physical disabilities, so he was no help. And my mom hated him, so was he inclined to help? Notsomuch.
I never blamed him. And her mental status disintegrated without Dad to center her, and her physical condition deteriorated because she wouldn't eat, and she continued to fall. She refused to leave her bed. She didn't know me anymore. And my pleas for help fell on deaf ears.

This is too hard. Need more bourbon--

the next step

So, I found myself in my childhood home, in my childhood bedroom. With my parents. A place I not only never expected to be, I never, ever wanted to be. I was not the chosen child despite being the eldest. I was always at odds with my mother, crazy about my father and totally unwilling to get involved. I felt misunderstood. They didn't get my husband, an unusual man to be sure. They mostly disagreed with every single one of my choices. I thought my brother would have the care of the parents because it seemed he could do no wrong. Now, I love my brother to distraction, but he's a sneaky wee man. He flies under everybody's radar, which is ironic since that is what he does for a living. I just thought it would be his responsibility to choose things for them because they didn't really like me. So I consulted him. He said, well, you're available. it's not like you have a job or anything. or a mortgage or even a lease.

I stayed. I cooked, I took them to the doctor. Seems my dad had never even told Mom's doctor about her mental changes, and I mourned for what she had lost that maybe she wouldn't have if he had just spoken up. I mourned for all the arguments we had had on the phone because I didn't understand what was happening to her. I couldn't understand just why she accepted me, bragged on me to her friends. She had only trashed me before, lied to people about what I did, ran me down at every opportunity. What was different this time? So I picked a time when she seemed to be all there, and I asked her, what was different? Why did she like me all of a sudden? She said, this time you got involved. You invested something of yourself into our lives. That was all she needed to suddenly like me? Look at all the years I wasted. Look at all the time I wasted. My mother was suddenly a sweet, delicate woman. Someone who liked pink dresses, soft fabric, and pearls. I couldn't wrap my mind around it. I asked my dad, what happened to her? How did she get so cold and judgemental if this was who she was inside? He didn't know. They were not introspective people, as a lot of the people who went through the war were not. They tended to deal with concrete things, in absolutes, not in concepts. I had a weird flashback to the 60's when I made my dad love beads to wear with his turtleneck and blazer, and how baffled he was. Ultimately, he wore a medallion, which I guess was okay. My dad was totally a fashionista, and now I get it. His closets are still full of the most stylish clothes from the 40's onward. can't seem to get rid of them. and all the pockets are full of cough drops.

Okay, that was a strange aside. But it's part of what I found when I moved back in here. Dad got better, but he never regained his mental status. It was a urinary tract infection, untreated because he couldn't remember that he was sick and needed to take medicine. I found out by accident, and it took 3 months of antibiotics and other things to heal him, but it was too late for his brain. So sad. My dad was such a special person, he was funny, and he always had a project, and he never finished anything. He was active in the Masonic Lodge, but when he started forgetting things, they started forgetting him. He came to terms with me, he would tell people "this is my daughter, she keeps me straight". I tried to respect his dignity, did not make decisions for him, but just reminded him of things. Like which side of the road to drive on. And to not buy any more gold coins that he didn't even freaking want. It was hard. I missed my husband and my son, and even the dog. But they came eventually. I thought the burden would be easier more distributed. But that did not turn out to be the case at all.  Oh this is hard. This is not what I wanted to do at all. But I think I have to, so bear with me.

I hope to somehow go down the road. I am a person with some issues, some strength, and would like to talk about how I feel about my life. I've been stuck for a while now, treading water in my life. I have a stable living environment, food security, and a family. There also are friends, but I mostly don't talk to them. Or my family. Or anybody, so I thought I'd try talking to myself, on a blog. Not planning on telling anyone I actually know that I'm doing this. Not really sure that I want my real life to intersect with the life inside my head.

A few years ago, I was diagnosed bipolar, with a borderline personality disorder. Put on medicine that mostly didn't really help. I've not been really good at keeping up with my health care, mostly thinking that I know more about it than any doctor could. I think the diagnosis was sketchy, mostly a result of a random event rather than any kind of analysis. There was also a doctor that suggested that I might have Asperger's Syndrome, and I ran directly away from him too. I had a real job that I loved. I felt pretty good about everything. I felt like a real person. Then it all went to hell.

The store I worked in was run by somebody not doing a good job. The hours allotted to the employees were based on the overall sales of the store. I wasn't anybody, really, and my hours got cut. Another store opened in the plaza, my son got a job there, and they offered me more hours, so I jumped. And it just didn't work, the job was a bad fit, they said though nobody could tell me what exactly I had done wrong. And they fired me.  And then I couldn't sleep. And I had lost my driver's license. and all my teeth. and I was stuck at home and somebody brought home a bottle of bourbon.

It was a revelation. I had never been much of a drinker before, but bourbon dulled exactly what needed to be dulled, and I could sleep. I stayed up late playing video games and sipping at some bourbon.  And the time passed. and the road stopped.

I made a hand pieced quilt top for my husband for Christmas. I visited my parents on Christmas eve, and suddenly, suddenly, my life was no longer my own. Something was wrong with my father and I didn't know what. He was 88 years old, the sole caretaker of my 91-year-old mother who had some early stage mental changes, maybe Alzheimer's, maybe just dementia. And without his attention, his memory, his care, both of them had fallen into some really bad habits. They weren't eating or taking medicine or bathing and doing laundry, the house was getting hoarded out and falling into disrepair. I tried reminding them on the phone, I tried enlisting the neighbors, but it became clear that what they needed was me. So I came back, and I stayed. and I'm still here though now they both are gone. Maybe this is all I can tell today. Maybe I will try again tomorrow. This has brought all the horror, all the enormous responsibility and fear back. And now, I need some more bourbon.