It’s too quiet

I lay star-shaped on my bed as my large fluffy long haired grey princess lays next to me panting. The house is about 100 degrees and humid. She has been laying next to me for the past few days since my health declined. I had a fever last Friday that lasted until last Sunday. I have been feeling alternatively ill and not so ill all week. My little princess has been beside me the entire time.

What hasn’t been in my home though is loud noises, arguments, little feet running, or small voices asking for help. The nest is empty and the quiet carves a hole into my heart. I have just one teenage boy that almost silently moves through the day and seems nearly totally independent of me. He wakes perfectly at 9 am and goes to bed perfectly at 9 pm. He does his chores and school work often without prompting. It feels like I don’t need to exist anymore.

I roll over on my side towards my grey princess and try to sleep although the sun is up and the heat is oppressive. My stomach lurches and I feel its contents threaten to come back up before they settle down again. I pet my princess and tell her what a good girl she is. I know I won’t get any sleep, so I get up and mosey into the front room to check on what work is available today on the computer. My head swims and the room spins, but I pound down a coffee and chase it with ibuprofen. Might as well be useful for someone. If I can’t be useful to my family, maybe I can be useful for my work.

I check Skype and see that the hours have been reduced today and they are limiting how many operators can work.

“Damn,” I curse out loud as Miss Princess looks up at me confused. She sits next to my office chair cleaning herself and preening.

My teenage boy is in his room with earbuds stuffed into his ears watching funny cat videos on YouTube. He’s been homeschooled his entire life. He didn’t learn to read until late last year because his eye doctor whom he saw every year since four years of age didn’t know he was a low-sight individual. I mentally kick myself for not being better than a board-certified optometrist and missing the fact that my kid was almost blind. It’s still too quiet.

I raised six children on an income that most people would have died trying to survive off of and that the WHO considered deep poverty. Life got better eventually, but the loudness of those days remains stuck in my head. There was always some excitement happening. One of the sisters found a frog or a lizard, or perhaps kittens were born, or the girls fought over whose dress it was…always some sort of excitement. Now the loudest noise is the fan buzzing next to me as I visibly melt into my chair waiting for a spot to work online from home.

I get the thumbs up and log into work. For the next hour and a half, I call people at their homes and ask them questions they have no interest in answering. About half of the calls are answered by an answering machine. The remaining callers answered and hung on or cuss me out as they slam the phone down. I giggle a little as a seventy-five-year-old man informs me he will do what the hell he wants when I ask if he will vote this November. I tell him to have a lovely day with a smile on my face and a cheery voice. His voice softens and he says, “You too, sweetheart.” The only humane interaction all day at this point.

The end-of-shift message pops up and I have to log off. That’s it for job one today. My stomach still feels queasy, but I am also slightly hungry. I saunter into the kitchen for some more coffee and back to my desk. I look at what prospects job number two might have today. I can log in and take calls, but oh I see the callers they have. I see a few familiar names, Dee the elderly woman that just loves to chat all day long about this mysterious underworld figure named Michael. I see also that Ester wants to chat today, probably about her ex and when he will contact her again. The second job I work is as a psychic phone operator. I use tarot cards and other divination techniques as requested by my clients. I prefer my clients on this job better, but sometimes it takes a toll like when they commit suicide on the line.

I log into job number two for the day and put a good solid three hours in before logging out. I didn’t talk to nearly as many people as usual. I make a mental note of the fact that my pay per hour is declining on this job due to a lack of clients. During the last recession, I worked 18-hour days to make approximately a dollar an hour. I was bringing home about $140 a week, but had to be logged in from 7 am until midnight most nights to achieve that. I have already decided I will not be doing that.

At my feet, the princess is curled into a perfect fluffy circle, with her nose covered by her very fluffy tail. She has been so patient. She looks up at me lazily, half awake and half asleep, assessing what I will do. I listen to the fan buzz as the room finally begins to cool with the nighttime. There are no requests for movie time. I have no one asking for popcorn. No one asks for dinner or even help to tie their shoe. The memories of the past twenty years wash over me in an instant and I can see my second daughter bringing me my purse so we can go out. I can see little Lucy sitting on the corner of the couch drawing and licking her fingers with her big glasses on her oh-so-small face. I can see my eldest son goofing around with my youngest daughter. I can even see my youngest child at about five or six years old trying to climb the bookcase. I’m reminded once again that I am useless. No such people exist in my life anymore.

Two other humans inhabit this house, but I can spend days never seeing them or hearing from them. I speak to strangers that curse me or alternatively praise me, but that have never seen me. The ones I love the most can’t be bothered to say hello most mornings. It’s an empty existence. I am reminded to take my daily medicine by an alarm before logging into YouTube myself to watch some videos before I go to sleep. Except I don’t sleep…I’m awake with a lump in my throat watching the ghosts of my motherhood haunt me from the living room corner. The world is much too silent.

Thank heavens, my husband is healing

We seem to have overcome the worst of his surgery pain. He is in physical therapy and gaining a lot of function in his arm again. He is not in agonizing pain daily either. He still has to be careful. I am so glad he did decide to go through with the surgery even if it did cause a bit of chaos. He is back to work almost full-time. I am still working two jobs, and we should transition to him working full-time and me back to one full-time job. I am loathed to give up both jobs though. One client is rocky, at best, and appears to be teetering on the edge of financial ruin. The other only have sporadic work. I also write, but the income from that is not enough to carry the house even halfway. I would rather have 2-3 jobs than just one. That way if I lose one, we’re not in desperate straights. The plan though is to go down to one eventually. My husband actually said he expects me to in the next month or two. It’s almost impossible to run a household by yourself while working 2-3 jobs…and there is ever so much to do in my home.

My teenage son has decided to pursue his education elsewhere. Although I am not pleased with his decision, I know it will be easier for me in the long run. I might finally be able to get my home back. Who am I kidding? My house will be a disaster from some other source…probably my hobbies once I actually have time to pursue them. I could put my foot down and make the boy stay, but given his attitude, I think a little learning from the world might just get some life lessons through his thick head. He seems to think it is might that makes it right. I can not in good conscious actually go toe to toe with my son. At one time I could have with little effort, but I am older now and much more frail. Not to mention, what mother wants to do that? Let him learn the hard way by someone else’s hand. I’m certain he will find a long list of men that will let him know in no uncertain terms where he stands in the pecking order if he continues with his attitude. I believe in natural consequences. I just pray he doesn’t find deadly ones with his behavior.

My younger disabled son has been happily chirping about how he will decorate “his” new room when his brother moves out. He is very excited to have the house pretty much to himself. He has already begun sharing his plans about what he will do with “Bubby’s” spot. He told me all of his plans and they sound wonderful. He wants to clean out his brother’s “trash”. He wants to wash everything from floor to ceiling. He wants a computer and a desk. He even said he will make us coffee in the morning. How cute!? I doubt this will all come to pass, but sometimes my youngest son surprises me.

How it was growing up

Tags

childhood, generational, low sight, parenting, technology

I had a friend ask me what it was like growing up. They asked me some pretty specific questions like when’s the first time I cooked by myself. I was four or five years old when I made eggs by myself and I was very proud of myself. They asked when was the first time I babysat a child and I was seven or eight. They asked the first time I went somewhere by myself and I told them five, but thinking back I was actually three or four when I went into our little town all by myself to get some bubble gum. I know I went fishing regularly by myself at four off of a very large steel bridge and the local police would constantly hold me back to my grandmother’s house for doing this. They asked the first time I ever shot a firearm and that was when I was four years old with my uncle.

The questions continued and it became clear that my childhood probably was not similar to most childhoods. I was never given a chance to be coddled. Some part of me misses the fact that I didn’t have that opportunity but some part of me is sort of proud that I managed to sort it all out pretty much on my own. When they asked about how I got together with my friends, it was simply wandering around the neighborhood on foot or bike and finding out where everybody was hanging out to play Nintendo. Back then there was no online games. Back then there were no cell phones. We didn’t even have pagers when I was a child. You had to go out and talk to real people face to face which meant you had to have manners. It meant you had to understand that at 6:00 o’clock everyone is having dinner and you better not knock on that door. It meant that by seven or eight when the street lights came on it was time to go home whether or not your parents cared about it. Someone else’s mom was gonna yell at you for being out past dark. Does that even happen anymore?

I want to have my own children were raised and there are significant differences even though I held back the tide of time as much as I could. My children didn’t have an online experience until they were older even though the Internet was very social and very developed by the time they were children. Computers and the Internet were used strictly by adults to make money in my household from 2003 on. The children could not even use calculators in homeschooling. We used slates for anyone under 10 years old to write on and over 10 until about 16 pencil paper. In 2012 the children got a computer that had dial-up on it. We live very rurally l so this was the only Internet available for a very long time. They found games online that they liked and discovered things like freerice.com. We did use computers for educational purposes as they got older. Specifically for your ice.com and educational subscription services, but this was passed 2012 well into 2014 to 2020.

The first child to receive a phone was 16 years old when they got it and they had to pay for it on. They also had to pay for their own service. Quickly in succession several other brothers and sisters ended up with phones but all of them were over 12 years old. I nor my husband purchased these phones, they were gifts from other relatives in the family like their uncle. The youngest to receive a phone was my youngest child who was nine when he got his phone. It was given to him by his older sister after she got a replacement phone and her screen was cracked. He is the only child to be raised on YouTube at such a young age. Most of my children did not get into YouTube. He has an obvious different personality and behavior pattern than the rest. To be fair this child also has massive disabilities in sight and developmental delays. I don’t believe the site disabilities were caused by watching his phone at night because they were only discovered at 10 years old. Although he cannot see and has difficulty reading due to that, he is very much aware of the world and what is going on in it thanks too using that phone. I don’t agree with everything he has stumbled across and I have had to correct him multiple times on his and correct assumptions due to misinformation on YouTube about how men can get pregnant, but for the most part a lot of what he learns about is pretty factual. His favorite thing to watch is guys fixing cars.

This brings me to the topic of technology with children and how it’s different now. I’ve raised six children with and without modern technology. Modern technology seeps into a family over time and is almost impossible to eradicate once it has taken hold. While it has had many benefits especially for my disabled son, it has been the source of most of our arguments in this household. Arguments about when to get off the game, when to get off the phone, bedtime, proper, and appropriate content, among other things have been a mainstay since 2012. The disagreements have only intensified over the years and caused a division between me and my children. It was originally my husband who brought computers and Internet into this home to increase our ability to generate an income. Computers and the Internet have allowed us to generate an income from home at least part time since 2006 and sporadically since 2003. The reason the children ended up with a computer in 2012 was because of an influx of children that were not lying and the need to keep them entertained and educated with so many little people. At that time there were eight children living in this small home and they were in groups of ages five years, six years, seven years, eight years, ten years, twelve years, fifteen years, and sixteen years of age. It was difficult enough ensuring they all had enough so and that that food was cooked three times a day. I felt that a little bit of games and some educational websites like free rice couldn’t hurt. It morphed into a lifestyle 10 years later for my youngest son.

My elder children played outside almost everyday and my younger son barely sees the outside. My elder children played with toys, trucks, sticks, dirt, animals, kittens, dogs, etcetera. My younger son does not like to do any of those things. While it may seem like Oh well he’s just different, I can see a gradual decrease in wanting to go out with each child as they interact with technology younger and younger. In 2012 I had a 16 year old and she was not the least bit bothered by going outside. I also have a 12 year old at that time and she too loved going outside. My 13 year old who has had plenty of technology in his life will not go outside. I feel like these devices are probably the leading indicator towards a child’s willingness to go out and play and their physical health consequently. My son doesn’t eat very much. However, he is still overweight which is unusual for a 13 year old boy. This year will be about reducing technology in our life as much as possible while still reaping the benefits. As I stated previously due to his disabilities he would not be as up to speed on things without technology. However, there is such a thing as too much. I’m going to work on making sure he can cook, care for other children, engage in sport, travel on his own, and navigate the world. Of course, this will be in addition to reading and writing better with the proper materials for his low sight.

What if the end of the story was…

she jumped off a bridge? How angry would you be? Would you want your money back? Would you feel like you wasted your time reading?

Now imagine that’s the end of someone’s story for real. Are you angry still? I would wonder why.

Nobody has to care…

Tags

bed, cocoon, hibernate, sad, sleep

I said a while back, that this blog was just for me to let out my thoughts. I mean it’s the subtitle of the blog…unusually quiet, the loud thoughts of someone that keeps them locked up. This is me letting them out. If you landed here, welcome, you get to waltz through a part of my brain. It won’t make sense, and I don’t care if it does, because honestly this is just for me to make sense of everything. It’s like the modern version of that diary every girl wrote at 12. Only, you get to read everything.

It’s not a work of art and I think this barely qualifies as writing to be honest. I write for part of my living. This is NOT on par with what I do for work. This is an extended Facebook post sans most cursing. Grab some popcorn, prop your feet, make fun of me, and enjoy the show. I don’t care. It’s only human nature to be snide sometimes.

With that out of the way, I’m not open to suggestions about how I should write my blog or how unhappy you are with it. Thanks for your long critique on how to improve, but that’s not my goal here. This is my therapy and you are either the therapist or the cat snoozing in the corner. You decide your role. You do not get to be my editor though. This blog page is the couch I rest upon as I spew my worries out. It does not get edited.

That said, I made a decision. Things seem to be fraying at the edges. I’m stretched thin mentally. I have too many irons in the fire at the moment. I have thinned my responsibilities to the bare minimum, passing up many social activities that would drain me, and evading friends that like to drag me in on their various charity roles. I usually love to do this stuff, but I am feeling very much like a caterpillar wanting her cocoon. I am wrapping up and preparing to hibernate mentally. This is what I typically do when things are not good. Often, this gives me an opportunity to focus on the absolute bare minimum and make sure those things are done. That way, even if I am falling apart, nothing else does.

I am not allowed to let everything fall apart. I have people that depend on me. When my grandfather died and I almost had a nervous break down, I still had to go to work, care for the kids, and pretend everything was ok for everyone else. When the bills aren’t getting paid and my granddaughter had heart surgery, I still had to hold it together while taking care of two small children on top of my own kids. Thankfully, most of the worst of the crisis have passed and turned out alright. That’s why I am where I am mentally though.

I don’t allow myself to fall apart during the crisis. After, I mentally do. Then I cocoon or hibernate. I have literally woke, up went to work, came home and slept for a couple days in a row before without doing anything else including eating when things are bad. I rarely am that bad off. Even now I am not, but I feel it. I feel that call to take to the bed and hide from the entire world. Why am I so upset? Why when the crisis is passed?

If I knew that, may be I could prevent this type of reaction. All I know is I need to spend more time on taking care of me. That means my mental health. That means my physical health. That also means my spiritual health. How though? I got to work a minimum of two gigs, home school a child, and keep a house when I am so done with everything. I don’t even care if no one else cares that I am done. I am just tired. I got to find the time to take care of me. I can’t go on hope, 3 hours of sleep, and coffee with ibuprofen no more.

I’m so tired.

Tags

sadness

In my home I am the only female surrounded by three males. My husband and my two sons also reside here. I am the only one working two jobs. I am the only one with my name on the bills. I am the only one that owns this home. I am responsible for everything and when people do things for or to themselves, I am the only one ever blamed.

My daughter wanted to get married at 17. Later, in revisionist land she said I made her get married. The truth of the mater is I didn’t say no, but I did ask if she was sure before the wedding. That marriage ended in divorce. I was blamed for that as well by the groom who was older than me. How I was responsible for ruining their marriage when my daughter came running to me bloodied and bruised and crying…I don’t know. I only did what any mother would do and offer her a warm place to stay while she figured out what she needed to do.

My other daughter wanted to date a boy. She forced the issue of moving in with him, as a means to force me to agree to let her get married, by threatening suicide. I refused to let her get married. She got pregnant thinking she would then have the right to get married in our state. When that failed, it was my fault she got pregnant. Why? Because I should have known she would get pregnant. Oh, well I guess I should have let her commit suicide then right?

My other daughter, my eldest, has repeatedly blamed me for things I had nothing to do with. I was working full time and going to school full time so she was home with her siblings and father while I earned an income. In my absence, she attacked her siblings. They fought back. They rightfully hate her to this day. Some how this is my fault. Yeah, I wasn’t even there so why don’t they blame the adult that was in charge?

My son is angry because I don’t want him to go to a girls house. He takes a little different tactic in saying that by refusing to allow him to have sex with this girl, he will end up doing it anyway and that will be my fault. Yeah. How it’s my fault what he does with his body parts is beyond me, but whatever.

Just now my husband pulled the same shit. He had a surgery done. He wanted it done for YEARS. It would have cost a fortune before we got health insurance. This surgery was to help his shoulder. I was very supportive of him getting the surgery as I knew it would improve his quality of life drastically. I have done everything in my power to work around his doctor appointments, make sure we had money for all his needs, took on a second job just to pay the bills since he will be unable to work, everything. Tonight he says he never wanted it done. He says I’m the one that made him get it done. Then he back peddled saying that isn’t what he meant.

I’m so done.

A few months ago I spoke about having a suicide note ready. I don’t even know why I made one. These people wouldn’t read it. All I am is a stepping stone for them to excuse their own decisions. I’m not a mom or wife. I’m a scape goat.

For the past few months, even when they see me crying, at my desk exhausted they just go on. They don’t even look up from their computer and phone screens. I am not talked to, I am shouted at. I am talked down to. I am treated like a slave. I am expected to clean, care for children, work two jobs, be everyone’s cook, and so much more. I can’t do it much longer. I can’t talk to anyone. Mental health services are a joke here and more likely to do more harm than good. Besides, it’s not me that is the problem. It’s my shit family. I wonder how they will survive and who they will blame when I am dead.

Work until the fingers bleed and work some more they say

Tags

life

When I was a child learning to write, my hands would bleed because I tried so much. I remember bringing my bloody ring finger on my right hand up to my teacher and crying it hurt. She told me it was good that it hurt and that meant my finger would grow a callus eventually. She put a band aid on my finger and told me to sit down and continue riding with my bloody finger. I was maybe 8 years old and I remember thinking people don’t care. It taught me an important lesson as I grew that most people really don’t care.

You can literally have a broken foot and be unable to walk, and your own flesh and blood will complain about having to carry things out of the vehicle to the house. Your children who are almost adults will refuse to do simple things like take out the trash, feed the animals, or carry the feed sacks even though they can clearly see that you can’t walk well. It’s disheartening. It feels like the past 20 years have been all for not. I could not stand to watch people suffer when I was a child. I was happy to help in what little way I could even if it wasn’t sufficient.

That isn’t to say that I don’t have my own little helper. I have had daughters who were very helpful but now they’ve moved out. I also have a son who is developmentally disabled who loves to help with certain tasks. He’s learning more every day how to do basic chores around the house and I appreciate his efforts. He has been extremely helpful when it comes to the animals lately. It is upsetting though when I see someone who is perfectly capable of doing many things and they’d rather argue. It reminds me of my teacher refusing to give me a break from writing even though I was bleeding from the appendage I needed to use to write. Arguing with my elder son, while wearing a cast, to carry things and him saying I could do it or you can – feels like he doesn’t understand how painful it is to walk on a broken foot or he doesn’t care.

I complain, but he has been helpful on certain things. I just don’t understand why someone can look at another person who is obviously hobbled and in pain, and not realize that it is difficult for them. Either way this is the least of my complaints to be honest.

I don’t know how it is where you live, but here in America it’s been difficult. Sure, gasoline prices have risen too insane levels but gasoline is higher in other countries. Also, we recently have had serious shortages of infant formula for infants that have milk allergies. My granddaughter is one of these children and she has had great difficulty in finding food. We even went so far as to take her to the pediatrician to get medicine so she could hold down regular formula. That didn’t work.

There’s another kind of difficulty happening right now though. I’m certain people in the UK can understand this difficulty most especially. Prices have risen two levels that haven’t been seen since I was an infant. People are working longer hours and getting less accomplished with the money they earn. I currently am working two jobs and my husband is barely working one due to his surgery. One of my jobs is full time, but it isn’t a W2 job, it is a 1099. It pays me better then most full time minimum wage jobs in my area. Even when I don’t work a full 8 hours in a day, I still make the equivalent of full-time minimum wage locally at this one gig. In addition to that, I work a second job which is also a 1099, and it pays me below minimum wage locally. Between the two jobs I by myself can bring in almost as much as my husband was making before he had the surgery. Now, with my two jobs and his job, we are having trouble paying the bills.

I’ve caught back up on some of the bills. I’ve made sure to pay the people I know personally. That means if you are some bank, credit card, or entity that doesn’t see me regularly, I still owe you money. I still owe some of the people I know personally money too, but not as much. Even though I’m catching up on the bills, as I catch up, the total amount monthly starts to raise. This is excluding all food, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, dog food, livestock feed, insulin, needles, and other medical needs. Our base of monthly bills have gone up by about 10% on average. As a result I have had to turn off certain utilities. Many of these were not essential as we had backups and are currently using those. We had to turn off an Internet provider which was our phone. We have turned off many streaming services months ago. We cut back on multiple education apps for our son. We are no longer driving very often since we work at home.

Another change that has occurred is we now get food from a food bank. This is in addition to my garden, chickens, and food my daughter passes my way. One of my elder daughters has a knack for finding free sources of food. When she finds a huge cache of food for free, she portions it out and saves certain items for me. Recently she brought over a gallon of milk, a pound of cheese, a box of cereal for her brothers, five bags of keto cheese puffs for me, and some sun nut butter since I’m allergic to peanuts. The cheese was used with my eggs from my chickens for breakfast and the milk was used with my coffee throughout the day. The keto cheese puffs ended up being my lunch for a week. The son nut butter was used with crackers for a snack. Her brothers also had cereal and milk every day this week thanks to her.

Our garden is not producing very well. The weather has been very cold, wet, and windy. It’s so cold and wet we had an orphan kitten show up on our porch half dead. We tried to find the mother to no avail. Currently the kitten sits in our home warm and dry eating little bits of meat that we found.

I feel like I’m being crushed

This is more of a personal blog. Everything is coming to a head and I’m not able to meet deadlines or the needs of my family. I’ve had a broken foot since April 24th of 2022. My husband got surgery yesterday for a torn rotator cuff. What was supposed to be a 45 minutes surgery roughly turned into a four hour surgery because the doctor said it looked like he had a bomb go off in his arm. So now me with my broken foot and my husband with his incapacitated arm must find a way to survive in an insanely high inflationary period. We are a month and a half behind on the bills because my husband hasn’t been able to have work and I just started work a week before I broke my foot. I have been working through the broken foot without pain pills and often long hours. I like my new job but it only pays once a month, so I haven’t had a full month’s pay yet. My husband’s work meanwhile has gone to zero.

On top of all of this, we have two children at home still. We also have numerous animals that need cared for daily and despite the fact that we have children, I still have to do that sometimes. We have several gardens that still need to be put in if we’re going to have fresh food this year or food at all if prices keep rising. My 16 year old son is applying for a program which will help him get into college, but he will be gone which means everything falls on my shoulders since his little brother is developmentally delayed. It’s a really hard time right now.

I’m very talented in writing, art, storytelling, and generally arts. I can always craft something, draft up a solution or idea list… I guess what I’m getting at is my entire life I have always found creative solutions to the problems at hand. When I was a kid my favorite thing to say was, “there’s gotta be a loophole somewhere.” I still think like this actually. I’m starting to feel like there isn’t a loophole, so much as a noose ever tightening around my neck. I can work 12 hours a day at my various jobs, in between clean up the house and cook, then go out and take care of the animals to some degree, and at the end of the day I still haven’t finished everything. I feel like everything is on my shoulders. Although I do feel that way, I don’t feel alone, just a lonely worker.

When we were dirt poor during Obama’s administration, I had six children that I had to feed, educate, clothe, and direct all day long. I also had to work 12 hours a day then just to put food on the table or pay the light bill. My husband was able to help in so much as he handled the animals and kept the children out of my hair while I was working. However, the children themselves did a lot of the work. Planting a garden with two adults and six children, while absolute chaos and nerve wracking never ending arguing, it got finished in a day even if it was twice the size of our current garden. Now planting a garden with 1 1/2 people and needing all four to be on task, it feels sorry lonely and overwhelming.

As an example, I typically can’t afford to buy more than $20 to $40 in groceries a week when my husband is working. Since he hasn’t been able to work due to various reasons, not just health, we have not been able to buy food. That doesn’t mean I haven’t bought food. That means I haven’t paid the trash guy in two months or the Internet in two months so I could buy food. It means that when I’m done with this, I will work until 2:00 o’clock in the morning on a terrible gig site talking to people about their problems for less than $9 an hour and I may not even be paid if the site operator doesn’t feel I did a good enough job. Last week I wasn’t paid because they didn’t like that I didn’t log on for 10 or more hours a week. They are the lowest paying gig I have in my rolodex of gigs and I only do it when I absolutely need money quick. This gig in particular is about one step above mechanical Turk and I used to do that for grocery money during the Obama administration. So this past week we didn’t get groceries or gasoline and my husband had to have surgery.

I drove him up to the doctor’s office knowing full well that we would not have enough to drive home. I expected my paycheck to be deposited into my account by the time I got to the doctor’s office because it always was in the past. When I got there I found out that they were not going to pay me. They had arbitrarily decided that unless you work a certain number of hours in a given week you don’t get your pay until you work those hours in a week. This is a 1099 job by the way, which this should be illegal to do to me. So now I was stranded 60 some odd miles from my house, my husband was in a very complicated surgery that was supposed to be easy, I have no Internet or cell phone data because I can’t afford it, and my 16 year old and 13 year old are at their sister’s house awaiting news about their father. Let’s not forget I’d still have to find a way to get him medicine with no money for after the surgery. To say I was angry is an understatement and these jerks have the nerve to try and call me into work after they refused to pay me and I told them I needed my pay to get home. I am beholden to them at this point in time because I need money for food and animal feed and medicine and bandages for my husband.

In a panic I texted everyone I know, once I found a public Wi-Fi hotspot. There was not a huge outpouring of support since everyone else is going through crap too, but one of my daughters was able to come help. Due to my broken foot, driving is very difficult and I almost wrecked. When I told her the situation, she drove to find me and said she would drive me home until she saw the gas gauge and the fact we were on empty. Unfortunately she was broke too and I couldn’t just abandon my truck where it was. I ended up asking for help from friends and they paypaled me enough for gas home. The utter embarrassment, of having to publicly state, hey I am stranded because I didn’t get paid…I can not describe.

That was yesterday. It only gets worse from here…send prayers folks. Some of us aren’t doing alright.

Sleep

It’s time to go to bed my love,
it’s to go to sleep,
it’s time slumber off,
into the deep deep deep.

I feel I gave away my love,
every part of me,
to have it thrown away my love,
and so now I weep.

As I lay my head down now,
on the cool pillow top,
the moon starts to peek out,
and my eyes begin to drop.

I feel like I have nothing love,
no reason can I see,
to continue to the next day love,
so I’ll just stay asleep.

* I sleep a lot due to depression now….alot.

I made a suicide note tonight

I composed it in an email,
it sits in my draft,
it’s got 5 email addresses,
and one more to add,
I didn’t hit send yet,
I don’t know if I will,
if I do you can bet,
no one would read it still.

Watching the lights go out

Tags

love, sadness, sickness

For the past two years, I have watched as my normally loving and attentive husband has slowly dimmed. He has reacted slower. He is tired most of the time. He can still hold down his job, but it’s usually followed by a nap, dinner, another nap, an hour of playing video games, and bed. He’s 46. My 65 year old grandfather didn’t nap this much and he worked full time at a foundry. He is in pain, can barely walk most days, and generally seems to be unable to enjoy life. He is breaking down and he is only 46. This is roughly 21 years after we first got together.

We have taken him to doctors appointments and ran tests…nothing seems to be wrong. He is slow to respond now. He is not on any medication, but it’s like life just stopped flowing through his veins as fast. For the first time in at least a decade, I stay up later, do more, am faster, and generally get more done. It’s having a profound effect upon me. He even smells different now. (Don’t ask a woman just knows)

Psychologically, my mind sees death creeping in. Although I am young enough to move on, there is no way in hell I am ready to. I cry just thinking these thoughts. He reassures me he is fine…but he’s not. You can tell. He gets winded getting up to go to the bathroom. He hurts sitting down in his office chair. He gets exhausted from making himself a sandwich. My heart is breaking. I catch myself on the verge of tears everytime I hear him groan in pain, every time he falls asleep in his chair unable to finish his food, and every time he says he will do something for our family “once he has more energy”. The more energy never comes, but he doesn’t see it.

I am trying to prepare my heart for what I know. Something is profoundly wrong and the doctors are not doing anything to help. If something isn’t fixed soon…I’m afraid I will lose him. He is my very best friend, my confidant, my partner in everything, the one person in this world I have been able to trust…losing him will be like losing my ground. It will be like losing reality. It will be like drifting at sea once again.

Oddly, I think he knows something is wrong, because he keeps pushing me to dress up, reach out to old boyfriends, look at myself in the mirror, etc. He teases me when other men pay attention and says, “there’s one for you.” He doesn’t understand I only want him, or maybe it’s his way of trying to prepare me for something he knows that he can’t say. This Christmas, I have never felt so alone. I was surrounded by his family, but all I could see was how he struggled to keep up. He slept the entire 3 hour drive there and the entire 3 hour drive home. Then he went to bed immediately after we got home. He is helping me take care of my own needs like giving myself shots for my diabetes. He has alarms set to remind me because “I can’t always remind you.” Suddenly, he wants me to be very independent. I don’t mind that, but the timing is very suspect since he never even wanted me to feel like I had to be independent before. He tells me, “I’m not going anywhere, I just may not be the same as I always was…”

My heart is breaking! It’s like suddenly he is just powering down or his batteries are dying and they don’t hold a charge as well. You know how as a phone gets older they need to charge longer just to work for a shorter amount of time? That’s what is happening with him and he’s only 46. It’s like watching his light go out.

But slowly….

I will never find another person on earth, real, imagined, natural or artificial that can ever replace him. I don’t know if I can make it if he goes. My heart won’t be able to go on…

Loving your enemies and being thankful

Tags

Love thy enemies, thankfu, thankful, Thanksgiving

It is that month of the year where everyone has that list posted daily on their Facebook about what they are thankful for today. It’s cute, but it’s also not as in depth as I want to go today. Being thankful for your enemies…what? Ok, to be fair, enemies might be a bit harsh or a stretch. I actually love every single person that I will speak about in this post, in some form or fashion. However, almost every single one taught me a very harsh lesson either through their actions or indirectly and for the most part we no longer speak. Hence, why I am thankful for having had them in my life. Without the lessons they provided, I’m almost 100% certain I would be dead right now. As a matter of policy, I never use real names of course, but two dimensional characters that describe in a very exaggerated way some feature of those I am referencing. Now don’t think I am going to down a bunch of people or be snide…I sincerely mean what I am typing.

I am thankful for Patricia, my eldest daughter, for teaching me how to be a mother to little ones and giving me a reason to keep breathing. For really, real, even though I can not for the life of me get along with her or appreciate the person she has become, she was a very important part of me having a reason to keep going at just 16 years old when I had her. She was the funniest little person and I absolutely adored her chubby cheeks and dimples. Sometimes, I wish life turned out different for us.

My mother that used me to be her personal paycheck in anyway she could use me, I am thankful that in spite of the hell you put me through I managed to survive and live long enough to not hate you. I understand we can all be selfish and we have our demons. Some of us are just stronger against them. I am not perfect either, but because of your example of how not to be, I did improve on what you offered.

My ex-husband, that before his untimely death in 2014, showed me that he really did care in spite of everything we had been through. A man that tried at the end to be what he was supposed to be. He fought his demons bravely. I am sad to share that I could not help him fight his demons without losing the battle to my own. Now I understand, you can love a person and still do terrible things to them while you are with them.

My ex-fiancé, the Prince. You tried so damn hard to give me the world and all I wanted was your time. If a man ever loved a woman more, I will never know. Unfortunately, we were two lions in a relationship. I seeing you as my equal, not my superior. This lead to many disagreements. Thank you for trying to give me a long life filled with the splendors of the world, but my heart is tamed by time and patience like most wild animals. Any domesticated woman would have seen what you were offering. All I saw was how you seemed to always be gone and how much I wish I could be by your side day and night every minute of every hour. Thank you for trying…I will never forget the many gifts of memories that you have given me for as long as I live. I understand now why you were gone and my heart is at peace with it.

The Queen, mother of the prince, a woman of no equal. Indeed the wisest woman I have ever met. I have no reason to lie about this as we haven’t spoken for a decade at least. Thank you for educating me on numerous things that to this day are important to my daily life. Many of the medical educational instructions, the historical, and so much more I have held in my heart grateful to have forever. I share my wisdom, imparted by you, with my children. It is with a heavy heart that we do not communicate. I know that your duties are many and your free time few. I pray God smiles on you in your last days.

I have been at odds with every single person I mentioned at least once and none of them do I speak to now. They have all taught me valuable and beautiful lessons. Love thy enemies…who would be the greatest enemy than the one you love that harms you? None the less, I do love them and thank God for each and every one every single day for what they have imparted on me.

How much does it break your heart to see the kids you grew up with and what life has done to them?

When you are young, your best friend, your cousin, all of your playmates all seem happy. Life is full of promise. Life holds possibilities. Then with just four decades under my belt I see how that promise of happiness, fulfillment, family, and joy can be ripped away in an instant or even worse a slow grind over decades of hellish isolation. My heart breaks for most of my playmates. The children I spent my most tender years with, for the most part, have tales of woe in adulthood far worse than I could endure.

One lost a child to abuse by the other parent and then a sister to an abusive boyfriend. Another loses twenty years in a relationship that is better described as a prison. Another loses their life to addictions. Still another dies in a tragic accident no one could have seen coming. So many are now gone or lost to the world. So many have had their dreams and joy stolen. So many….

Tonight I reflect on their sacrifices.

This is how I fight

When walking into the forest clearing,
following spirits near me,
listening close to their whispers,
I must do as they bid sir.

Even as I lay my hand down,
this too is a symbol of the crown,
never falter my heavy gaze,
as I watch through morning haze.

You come at me confused,
demanding answers to a ruse,
concocted by your superior,
to draw my heart closer to war…
and I give in.

That was then.

That was a hot and breathy time,
filled with anguish and lies,
yours not mine…
unintentional perhaps,
but bright as sunlight.

You glow…
and you wanted me to shine.

However, from the darkness,
do I serve the light.

Now my heart is steeled,
and my experience real,
having brought forth from the forest,
through a drought and blizzard,
some of the littlest,
creative creatures.

“You can’t save them,” they said.
They lied.
Unintentional perhaps,
but bright as sunlight.

They glow,
and they wanted me to die.

However, from the darkness,
do I serve the light.

This is a long war,
one that wasn’t worth fighting for…
what will you have gained in sum,
if you are to be the one,
that’s won.

I will not bow.
I will not cave.
I will endow,
the creatures
with knowledge of your and my ways.

I have since they breathed life,
every second of every day,
out of the sunlight,
in the forest tucked away.

There was just one warrior you had to beat,
but now there’s more,
and more,
and more…
in the deep,
deep,
sleep.

This is how I fight.

From the darkness,
I serve the light.

Introspection

I complain an awful lot about others on this blog, because I usually don’t say anything about others and what I think to humans. Like the blog says, the loud thoughts of someone that keeps them locked up. The thoughts are loud because I don’t express them. Polite society dictates that certain things just are not said, not even at a whisper to your best friend, period. This blog provides a little tiny bit of anonymity or at least it did. It does not in fact do that any more. I am saddened by that honestly, but I stand by what I have written.

It has taken me some time to re-examine my life. I usually do this every 5-10 years. Most people do it more often. I tend not to because I have a lot of garbage in my past to sift through, and I prefer to leave it there. Why wallow in a past that can not be changed? However, the recent past isn’t anywhere near as horrific. It is however full of mistakes I have made.

I am a human and I need to remember that others are human too. It’s hard for me to do that because such high standards have been expected of me at every turn, excluding my family, so I put the same standards on others and I hate that. I am a hypocrite. I hate when others criticize without adding at least one compliment, and yet what do I do? The very same. I noticed when my daughter opened her store that at first I was very critical of every way she chose to do things. When I noticed it, I took a step back and breathed. It’s not my store, I told myself. After that, I refrained from criticizing anything at all, but offered praise when I thought she did something right. It has fundamentally changed our relationship for the better.

She is happier and glad I am proud of her for trying at least. I don’t think she’s quite got the formula for success down yet, but I am waiting breathlessly for her eventual rise.

It’s not that I don’t want to improve as a human being. I do. I think too much is put on people to improve though. We shouldn’t expect people to want to improve at all. We should believe that those which do are exceptional. I think, if you look at the human race as a whole, this statement is true. However, what I consider improvement may not be the same as what you consider improvement. For an addict, going one day without a drug is an improvement. For me, going one day without being cross at someone is an improvement. We have to meet folks where they are without the name calling and temper tantrums I have so often seen associated with the so called enlightened here.

Notice I said I myself get cross daily with people, but usually I am capable of holding off a full blown temper tantrum…if only barely. The root of the problem is not just my outward actions though. Being angry at someone but not showing it is not that much of an improvement. Letting go of anger is a masterful improvement. That is what I aim to do, but I expect it to take a lifetime to master.

Accused of selling out my friend/ex

Tags

break ups, love, relationship

I was accused of selling out my friend/ex to “save myself” from I guess embarrassment, shame, or some sort of emotional repercussion. In what manner, I know not…but I wish to address this. The only mediums I use to talk about my friends or family is either directly to them or via the internet under falsified names and aliases. The person that made these accusations has never been directly referenced by name or even an assumed name on this blog.

In fact, they have been referenced only as vague characters made very two dimensional so as to make them appear unreal. That is to say, unless you are that person knowing very specific phrases spoken or very specific events that transpired, the reader wouldn’t even think it was based on a real life situation. The truth is everything I write about is very real and the people are very real.

I however, maintain a personal policy of keeping those people private by using aliases or writing in such a way it seems it is just a fictional story without names used at all. I do this because, first no one would believe who I was writing about half the time if I did name drop. Second, I hate name droppers. Third, I think it’s the height of self aggrandization at the expense of others to build an audience. Fourth, if I am going to do a tell all piece, it will be a book that TELLS ALL…thought I doubt it would make much money as I haven’t the evidence needed to solidify the past…but it would clear my conscious quite a bit. Fifth…what arrogance to think I need to soil another to do well. Sixth, what exactly would I get from it? I have made ZERO from this blog and in general, I have benefitted very little since my departure from this person’s life from knowing him. I will not say nothing, because I will forever hold the memories, but it’s not like we even talk anymore really.

I have been accused of “not fighting for” this person and “running away”…I don’t run. I do refuse to fight for a man’s affection especially if he claims to want my hand in marriage. I shouldn’t have to share my husband with anyone. I am not an “open marriage” kind of gal. I never have been. I deserve better than that, especially if I was to meet the standards expected of me after the marriage. He wanted to claim I have no self respect? Any woman that would grovel for the honor of being by his side for one more night has no self respect. Nor should I have to fight for his attention from other women. Why would I fight for the affections of someone that claims they love me? Is that really love or desperation? And if he does love me, why on earth would his attention be anywhere but me? I can love a man from 2000 miles away just as well as in his bed, because love is of the heart not the loins. If you love someone, you should be able to control your loins and even your tongue when need be so as not injure them. I didn’t run away. I chose peace.

I chose the peace of knowing my worth, which is not to question my value according to the one human being I pledged to share the rest of my life with until death and even to sacrifice myself for should the need arise. I chose the peace of knowing no disease would befall me due to infidelity. I chose the peace of knowing my children would never call another Mommy while I was still married to their father or be placed in awkward situations with his mistress. I chose the peace of knowing that my body, health, and mental happiness is valuable to my mate, so much so, he is willing to curb his desires to keep me happy. (This goes both ways) I chose the peace of simplifying my life by leaving drama behind.

Oh but, I have no self respect because I chose a poor man. Why do I need a man to support me? He claimed to want an independent strong woman, but when he had one, it damn near broke him. He was right, I didn’t need saved. I never did need to be saved. I wanted to share my life with him, to spend all of my time with him. Time, the only resource you never get more of and you can never spend again. Given that doctors said I wouldn’t be on this earth as long as I HAVE been, that resource is even more precious. Yet, he wouldn’t spend his time with me. How could I have stayed and not devalued myself and thrown my dignity away? How would staying with him have given me self respect?

The “respect” he spoke of is no such thing. It is prestige more properly understood. Standing or respect from others. No self respect would be gained by our union, respect by others. I never craved the respect of faceless others. My family? Yes. My mate? Yes. Yes, even him when he was my mate. I did seek to have him look upon me with approval, but often found that elusive. However, in general standing among the populace, which is what prestige is…NO. I could not care less what the vast majority of the masses believe is worthy of respect, because often the “wisdom” of the crowd is anything but that.

So all of these accusations, in my opinion, are angry twisted opinions foisted on me, because he was scorned…possibly for the first time ever in his life, by a woman that was “beneath” him in her station. He assumed I would be grateful for a life of material luxury, enough, to over look my entire childhood’s training about what makes a good mate, because I lacked basic material needs. (I did honestly. Finances have been a struggle, but it is for everyone isn’t it?) My needs, that I desperately needed at that time more than fancy clothes or cars, was to be shown I was valuable. The most valuable thing to me is time. All he had to do was spend his time with me without being irritated by my every word or lack of words! Yes, he even got angry because I didn’t speak. It’s so simple.

There is literally a world FULL of “gold diggers”, as my son calls them, and when he meets a woman that isn’t, it upsets him! Why? I was a mystery. He didn’t know how to get me to do what he wanted. He didn’t understand the base from which I operated out of, nor where my moral compass pointed. He even admitted he prefers to be around greedy people because they are easier to control. I bet he still doesn’t understand from which point of view I operate. Bless his soul. He wanted to save me from poverty, but miscalculated what my poverty truly was and failed to do so because of that. He wanted to be like the prince in snow white…a kiss and happily ever after snow white wakes up and all is well. She is magically transported from her poor forest dwelling cottage to a castle and lives happily ever after. Except, I like my forest cottage.

I didn’t like how my parents threw me away and I didn’t like how many men that wanted to date me expected me to be “thirsty” for them as the kids call it. I didn’t like having to lower myself for others. I have a real problem with that to this day. I am kind of an asshole about that. It’s a huge sticking point for me to the point I would literally rather die than lower myself to others unless it means I will save an innocents life. Yeah, that serious.

When you spend your life getting stomped on by everyone and treated as worse than the dirt on someone’s shoe because of stupid crap like your biological father isn’t 100% white, you tend to tell people to piss off when they even smell like they want you to be beneath them. I don’t care how much I love someone, I’m selfish like every human, I love myself more. That means, unless I love you a lot and you are about to die if I don’t lower myself…you will get over it if I don’t. I will not capitulate though. I will not devalue myself so that I can marry someone that wants to be with other people, but will pay me handsomely in a very materially wealthy life. How rich are you if you can’t “afford” to spend the night with your fiancé? How rich are you if you can’t have a peaceful home life because of lustful or angry behavior? Richness can be defined in terms of money, but it can also be defined in terms of quality of life like a peaceful relationship with mutual respect and shared goals along with shared expectations of behavior.

All I am saying is this…if I sold him out, it would be front page news and I wouldn’t be making less than 10k a year from a gig job just to make enough to pay the bills that aren’t covered by other employment. I don’t need anyone to get a mate, job, or anything I truly want. I am disgusted that he would think I would use someone in that way, when it should be beyond obvious I have done everything in my power to avoid such behavior and to protect his integrity to this day even though I am starting to wonder why. Furthermore, what arrogance to think I am such a victim to need him for finding a mate. My current husband knew me ages ago and doesn’t give a fig who I dated previously. If anything, he is scared witless I would leave him for my ex since most women would seek out the more financially secure man. That wasn’t my intentions. Hell, I kept my ex a secret until he LITERALLY showed up to announce himself to my current husband and children.

I barely kept my cool with my ex’s less than charming reply to me running enthusiastically to him and calling him by my pet name. My reaction, or rather lack of a violent reaction to my ex’s jerk response, still angers my husband to this day. Because my husband knows I would have been beyond angry if he had done that to me and he also knows I temper my behavior for those I love. He is jealous because he perceived it as I loved my ex more than him, yet here I am still by his side. I love my husband in a different way than my ex. It isn’t better or worse, it’s just different. Once you love someone, you never truly stop. You just learn to live without them. So I couldn’t even hide my feelings in front of my husband when my ex well and truly pissed me off because I still could not be mean to my ex though he deserved it. Oh, but I sold him out and I ran away. Lord help me…lord help me.

What fresh hell does come home to roost

Tags

Afghanastan, article 25, balkanization, country living, military, peace, revolution, sadness, secede, USA, war

I have been busy with my home cleaning, canning, and gardens of late, but watching the news cycle in tid bits has exhausted my emotions.  First, as I sit here a quarter till midnight, surrounded by paperwork as usual, I must commend my husband on actually helping.  He has “mowed” almost ten acres, tilled a full acre, and helped me with canning numerous jars of food.  He has also helped with the housework.  That is something he typically doesn’t do often, but given his work gave him time off…because they didn’t have any hours…he decided to be helpful.  Thank heavens he was because I was sinking.  

We live a pretty isolated and quiet life in rural America.  We have four neighbors on our street now.  When we moved in 17 years ago there were two.  A lot of large acreage used for cattle has been put up for sale in several acre lots to move people in.  Some of our neighbors are decent people.  Some, I’m not sure of yet, but everyone seems to try and get along on my street by keeping to themselves.  We enjoy the typical rural American pastimes like gardening, sewing, raising a few gentle animals, flower photography, reading books, and playing games with our children and grandchildren.  Yes, we have grandchildren now.  We have a comfortable life even if we are considered “poor” by national standards.  

We have always had want for great healthcare since moving here, but we both realized that rural areas have less than ideal access to those things when we moved here.  I have had to make some great improvisions in caring for my family over the years in the area of healthcare and to this day I have to improvise on major things like insulin dosing, blood pressure meds, and when to treat an infection.  Notice I didn’t say when to see a doctor.  I follow the very old standard of triage that is used for mass casualty events.  If you can not treat it outside of a hospital due to a lack of equipment, testing, or surgery theater, then you see a doctor.  My doctor probably hates this about me.  I literally had internal bleeding in April and refused to do much until I was puking over it and only then because my family rushed me in.  Then again, they did nothing except pain meds and nausea meds for me anyway.  (Kinda makes my point about not seeing a doctor pretty valid)

We live by many standards a “poor” life.  

I don’t feel poor though.

I live in a place where when I step outside, I see green everywhere.  I see sunflowers.  I hear song birds early in the morning, dogs barking through the night letting me know that they will keep me safe, children laughing in the afternoon, and the hum of a refrigerator in the evening.  I have clean water, electricity, a phone, a cell phone, a computer that makes me money, internet, and many clients to keep me employed.  I can see a doctor when I have internal bleeding and if I didn’t like what they said, I actually have the means to drive to a hospital that would more than likely have the capacity to do something more than pain meds.

I have numerous tools to can, sew, build, grow, etc..  I have a library that rivals the old library in my town.  No, it’s not all e-books either.  I have children that do adore me.  In fact, one just called on a dare to see if I would answer…and sure enough I did.  She called just to see if I would be there and I was the only parent of a 20 something that did.  She was so happy.  The look on her face is worth her weight in gold.  I have grandchildren that ask to see me regularly, enjoy my cooking, love the toys and clothes I make, and ask for me when I am not there.  I have a peaceful life for the most part.  I live so far out that few if any people stop by my door unless it is the little neighbor girl that loves riding bikes with my son or the local minister to make sure we are “alright”.  I have a home that so long as I pay the $500 to $700 in taxes annually, I can live in.  I have what so many people in life dream of…and yet I am called poor.  

What I see on the news cycle though is true poverty…and I hate that it is my country that seems to have caused it.  Children desperately cling to planes as they take off because they are so afraid of the Taliban.  Women being kidnapped and God only knows what happened to them.  American citizens being killed and our government deserting them like cowards whilst other countries save their citizens and OURS!  (Thank you by the way)  I am only poor now, because my country deserted it’s allies, abandoned it’s countrymen, and gave weapons to our enemy that WE THE PEOPLE are not allowed to own.  The same enemy by the way that they said we all had to be spied on for, tracked for, and humiliated every time we flew for…the very same.  Paid for by the way with my money that was taken out of my pocket, out of the mouths of my children for my entire adult life and their entire childhoods, so that we could do this?  The anger I feel…is minimal compared to my cohorts.  The accountability I want is docile compared to my compatriots.  My peers, my peers would be satisfied with blood…and I just want justice to prevail.  

Neither want shall be quenched until action is taken and that action doesn’t look to be in the works at all.  The lack of action will build, the anger will swell, and the anguish as we labor under inhumane conditions moving forward due to this administration and the previous (yeah, I said that) will take most people from just being angry and wanting blood to being willing to act.  Between the wars, our allies refusing to work with us (with good reason ya’ll), the absolute slap in the face of every soldier that died over the past 20 years (MY GENERATION), the insane monetary deficits, international actors moving to simultaneously get out of the swift system and dump treasuries, and so much more…America will begin to resemble Venezuela by 2025.  As inflation rises by 3-5% monthly now and the dollar falls, people like me will truly be money poor on top of the insane military misadventure, insane cultural dictatorial mandates, and the insane monetary policy all headed by a man that is not of a sound enough mind to actually run a country like this.  

I am not so foolish as to believe that he is running the country either.

Add to this the “covid” hysteria, discrimination and outright fascism, for a covid variant that is less deadly overall for younger and healthy people than the vaccine according to many professionals including my own doctor.  The American people are under attack and have been for the past twenty years by some of the very people we call our “leaders”.  

I take a sip of my coffee and breathe in deeply.  

I am not in a position at this time to do much to change this.  When I was younger, faster, “with it” more…perhaps…but now…I doubt I would affect much change by myself.  Even still the change I want is simple accountability…people arrested and taken to trial for their actions or lack of proper action.  Justice is all I ask for, the same justice that would be applied to me if my decisions killed an entire generation’s worth of our best and brightest.  I don’t want lawlessness, anarchy, violence, or descent into madness on a society wide level…and without justice THAT is what we shall reap.  

We should start with impeachment hearings.  Perhaps article 25 of the Constitution.  If the federal government refuses to act, then pressure state governments to secede.  Barring that, there is a convention of the states we could try.  SOMETHING MUST BE DONE TO APPEASE THE BLOOD THIRST I HEAR TALKED ABOUT OPENLY TO KEEP THE THREADS OF SOCIETY TOGETHER.  An impeachment hearing is nothing too much to ask for compared to what will happen in times moving forward, as things get worse, and the people have nothing left to lose.

Again, like I said, I am not poor.  I have plenty to lose.  I have a lovely peaceful life that is on land that nurtures me…and even without much money, I could still pay the basic bills and taxes (thus far) to continue to live peacefully.  I want a peaceful, boring life.  My leaders, doing what they are to destroy America and denying justice to the people, puts that peaceful life in jeopardy.  So much so, it warrants me to appeal to their conscience to do something.  I know I will not be the only American to do so…either.  I just hope that we who want a peaceful solution can get through to those in power before the patience of those that want blood runs out.  I pray that if they do not heed our calls for a peaceful solution, that I can stay out of the way of the blood thirsty as they attack our tyrants.  I pray also that the tyrants that ignored our pleas for peaceful solutions can not.

I’m not a nice person

I’m not a nice person. I will be civil. I will play peacemaker. I will even back up anything I say in a debate or argument with facts and links to those facts if necessary. I’m not nice though. I’m not gonna go out of my way to make you smile or make your day easier. I’m not going to back down from an opinion that I believe is right to make your life easier.

What gets under my skin is when people call me wrong and they don’t care what facts from government entities or authorities I have to back it up. I can give you links all day about certain vaccines that have reactions and someone will call me an anti vaxxer even if the National Institutes of Health agree with me. But to sit here and say it’s misinformation or a lie when I can cite scientific papers from our own government is not just disingenuous. It’s a straight up lie and it’s an assault on my person. It’s an assault on my character.

I’m sick and tired of trying to tell people things and having uninformed or misinformed third parties butt their nose is in and call me a liar. I’m tired of people shutting down conversations with just repeating that I’m a liar instead of listening to things that are supported by multiple other people or agencies. This is a typical tactic of certain political parties here in the United States and it does nothing to improve the national discord or unity. In fact, I believe that this is meant to build more discord and disunity. Not only have they stolen the language and renamed things, made symbols for things that used to be innocent childhood things, but now when you do use their own language against them with authorities backing you up, they shut you down. It’s disgusting.

That’s OK. I was born for this. I have been arguing since the moment I could speak. I have been rebelling since before I knew what the word meant. I have been hated by my own mother because I refuse to kowtow. I have lost untold amount of money and friendships because I refused to bow down. I don’t think these children who can’t accept an argument even when you use a language that they understand are gonna break me in a second. I think I’ll break them first. after all, I have more experience with being an asshole.

I’m 42 years old and I own my own home. I went from being a homeless teenager that was abused to a very small business owner and homeowner. I don’t mean I own a mortgage, I mean I own it. I had a hard way to grow. I have done better than anyone else in my family as well. I am the only one with a college degree in my family. No, they don’t give a damn either. In fact, because I am so stubborn and I have repeatedly decided to go my own way, they don’t talk to me. That’s because after a decade and some change they realized I wasn’t gonna change, no matter what they threatened against me.

The kind of people we need right now are those stubborn old mules like me to take on these young idiots. I’m not a boomer. My mother was a boomer and my father was a boomer, but I’m not. I’m somewhere between Gen X and millennial. I believe they called us the Oregon Trail generation or Xennials. Either way, my generation has to be one of the most stubborn generations that exists. We’re not as big as the echo boomers which would be millennials. We’re not as tech savvy as Generation Z. In fact, I’m raising Generation Z right now. I also raised some very late millennials because I decided to have kids for a very long time. You ask anyone, I will take suffering just to prove my point… Ask my daughter. She’ll tell you I’d rather cut off my own leg if I’m right than admit I’m wrong when I have proof I’m right.

People like to say that stubborn folks like myself that don’t like the touchy whiny feely crap are part of the problem. We have no introspection. We have no empathy. No, we have no bandwidth. The young people, children to me, don’t seem to understand that everything requires bandwidth. Going to school requires a certain amount of bandwidth and working does as well. And, not to date myself, when people are younger they can handle massive amounts of bandwidth easier. Not to mention the world we grew up in, my generation, wasn’t nearly as complex as the world I currently live in. This means that every day I exist requires more bandwidth inherently due to the complexity that has been woven into everyday life unintentionally through technological means. I’m sick of wasting my bandwidth on bullshit. It’s my bandwidth. It’s my mental energy and I get to do with it what I want. That means if you wanna whine and cry about how hard your life is, I get to tell you go do it to someone else.

You don’t have a right to my mental energy or arguments. You don’t have a right to my sympathy or empathy. In fact, I’d go so far you don’t have a right to talk to me unless I allow it. So you can block me all you want to it doesn’t hurt my feelings. You can censor what I say even and that doesn’t hurt my feelings. However to challenge me on facts and then me to spend my mental energy to try and educate you with links and experience only to be told La La La La la as you stick your fingers in your ears, is a great waste of my time and yours. I’m closer to the end of my time so maybe I’m a little bit more sensitive about wasting it. So, when you come back asking For more information or arguing with me, I don’t have to continue that argument. I don’t have to answer you. I can block you. I can send you nasty grams too if I feel like it. Usually, I just go do my own thing because I have a lot of other things to do besides argue with children. My generation is running the world. We’re the ones listening to people arguing for gay rights, people arguing for trans rights, and arguing for minority rights. We were the ones who started this 20 years ago. I guarantee you are overstaying you’re welcome with how far your rhetoric is going with my generation.

People expect too much

Tags

childhood, expectations, Expecting, hard, survival

People expect too much in general. However, I think that people expect too much of their parents. Now I say this as someone whose mother abandoned her multiple times, tried to marry me off at 12, and then tried to take my child from me when I was 16 years old. I complain about my mother and many would say I have a reason to. However, I have done everything in my power to be nothing like my mother towards my children and they still have complaints. I sit here and wonder would I have complaints if my mom was a normal mom? I think I would. There would be some little thing that would drive me nuts about my mom even if she didn’t do all those terrible things.

I look back on my life and think about all the hours I sacrificed working, all the time I spent trying to teach my children, and all the hours and days stressed about how to put food on the table. I think about how when I didn’t have enough money for food, I grew it. When they got older, I had them help me grow their own food so they would know where food comes from and their children hopefully would never go hungry. I canned, froze, jellied, and pickled everything I could. On top of growing the food and preserving it, I of course cooked it, and I ran a small business at home for 12 to 18 hours a day. Throughout my day while working and cooking, I took time to give them short lessons and schoolwork. At the end of the day if I had time while sitting waiting for clients to call me, I either mended their clothes or sewed them new clothing. My entire existence was dedicated to their survival because we lived on such a tight budget. Before this, I was at school 12 hours a day and working outside the home. Starting my own business meant that we would have less money but I would get to see the children more often.

Although I did everything in my power to be a decent mom, never dropping them off at three years old at the playground to survive on their own, not taking them to their friend’s house and not coming back for a week, refusing to feed them for days never happened, and I also didn’t drive down a field road and drop them off in the middle of nowhere like my own mother. My mother set the bar pretty low though and didn’t give me the skills to integrate into society or to handle human interactions. I never did understand people and I still don’t. From my point of view I did everything I wish my mother had done for me. I worked long days to ensure they had their needs met, I never took a break, even when I was resting I was still sewing or cooking, and I did nothing for myself.

Twenty years of this has taken a toll on my health. I never ate healthy even before I had children. Before having children I typically would eat whatever I saw in large quantities or nothing for days and days. Part of this was due to my upbringing. There were weeks I didn’t eat as a child. When I finally got food again, I stuffed my face like I was going to die. This type of eating habit followed me into adulthood. I never exercise intentionally as a child either. Although I did get plenty of exercises it came in the form of running around trying to find food, hiding, and walking here and there to get resources to take care of myself. I never developed the intentional habit of taking care of myself and because I was basically thrown away, I never felt I deserved to be taken care of at all.

This is why right now I’m colliding with my children. No matter the hardship they always had their needs met. One can argue the standard that their needs were met would not be first world standards. I have had to keep fevers and check with just water before. However, I was there checking their temperature every 30 minutes to an hour and giving them sponge baths to cool them off before their temperatures got too high. When I was a kid, the only kind of medicine I had was to pray to God I lived after my grandmother passed. I only learned about this kind of medicine from the church and most people would not consider that medicine. When I was a child, if I spoke out of turn and I was in my mother’s care, I got backhanded so hard my lips would bleed. I still have scars on my mouth from getting back handed over three decades ago. When my children were spanked on their behind without so much as a red mark left behind, they called that abusive. Where I live that is not considered abuse. What I’m trying to say is I have no point of reference to understand how they can complain.

Let me explain some of their complaints. I make demands. I’m not nice. I sound aggressive. I don’t care about their feelings. At some point I want to just look at them and say I’m only human. I want to say I have been under so much pressure for so long and no matter what I do it’s not good enough. I have said that. I live with a constant fear in the back of my head that we won’t make it because I’ve spent so long scrounging to survive as a kid. I don’t have time for nice, I don’t have time to sit here and explain why something needs to be done three and four times, and I don’t have time for them to break down into tears because I asked them to do their chores and when they didn’t, I yelled at them. I don’t have time because a lot of the time, I have too much to do. Everyone expects me to answer all of their questions and help them with all of their chores and tell them when to do their chores every day on top of working two jobs, deciding what’s for dinner, making sure they get to their appointments, paying all the bills, and being the backup chore person when they don’t feel like doing it. I’m only human and humans wear out eventually. I’m getting tired.

I’m tired because I have dedicated my entire existence to them and I haven’t maintained my health. I tried to carve out a little me time the other day and was annoyed the entire time by my teenager. Then he gets angry at me today because I yelled at him for not giving me down time. I bought a bike to ride indoors, a stationary bike, and my teenager uses it for a clothes rack. The cat uses it as a scratching post. When I try to use it everybody has a fit because I’m in the way. I have to eat a very low carb diet due to diabetes and I have to eat at a set period of time. The diet and the times to eat have not changed in two years, yet every day I’m asked what I can eat and when I’m supposed to eat, and even when I tell them they ignore me so I have to go do that myself as well. Speaking of which, when I try to walk through my home I can’t because they have their crap thrown everywhere. So when I tried to go to the refrigerator to get my insulin I can’t because their boots are in the way and when I tried to make myself food twice a day I can’t because their garbage and dishes are in the way. When I yell at them to get their crap out of the way, throw away their garbage, and do some damn dishes, “ I mean”. I’m going to die if I don’t get my medicine and food on schedule and be yelling about it is mean.

I am thoroughly sick of being a mother to these types of human beings. I don’t want them to die or anything. I don’t even want them to leave my home. I just want them to grow up and gain some perspective. They would be mean to if their life flashed behind before their eyes every single time they tried to do anything for themselves. Oh, one more wonderful side effect of being the mother of these children and doing all I have done, they blame me for things other people have done. Let me explain, they have a sister which they all despise because she was very mean to them. While I was at work outside of the house, she would essentially torture them – from what they tell me anyway. When I came home, to be perfectly clear, they never told me anything was wrong, I never saw any marks, and my husband who was in charge never mentioned any fights or arguments. I did see there was tension between the siblings however and assumed it was typical sibling rivalry. Every time we get into an argument now, almost every child says it’s my fault that this eldest child was like this. Not like I raised her wrong so she ended up being a psychopath, but why didn’t you stop her type stuff. How could I stop her if they never told me? I asked them that and then they start making excuses for why they didn’t tell me. Instead of looking at it like oh, mom didn’t know so she couldn’t stop her. No instead they say that’s not my fault I was a child, and I was afraid, and you should have just psychically known.

This is what happens when you give everything to people and they expect you to be God like. I have never claimed to be God like. In fact I have told my children numerous times about the multiple screwups I’ve made throughout my life. Nonetheless, they assumed I would just know, just suck it in like osmosis. This is what I mean by people expect too much and let the record reflect that I think it’s ridiculous.