Chaos Attraction

Hitting My Limit

2005-07-26, 9:01 a.m.

Found this:

"Eve responds, "But aren't you sick of adjusting? I adjust to jobs I hate and my boyfriend losing it and my favorite band breaking up and my rent increasing. Circumstances change and I get disappointed and so I adjust and make do with less. I don't know if I can handle fifty more years of it. I can't afford to lose that much more."

Silas reassures her, "There's wonder still in store for you. Life isn't all a downward slope."

I have to say...not feeling that these days.

I'm tired of having a fine weekend (got some metalsmithing done at the CC, went swimming, went dancing, tra la la) get ruined by the mandatory Sunday night phone call of Doom.

The topics are always the following:
(a) Crazy Grandma continues to be crazy and refuses to get help.
(b) Auntie Dolores is being a clueless bitch.
(c) What new ailment Dad has gotten in the last 2 days (this time: pneumonia). Oh, and it now takes FOUR hours to feed him. And he doesn't want a feeding tube.
(d) Janelle isn't doing too well.
(e) Neither is Aunt Helen.
(f) Who Mom knows that got cancer this week. (I wish this was a joke. It's literally Every Week.)

Gee, I wonder why I feel really old and depressed after these conversations.

I do NOT want to go home next weekend. I do not want to be literally TRAPPED IN THE HOUSE the entire weekend. The only parts of visiting my parents I can stand any more is (a) sleeping, and (b) being out of the house, and one of them has been fucking taken away because he's too weak to get into a car without a large man around to put him in.

Mom is thinking about spending thousands to revamp the van, but that would leave them carless for god knows how long, and with Dad going to the hospital every day... that can't be done.

The idea of being home for 48 hours with no way out makes me want to scream and cry. I hate to be so immature and dramatic about it, but there it is. No escape, no relief, nothing but sitting around being yelled at and watching Dad drool. Not to mention the hours it takes to feed him.

God, I DO NOT WANT TO GO HOME. FOR ANY REASON.

I know there's no way I can get out of it without everyone I'm related to thinking I'm a colossal asshole, but I keep trying to think of a way out anyway. Not that there is one, with DEATH and GUILT hanging over our heads and all. I have three weeks worth of excuses coming up in August, so I know damn well I have to sacrifice myself for this weekend. I have to suck it up and be miserable and be okay with being miserable. I've gotten away with not coming home for two weekends now- I can't do it forever.

But you know what?

I am officially burned out on dealing with this. I have been dealing with this every goddamned day for 8 years, and I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF COPING. And throwing in Grandma and every other relative and sick person on top of that REALLY ISN'T HELPING when I have hit my fucking LIMIT as to how much I can take of being depressed and guilty and stressed and guilty and miserable and guilty.

Every day, on some level, feeling guilty and depressed and stressed, getting worse every day, for EIGHT GODDAMNED YEARS. And I am tired of it getting worse every day.

And I shouldn't even fucking talk. Compared to Mom I'm having joy and happiness coming out my ears. At least I'm not always trapped in the house, spending all my waking hours feeding and toileting.

You know who I'm jealous of? Everyone who loses loved ones quickly. They're jealous of me, but I'd trade in a heartbeat to still be able to remember Dad as being well without all of THIS tainting everything and everybody. "The opportunity to say goodbye", when it goes on for years, seems far more excruciating to me. You still end up with the loved one dead, but at least if you lose them quickly, they still stay relatively intact. All of my biological relatives die these long, drawn out, eroding, horrible deaths AND I AM TIRED OF IT. I am tired of seeing people like this. I cannot fucking take it any more.

And guess what? I have to keep sucking it up and taking it. Who knows exactly how long, but at the most, a few years more. Doesn't matter if I'm burned out, 'cause I'm trapped, and she's trapped, and he's trapped, and nothing's ever going to get better again.

I shudder to think how messed up I am now compared to before. I shudder to think how messed up I am now. I shudder to think how messed up I'm going to be in two years.

"Circumstances change and I get disappointed and so I adjust and make do with less. I don't know if I can handle fifty more years of it. I can't afford to lose that much more."
"There's wonder still in store for you. Life isn't all a downward slope."

I'm so sick of things getting worse. So very, very sick of it. I don't want to have to wait up to two more years before this is all over and there might be hope of having a day go well again. I just want the suffering to stop, for him and for me and Mom.

Why, yes, I have been asked if I would be interested in taking antidepressants. Even if I could swallow pills, I don't see the point in taking them when it's circumstances that make me miserable, not my own brain. As long as I can block out what's going on, distract myself somehow, I'm fine. But getting "Call me, your father's going to the hospital again" calls every other day ruins the illusion. I don't want to go home, I don't want to be anywhere cell reception can reach me. The only thing I enjoy any more is the obsessive crafting and reading I do. Not much blocks it out, but those help.

The crafting obsession I think everyone's really noticing. I actually have been using lab time at the CC, something I never do. I've worked on glass fusing without a class to make me. I have about five inches done on my woven beaded bracelet, and when the hell do I do class work on my own time? Plus there's the obsessive knitting thing. And I kind of want to make a collection of Tower-related pendants. I am feeling the Tower-pain right now. Hell, I drew the Tower on the back of my leg in henna the other day.

As for the reading, I have a fat reading stack right now (at least half of the TBR list is ebooks, but I'm still reading through Jess's stuff right now and haven't gotten to them), and what did I do yesterday? Go out and buy four MORE books. (At least I got paperbacks.) And probably half of my paperback stash right now is books I got for FREE. Did I need to do that? Probably not. Am I trying to restrain myself now from ordering the books I want that aren't at Borders or the indie bookstore? Hell yeah.

Anything to block things out. But there's only so much that can be done without resorting to heavy alcohol or drug abuse, and I ain't going there.

Here's my horoscope today, off here: "You can almost feel change breathing down the back of your neck. In a feral kind of way, you sense that something new is quickening, even if others deny it. On another note, you�re restless for fun and the kind of passion that is more powerful than the need to eat or sleep. You want a euphoric connection with someone � a magnificent obsession. The same dry predictable stuff leaves you feeling crushed and empty."

A-fucking-men to that. Well, I'm not craving connection, but SOMETHING that makes life less depressing. It's not likely to happen, though.


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