‘Shatter every window, till it’s all blown away’
Biorhythms are funny thing. The body in general is, really. Because your cells have memories. They really do.
I’ve been off-kilter because of Retrograde, but part of the absolute frustration and anger that’s been coursing through my veins during the past few weeks can also be easily explained away by the fact that Thanksgiving was coming. Something about impending family holidays — even when you’re down to having just one family member left — can really ignite the fight-or-flight response.
And normally passive-aggressive me has bought a brand-new pair of boxing gloves. Now I see why.
This is also the week that we lost my grandfather six years ago to absolute incompetence and error and neglect and other bullshit. I swear the VA Hospitals are told to kill off anyone they can so the country can stop paying their pensions. Why I continue to vote for ObamaCare, I’ll never know.
Oh wait, I do it because mom has been in my house since my grandfather died. And high atop my bitch list is basically needing help and not being able to get any, financially or other-resource-wise.
A friend of mine always told me, “I’m not long for this world.” And I have gotten scared about that at times, but the girl lives her life fully and I respect that. I’ve often thought the same of myself since I heard that. Maybe this is all an illusion. Instead of trying to be planful about the future, I should just blow my wad on fun stuff to make each day special because who knows if it will be the last.
And given mom’s frail health, I do tend toward the latter. Since lately, she doesn’t miss an opportunity to remind me how sick she is and how she probably won’t be around for (insert next holiday or major life milestone or weekend).
Yet when I say let’s try again for health care (she kept getting rejected so now we’ve just plain old given up), she’d rather go to Wal-Mart. So when she kvetches that I don’t know how serious things are, I say let’s strategize and make some progress instead of going out and spending my money, eh?
I have a debate going on in my head, mostly since I have a thing for poor boys so I know not to count on anybody taking care of ME since I never had kids to move in with, like everyone else in my family did. The debate is pretty much “reducing expenses” versus “making more money.” Which, I want both. I’m not an idiot.
But something about renting a shack in one of the Keys and living a simple life is SO appealing to me. Or do I use MY last burst of energy to bust my ass and get a good title and at least have money, if not time to spend it?
Right now I’m in the middle. I could be doing better on all fronts. Frankly I’m just happy to be middle management and just-enough out of sight to be out of mind, most days. I got canned from a pseudo-executive level in a cost-cutting measure last time around, so I have no aspirations to do better only to be more-visible.
But this working-hard-enough thing is about as fruitful as dating the wrong people, too. Everything and everyone is making me boring. Not bored. BORING. I haven’t been challenged in a LONG time and it shows.
The only challenge I have, really, is mom. And my brain is so far in “off” mode that when she says she’ll be spending Christmas with me from heaven … while it makes me absolutely nuts … the exhausted part of my brain and heart doesn’t allow the creative-solution part of my brain to do anything other than go park its ass in a hammock in the ocean.
I just don’t know what to do anymore. Nothing I do is ever enough — not with her, not at work, not the anonymous works I do for the greater good (or, more likely, for the specific people and animals I target), not with some of the people in whom I’ve invested as of late.
My life really is a good one. Better than most, really. I gave up a lot and I have enough. But if these are the best years of my life, being “not long for this world” would be more of a blessing than something to fear.