Mom has put her foot down; as of February 28th, she will no longer be able to offer me any type of financial assistance whatsoever. I can't blame her--she's been so far beyond "generous" that I feel like I should squelch my misery. See, once we get to the first of March, I will (barring a miracle) have to move home, sans CR, to Mom's basement. Aside from the normal unhappiness, I am entirely miserable because CR has, effectively, no place to go.Unless I can pull a job out of my tail, I may be losing more than my home.
I can assure you that if it comes, neither of us is going to take separation very well. I've redoubled my efforts to find a job, but it just seems like no one is calling. I'm running out of ideas for the short term; all the things I can do which would make us money are longer-term endeavors, like the book and the bakery. There's a little corner of my mind that's just about ready to try a grassroots, "everyone-send-a-penny-to-save-my-home" kind of fundraisers going...but we're not sympathetic enough. If I had an adorable baby, perhaps, or a basket of fluffy little kittens....but two couch-dwelling slackers hiding out and feeding into each other's major depressive disorder?? Not likely to make anyone open their pockets, ya know?
I keep telling myself that this is happening for a reason, and sometimes I'm okay with not knowing what that reason might be. The rest of the time, though, I think the reason is "I'm a failure, a waste of potential, a total loser, and I need that fact hammered home as forcefully as possible."
I sure could use that miracle right about now.....
Monday, January 30, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Don't Worry, I Haven't Heard From Me Either
So yes--I am here, still alive, and still Gladys. I think my seven months of blog-silence has been just another hallmark of my depression, which I'd largely allowed to take over my whole life. I'm still unemployed; I had a job for three days back in the summer somewhere, but that came to an abrupt halt when my manager caught me dozing off. (Yes, it's exactly what it seems: my apnea is WAY not controlled. I'm now at the point where I'm really sick of it and very WILLING to become compliant with the CPAP regimen--but now I have no insurance to replace the hoses and masks I need. This would be less of a problem if a certain pointy-ended kitteh hadn't punctured the hose...ah, well. Sometimes I think cats are lucky that God made them cute; otherwise they'd lose their happy homes!) Since then, I've had a few calls and a couple of interviews, but nothing terribly encouraging. I think I might know why; I'm pretty sure the vibe I'm sending out to the universe is "no more office work, no more bosses, no more daily panic attacks for fear I'll encounter something I don't know how to do." The little interior voice is telling me it's time to make that jump, whatever direction I need to jump in. My writing, my bakery idea, a few other options I've considered--it's time for me to pick one and go with it, because this is probably the last time I'm going to have a chance to solidly THINK about my life and make a considered decision.
It's scary as hell, and then too it's a very bittersweet thing to have options, because the only reason I'll have any chance at all to take the needed time to get anything off the ground...the only reason I'll have that kind of time at all is that I will be moving home to Mom's house at the end of February. That on its own is bad enough, but the REAL heartbreaker is this: CR is still here, we are still together and happier in our relationship than we've ever been, and when I move home to Mom's I have to accept that he's not allowed in her home. Not because of our past history together--Mom doesn't know there IS a past history--and not because he's some kind of horrible person or because he mistreats me or talks down to me or cheats on me or any of that. Mom doesn't care how well he treats me (and he does!); doesn't know how good a man he is, how much he cares about everyone, how happy I am with him. "I don't NEED to know all that," she says when I try to talk about him. "I know the only thing I need to know, to know that I don't want my daughter dating him!"
It's hard, looking at my mother, who has been the only person on earth who has ALWAYS been there for me, no matter how angry or disappointed or betrayed she's felt because of my actions....It's hard to look at her and know all her good points and then have to face up to this horrible, inflexible WRONGNESS that lives inside her. This is my mother, my flesh and blood, and to have her say on more than one occasion that if I continue dating outside my race, she will not be able to have a good relationship with me...it angers me, of course, and it makes me sad to an amazing degree...but it also scares me a bit, because if this ultimatum is serious, and if she carries it out, it will mean that she's putting her hatred for black men over her love for her daughter. I know she doesn't intend it that way--for all my life, I've heard her say in various ways and situations "if you REALLY loved me, you'd..." She did it to my father all the time; I can't count the times I pressed my ear to the heating vent and heard her argue with my father, always arriving at some variation of that theme. In my last argument with her (New Years' Eve, and boy was THAT a doozy) after she said that if I stay with CR, then either I must not be grateful enough for all the things she's done, or that I must not love her enough to consider HER feelings on the matter...after she said that, I told her that was just as wrong when she said it to me, as when she told my father "If you don't clean out this basement, you must not care what I think." I reminded her of the times she'd said that to my dad, and then I said, "Daddy loved you! The basement was a total mess when he died, but he still loved the hell out of you!!" And she actually came back with "Well, sometimes I STILL wonder whether he did or not."
Um, hello? My dad died in 1987. At the end of this summer, my father will have been gone twenty-five years, and yet mom STILL holds a grudge. Faced with that, how the hell am I supposed to make MY point?
And the hell of it is this: I AM grateful for everything she's done for me. Since the remnants of my 401k ran out back in April or thereabouts, she has been BEYOND generous with helping me financially. I tell her all the time how grateful I am, how if she ever needs me to do anything for her, all she has to do is tell me and I'll take care of it. When she said once that she wouldn't live long enough for me to pay back everything I owe her (okay, that's sad but true--she's 83 years old) I even told her--and in all seriousness!--that I'm willing to take any money I hadn't been able to pay her, and donate it to the Catholic Church on her behalf. (As anyone who knows me well can tell you, giving ANYTHING to the Church is as distasteful to me as giving it to the Young Drunken Nazi Fundamentalist Dogfight Association.) I don't know what else I have to do to express my gratitude....because the only thing that will prove my gratitude to her is the one thing I cannot do.
But since I have no job, and since CR has no job, and since my mother has finally reached the point where the state of her various bank accounts is causing her stress...since my unemployment payments can't cover the rent, the cable/phone/internet, my various meds, gas and oil for the car, and groceries...I have to move home. I'm not being given any real choice; even if I get a job, I would still need to move home so I can start paying her back. And so at the end of February, CR and I will have to pack up all my belongings and leave our place together. I'm not sure which one of us is more miserable about it.
Anyway, that's the latest. I'm definitely feeling bloggier lately; it took only a couple of concerned comments to tip me over the brim from "writer's block" back into "wait, let me write this down so I don't forget it for the blog". So to all of you who worried and commented--or worried and DIDN'T comment, for that matter--I thank you for your concern, and promise to try to do better in the future.
It's scary as hell, and then too it's a very bittersweet thing to have options, because the only reason I'll have any chance at all to take the needed time to get anything off the ground...the only reason I'll have that kind of time at all is that I will be moving home to Mom's house at the end of February. That on its own is bad enough, but the REAL heartbreaker is this: CR is still here, we are still together and happier in our relationship than we've ever been, and when I move home to Mom's I have to accept that he's not allowed in her home. Not because of our past history together--Mom doesn't know there IS a past history--and not because he's some kind of horrible person or because he mistreats me or talks down to me or cheats on me or any of that. Mom doesn't care how well he treats me (and he does!); doesn't know how good a man he is, how much he cares about everyone, how happy I am with him. "I don't NEED to know all that," she says when I try to talk about him. "I know the only thing I need to know, to know that I don't want my daughter dating him!"
It's hard, looking at my mother, who has been the only person on earth who has ALWAYS been there for me, no matter how angry or disappointed or betrayed she's felt because of my actions....It's hard to look at her and know all her good points and then have to face up to this horrible, inflexible WRONGNESS that lives inside her. This is my mother, my flesh and blood, and to have her say on more than one occasion that if I continue dating outside my race, she will not be able to have a good relationship with me...it angers me, of course, and it makes me sad to an amazing degree...but it also scares me a bit, because if this ultimatum is serious, and if she carries it out, it will mean that she's putting her hatred for black men over her love for her daughter. I know she doesn't intend it that way--for all my life, I've heard her say in various ways and situations "if you REALLY loved me, you'd..." She did it to my father all the time; I can't count the times I pressed my ear to the heating vent and heard her argue with my father, always arriving at some variation of that theme. In my last argument with her (New Years' Eve, and boy was THAT a doozy) after she said that if I stay with CR, then either I must not be grateful enough for all the things she's done, or that I must not love her enough to consider HER feelings on the matter...after she said that, I told her that was just as wrong when she said it to me, as when she told my father "If you don't clean out this basement, you must not care what I think." I reminded her of the times she'd said that to my dad, and then I said, "Daddy loved you! The basement was a total mess when he died, but he still loved the hell out of you!!" And she actually came back with "Well, sometimes I STILL wonder whether he did or not."
Um, hello? My dad died in 1987. At the end of this summer, my father will have been gone twenty-five years, and yet mom STILL holds a grudge. Faced with that, how the hell am I supposed to make MY point?
And the hell of it is this: I AM grateful for everything she's done for me. Since the remnants of my 401k ran out back in April or thereabouts, she has been BEYOND generous with helping me financially. I tell her all the time how grateful I am, how if she ever needs me to do anything for her, all she has to do is tell me and I'll take care of it. When she said once that she wouldn't live long enough for me to pay back everything I owe her (okay, that's sad but true--she's 83 years old) I even told her--and in all seriousness!--that I'm willing to take any money I hadn't been able to pay her, and donate it to the Catholic Church on her behalf. (As anyone who knows me well can tell you, giving ANYTHING to the Church is as distasteful to me as giving it to the Young Drunken Nazi Fundamentalist Dogfight Association.) I don't know what else I have to do to express my gratitude....because the only thing that will prove my gratitude to her is the one thing I cannot do.
But since I have no job, and since CR has no job, and since my mother has finally reached the point where the state of her various bank accounts is causing her stress...since my unemployment payments can't cover the rent, the cable/phone/internet, my various meds, gas and oil for the car, and groceries...I have to move home. I'm not being given any real choice; even if I get a job, I would still need to move home so I can start paying her back. And so at the end of February, CR and I will have to pack up all my belongings and leave our place together. I'm not sure which one of us is more miserable about it.
Anyway, that's the latest. I'm definitely feeling bloggier lately; it took only a couple of concerned comments to tip me over the brim from "writer's block" back into "wait, let me write this down so I don't forget it for the blog". So to all of you who worried and commented--or worried and DIDN'T comment, for that matter--I thank you for your concern, and promise to try to do better in the future.
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