This post might be to intimate and personal - read at your own risk.
It's about to get real in here. Maybe it's the lack of oxygen from pneumonia, maybe it's the antibiotics talking, maybe it is that I have just held it in long enough, maybe I have reached a point of hurt and frustration. Here I am up at midnight after an hour long of silently crying into my pillow. (Yes, my robot demeanor has really broken down) There was a real rollercoaster of events that happened today and I am just trying to make sense of it all.
I did the dutiful thing today...well yesterday at this point. I went to work. Doesn't sound like a big deal, right? Factor in that after my 9+ hours were done, I went to Urgent Care where my doctor wanted to admit me for my pneumonia. I scared my boss today and at the same time showed my commitment to my job. So it was a blessing in a way. Tomorrow I will not be going to work, I bargained my doctor down to bed rest. While it paid off to go in sick, risking it tomorrow might be unwise. Guess I will stay home most of the day and say that I am resting, but in all likelihood it will be a lot of housework. I have been sick and the house definitely shows it.
Tonight it all kind of crashed on me at once. My doctor was really scared. Seeing the fear on her face shook my stubborn resolve. There was a time in the exam room where I was getting so little oxygen and coughing so violently that my vision went blurry and my ears rang - I almost fainted in the exam room. I was alone and scared, sadly enough, it felt familiar.
I have made no secret about it - I have no family. By that I mean no parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins or grandparents. I had a family once, it isn't like they were all wiped out by a terrible plague and I am the sole survivor. The plague I survived was circumstance. My mom abandoned my brother and I when we were toddlers, left us in the care of my drug addicted criminal father. She survived her attempted suicide and I wound up taking care of her after she returned from California. My dad and my uncle landed themselves a prime spot in the federal penitentiary system after a botched bankrobbery. My paternal grandparents took my 6 year old brother and raised him in Colorado until he came to live with my mom and I at age 11. My maternal grandparents both passed from cancer when I was 9. My brother found himself to be a drug addict too by the age of 12, he spent his adolescent and teen years locked up in rehab and boys' homes. My dad has been pretty absent my entire life. I know that he is sitting in jail in Missouri right now waiting trial on charges that will likely put him away for the rest of his life. My brother is on the lamb from what I have heard through the grapevine. It doesn't even phase me anymore. I rarely think about my family at all.
My mom...yeah, that's the tough one. She lives less than 10 blocks from me. Brain injury and addiction have made her an impossible person to be around. She is spiteful and venomous to frightening extremes. A little over a year ago I reached a breaking point with her that I had came to more than a few times. Backstory and awful truth time - as a child, I was shuffled around to whatever place she could sucker a man into letting her stay for awhile. She had a lot of boyfriends and we moved a lot. For a long time, we were homeless...sleeping in our car if we had one or a tent when the weather was nice. I had a couple of stepdads and one I kind of thought was going to be permanent in my life. When I was 13, I was sent to shelter because my mom was too drugged out to take care of me.
Shelter was bad, most of the other kids were there as a transition to juvenile hall, some of them had the same situation as me. After 6 long months I was placed in foster care (most foster parents don't want to take teenage girls so placement is difficult) The first foster home was a nightmare. They wanted only girls for a reason. We were paychecks and eye candy, if not worse. The fateful day came when credible allegations came and were finally founded. I was hurried out of the home and placed 10 miles north. It was a different world there. To a college town with culture and size, from a Podunk site of 200 people. It wasn't just the location that was different either. My second foster mom was about as far removed from my first placement as possible. Jayne was a confident and well off business woman with a full schedule. She was my saving grace. After two years of being with her, my mom petitioned the court to place me back with her. Two days before my 16th birthday, I went back to a home I didn't want to be in with a woman I wanted nothing to do with.
I had taken care of my mother since I was 4 years old. Far too young. I had the brief two years where I could be a child and I wasn't ready to go back to being caretaker. The drugs didn't quit and the mental/emotional abuse didn't either. It was my private, shameful hell. Well into my 30's I am not ashamed of it anymore. I am wise enough to know that those were her actions and not mine. I am also wise enough to see the damage and hurt that she placed directly upon my children. That is the ending point of my tale with her. Forgiveness isn't the issue, there is no sense in harboring that kind of hurt. The sad part is that I can't forget because my duty as a mother is to protect my children.
That brings me to the next part of this lengthy post...the family I do have. I am a mother, that is a great source of pride for me. Those children are the only blood family I have contact with. It is sad to say that they are the only family I have. My love for them is sufficient enough to fill the void of emptiness where other family once was.
I am questioning things in my life tonight. There are big decisions to be made and I have to be sure that they are the right ones for my children. They are what I have to hold on to. They are who I am responsible for. I did the dutiful thing today for them and for the man in my life, at the detriment to myself.
I am hurt right now, that isn't something I admit to easily. You know who reached out and checked on me tonight directly? (outside of the immediate household in which I reside) the father of my children and my boss. Two people who depend on me being well made the call or text, that's it. Sometimes it really sucks not belonging to a family, not having anyone to talk to or turn to. Most of all...it hurts that no one cares enough to even reach out.
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