Watch it burn…. (catching up)

Oh Diary, how I have missed you.  Oh, there were attempts to keep in touch, apps, books, notes, blogs…. but no one I loved as much as you.  No one who I wanted to talk to as much.  Silly, probably, but hey, when you tell someone your secrets, even if you erase some so no one else will read them, the connection is still there.

 

So much has happened in the years that have gone by and I am, for the first time in a long time hopeful.

My marriage, it was over before it started.  To sum up my marriage to Brian, well as much as i thought I loved him, I was never enough.  He was always looking to friends and other women to find some sort of happiness.  I was unhappy, overweight and over worked.  I finally let him take control of our lives and we crashed.  Well, I crashed, he bailed.

 

I ended up with no career, no home, no car and moved into my mothers house which was and is still falling apart.   All my life I fought to have nice things and the entire time I was with Brian he broke and ruined every nice thing I ever had, his need to control me was so that I wasn’t really allowed to have friends, to go out or do anything that did not have him next to me.  We spent time with his friends, his people….so when we split I had no one.

Finding the strength to remove Brian from my life was the hardest thing I ever had to do.  I almost lost my daughter over it, she saw the toxicity of our relationship and how far I had gone, how low.  No job, no house, no car and he was still doing him.  He moved out into a nice appartment and I ended up in a rat infested house with bad electrical, plumbing, no washer, dryer and no use of half the house because that side of the houses roof leaks so no electrical.  I have no money to fix anything so I am struggling even now to get it all together.  Ah, but I get ahead of myself.

One evening my father tells me he had cancer, stage 4.  6 months to live.  I am sitting at the kitchen table, listening to my father in shock and Brian walks into the kitchen.  He looks down at me and started bitching loudly about dinner not being ready, about how he hates living here and I am always on the phone.  “Who the fuck are you talking to, it better not be some dude.” he bellowed at me.  To this day it breaks my heart to know my daddy heard that.  I will never forgive Brian for that, ever.  Even when I said to him, “Its my father, he has cancer,”  he said oh and walked away.  My daddy told me we could talk later he didn’t want me to get into trouble.  I said to my daddy, “No Pa, I am not in trouble, he is like a barking chihuahua, he wont be around much longer.”    I kicked him out within days .

I took care of my daddy through his illness, I found out his current wife was being abusive and my father, my hero, one of the strongest people I know was afraid of her.  I wanted to kill her, but I moved my father out of there and he came to live out here.  He ended up staying with his brother.  My machisto fucked up ass brothers couldn’t put any money into my house to help my father stay here, because the house belongs to my mother and my father and mother had a fall out many many years ago.  They will visit her but wont put money into her house to help her.   To my amazement,  my middle brother didn’t let my dad stay with him.  He was all talk, telling my dad as long as he had a breath in his body, (thumping his chest) you can be sure” mi casa is your casa Pa” until his wife decided she didn’t want a man with cancer dying in her home.  So, when my dad was weak, alone, couldn’t return to the comfort of his home, his wife was going nutty and being abusive to him in his illness and while he was dying my brother decided dad can’t stay with him because he felt it would be too much drama for his children to see my father being ill, (side note – 4 yrs later he is shopping for a new home because his wife’s grandmother is dying and wants to die at home with family. – ya, so did daddy… but no animosity there)  and my other brother, the youngest of us three was so deep into his own addiction of pain pills and alcohol that his wife (who later left him and had an affair and took all his shit) told him our father couldn’t stay with them.

I had no way to help, no where to take him, my life had just fallen apart, so my daddy spent his last few months of life living in the guest room of my aunt and uncles house (my dad’s brother.)  I left my oldest son, then barely 19, my youngest son, then 6 alone night after night while I stayed with at my dad’s side.   I took breaks from his 24 hour care to go home clean and cook, get my youngest ready for bed, then going back to my dad, tending him through the night then going back to the decrepit little house we live in very morning to get him out of bed and make his breekfast, then to school ack to dad and back to my son at pick up time, he would spend time with me at my aunts house until my oldest got home from college then I would take my baby home and start the whole routine again.  I slept sometimes in a cot next to my fathers hospital bed, somenights on the floor next to the bed.

Some day I will go into detail all the craziness that surrounded my fathers passing, but ultimately it ended like this.  Me sitting on the foot of my dad’s bed, listening to his breathing slowing down, not sleeping, just writing nonsense, wishing he would die because I was and still am convinced that it was horrible.  My poor daddy.  I will never forget kissing him and telling him it was okay, the last breath that came from him and me asking, “Daddy?  Are you gone Daddy?”  then the realization he was really gone and all I could say was “Oh…”  I remember I sounded like a lost little girl.

I am although still deeply wounded by losing my father, deeply hurt that his life ended the way it did and have loads of anxiety and a sudden awareness of how short time is on this earth, I am grateful for the opportunity to be his caregiver.  I feel I was blessed to be close to him again.

I lost my dad when I became a teenager and over the years I was always painfully aware of the fact that I am the black sheep in the family and how much closer my father was to the boys.  Mostly because they were boys.   Although we are all messed up in our own ways, I am the most broken.   Never mind that I went to school and worked my ass off, both my brothers got their first jobs from my dad, both making very good money.  I had to figure it out.   Like my dad told me, I had to get a job or get married.   I got pregnant… oh well.

Of the three of us, I am the one lacking in money, toys, possessions, and I can’t keep up with the Jones, hell I live paycheck to paycheck…. but my kids are amazing.  We may not be able to afford all the trips, new cars, cheer leading and all the other shit my brothers have but my kids have relationships.  They had a relationship with our grandmother and grandfather, with my mom and my dad.  Although my dad moved away when he remarried, again pushing me and mine out of his life.  Apparently my need to take care of my mother was seen as a betrayal.    Stupid men.  Any way, I am blessed in my heart.

After my father died I got a job in a gym, minimum wage, front desk, part time.  I needed to make money, take care of my kids and manage to get the little one to school, my ex wasn’t helping so I got welfare and made sure they went after him.  I eventually worked my way off welfare, the goverment started taking money from Brian for our son and he bitches every two weeks to this day.  I eventually managed the gym and ended up leaving becuase new management sucked and I needed more money.  It was by far the funnest job I have ever had, but then again, who doesn’t love flirting with buffed guys all day?  I was overweight when i went to work at the gym, very overweight.  I really didn’t think they would hire me but they did.  There I started to find myself again, the old me, the fun me.  The Evil Queen me.

That girl, that woman, that romantic that fantasized of being swept off her feet, of finding her prince charming.  The one that believed that everyone has good in them believed in fairy tales and happy endings.  That bitch is dead.

Maleficent, the movie.  I loved it, it showed how and why she became so bitter and evil.  See.  There is a story behind every Evil Queen.  I have embraced that… from the fires.

 

Everything burned away.  Everything was ruined.  I was a wife, a mother, a housewife, I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do. Being a good wife, being a good mother, trying to make a career but my husband is like a rabid dog.  No matter how many times you reach out to help him he eventually will bite you and he is toxic.