Streams of Consciousness

For the second month in a row my sister didn't come up with all the rent money she's supposed to contribute.  Luckily I had a little money saved up for the summer, and it was enough to make up the difference, but now I have no backup for the next couple months.  We had told her we couldn't cover for her again, but when she doesn't tell us until the day rent is due, we don't have a choice.  Anyway, Mom finally confronted her about it, and my sister said she didn't care.  She wrote this note about how she doesn't care about anything, let alone how we feel about her not coming up with the rent money.  That prompted Mom to finally have it out with her, which Mom doesn't normally do, because she doesn't do conflict.  She hates it, because she doesn't handle it well, but I have to hand it to her on this one, she held her own for a change.  

She now understands what I've known for a long time.  My sister hates us.  I think it's because we remind her of a past that she hasn't ever been able to come to terms with.  I know that physically I look a little like the biological father.  Not as much as I used to, because I'm older now and my face has changed, but enough for her to always be reminded.  Somehow she blames Mom for everything that happened when we were kids, when it was the biological father she should be blaming and understanding that Mom did what she could with completely crappy circumstances.  She had no coping skills, but she did what she could.  Yes, there were things she could've done differently, but when you're in the moment it's difficult to come up with just the right thing to do a lot of the time.  Things could've been a lot worse, so you have to give her that.  I understand this, but I've been through years of introspection and therapy, and my sister obviously hasn't done the work she needs to do to be halfway normal.  

Mom got so fed up that she told her that she could move out in the fall.  I guess when your kid essentially tells you that she hates you, you finally get a backbone and realize that you can do better without the hassle.  My sister told her that when she moves she's not going to let anybody know where she is.  You can't get a clearer declaration of hate than that.  Mom has done so much for her, more than she should have, but she doesn't care.  She's used her the whole time she's lived here, until recently, and now she doesn't want anything from her.  Except or money to cover her responsibilities of course.  She's 44 years old and can't be held responsible for anything.  It's always been a problem with her, but it's getting worse.  I know that it will be tighter financially without her living here, but Mom and I will be better off in every other way, so it'll be good.     

I haven't gone into much of my past here, but it might explain why I'm having such a difficult time accepting what my sister is doing.  My childhood was messed up.  The biological father was psychotic.  He hated me, and no, it wasn't in my mind, everybody in the house knew it. In my thirties I thought it was because he had felt guilty about what he had done but didn't know how to fix it, but I realized later that it was because I had wrecked his plan for his life, to do what he wanted without anybody knowing.  When I was fourteen and my little sister was eleven, she told me that he had taught her that I was bad, and that she shouldn't have anything to do with me.  We do okay now, but there's still a distance between us that will never be fixed, mostly because she was so young when those ideas were ingrained in her mind.  She acts like things are okay, but there's a phoniness to it and I can feel it.  My other sister is only a year younger than I am, and for most of our lives we were close and got along well for the most part.  She was in my wedding seventeen years ago.  Sometime in the last seven years or so she started to change.  Every year it gets a little worse.  She can't let go of the past, even though she was never the scapegoat as a kid, I was.  Yes, we were all affected by the instability we lived with, but somehow she blames me and Mom for what happened when we were victims as much, if not more, than she was.  We did the family therapy thing for years when we were growing up, but that kind of thing doesn't work when the crazy person lies to the therapist, and the kids don't understand enough about life to know what's really going on.  I didn't understand it all until I was in my forties.  I've worked through the things that haunted me and caused serious anxiety attacks for thirty years.  My sister hasn't, and won't.  She's been in therapy, but she won't allow anybody else to be involved, because then the therapist would hear the truth, and not the delusions she lives under.  She can't allow reality to enter the picture, because then she'd have to deal with it.  She'd have to stop blaming the wrong people for her problems, and blame the person who caused them.  I don't like being blamed just because I'm still around and the person who should be blamed took himself out because he was weak.  I was blamed for something I didn't did for twenty years of my life, and I refuse to put up with it again, which is why I don't bother talking to, or dealing with my sister.    

The reason I picked Papa as a male role model, the father I had always dreamed of, is because enough of my reality was so bad that I had to have something else to base a life on.  Without knowing it, Papa showed me that a person's destiny can be changed, if they want it.  I wanted it, and I made it happen.  I may still have some small glitches left, but I don't blame anybody for what happened except for the person who was responsible.  I went through three years of therapy that actually worked finally, after I had done as much work as I could on my own. You have to be willing to face the demons to make them go away, and it took a long time, but I did it.  My sister will never be able to do that because she can't admit that she has demons.  She can't be held responsible for anything, including her own problems.  She blames ADD, which I don't believe she has, just so that she doesn't have to fix anything.  The biological father blamed everybody but himself for his problems too, including me.  I see history repeating itself, but I don't have to be destroyed by it this time.  I survived the first time, I'm responsible for my own sanity, and she can be responsible for hers.  He tried to destroy me mentally and emotionally, but he didn't succeed.  I'm still here and he isn't.  Despite everything he tried to do to me, I'm strong, capable and loved.  He tried to convince me that I would be alone and friendless for the rest of my life, because he wanted me to suffer.  Well, guess what, I win.  I have everything he tried to take from me.  My sister was happy when I was out of work earlier this year, and as soon as I started working again, which was right around the time she stopped talking to Mom, her whole demeanor changed again.  She resents anything good that happens in my life, the way he did.  She doesn't realize just how much like him she's become.     

Three weeks ago Mom fell and mangled herself pretty well.  Hit her head really hard, dislocated the middle finger on her right hand which broke the top bone the middle of her hand, and hit her knee hard enough that it's still bigger than it should be.  I had to watch her for two weeks to make sure that she didn't have a serious head injury or brain bleed.  The CAT scan was  fine, but they said that there was a two week window where things could still show up, so I was paranoid the whole time.  My sister, who has been a problem for years, had stopped talking to Mom at the beginning of April because Mom had been so stupid as to try to give my sister something for her birthday.  Can you tell I'm being highly sarcastic?  My sister is crazy.  She gets it from the biological father.  She thinks that Mom and I are seriously screwed up and that she's okay, which tells you something right there.  She treats her friends great, but she treats us like garbage, but that was normal for her.  

What really bothers me is that she was home when I brought Mom home from the hospital.  She doesn't work on Fridays, so she heard everything that we talked about and saw what Mom looked like when she bothered to come out of her room.  She doesn't ask what had happened, didn't ask how Mom was, nothing.  She STILL hasn't asked, even three weeks later.  She doesn't care.  My youngest sister came over the day after it happened and freaked when she saw how bruised and banged up Mom was, so I knew it wasn't just me overreacting to Mom's injuries.  She was a mess and couldn't do all that much for herself.  I was doing everything around the house, and getting and doing for Mom because she couldn't get around very well the first week.  My crazy sister is no help, all she does is stay in her room when she's not at work, and won't help around the house at all.  

As high as my irritation with my sister was, it went through the roof last Sunday.  Last Sunday was Mother's Day.  Mom and I had the day planned because my other sister had shown up the day before to give Mom her presents.  Because I'd been so busy I was lucky to get Mom much of anything, but she liked what I got her.  Good thing I can download music and burn CD's on the computer, because that I didn't have to go out to get.  I have software so that I can print my own cards too.  I decided that because of what had happened that I had to give her a not funny card besides the usual funny card.  She liked that.    We got dinner, carry outs, so we had a nice quiet day.  That's where my problem is.  It was just the two of us.  My sister lives with us and she IGNORED Mother's Day.  She didn't say anything or give Mom anything, not even a card which is unforgiveable as far as I'm concerned.  It would've been anyway, but after what had happened three weeks ago, it was even worse.  We got lucky that she only has to deal with an annoying cast on her hand for another month or so.  She gets claustrophobic, so she gets a little crazy because of it, but she's dealing with it. 

If we didn't need her money for rent, I'd kick my sister out without even thinking about it.  She obviously hates us, so she's just using us for a place to live because she doesn't have money to live anywhere else.  SInce I can't kick her out, I have to live with  crazy bitch who hates my guts for things I didn't do.  My looks remind her of the past, a past she can't get over awhiand which she blames me AND Mom for.  She's crazy, and we can't do a damn thing about it.   

Yesterday when my cell phone rang, I wasn't expecting the number I saw.  It was somebody from my old job, asking if I was interested in coming back.  I said yes, and asked when they wanted me.  They said "Tomorrow".  Wow, after two and a half months, less than twenty four hours notice!  They called just in time.  I knew I couldn't find anything else, I couldn't go back to retail, I was losing brain cells rapidly from the lack of use, even with twice a week phone calls with G, and I was slowly turning into a slug.  I wasn't doing much of anything, mostly sitting watching tv and surfing the internet.  It was getting ugly.  After the phone call I felt my mood change.  I hadn't been depressed or anything, but my previous emotional strength had been seriously lacking.  I felt it come back yesterday, which was good.  Maybe it was confidence, because they called ME.  Not that it gave me any bargaining position or anything, but I was going to be working, and at the same place I had already been, without having to totally change my life.  

My second thought was realizing that it happened on March 30th.  For the past 22 years that day had always represented one of the worst days of my life.  I know intellectually that Papa had nothing to do with it, but there's that little part of me that thought maybe he wanted that day to finally mean something else for me, even if it wasn't in some huge way.  Instead of being very introspective the way I normally am on that day, I was happy for most of the day.  It was good.  This year represented the first time that there were more years SINCE Papa died than the years leading up to when it happened, and maybe getting the job back was a sign that things just might get better for a change.    

I've written about the fantasy world I had developed as a kid and kept going until I was in my mid twenties.  I've never written about specifics, but tonight, for some odd reason I decided to look up something that I had done in the story over twenty years ago.  I was big on melodrama, so dramatic story lines (it WAS essentially a soap opera LOL) were my forte.  I developed a storyline where one of the kids started regressing physically, and because I had no way of looking up obscure diseases at the time, it was the early 80's, I never named what he had.  It ended badly of course, and I always assumed that I had come up with something that could never really happen in real life, something that wasn't a real disease.  Well, tonight I Googled general terms and actually found the exact disease it would've been if I had had the internet and Google more than twenty years ago.  I was floored that I had nailed it so exactly, down to the exact age range that it would develop and how it would progress.  It was totally weird, reading the symptoms and the progression, because it just took me right back there, though in a detached way.  I was ME reading this stuff, not Molly reacting to something that happened way back that had been so totally traumatic that for a few years she lost her memory of a whole day.  It eventually came back to her, but even I couldn't remember it, so it was pretty traumatic all around.  I always reacted badly to some of the worse events, which made Molly react badly.  There was a whole story line that I had to totally give up on and pull a Bobby on Dallas kind of redo on it was so bad.  Anyway, I'm getting off the track here.  The idea that I pulled something out of the air that I never could've known about at the time is totally weird.  

I've been thinking of writing about the whole thing from the perspective of Molly's oldest daughter from her second marriage.  It would give it a whole different angle I think, and if I could pull it off, it could be totally cool.  It's not like I don't have the time for it now!

Today it became official that my layoff from work became a termination.  Last week I got the letter telling me that the manual states that if you're not called back by a month from the day that you were laid off that it terminates your employment.  I was a little panicked after the first couple weeks, wondering what I was going to do if they didn't call me back, but by the time I got the letter it didn't matter anymore, I knew it was done.  It's essentially the same reaction I had five days after my ex left.  His uncle told me that no matter what I did, he wasn't coming back, and at that moment I decided that I had plans and it didn't include chasing after somebody who didn't want me.  Same with the job.  I'm not going back to get the few little things I left in the desk, because except for the back scratcher they weren't particularly personal things.  I've decided that I need to do something different, and I'll do what I can, odd jobs here and there, online things, mystery shopper stuff, to make money, and eventually I'll get a real job again.  It's not like I don't have any money coming in, I still have the crossing guard job, so I'm not completely screwed.  I'm going to try to make some money writing, which is my dream job anyway.  If I can make money that way, I'll be happy, especially if it becomes a major source of my income.  It's slightly daunting having to start over after working steadily for as long as I have, eleven years straight, over seven at this one alone.  Sitting home is BORING as all get out, I'm so used to the routine of going to work.  With the ecomomy the way it is and the job market the way it is right now, I'm thinking that it's going to take a while to get a normal job, which is the other reason I'm just going to do what I can to make money.  I couldn't have done this ten years ago, but there are a lot of ways to make money through online avenues.  If I can come up with a business idea and figure out how to make a website, I might even go that route.  This could turn out to be a good thing in the long run.

I watched, and recorded the entire inauguration ceremony earlier today.  It was an amazing speech, but I didn't get emotional, which surprised me, because I got emotional on election night.  No, I have to be different. LOL  I'm watching and recording (DVD recorder, no VHS here!) the parade, and THIS is where I get emotional.  It's not even about Obama or what this day means.  It's the marching bands!  It's because of Papa, and every time I see a parade, I get emotional.  I saw him direct the marching band in the Homecoming parade when I was a freshman, all decked out in his maroon jacket, hat, and black pants.  He looked so cool, and you could tell he loved what he was doing.  It was freakin' cold that morning, but you couldn't tell by him.  He was in his element.  I can't help every time I see a parade on tv, or worse yet GO to a parade, I turn into a pile of mush if I'm not careful.  If Mom is in the room or with me at the parade, I have to control my reactions, because I'm not about to explain it, but if she's not, I either well up or just flat out start crying.  It's just that connection to Papa, it's strong when it comes to marching bands, and if I see the trombone players, I'm done for.  Like I said in the title, I'm a big doofus. LOL

It's baaaaack.  I have  the urge to write.  It had been a long time, but it finally came creeping back in.  The problem is, I get a few sentences in and I can't get any farther.  Annie read the first chapter of my book about four years ago, and said that I should take literary license and add dialog.  Today I thought I found a way to do that, but when I get into it, I couldn't think of any dialog.  I know the scene I want to write, but actually putting it into words isn't working.  The other idea was something about Annie.  A character study piece, but I get half a paragraph in and it all sounds trite and fake.  I have the ideas, but nothing wants to gel.  I don't know if there's just so much in my head that needs to get out that I can't narrow it down, or if I just have vague ideas with no substance.  Annie had the right idea to get my book on track, but it's up to me to make it happen, and I'm falling short.  It's been years since I wrote the first chapter, and I thought I couldn't do more because I couldn't remember what happened during the time of the beginning of the book.  Annie's insistence that I can take literary license and skew the truth a bit will help with that part, because as it is half the book is already speculation.  Nobody but me will know the things that aren't quite the solid gold truth, and it's not like changing things just a little will change the story.  The end is what's important, the journey was long enough so that a slight shift won't be felt in the space-time continuum.  The important things will still be there, that stuff I remember.  I just have to WRITE it, and that's what's stopping me right now.  It's aggravating to have finally felt the urge and not be able to do anything with it. I wish I could do like G does, and write a whole book in my head and not put anything on the screen or paper until it's perfect.  I can't manage that, I can't remember things if I don't get them down.  He's lucky that way.    

Mom has been spending a lot of time in my room watching tv, because the tv in the living room broke just before Christmas.  I have pictures of Annie and Papa next to my bed on my nightstand, and tonight Mom asked me who the picture of the woman was.  I told her it was Annie, and she couldn't believe it.  The last time SHE saw Annie was sometime in the 80's, so of course Annie at 75 wouldn't look like the person she knew way back when.  I couldn't tell her anything else, even though I've been thinking that I was going to have to if she brought up the pictures.  Just saying her name made my heart pound, because I thought I was going to have to say IT.  It's been a year and a half and I've still never told anybody that she died.  Yes, I wrote it on here, and I told a couple people in an email, but I've never said it to anybody out loud.  I had to try not to act panicky while we were talking about her, and Mom didn't seem to pick up on anything, so I think I'm safe.  Part of me is chicken, I don't like having to say stuff like that anyway, but in the past week or so I finally have reached the point where I feel a lot more like my old self, the strong confident me, not the one who for the past three months or so has been working to get past missing Annie all over again.  

I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to say it out loud.  So far there hasn't been a reason to have to, but that might change, and I don't know how I'll handle it.

I was all set to start arguing with the universe, to ask why again, why now, why why why, but then I thought about it.  There comes a time when you have to stop railing at the fates and start accepting.  You have to play the hand you're dealt.  Make do with what you have.  Anger and resentment only get you so far, and then you're stuck with it, having wasted too much time in the process.  It's always been so hard for me to get on with things after having to face an emotional challenge.  Having to reorganize my thinking, processing the new order of things has always taken too long, made it that much more difficult the next time, doubling or tripling the agony.  I have to get a grip, and realize that yes, it will happen again, but that it's going to happen and there isn't anything I can do about it.  It's the way of the universe, the way things are. 

There's a lot of talk about how atheists can't possibly be happy during this time of year, because they don't "believe".  Christians assume that they know what's in atheists' hearts, and they've decided that it isn't good.  I'm a Humanist, which means that I can still consider myself culturally Jewish and religiously atheistic.  I was raised with Christmas AND Hanukkah, because Mom's side of the family is Jewish and the biological father's side isn't.  We did the secular version of course, Santa and presents and the tree.  I'm a complete traditionalist when it comes to Christmas, we have to have a tree, there have to be presents, and we have to have Christmas music.  I love the music even if I don't believe what the songs say.  Mom raised us to have an open mind when it came to religion, to check out all of them and if we wanted to pick one, fine, but she wasn't going to decide for us.  She's agnostic, so she's never been big on religion either, so I started questioning things early.  I've been to Catholic Mass, Sunday school and an Easter service with friends when I was a kid, Jehovah Witness bible study (again with a friend when I was in high school), and to the synagogue a few times.  None of it impressed me, because I already knew that I didn't believe.  Even as a kid I knew I didn't believe any of it, so none of it swayed me.  When I was 30 I was in a class about the Jewish holidays at the synagogue where I'd gotten married, and I was fine with the class until we started learning about the High Holy Days.  Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the only truly religious holidays we have.  Most of the others are harvest festivals primarily.  Anyway, the rabbi started talking about God and fasting and asking for forgiveness for things we'd done wrong, and celebrating God in general for the New Year, and I started getting really uncomfortable.  As long as the classes stuck to the cultural aspects of the holidays I was fine, but adding the religious part bothered me enough to stop going.  That's when I started reading the big copy (this sucker's HUGE) of the Old Testament that my Grandpa had given us way back when.  I'd read some of it here and there before then, but I'd never really read it to question it.  It was then, after reading a lot of it, that I really understood what I believed, and I found a book about Jewish Humanism.  It fit my belief system really well, because I've always felt that people had the ability to make things the way they should be, even if it might take a while.  

I figured that all that background stuff was needed for this next part.  It really bothers me that people have such hate for atheists.  The governor of Michigan back in the 90's wrote an editorial in the  newspaper saying that atheists can't be good people and that they're amoral.  Religious people just can't understand that people who don't "believe" have decided on our own that for the good of society as a whole we should act in a way that doesn't hurt other people.  We act in a way that helps people when we can, or at least doesn't make things worse.  We do things out of a sense of obligation to other people, not to something supernatural that says if we do good then we'll get to go to a special place after we die, or if we do bad things we'll suffer for eternity.  Helping people should be done because it's what's right, not because we feel obligated to follow some dogma.  That will freak some people out, but it's the truth.  I'm not soulless, I'm not evil, but there are people who think I am just because I don't believe what they do.   

Last month we elected our first black president.  There are people who voted for him who will never vote for an atheist or a Humanist, even if that person has ideas that could save humanity.  What would happen to the country if the president didn't believe in God, but still believed in a better future for everybody, and knew how to get us there?  Would society crumble in the face of logic and reason without the outer wrapping of a supernatural power?  I don't think so.  But people are so afraid to find out, because people they listen to every Saturday or Sunday tell them that to work for the good of society is evil if they're not doing it for God.  It's silly really, but changing these peoples' minds is going to be next to impossible for at least another generation.  Maybe in another twenty years I'll see the first atheist president elected.  

Most of the year this doesn't bother me as much, but all those people who have decided that if you don't say Merry Christmas you hate America get on my nerves.  I don't even see saying Happy Holidays as being all inclusive, covering Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.  I've always thought that it covered Christmas and New Year's.  There are two holidays in a row, so it's a blanket statement, but there are people who can't stand the thought of being inclusive, so they have to impress on everybody that it's THEIR time of year, and nobody else is invited.  This is the time of year when EVERYBODY should be included, because it's supposed to be a time of peace and good will, but screw that if you don't believe what "they" think you should.   

After eight years of the hell that was the Bush presidency, we can finally fix the country.  Barack Obama is the new president, and it's a relief.  My confidence in the system has been restored after the past two elections.  This was a blow out, a landslide, whatever you want to call it, there was no way for McCain to win.  I cried, more than just teared up.  Ten years ago it happened that I cried when I got amazing news, because it was just such an amazing release after being so keyed up for so long.  I've been obsessed with this stuff for months, been so focused on wanting it to happen, but there was always that "will they steal it again" fear that didn't let me believe it until the numbers were so high that there was no doubt.  

This is a trancendent moment.  The tide has turned completely.  The younger generation, MY generation, will now be in charge.  No more "old guard", those of us with hope will now have a chance to put the country right with the rest of the world.  They were watching, and they're as happy as we are, because they don't have to fear what we'll do now.  They don't have to fear that we've slid into Idiocracy, which was something many of us thought was happening.  Palin was the next step down, and that's been averted.  We can go on from here and become the country that some of us have always known we could be.  We can make things better for all of us. 

Now the real work starts.

After being out of therapy for over a year and a half, I was noticing that in the past few weeks I was reacting to things the way I used to before therapy.  Getting frustrated easily, getting overemotional, things I recognized from the old days before the therapy started working.  As I've said before, October tends to get on my nerves, but until this year it didn't seem to affect me this much.  I still miss Annie more than I probably should after over a year, but it's also getting close to her birthday, so that might be coloring the situation.  Now that I've figured out the problem I have to get a handle on it so that I don't completely revert back to my old ways.  I wondered how I was going to do that until last night.  I went through a couple tubs that I have forgotten even existed, and the stuff in those tubs is OLD.  20+ years old.  In one of the tubs I found two things.  One I had completely forgotten about, and one that I had been thinking a little about, but knew that there were two different ones floating around somewhere.  The first one is a picture of Annie from back in the 80's when she was going strong.  It's a Polaroid from an instant camera, and for some reason part of the film would sometimes not come out as part of the picture.  I never understood what the problem was, but this is one of those pictures.  I kept it because most of her is in the shot, so it was worth keeping.  It was before she stopped coloring her hair, so it's still dark, which is a big difference from the recent picture I have of her.  



The other thing thing is this autograph book I had put together out of notebook paper for the end of my junior year.  There are only two pages filled, and five out of the six people who signed it were teachers (surprise surprise LOL).  Annie's is in the middle of the first page, and what she wrote proves again how she felt about me.  I was still her assistant, still a student, and we hadn't transferred to the point where I called her by her first name.  That's part of what makes what she wrote so extraordinary for a teacher to a student.  I'm thinking of scanning it just so that I can keep it longer than the paper might last, because it means so much.  Here's what it says:

"Jenny, I miss you each day this summer.  Have a good summer.  Give me a call sometime.  Truly - Mrs. Wolff"



She's the only person to ever call me Jenny, even now.  She didn't use it all the time, mostly just when she wrote my name in a note. like that one. (If you're wondering, I'm very good at reading handwriting other people have trouble with)  I don't know if she meant to say I miss or I'll miss, but the way it's written it seemed to cover the summer when I read it during the two months away from school, like she wrote it to be in the moment whenever I would read it back then.  Whatever she meant back then, what it tells me now was that she missed me as much as I missed her during those evil summers when I was stuck in the hell that was my life at home.  

I've put the picture up on the shelf that's below my tv, with the autograph book right behind it.  As much as I watch tv, I'm able to see the picture all the time.  It seems to help, to keep me on an even keel for the rest of this month, and to keep me on target after that.  Hopefully it'll work.  Annie was always able to keep me in the here and now, firmly in reality, so I'm thinking that seeing her all the time, back in her prime, will get me back to where I should be.

It seems I was right the other day when I wrote that to get past my anger that I would have to write about it.  Today I realized that I'm so over it, that I was even considering buying a new travel mug for the car that's got the pink ribbon on it.  I didn't even want to chuck the pocket mirror back at the teller at the bank today when she handed it to me and the cover on it was pink with the ribbon on it.  It's amazing how well it worked.  It's been over a year and a half since I stopped therapy, and my coping skills are actually in working order.  I was thinking about that the other day.  I never learned coping skills as a kid, and it's no wonder.  Neither Mom or the biological father had coping skills, so how could they teach us?  When the only examples you have growing up are either rage or anxiety, you're on your own.  You can't figure out how to handle ordinary frustrations, let alone extreme situations, so is it a surprise that I ended up with rage AND an anxiety problem?  I was able to get rid of the rage problem ten years ago, but it's only been in the past four years or so that I've been able to get rid of the anxiety problem.  With the three years of therapy and the immense help of G, I've been able to learn the coping skills, even if it's only a matter of writing about a problem so that it gets out of my head.  That's for extreme situations, because I can deal with the everyday frustrations without having to get worked up about them.           

I've been in a funk for the past month or so, and if I want to get past it and get on with my life, I need to write about it.  I'm still angry, and I still miss Annie.  The most annoying month for me is about to start, and if I'm going to get through it without being totally ticked off for the whole month, I need to get it out of my head.  Sometime back in the 90's, at least that's when I started noticing it, the powers that be decided that October should be Breast Cancer Awareness month.  I've tended to ignore it every year up till now just because it always brought it all back up every year, all the stuff about Annie back when I was a teenager and easily freaked about that stuff.  This year it's just so aggravating because she's gone now and that's what took her.  Yes, it was in her liver in the last few years, but she told me that it was secondary.  Yesterday at the store I found myself getting into a mood, because every aisle, every display, every EVERYTHING, was filled with that damned pink ribbon crap for October.  It's just a reminder for me, everywhere I turn, that Annie's not here and I can't have her back, and it's so WRONG.  It shouldn't be like this, but it is, and I wish I didn't have to be confronted by it constantly.  

I know intellectually that Annie would have a fit if she knew I was reacting like this, but I haven't been able to control how I deal with it.  I made a decision that at the beginning of the month, which is in two days, I'm going to get a grip and get my act together again, but I knew I couldn't do that until I wrote at least SOMETHING about it.  I just couldn't figure out what to write until yesterday when I realized that my reaction was a little too intense for the circumstances, then I knew what the problem was.  I'm angry and it's going to take some time, but I'm going to have to deal with it.  I should be used to unfairness by now, I've had enough of it over the years. 

Since I upgraded the account, I realized I had access to a lot more layouts for my page, and I was getting bored with the old look.  G will tell you, I tend to get bored with some things eventually, which is why the borders of the windows on my computer are silver instead of that awful blue.  I got really bored with that blue.  I also changed the theme on Firefox from the basic boring.  I have a kitty theme, with light green at the top and bottom of the window, which would seriously clash with the blue if I hadn't changed the border color.  I like the new look, and there are lists on the side of the page now so that you can go to specific posts.  I also like the RSS feed option, because it makes it look more like a real website.  Since I completely suck at putting my own site up (believe me, I've tried), this is the closest I'm going to get!  I have a book about HTML, but I know me, it's going to be a long time before I learn enough to put up a real page of my own.

So if nothing else, everybody will know when I've become bored with how this looks, because I'll change it again. LOL 

  

I upgraded to the Plus account, so that I could add pics.  The post I wanted to write wouldn't make any sense without one, so I decided to take the plunge.  The reason was this.  I keep a picture of Annie (I only have the one good one)and a couple pictures of Papa on the nightstand by my bed.  Tonight I was looking at them and thinking that even though Annie is more than twenty years older than Papa in the picture I have of her, she doesn't have white hair, only sliver.  It's difficult to see just how impressive Papa's white hair is in this picture, but take it from me, it was amazing.  I realized as I was thinking, that Papa wasn't even 51 in this picture.  I did the quick math in my head and realized that in this picture Papa was the age I am NOW.  OMG.  He'd had that hair for the whole time I'd known him, and I met him when he was 40!  This was taken at the beginning of that school year, which was late '78, which meant that he was 44 years old.  Because of that hair of his, and the fact that I was a teenager at the time and had no real concept of age, I always assumed that he was a lot older.  He doesn't seem like my age, but like I've mentioned to some people recently, 44 back then wasn't the same as 44 is now.  In 1971 when All in the Family started, Archie Bunker was supposed to be 47 years old.  G is two years older than that now and looks about twenty years younger than Archie did back then.  Anyway, I just thought that was totally bizarre to realize that I'm the same age now that Papa was when he was my teacher.  And OMG, that hair.  

Even since I found out that Virginia died, I've thought about it once in a while to see if I was just fooling myself and it really does bother me.  Every time I think about it, it doesn't bother me, so I'm not fooling myself.  It's not a matter of being numb and not being able to feel anything about it, I just don't care enough to be upset about it.  What knowing has done though, is make me miss Annie that much more.  I know in my heart that she was the one who accepted me, even though there wasn't one time when she ever told me that, or told me she loved me.  I don't know why Virginia made it a point to say it so often, if maybe she thought it was what I wanted to hear or if she needed to convince herself, I'm not sure.  I have no idea.  All I know is that she didn't love ME, or accept ME, she loved and accepted who she thought I was, and who she WANTED me to be.  Truth be told, she seemed to back off some when she found out that my then-husband left me.  I think because she had felt like such a failure when her own marriage failed, that she saw it as a failure on my part too, so I felt something of a pullback from her, even if it wasn't intentional.  It could've been an unconscious reaction, things like that happen all the time. especially from people who don't understand themselves.   Even when I completely screwed up with Annie, when I didn't understand what what going on in my own mind, she didn't back off, she didn't abandon me, she talked to me about what was going on, what I needed to do to make sure that things didn't get worse.  What she said brought me back to reality, after I'd been so far gone that nothing mattered to me but her.  Like I've said before, she'd been caught in the crossfirre of my crazy mind, after Papa died and sent me over the edge mentally.  In my heartbroken state I though Annie was the only thing I had left to hang on to, and I almost destroyed that.  Not quite ten years later I was able to apologize for what I'd done, which she appreciated. but even after I'd done all that stupid crap, she was still my friend.
 


As strong as Annie was, as much as she was able to handle every physical setback and keep going, there was one thing that if she had to think about it for any length of time, would've stopped her in her tracks.  I knew about it early on because she told me, and I knew it was something not to bring up because she couldn't think about it.  Her son was married, though I'm not sure when or for how long.  I don't know the timeline on it.  All I knew was that Annie had a granddaughter who meant everything to her.  She showed me a picture of her at one point, but it was so long ago that I'm not sure anymore when all of this happened.  I think she showed me the picture when I was still in school, and then later on after Jason was born, she told me what had happened.  Her son's marriage hadn't lasted, and his ex-wife had left, taking their daughter with her.  She didn't want them to have any contact with her, and it broke Annie's heart.  She couldn't think about it, couldn't talk about it, and kept it in the dark recesses of her mind to keep herself sane.  I understood why, it's understandable that if you wanted to keep going, you couldn't focus on the one thing that ripped your heart out any time you thought about it.  It was her one weakness, the thing that would've made her vulnerable if she'd let it, but she didn't.  I don't think more than three people knew about it.  If you have a chink in the armor, you don't go broadcasting it.  Not wanting to hurt her, I knew not to bring it up after she told me, and after a while, at least once Jason was older and not living with us anymore, I thought that it was better not to bring him up all that much unless she asked, because it would've just reminded her of what she had lost.  My main focus was to protect her from the minute she went back to work after the first mastectomy.  I saw it as my job.  I set myself up as her morale officer, leaving her notes on days when things were psychotic, telling her not to let the natives make her crazy.  I did anything and everything she needed, without question.  G would never believe that, because my attitude doesn't work that way anymore, but I was a very shy, very quiet kid, willing to do anything for somebody who validated my existence.  That could've been dangerous if I hadn't been afraid of men, but when it came to Annie, I was safe in giving her my complete loyalty.  Since then I've been proven wrong more than once in doing that with other people, but not with Annie.  Annie earned all the respect, admiration, loyalty and friendship I had to give.  I can't even say she wasn't perfect, but she was as close as I've ever seen.  Yes, she smoked, even though she was able to quit eventually, and she drank more than a little, but when your heart's broken and you don't know any other way, you do what you need to do.  I can't blame her for that at all.  She wasn't one for therapy, she handled her own business, and did very well if you ask me. 

Last night I cried for the first time in the year since she's been gone, though it didn't last long, it was taken away in the memories that came to me, all the things I have in my mind about her, which means there will always be part of her that remains.  I remembered a dream I had a month or so ago, where Virginia came to me, very upset about something that was happening to her physically, and in the old days it would've upset me, but in the dream, I didn't say anything to her, I called out to Annie, maybe apologizing for all the stupid things I'd done.  I say called out, because I didn't just talk, I yelled out, as if I was trying to cover a great distance.  I said, "I'm so sorry Annie", and maybe at the time I meant for all the things she'd had to endure, all the physical pain, all the hell she'd known and felt.  Already, even before I knew that Virginia was dead, she had ceased to matter, even when confronted in the dream with what had been my worst fears for her way back when.  It was Annie my mind went to, it was Annie I cried out to, whether to apologize or to show my understanding for her pain while she had lived, I don't know.  It doesn't matter, either or both work.  She'll know which I meant, and which one matters.  Even when she didn't know how to help, she still managed to do what needed to be done and give me the exact thing I needed.  It isn't part of me that will miss her forever, it's all of me that will miss her forever.    

Earlier today I looked at Annie's picture, and I saluted.  I hadn't done that in over twenty years.  I had forgotten all about it, but I guess knowing that Virginia's dead and that Annie is the one who meant the most to me made the memory come back.  Back when I was her assistant, and then after I graduated, I used to do that when I would look into her classroom and see her, when she wasn't looking.  I don't know what her reaction would've been if I had done it to her directly.  She seemed like the type who wouldn't think she deserved it or that it was over the top, but that was how I felt about her.  I didn't understand respect back then, because I had no real experience with it.  At that point I hadn't realized yet that I had respected Papa, although he was probably one of the first people I had had any respect for.  It just wasn't something that entered my mind, that I respected anybody.  I sure as hell never respected the psycho, even though he thought he deserved it.  I had contempt for him, never respect.  I respected Annie though, and saluting her, without her knowing, was how I expressed what I couldn't verbalize.  I didn't do it every day, or even on a regular basis, but there were those times, maybe when I knew she was going through a particularly rough time physically and still doing what needed to be done, that I would feel the inclination to do it.  I can see myself going up north, knowing that's where she is, and saluting as I look out at the lake.  I don't know when I could get there, unless one of the jobs I gave G a line on works out.  With him here full time I bet we could go up there at some point when the weather's good.  From what Annie told me the last time we talked a couple years ago, the place has changed a lot, so I don't know if it will get to me to be up there knowing I can't see her, but knowing she's "there" all the same.  I know I'd feel that urge to salute, the whole place will just have the vibe that will tell me she's around.  I haven't been up there since the last time I saw her, which was so long ago that I was still married.  A whole lifetime ago at this point.  The point of this is starting to drift, I should know not to write when I'm tired, but I wanted to write about it before I forgot again.  It's important to show respect when somebody has earned it, and so few earn it.  Annie earned it big time. 

 

        

A few days ago Mom brought up Virginia.  We couldn't remember how old she would be, so I knew I would have to look up Aunt Rita to know, because they were born the same year.  So I got on the Social Security Death Index (and it irritates me that Ancestry.com has control over it), and found out that I was right about the year, 1921.  On a fluke I decided to look up Virginia, because I hadn't talked to her in years, and I knew nobody would tell me if anything happened.  I was a little surprised to see her name actually come up.  Turns out that she's been dead for just about three years (as of next month).  It didn't upset me.  I'd gotten over Virginia mostly a few years ago, but then for sure last year after Annie died.  This is actually a repeat pattern for me.  Papa died in '86, and I was heartbroken.  The psycho died in '88, and all I felt was relief.  When I found out that Annie had died, I had an automatic reaction, I started crying right away, and I was very upset about it for days.  I know she loved me, she proved it so many times, by not rejecting me even when she thought I had major problems that she didn't know how to help me with.  Virginia realized I wasn't the person she wanted me to be, and she turned her back on me, even after she was the one who said she loved me first, which was a lie.  She loved who she thought I was, not who I really am.  Knowing she's dead doesn't bother me.  It allows me to completely stop thinking about her, and wondering if she was still around.  Of course I had to have SOME reaction, but it's not what you'd expect.  I looked up her obituary and it said she died at home, not that she was sick or anything, which means she got to die at 83 years old, peacefully at home.  She was a bitter, judgmental, bigoted woman, and she got to go out the easy way.  Annie was an amazing, strong, loving woman, and she had to suffer more physical pain than one person should ever have to suffer, over decades, and she had to die in the hospital.  So I have a little anger again about how the good ones suffer and the evil ones just kind of fade away.  The psycho just faded out, having drunk himself into oblivion, but Papa had either a heart attack or a stroke or both at the same time, so massive that he couldn't survive long enough for anybody to be able to help.  The only thing I can hope with Papa is that the pain only lasted a minute or two at the most.  For somebody to have found him still sitting in a chair meant that it couldn't have lasted long, which is the only saving grace on that one.  But like I said, the good ones suffer and the evil ones just fade out.  Aunt Rita was in that hospice for a month and a half, and they had to crank her morphine way up in the last week to keep her from suffering too much.  Another good person who died totally unfairly.   

So I can't grieve for Virginia, I've been over her for long enough for her death not to mean anything to me.  Part of me will miss Annie for the rest of my life.  At least now I don't have to wonder if Virginia's out there somewhere still, making me resent her because she was still alive and Annie wasn't.