"the smell of hospitals in winter, and the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters with no pearls"
So I've been having a rough time dealing with life lately, and I thought maybe I'd feel better if I laid it all out in here....so here goes, the huge catharsis that is the start of a new year....
What's going on in my life?
Well, my grandmother died a month ago today, after a very sudden and terrible stroke and a week of watching her very literally decompose in a hospital bed while my grandpa stayed there every second trying to come to terms with what was happening and not feel guilty about letting his wife of 55 years die. I never want to do that again. Ever. I had to hear the story of what happened over and over again, and it just made me sicker each time. I hate that this happened to my grandfather, who is a very good man and hasn't ever done anything to hurt anyone in his life. He's been dealt a largely unfair set of cards, and I would have loved to see his last days perfect and peaceful. This isn't going to happen, though, and I feel sick just thinking about it.
He has ALS (Lou Gherig's disease), we think (he'll have an appointment tomorrow to get a second opinion on this, but it seems pretty certain, and hoping just hurts at this point.). So basically, I'm watching him disintigrate in front of my eyes. He's thinner than I have ever been in my entire life (and anyone who knew me in high school will understand what that means), and he's hardly ever hungry. He eats, but it's tiny little amounts because his stomach has shrunk down so far, so he keeps losing weight he can't afford to lose. He has a hard time breathing at high altitudes, and sometimes even lower altitudes, which means we are going to have to move him out of his house, which he doesn't want to do, and hopefully into my parent's house, which we will try to convince him is a good thing this Thursday. He's a fiercely independent man, and all of this is hard on him because he can't stand "being a burden" (he's not.) or dealing with the fact that he gets tired after being on his feet for about ten minutes now and can't even get up the strength to shave most days. I love him dearly, I've been his other sweetheart all my life, and this is the closest I have ever come to actually having my heart torn out. It's hard enough to want to fix things that I can't in the world all the time, but not being able to fix this pretty much drains the life right out of me.
As if this wasn't hard enough, this side of the family has got to be one of the sickest emotionally that has ever existed. They don't want to talk about anything, and they don't want to deal with what's going on, so they don't. They act like little kids a lot of the time, and then when they're forced to deal with things, they go into some super-untouchable mode that makes them come across as callous and cold to those of us who are actually dealing with feelings and reality. The house my grandparents have lived in for years is a mess--it looks like mental illness bottled up inside a structure. All the filing was done quite randomly in plastic grocery bags from the Vitamin Cottage, and it's taking weeks to find things. There are also dozens of bottles of nutritional supplements that my grandma was making she and my grandpa take, and it's nothing even close to healthy. The entire garage was filled with the boxes the vitamins were shipped in, and we now know that she wasn't telling the doctors what she was taking like she has promised us she was. God only knows if this stuff had anything to do with her stroke or my grandpa's illness, but it's not at all far-fetched. I'm dealing with a lot of anger at this situation, and it feels a lot of the time like it has no where to go.
On top of this, I'm working at a job that just feels like it constantly drains me. I'm working in a toy store again, and dealing with Boulderites, which as cheesy as it sounds, does make a huge difference in the way they interact with you. I'm the person who is personally responsible for their happiness, the person who is there to clean up after their children, and sometimes not even a person at all. I'm very tired of getting snapped at when we're out of something and their kids can't handle the disappointment, I'm tired of knowing that this is what my degree and over $40,000 worth of loans came to, and I'm tire of being in a place where I work all day most days very hard for $8.50 an hour, which has proven itself to not be enough to live off of in Boulder. I don't have insurance, which means I don't get to go to the doctor when I need to (even with the thyroid problems I have), and my paycheck doesn't even come close to covering the bills that I have. On top of that there are people in charge at the store who are amazingly negative that make even the best attempts at being cheerful and having a nice conversation pretty much useless. There's one girl who doesn't even acknowledge me when I talk to her most of the time. I'm tired of putting the best of me into a place that doesn't care what I give or what I get. What kills me is that I still have guilt over looking for another job while I'm there. I don't think it says much that's good about an employer when you keep hoping that they'll fire you.
So there are the things that are dragging on me these days. I don't even want to function sometimes, and I hate being that way because it's not who I am. I love life and usually love working, so I know there's something wrong to be this unhappy. Sorry to dump here, but I needed to vent. Something's got to give, you know? In the meantime, I'm trying to stay positive and give everything my best shot, which is a huge effort some days......
What's going on in my life?
Well, my grandmother died a month ago today, after a very sudden and terrible stroke and a week of watching her very literally decompose in a hospital bed while my grandpa stayed there every second trying to come to terms with what was happening and not feel guilty about letting his wife of 55 years die. I never want to do that again. Ever. I had to hear the story of what happened over and over again, and it just made me sicker each time. I hate that this happened to my grandfather, who is a very good man and hasn't ever done anything to hurt anyone in his life. He's been dealt a largely unfair set of cards, and I would have loved to see his last days perfect and peaceful. This isn't going to happen, though, and I feel sick just thinking about it.
He has ALS (Lou Gherig's disease), we think (he'll have an appointment tomorrow to get a second opinion on this, but it seems pretty certain, and hoping just hurts at this point.). So basically, I'm watching him disintigrate in front of my eyes. He's thinner than I have ever been in my entire life (and anyone who knew me in high school will understand what that means), and he's hardly ever hungry. He eats, but it's tiny little amounts because his stomach has shrunk down so far, so he keeps losing weight he can't afford to lose. He has a hard time breathing at high altitudes, and sometimes even lower altitudes, which means we are going to have to move him out of his house, which he doesn't want to do, and hopefully into my parent's house, which we will try to convince him is a good thing this Thursday. He's a fiercely independent man, and all of this is hard on him because he can't stand "being a burden" (he's not.) or dealing with the fact that he gets tired after being on his feet for about ten minutes now and can't even get up the strength to shave most days. I love him dearly, I've been his other sweetheart all my life, and this is the closest I have ever come to actually having my heart torn out. It's hard enough to want to fix things that I can't in the world all the time, but not being able to fix this pretty much drains the life right out of me.
As if this wasn't hard enough, this side of the family has got to be one of the sickest emotionally that has ever existed. They don't want to talk about anything, and they don't want to deal with what's going on, so they don't. They act like little kids a lot of the time, and then when they're forced to deal with things, they go into some super-untouchable mode that makes them come across as callous and cold to those of us who are actually dealing with feelings and reality. The house my grandparents have lived in for years is a mess--it looks like mental illness bottled up inside a structure. All the filing was done quite randomly in plastic grocery bags from the Vitamin Cottage, and it's taking weeks to find things. There are also dozens of bottles of nutritional supplements that my grandma was making she and my grandpa take, and it's nothing even close to healthy. The entire garage was filled with the boxes the vitamins were shipped in, and we now know that she wasn't telling the doctors what she was taking like she has promised us she was. God only knows if this stuff had anything to do with her stroke or my grandpa's illness, but it's not at all far-fetched. I'm dealing with a lot of anger at this situation, and it feels a lot of the time like it has no where to go.
On top of this, I'm working at a job that just feels like it constantly drains me. I'm working in a toy store again, and dealing with Boulderites, which as cheesy as it sounds, does make a huge difference in the way they interact with you. I'm the person who is personally responsible for their happiness, the person who is there to clean up after their children, and sometimes not even a person at all. I'm very tired of getting snapped at when we're out of something and their kids can't handle the disappointment, I'm tired of knowing that this is what my degree and over $40,000 worth of loans came to, and I'm tire of being in a place where I work all day most days very hard for $8.50 an hour, which has proven itself to not be enough to live off of in Boulder. I don't have insurance, which means I don't get to go to the doctor when I need to (even with the thyroid problems I have), and my paycheck doesn't even come close to covering the bills that I have. On top of that there are people in charge at the store who are amazingly negative that make even the best attempts at being cheerful and having a nice conversation pretty much useless. There's one girl who doesn't even acknowledge me when I talk to her most of the time. I'm tired of putting the best of me into a place that doesn't care what I give or what I get. What kills me is that I still have guilt over looking for another job while I'm there. I don't think it says much that's good about an employer when you keep hoping that they'll fire you.
So there are the things that are dragging on me these days. I don't even want to function sometimes, and I hate being that way because it's not who I am. I love life and usually love working, so I know there's something wrong to be this unhappy. Sorry to dump here, but I needed to vent. Something's got to give, you know? In the meantime, I'm trying to stay positive and give everything my best shot, which is a huge effort some days......