Kind of an update...

Aug 07, 2010 11:35

Okay, so... it's been a crazy, crazy week. It feels more like a month rather than a week.

First of all, I'm technically employed by my local school district, which is really nice. I'm not quite done filling out the application (it's a HUUUGE application), but I'm working on it now, actually (taking a bit of a break, think I should drink some water, too much coffee this morning)... Lots of essay questions, some that are pretty difficult. Really excited about this, if I pass the background check, I'll finally be employed after 8 months, and what a comeback! :D I'll be going from retail to an actual professional job! Exciting, and really scary! Wheee!

Anyway, I found out that they liked me on Tuesday morning, and then I walked home, got a random ride from another random stranger (I love random strangers), and just as I was getting ready to finish the application, I found out my stepfather had another heart event (I don't know if it's a heart attack or not), and that he might be dying... And then my mom texted me and asked me to come to the hospital because she was freaking out. Which turned into a four hour odyssey of frustration trying to get Western Union to relinquish the money that was wired to me by Kristina for a cab, and then getting a cab to come all the way out to freaking Raytown... *sigh* Much frustration there. In any case, I made it. Spent my Tuesday evening baby-sitting my mother, who was intent on irritating the poor nurses.

Wednesday, Scot's brother Stan picked me up to go to the hospital to see Scot and deal with my mother, because of some things that needed to be dealt with with this situation. (Namely, how is she going to get by if Scot dies?) Stan's pretty cool. :) Anyway, Mom wasn't at the hospital when we got there, and it took almost an hour to get in touch with her, and it turned out that she decided to have a bit of a lie-in, which really irritated me, because I got up at 6:00 in the morning to deal with this situation, and she was getting up at 9:30. Ugh. Anyway, we waited a couple hours, and by 11:30 were getting really annoyed, and she said she hadn't even eaten yet! Talk about time management fail! So we drove out to pick her up at the trailer she and Scot live in, and then drove all the way back to the hospital, missing the chance to talk to the doctors. Mom decided she didn't want me to interpret and would rather have a certified interpreter there, which really bothered me because she didn't mind me interpreting the night before, but now that I was obviously teamed up with Stan, she wasn't interested in me signing to her. There was yelling and crying. Stan says it's because she doesn't like the focus being removed from her and she wants to be in control of the situation. Anyway, we left, and ended up going to lunch at a really good Mexican place (I love Mexican!!), and when we came back, Mom was like "where the hell have you been? I'm going to get lunch!" And she took forever, so we went to find her and tried to have a conversation with her about what is going to happen in the future if some changes don't happen. Of course, she didn't want to hear it, and it degenerated into shouting and hysteria again. (I've also learned that I've forgotten most of the signs I ever learned, and I wish I could take a class and learn it all again.) Anyway, we gave up on her, she's made her bed, she knows that no one wants to help her because she's used up all the chances that have been given to her.

I think seeing Stan was really good for me, though, it really gave me some insight into the stuff that happened when I was a kid, and getting another perspective on the whole situation really helped me. I mean, I'm probably never going to be completely okay because of all that stuff, but knowing more about what was going on with them really helps me. I didn't notice it when I was in it, but I was kept in this bubble of just Mom and Scot and me, and we didn't have any contact with any of the family. Seriously, the minute I moved in with them, I didn't talk to my grandparents anymore, and it's kind of the responsibility of the adults to ensure that contact continues with other relatives. I don't know why they decided to drop contact with everyone, but they definitely did. (Dropped all their friends, too, after they got married.) There's a lot of stuff surrounding that that I'm really confused about.

Mom and Scot are basically children - someone has always taken care of them. Mom has always had someone to take care of her - she lived with her foster parents (the people I call Grandma and Grandpa) until she was almost 28, and then she left me (at 5 years old) with them because she couldn't take care of me herself. And after she moved out, they were still taking care of her, Grandpa would drive up there every other weekend or something to take her to the grocery store and stuff. I don't remember when she started working for the IRS, but I think it was after she dropped out of college again. And then she met Scot and she moved in with him, because I guess this was right after his mother moved to Reno, so Scot was living alone for the first time, and that didn't exactly last all that long, because Mom moved in with him. (I know they had separate bedrooms for awhile when she first moved in, so I'm not entirely sure what was going on with that.) Scot lived with his mother until he was about 35, I guess, I'm not sure of his history because we've never really gotten along, but then they sort of took care of each other and stumbled along. And then I moved in and everything fell apart, because neither of them knew what they were doing and a 12 year old does not make a good adult, especially a spoiled 12 year old that's never had to be an adult. It wasn't really my fault that everything fell apart, it was just that no one knew what they were doing.

Anyway, that pretty much takes us to this point, I guess. They're children, they look at the world as children, and they don't understand why people won't just fix it for them and keep taking care of them.

I kind of wonder, if I'd had anywhere else to go, any other adults in my life that could have taken me back in 1999, if they'd have been better, if Scot might not have started drinking so much. Because he didn't start until right after I turned 13. That's when I really noticed his drinking. (Also, that was when he had the colostomy bag, so what the blue fuck was he doing drinking so heavily when he had a fucking colostomy bag?!) That was the night that he told me that everything was my fault, their problems with paying the bills, their marriage issues, their health problems, everything was my fault, and then he kicked me from the living room into my bedroom. It was the day after my birthday, the same day I got beat up at school. (Yaaay)

But maybe if I'd never moved in, they'd have never started being so disgusting, maybe Scot would have still taken decent care of himself, maybe they'd still have the house, maybe they'd still have both their jobs... I hate how complicated this situation is, I wish there was just an easy answer for it, because I never wanted this. I mean, Scot and I have no love lost between us - he never wanted kids, doesn't like kids, didn't like me and thought I was too spoiled, and never thought that I would someday come to live with my mother (and him) - but ... I don't know, I think he deserves some karmic retribution for everything he put me through as a teenager, but I don't think it was all his fault, if that makes sense. His situation was party his fault, partly my mother's... and maybe a little bit mine, because if I hadn't been there, it would have been better. I don't know where that would put me, and I can't go back and change it and I don't know if I want to.

I don't love him, I can't love him, I'm too angry at him for all the bad he did, I but I do remember that he did sometimes defend me from my mother - he'd tell Mom to stop when she went to far sometimes with the verbal abuse, sometimes he'd stop her from trying to hit me, and he told her that she was taking it too far after she was bailed out of jail after trying to kill me that one time and she refused to talk to me or acknowledge me at all.

I don't know, this week has given me a lot to think about in regard to the whole situation. And I'm angry at my mother, too, partly because of all the shit she put ME through and partly because of the way she's handling the current situation. I think she needs to grow up, and I know it's never going to happen and that my expectations are too high, but I think they should be high, because she can be better than she is, she just doesn't want to. I understand that, because I could have done more, I could have applied myself in high school and I probably would have gotten a full-ride scholarship to college, but I didn't want to, and now I can't go. I'm trying to do better now, but I have no idea what the hell I'm doing, I don't know how to be an adult any more than Mom and Scot do, but I think I'm doing better than them at least. That's a pretty low bar to set for myself, but if I can do better than them now, that's at least a start, right? I can raise the bar later. I need to find my feet, I need to grow up, and it's so hard, I don't want to grow up, I'm terrified of being an adult. I'm seriously ready to cry right now, thinking about it. I want to be a good person, I want to make everyone proud, I want to be proud of myself. It's such a struggle not to succumb to all of this pressure, to the depression that bites at my heels.

I want to forgive them, but I feel like it's an injustice to myself to forgive them when they aren't even sorry. Except I have to keep reminding myself that neither of them has the same maturity level as me, and that I need to look at them as children. Children wouldn't say they were sorry for that kind of shit. Except they were supposed to be MY parents. I was supposed to be the child, not them. I think I am owed some sort of apology, but I know I'll never get it, and I'm not sure it matters anymore, really.

I just... I'm so confused.
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