Saturday
Whatever.
Better vomit here than do/say things to Dad I might regret.
I'm holed up in the spare bedroom drinking some hazelnut coffee. I feel OK leaving the mask off in here, I keep the door shut and the windows open. Or I go outside too.
I can hear him grunting and groaning and moaning, but he needs to be his own company for a while.
I had audibly commented on a text I had received. When he asked what was up, I said that the dog Fxxx I sat a few weeks ago is at another sitters' and she is having problems with him marking all over the place. I explained that I felt bad because I had referred the owners to him and said that he "was easy". "Whatever" he said and went off to sleep.
Whatever.
That emotional trigger that is more about the past than the present. That dismissive, self-centered asshole. I've already spent some time earlier today on a park bench, pondering a reply to AN, coming to some clarity that in part I want to learn to overcome those huge barrier walls which made it impossible for me to be L's friend when we still underneath it all cared about each other. But also realizing that AN is not the same person as L, and accordingly may not be wanting or deserving of a continued friendship. Remembering some of AN's deliberately inflicted hurts, and outright lies or hallucinations....L had some faults but he was never a manipulator. So I am thinking of this and how I have sometimes been "too nice" to people like TB who really didn't deserve the bandwidth, and whether AN qualifies in that category. And thinking about the man who conditioned me to try harder and harder for love, approval, acceptance, or even simply acknowledgement that I existed. So when that man dismissed me - and everything - with a "whatever", I snapped. I was angry. And I don't want to blow up AT him because it won't do anything contstructive. In the first instance his mind is not right. In the second instance, he already tried to walk out of the restaurant this morning when I criticized his choice of...a full order of sausage biscuits and gravy with a side of bacon (I was of course sitting across from him in my N95, getting my food to go so I could eat it later). "You're getting worse than Peaches!" He wants to do what he wants to do. He can't empathize with how it feels to move mountains to get him home for surgery, and to all these appointments, and basically revolve our lives around him, only to watch him sabotage everything. He ate EVERY bite of that breakfast just to be ornery. I know when he is with Peaches he always takes half home. When later I tried to talk about it, and say that OK I understood that he is tired of being nagged/reminded and I apologized. And I tried to explain that I felt like he is not working at being ready for surgery and it is not fair to expect Peaches and I do all these things to help him get ready just to have him sabotage - he reacted and said "I NEVER asked for your help. Just like I told Peaches, go away and LEAVE ME ALONE I CAN MANAGE BY MYSELF."
He has a point. He never asked for help. I mean he asks for help sometimes picking up something he dropped or changing his wet Depends. But for the most part, we just do things because he obviously needs the help (meds management, driving, etc.). And I could see that he is hanging on to control and independence as much as he can, so much that he is in utter denial. It's like AN. If I could "help" AN financially without him asking outright, then he was able to say that he never asked me for anything. I would make it my job to "find work', I "loaned" him money for which filming equipment was collateral (written contract) knowing he would never repay it. I paid him to paint the back porch. etc. When he was super destitute, he would mention not having food in the fridge...I made up an excuse to drive over and then pressed cash into his hand, and one time I took him to the grocery store and just paid. Technically he can say "I never asked." It's like if no one says that part out loud, then it allows them to keep their dignity. But it is a lie and denial of reality.
Later on she told me that he sometimes talks about wishing he could simply die. Now, being a fan of voluntary euthanasia, if it was permissible here and he was to bring it up, I wouldn't say no. He's done. He is suffering, physically, mentally, emotionally. He is losing personal dignity. He has lost his independence (though he is still in denial about it sometimes). He is a stubborn old man of the Greatest Generation who really doesn't have much left to live for. I'm sure he is depressed and without taking this surgery seriously as his Hail Mary, he has sealed his fate.
The anger has abated and I can go back to being kind and supportive.
I know his actions and behavior are entirely about HIM. But it is the reminder of some of the most painful formative experiences that made it so personal for me. The same experiences which led to my very dysfunctional and unhealthy relationship patterns...the same things I'm trying to understand with AN and figure out where *I*, the REAL Fiera, really AM in all of it. What are my needs and wants? What are my boundaries? If someone says "Whatever" and dismisses me, is that EVER really acceptable? Especially when they don't see it, don't want to see it, would never think it would be necessary to apologize? I mean, WHY would you ever let people treat you like that, and yet it is SO much a part of my past that I'm only beginning to even see it for what it is?
Ultimately do we just accept bad behavior as a term of endearment, especially knowing that the sun will eventually set? When you know that typically it just leads to more beating your head into the wall?
So much material for thought here.
I know I'm also just depleted and run down and tired. But these are precisely the times in life where it makes sense to ask "what's it all for? what am I doing here? what do I want for ME?"
Today is a pretty big mile marker for a lot of reasons. 15 years now since the Ladytron concert in Toronto a few months after my divorce from L. I was aching from the failure to launch/letdown of a promising relationship, but tbh I was also drowning in booze and nightclubbing like I was in my 20's. I ran away on a business trip to Canada and let the anger of "Destroy Everything You Touch" out on the dance floor as the clock struck midnight. 15 years. Things have gone far differently than I ever would have imagined.
That's for another chapter, maybe tonight if I'm feeling it.
