I know, I know. I should also mention that as these recent events unfolded I was suffering from some terrible virus I picked up from choosing to work in a crowded monoculture of 5 year olds and was therefore temporarily unable to function as rationally as I would prefer. (((Poor me))) The reason the topic of this thread struck a red button with me is that I was made aware of my mother's increasing decrepitude. If I was going to cast a movie version of my life, my mother would be played by Elizabeth Taylor. My father, who would be played by somebody like Fred MacMurray (thankfully, or who knows how I would have turned out) in a typically idiotic male move, married her because of some puppy-love infatuation he developed when he saw "National Velvet" in his youth. She suffers from bi-polar disease and, therefore, was quite neglectful and frequently abusive in her behavior during my childhood. It is only in recent years that I have accepted that she is my mother. The reason why I decided it was in my self-interest to accept that she is my mother is that I realized that it was not in my self-interest to always do the opposite of what she would do. Anyways, the situation is that I believe that I have some level of social responsibility to provide some level of care for my mother even though I have only a very slight affectionate bond with her. I have to say things to myself like "She saw to it that we had lots of arts and crafts supplies and dance lessons." in order to break through my resistance to even give her a hug. Luckily, my father was a high-level federal government employee, so the checks keep rolling in.Ego said: Sometimes it is good to let the pieces lie where they fall. Sometimes not. Either way, it is a choice.
OTOH, I love my cuckoo-bananas sister and very much value my relationship with her, so I am choosing not to completely default to "I'm outta here." in the face of whatever is currently going wrong with her brain. She is the prototypical Bohemian artist type, so her insanity is taking the form of performance art gone terribly wrong and over the line of anti-social. So, it is already seeming kind of funny to me in a very black humor way. She almost died from cervical cancer, so a normal-crazy thing she once did was to dress herself up like a clown-stripper and perform a sort of burlesque act in front of a strip bar that was right by a college campus while handing out information on HPV vaccine to people on the street. Now she is doing crazy-crazy things that don't have sensible underlying motivations and she resisted arrest and one of the cops slammed her against a wall and gave her a terrible black eye. She promised me that she won't do any more public dancing and she understands that I am very angry that she made use of tomatoes from my garden in a criminal act. Yesterday she told me that she is going to start composing a work that will make use of modern dance music in the way Chopin made use of folk music, and it will be entitled "Sketches from the Metal" and her new identity or band name will be Black Squirrel. One thing my daughter once said was "In our family the only choice you have is which Wes Anderson movie you want to be in." I guess my point here being that I am willing (deem it to be in my self-interest) to tolerate a good deal more bad behavior from people whom I deem to be intelligent, talented or interesting, as well as generally kind or usually lovable.
I feel for you too. I apologize for being sexist in my assumptions about who is likely to be doing personal care duty. As you may recall, I was recently being "kept" by a wealthy former polygamist. I insisted on overt contract for monogamy, to which he literally adhered, but his behavior and attitude still eventually made me livid. The funny thing is that even though there was a level on which I felt like his pawn or his pet, there was another level on which he grew increasingly dependent on me because he had huge stormy emotions and my temperament is usually like San Diego. Kind of like how Nero Wolfe is dependent on Archie Goodwin. Anyways, I know it's kind of wrong to use my current lover like a sexual punching bag, but he doesn't care (he just laughed when I said "May I ask you a personal question. How much can you press?") and we are actually friends who sit around and eat his gourmet cooking and watch permaculture videos together, so it's okay. Like if we run into each other in the grocery store 5 years from now, we will smile and give each other a hug. Also, I am currently digging a deep pit through compacted earth and rubble in my garden, so that will burn off some of my steam too.Sclass said: Your story makes me disordered and anxious. Good luck with this storm. Maybe its time to hit the muscle climbing wall for a break. That sounds like more fun.
That was awesome. I cried.
