It's been a long time since I have blogged.  Life has strewn me thin and thinner in places and much has happened.
Much of this blog has been discussion of my struggles with life, whether it be my depression, my physical health, or whatever.  And some of it has been my struggles with expectations of those around me and involved in my life.  Life has tried very hard to teach me not to have expectations of others.  That way, when someone else does the right, responsible or ethical thing, I can be pleasantly surprised on those rare occasions, rather than being in a dull state of disappointment continuously.  Often I forget this lesson and then feel devastated by life, et al, all over again.
In the past year, I have watched cancer take my mother's life.  I felt helpless as I continued to beat my head against the work post, giving too much of my life and energy to maintain status quos.  For this reason, I lost many opportunities to work out lifelong issues and spend time with mother before she died.  Sure, she lived in my house, and my husband stayed with her so she was never alone, but I owed her more than that.  I owed her myself.  And I failed.
In the past 10 years I have spent an astronomical amount of time trying to be a wife and mother.  Because my husband has never been much of a provider, and for 8 of those years has made little or no contribution to the family financial situation, I have been forced to work a great deal harder than the typical wife and mother. This has added even more stress to my life.  And I am not graceful under pressure.  So my home life has been less than idyllic.  All I can say for sure is that I have loved my children fiercely, and sacrificed whatever was necessary to take care of them.  My health.  My happiness.  My own interests.  My friendships.  My sanity.  My time.
All the same, I did the best I could.  I was not always able to spend as much money on them as I wanted to.  I was never able to spend the time I wanted to with them.  Since marrying my husband, I have often had to take his part of responsibilities in addition to my own.  My older daughter resents the last 10 years, when I stopped being a single parent and started doing something besides working and then coming straight home and focusing only on her.  So now she has told me that she has not been happy since she has had to share my focus and is moving out as soon as she legally can.  This happens to be the day after tomorrow.
So back to expectations.  I expected that if I sacrificed whatever I could, I would be the recipient of gratitude, not resentment.
So when I look back on my life, it's not real impressive.  It's full of dull aches, unrequited caring and compassion.  I am a warrior with fatigue that permeates ever part of my being, My health, emotion, physical, mental, spiritual, is teetering.
So now, having lost a mother, I am now losing a child.  Life has decided to do this to me in the space of 7 months.  I fear for my younger daughter, who is feeling abandoned.  My husband spends his time on the couch, watching football and sitcoms, and playing on his computer or iPad.  No job, no job prospects.  No financial support.  And is apparently incapable of providing emotional support, focusing long enough to have a conversation.  More expectations on my part, I suppose.
I feel that I am living in a nightmare.  This weekend I spend two days attending the estate auction of my grandmother, who died 4 years ago.  I keep waking up and wanting to call my mother and talk to her, cry to her, and be heard by her.  Only she was the one who could understand me.  Only she was with me from the beginning of my life.  Then my firstborn hates me, denies the 18 years I have spent taking care of her, and leaves me as well.  Meanwhile, the dead weight of my husband doesn't budge, seems blissfully unaware that anything is going on at all, and is only impacted by running out of cigarettes or me asking him to do anything other than lie on the couch.
I worry.  I worry about what is going to happen to my youngest when I finally work myself into a state where I can no longer take care of her.  I worry what will happen to her if I am not able to fully function as both sole responsible parent and sole breadwinner until she is fully an adult and can take care of herself.

In regards to the Bukowski quote above, I know my original dream was to become a fusion of mind and soul, spiritually attuned while being grounded and stable.  However, lately I have felt like a soul who has lost her mind, and definitely her moorings.  Insanity does not feel good.  If I could choose to change my course - and I will fight like hell to do so - I regain my mind, and intellectualize my life.  I feel most comfortable with this.  It's as if the emotional shock has caused a gigantic regression in all my Aspergian traits and I need to disengage.  Problem is, I don't have the strength to do so, unless forced to do so.  I am scared of what is going to rip off that band-aid.

TdJ: My Mother's Health

On my Topic du Jour List, this was listed as a worry.  Since the middle of last year, this is a daily worry of mine.  Prior to that, it was one of those nagging, ever-present but sometimes-pushed-aside-for-crises worries.

My entire life I was somehow certain that my mother's health was not good.  She herself traces it back to being pregnant and giving birth to my sister - one of the greatest joys of her life, ironically - in 1972.  That's just over 40 years of (not so) silent suffering for my mom.  She had a Cesarean birth for my sister, then had to feed my sister through a tube for the first few months of her life.  Then she had an appendicitis which ruptured in the late 70s.  Then she developed septicaemia from that.  Then she had an ovarian tumor which was benign when I was in high school and had a total hysterectomy.  Then she broke her foot or ankle or some shit.  Then she was in an automobile accident about 2 or 3 years ago and broke her back.  Add to this an absolute addiction to Coca-Cola and Type II diabetes which she wouldn't stop drinking Cokes for so she has to shoot herself up with two types of insulin.  She has always been, in one way or another, a fucked up little pup.

Then this past spring and summer she started urinating blood.  She ignored it, being too focused on babysitting my nephew (who happens to have autism) to schedule and attend a medical appointment.  The quack she calls a primary care physician is fond of just calling in an antibiotic for her without actually seeing or examining her.  However, the day she finally made the call, at the urging of some woman at her church (having ignored my sister's and my suggestions/urgings/pleadings/veiled threats), luckily her quack was unavailable.  She ended up being placed that day in the care of a nurse practitioner, who actually made her come in, give a urine specimen, and who immediately referred her to a urologist.  The long and short of it is my mother had kidney and bladder cancer.  One kidney, ureter and part of the bladder was surgically removed in August, 2012.

She spent the fall and winter of 2012 in chemotherapy, 12 days in all, (four sets of three days for you math whizzes out there).  A scan on the last few days of 2012 showed that the chemo was effective in getting rid of the kidney cancer, but there is still a "dark shadow" in what remains in her bladder (cue vampire music here).  On the 14th of January, she began radiation treatments for this.  She hates radiation as much as chemo.  Other than her trips to get the radiation and a stop to buy more junk food on the way back if she isn't too tired, she does not leave her bed.  She has even lessened her obsessions.  She is reading more, and even reading more than magazines and newspapers, so that is a good thing.  But other than that, it is hard to watch her consciously make decisions in her lifestyle that are working against her healing.  She has always been a junk food junkie, and has sneaked and rationalized drinking Cokes all throughout her diagnosis of diabetes, even through being placed on insulin.  She is a pessimist about her own life, always has been.  There is no magic wand or formula for me to get her to eat a real fruit or vegetable, even when I guilt her into drinking one of my protein fruit smoothies (22g protein, 3 servings of fruit).  There is no way she is ever going to drink water instead of carbonated beverages.

This has been a long, hard road for her.  Even more thankless, I would hazard a guest, than birthing me.  I do know that there is no way I can "feel her pain" or understand.  I don't have cancer and don't go to doctors.  I feign health even when I feel like shit, and I have no patience for illness in my own body.  I am not so naive that I think I am going to save her.  I may want to.  And I do feel like when all this is over, she will have a good prognosis.  At least I hope so.

The Serenity Prayer states, in my version:

Goddess,

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can, and 

The Wisdom to know the difference.  

My mother's health is a topic over which I need serenity.  Maybe courage to change my attitude and approach.  And wisdom to keep my mouth shut.  

Having said all this, I do ask for tonglen or groovy thoughts from you towards her health and healing.  If you are one of those Christian types, prayers work too.  She is Catholic, so she is all about the prayers.