it sucks to get old. It sucks a big bucket of greasy friend chicken to get old. To have a mind that runs on full throttle but a body that is threatening mutiny at any turn...it's unfair. Life is unfair. Life is old. I am old.
Crying isn't going to bring back what was lost. All those years choosing between one evil over another in the hopes to live or survive some way and some how. I lost a lot of me. I evolved into a monster in the span of seconds and never really knew my past. It was a fairytale and not a very good one at that unless you consider decades of drunken, abusive, adulterous, Catholic, neglectful, selfish, gambling, incestuous pricks a fairytale of sorts. My age is increasing at an alarming rate as I am sure few of you have been thinking the same thing as well. I am reminiscing of my grandparents and parents and the hard attitude I silently had toward them. (yes, silently because kids knew their place back then and had the fear of the gods put in them) I loathed their whining and thought they were stupid and ignorant at times. I out grew them, and now, Laurel is out growing me.
I am a burden to her and I see that reflected in her eyes. She once read my blogs and poems and sat eagerly to hear my fantastic and true stories of my colorful past. Now she resigns herself to her room to be emotional and sad and counting the days on the wall until she is free from her supposed metaphorical prison and I am left to my own hell and recognisances and the insanity of my mind. I guess this is the stuff a mid-life crisis is made of, when you realize you no longer truly contribute anything in this world and you're not there yet for the rocking chair and your kids loathe the sight of you except when they want something, of course. Work is something I am not allowed and now spend most of my days either in a mood of sorts or a cerebral prison trying to work my way out just like my kid trying to work hers out. It crosses my mind that things didn't turn out the way I had wanted for her and that because of my poor reaction to our issues she sees no other avenue then to bail along with my health. Pretty soon I will be living in my car thankful I held on to that bottle of trazodone. Let me tell you how I wanted things to be at this point...
There would have been a job either in upper management or self employment and I would own a decent home by now and have a pretty set schedule like most of corporate America. I wouldn't be a boater but I would go on trips on the weekend I allowed myself off each month or save up for a big one every now and then. My kid would be healthy and happy and come and go and have her friends and respect for me and herself. She would be active in the community we live in and would be home most every evening for supper with me. I would be fit but not thin (that's a pipe-dream in any realm I think) and would be charitable at every opportunity. I never contemplated what type of mate or partner I would have, only that I had one. The life would be good and my home would be humble but clean and pretty and for once, someone in my family would "blend-in" and stay in one place longer than the three year average or less that I grew up with. We would have roots and once a month Laurel and I would visit my father and his wife (the step-monster) and come home together to watch a movie or play a game. >poof<
...things don't work out as we planned and without the proper skills given it was to be expected no matter how smart and individual is, if they don't believe in themselves enough in the right way they won't make it off the front porch. I have trust issues and so followed the gypsy lifestyle set before me wandering from one bad place to another and from one bad relationship to another. Now I am too old to wander and pack and move and incapable of remaining where I am for very long. I have brought this upon myself and the age is taking its toll as the mind punishes me far more severe than the fates ever could. Any hope I have for romance and normalcy slips away in time with each passing hour and pretty soon that car and bottle will look so pleasing that I won't care for naught else...but...
I don't want to take this laying down. I want to keep going and to find someone and to build a home and to show my daughter life isn't just the hell I have doomed myself to with the help of family and poor choices. I want her to not see just the sad example that I have become. I want her to see sometimes someone good wins or perseveres. She deserves a swat now and then but she also deserves a better example for life than I have set. Even better than her dad has set as neither of us are happy folks and both in similar situations, facing our "end" separate but together and for different reasons. I am no saint and neither is he but we live on two different fulcrums of that lever. Whereas I look at my global fingerprint daily and how I affect others he could care less. And the truth is we are more alike than either would admit to the other. We both despise people by the droves, both are learned individuals, both are stubborn, at one time both were good looking people, both are charismatic. But from there we part. We share "ownership" of our daughter in a very unequal split (95-5) with me being the lion share's owner. He will tell you the same but then he will also tell you he brought me to Florida though I hadn't met him yet when my family moved down here. Alcohol kills brain cells and he seems to have lost many of those along the way...
So I am old. All my friends live in states I can't get to. I own 6 cats, have 4 boarders and am in debt up to my eyeballs and thinking on going back to school. Welfare takes that into consideration for Medicaid and the food assistance programs giving you a big kick in the ass for doing so. I can't let my kid get a job because her income is classified as mine and I have to pay the taxes on it as well, further garnishing an already doomed household financial portfolio. The government will take away any assistance I have applied for if I get a grant for school thus preventing me from school. Doctors will not clear me to work jeopardizing my ability to obtain a job even under handi-capped status. And tonight I just want to crawl in my bed into a little fetal ball and sob until I am so dehydrated that there's nothing but a leathery, bony shell leftover for them to cremate and give to my family in a cardboard box. There's not much left to say at this point as my world crumbles down all around me, but tomorrow I will wake, get up and try to keep moving forward until there is no move left.~mobe's love to her all and her all to her loves, wherever they be.
