Hungry

It’s been a long three months since I last posted. The temporary job is over. We moved into an apartment. Long story short, it turned out to be Hell. I made just enough money working to get us out and into a nicer place. I have had so many friends help us I can’t take any more help. I feel like a charity.

I turned 47… and now I’m back to square one. Sigh…

There have been a few times I wanted to write… but time went by so fast. There was no time to write… all we could do was survive. I loved my job, but it didn’t work out. I’m sure there is a reason but I don’t know what it is… I wonder why I and my son, each in our own way, have to spend our lives on the outside looking in. He, stuck at home all day with his Crohn’s causing him pain. Watching other people have normal lives, wishing he could do the same. Me, always just THIS short of making it, and falling short. Watching other people come and go to their full-time jobs with benefits, wishing my job was something I could keep, but can’t.

Just like my marriage. A nice, big failure.

My ex is my friend now, I guess, for lack of a better word… What do you call someone with so many verbs in your relationship? He isn’t just my ex-husband… he is the guy that I grew up with, had a child with, turned 30 and 40 with, and he is they guy that broke my heart in two, ended the life I knew and he is the reason I am sitting here, divorced and alone, in a second-floor apartment with two cats, while our son sleeps in the other bedroom. There is no word for all that.

In the days past, when I wished him dead, I was almost blind with anger… anger I had a right to feel. But now that some of his brain fog has lifted, he seems like an older, wearier version of that guy in my wedding picture. And I was not ready for that. There have been a couple of times when he said something or I said something in conversation that sounded and felt so familiar that it made me cry. For a brief second, we lapsed back into old habits, like him calling me “baby” or me wanting to reach out and rub his back.

These feelings are hard to feel. They are the kind of emotions I have been trying to avoid my entire life. Regret. Loss. Pain. Helplessness.

Solitude.

I miss him still.

It’s very weird how surreal life seems now.

I have lived with all my heart, and put it through too much. I been homesick so long, I have forgotten the girl who started this blog. I am not a wife, or a warden, anymore. I am not a victim. I am a single mother, and a caretaker. I need to also be the breadwinner. And soon.

The one good thing I have now, that I didn’t before, are my parents. I knew, but never really wanted to admit, how great it is to call your mom and hear her laugh, or to know your dad will look at your car if you need him to… But beyond being there for me, I ask nothing of them. They did their job… and I have to do mine. I’m  just at a loss where to go from here.

I have been looking for employment and I feel almost desperate at this point. We are almost out of money. I didn’t get any real notice and my job was gone. The last paycheck of February never came, but I got a tax refund that helped us catch up the bills and move. Now I have little time, and little interest in my resume.

I am so tired of this. So so tired. I just want to come home at the end of the day, knowing I can breath easy, at least for a few more years… I don’t think past that. All my plans evaporated with my divorce. I can’t seem to make new ones. It feels so late in the game, I almost feel doomed to working until I die, hopefully getting my son to place in life where he is happy, more independent, and most important of all, healthier. The thing is, I take better care of him than I do myself…

I always  put off going to the doctor as long as I can, but I saw him two weeks ago. My ex paid for the visit, out of kindness… there could be no other reason.  According to my chart, I have lost almost twenty pounds since last April. No wonder my clothes are falling off.  No wonder my memory is shot. No wonder I get tired so easily. Except when it came to the size of my jeans, I didn’t even notice… For me, stress is an appetite suppressant, and I didn’t think about it. My son has been so sick in the past year, my focus has been on him. I’m sure to someone who CAN’T eat, I seem like someone who just WON’T eat, but it is complicated.

It is clear that my hunger is for more than just food. And I know what it is, but I don’t know how to get it back. Like trust. You cannot  manufacture feelings of security, or contentment… feelings I lost somewhere along the way.

Blessings

Yesterday I noticed that it had been exactly three years to the day since I packed up my last full-time job and went home. I noticed because I was filling out paperwork… and I was hired by a temp agency. I have already been assigned a position starting next week.

Exactly three years of unemployment, uncertainty and care-taking my son when he needed it. And a lot of it seems to have paid off… because I can tell a marked improvement in his health. The goal is to keep doing what we’re doing, and adjust to me being gone 9 hours a day. In the recent past, I don’t believe he could have cared for himself everyday while I worked those hours, but I know he can now. He is stronger than anyone gives him credit for. And it will be good for us both for me to go to work, and for him to recover.

It looks like some of our storm clouds are finally drifting away.

Somehow during all this I have established an ADULT relationship with my parents. At some point, they stopped bringing up old arguments, and I stopped being the rebellious smart-ass that started the whole thing. My dad has survived cancer and it has changed him… he enjoys giving hope to other people who are sick, and afraid of dying. The other day he was wearing a tie-dye T-shirt and I thought I was going to pass out. This from a former member of the Moral Majority in the ’80s. My mom, well she is older, but still cute as a button. When she laughs I hear myself, and when I talk sometimes I hear her voice.
My brother, who I had not talked to since I left home at 18, helped my father move my things into this apartment. He is a married man now, and seems happy with his life, although his wife is sick. That we both became caretakers is sad, in a way, but our mom taught us compassion. We will find our way, both of us. He is strong like me.

But I wish I had not stayed away so long.

Like any child, I need my parents… just like Dylan needs his father, who for whatever reason, is finally waking up and coming around. He also asked me out to dinner.

But I tell myself just as things happen for a reason, there is also a reason for WHEN they happen. Life has a way of blessing us with people and opportunities to help heal the pain, to at least make up for a little of what you have lost. My tears don’t sting in my memory, because I have also smiled a lot.

So now I have five calendar days until I go back to a 40-hour work week, something I will not take for granted. But in the meantime, I am going to do some artwork for this apartment… then back to being a grown-up. And I can’t wait.

This Thanksgiving, I have so many things to be thankful for.

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Turning

Sometimes, life can show us sweet and perfect moments. It isn’t anything that can be manufactured or manipulated… you cannot make such magic occur. That is the beauty of it… when it does happen, hopefully you realize it before it has passed.

Two nights ago, I stood in the doorway as my son and his father played guitar, it was an old Radiohead song, “Fake Plastic Trees” that we all tried to sing… Neither of them, so concentrated on their music, could have known my vision was getting fuzzy. And it was better that way… because they kept playing and after singing a bit more, I turned and walked away, a tear rolling down my cheek…

I thought this moment might never happen. And so did my son.

In the past couple of weeks, my ex has brought us things that mean a whole lot when you are starting over with very little money… bed sheets, a big space heater, reading lamps, and food. I am grateful for these things in more ways than one… they help me physically, and financially, but they also demonstrate a level of caring he has not been capable of in a long, long time.

The guy I used to live with, on the other hand, brought me $50 a week ago after promising me a list of things I will never see. He calls randomly at night when he’s had a few beers, and he asks how things are going. I know he would prefer it if I just said “Fine.” But I don’t, so just winces his way through the answers, because he knows I blame him in part for being here. He rushed me into decisions that I shouldn’t have made… including moving in with him in the first place. And it’s funny how I don’t miss him. I honestly thought I loved him this time last year, and maybe I did… until he ran that drunk mouth. Now I just don’t miss him at all.

Of course it is a different situation with my ex-husband. I have missed him for a long time… I grieved him, and our marriage. because the man I missed seemed to be gone forever. Now I see glimpses of him, and it fucks with me. Part of me wants to cry and hug him… to say a lot of things he couldn’t handle, or answer. But I don’t… because he still has a long road back to himself. He has memory problems, I think. And from the things he says, it’s obvious that some of the decisions he made in the past two years were not made out of malice, but more out of ignorance. Maybe it’s wishful thinking but I don’t think he was capable of considering how we felt… I believe  it was all he could do to handle his own feelings, and the truth of what his life had become.

He gives me hope, though, when he tells me he feels the need to make things up to me and our son, that he hurts too, and mainly, that it isn’t my fault. He gives me hope when he asks how we are doing, if I have eaten or if we need anything. Six months ago, that would not have been his concern.

Although I know we will never be husband and wife again, I hope that we can be a united front when it comes to Dylan and his health, and maybe one day, be friends again. Seeing him clean, healthy, weathered from the sun and the years, his eyes so clear and beautifully blue… it is hard not to be confused and conflicted. The girl in the wedding picture wonders just who is she looking at? I think her heart is looking for something it can recognize…

It’s the first time since all this started that I have really considered forgiveness. Because it might, MIGHT just be possible. It makes me feel as if I can breath, at last, just thinking about it.

Steps

I woke up this morning in a memory. I looked at the clock.

Two years ago, my life was falling apart… it was the day my ex left in a police car. The end of our marriage. Our last chance for a goodbye that never came, but was finalized in a court of law and sent to me through e-mail. Two years that feel like two weeks… and at the same time, they feel like ten years.

I was trembling from past thoughts when I went to check our account online, preparing to pay my first full month’s rent today. But of course, nothing can just be that easy. I looked at the numbers and then realized my son’s SSI direct deposit amount was not right.

A few months ago, Social Security sent my son a letter about being overpaid. I remember writing back, requesting an appeal. I never heard back from them and forgot about it. Until today.

They have deducted almost $100 from his monthly disability. And will for a few more months.

That’s all we needed. Yesterday I found out my unemployment ends after November 21.

Of course, we can get on the phone, try to fix it, live around it… NOT EAT, essentially, because here I am, up to my ears in uncertainty already. I feel like I am going to implode, or blow my brains out, or just collapse in a heap. But I won’t… I won’t be that lucky. I’ll have to go find two jobs, wait a couple of months until the red tape has been cut through, and then, what?

My son is slowly, gradually, getting better, but it seems as if his health, like a mirror of our life, gets knocked back two steps for every one step forward. I am beginning to wonder if I am allergic to progress, or perhaps just a magnet for failure or bad luck.

Meanwhile, my son and I wait on his MRI, as he sleeps the days and nights away, sedated on pills. He writes some, and reads a lot, but so much of his life has been taken away… music, TV, the computer… he is so sensitive to sound that he doesn’t like to go near the refrigerator. It scares me, even knowing I have done everything a mother can. I am still terrified. There are things, like direct deposit and gas prices and cats disappearing, that I can’t fix. I can’t stop his pain. I can’t silence the world. I can’t beg God any more than I already have.

It eats at me.

I have a very hard time watching my son suffer, but turning my back is not an option. We have to take it one day at a time.

His family couldn’t acknowledge it…  His father couldn’t understand it…  My former roommate couldn’t take it…  But I can, and I will, because I am his mother.

It’s taken a long time, but now that his father has started checking on us, and bringing us things we need, I feel a little better. But I am cautious… there has not been real closure and I am not whole, not by a long shot. He realizes that we are here because of him. Because of that day two years ago, and all the days of lies before then. We are here, and he is there, having survived…  but still trying to recover from it all.

How many hesitant steps forward will it take? I guess it doesn’t matter. I am used to walking in these shoes.