RouletteWeekend

It’s been 75 Days since we closed the door to the U-Haul in Myrtle Beach and opened it in Knoxville. Seventy-five days of packing, sorting, cleaning, grieving, reacquainting and trying to find a new normal.

It’s a weird thing to live in someone else’s house and sort through someone else’s life when they are still alive. It’s even more interesting trying to figure out where you fit into all of it.

My emotions have been all over the place. I don’t mind being here, but I have felt more like a glorified maid than a family member since we got here. I know it’s all in my head and not intentionally being directed at me that way. I think maybe it’s a mix between my anxiety (& always wanting to make sure everything is OK for everyone) and my utter exhaustion from doing exactly that. I’ve scrubbed until my fingernails were like wet paper and just peeled off. I’ve gone to bed with so much pain in my body it took my breath away when my ass hit the mattress. I’ve woken up with so much pain in my feet it feels like I’m walking on red hot nails. And still, I can’t make myself stop.

We hosted Easter Dinner, which turned out to be really nice. My sisters and my niece, nephew, great nieces & nephew, and my mom came. The day was beautiful. My mom and Will’s mom got to sit and visit with each other. It was four hours of laughter and family and another hour of cleaning. And then my body just kind of gave out.

I did nothing today. I went to the store for dog food. That’s it.

I’ve been telling myself that today is the day that I sit down and do some writing. Not blogging, but actual, “let’s work on one of the books on your Google drive” type writing. And every “today” that arrives, I find myself having to “do this” or “do that.”

I’m sure it’s just another form of self-sabotage. Sometimes, I pretend I’m my own therapist and I say to myself, “Angie, do you really have a creative block or are you just making excuses to not write because you think you are a shit writer and/or you’re afraid that you will sit down and all the ideas and thoughts you were sure you had will just be gone?”

And then I think to myself, “Damn, you’re a really good therapist. It’s like you’re reading my mind.”

And then I get distracted and remember that I have bathroom baseboards to clean and I start looking for my magic erasers and forget all about writing for the day.

It’s pretty much an endless loop of despair.

I often question how I will ever be famous when I die (a joke I like to make) if I don’t have anything to leave behind when I go.

I’m sure as shit not going to be famous for my sparkly clean bathroom baseboards or my impressively empty kitchen sink. And the real kicker, it’s not my bathroom and it’s not my sink.

It’s not my monkeys, but somehow I’ve let everything else become my circus.

I don’t know how to get out of what I can only call this destructive feedback loop of existence that I find myself stuck in.

Yes, this is my pity party. And I am going to finish having it, because for some reason, it seems important to my survival. Or maybe it will be important for someone else’s survival when they find themselves at fifty moving in with their 77 year old mother in law who is slowly forgetting everything that has happened over the last 5 years but remembers everything that happened 40 years ago while confusing all the details in the middle.

It’s a strange twilight zone that happens when people get old and dementia sets in. At least that’s what we think it is. The MRI said there was no Alzheimer’s and we were grateful for that.

But then there is the weird evening behavior and restlessness that I have read is a possible condition called sundowners or something like that.

I try to keep notes on my phone about all the little things that are happening that I feel like might be signs of something more than just “getting old.” I also know I’m not the only one going through this. I don’t know the numbers officially, but I do know that every single time Will or I mention that his mom is having memory problems or say the word dementia, the answer is always “my mom had,” “my mom has,” or “I know someone, too” so we know we are not alone on this island. I guess I’ve just allowed myself to feel really alone on it.

I selfishly had this vision of what my fifties would look like. I thought I would be sitting at a desk in my small little home office with a big window overlooking a beach or lake or a very busy city and I would be just type-type-typing away at some amazing novel that the muse had so delicately and generously placed in my lap as my agent sat patiently waiting for me to finish so the New York Times could happily place me on their up and coming authors to watch list (if that’s even a thing, but in my daydream it is). But instead, my desk looks at a wall and it doesn’t even matter because I have not made the choice to carve out the time to sit at said desk and tell everyone to fuck off for 2 hours a day while I work on doing something for me because the scared Catholic school girl in me is somehow terrified that if I do one tiny fucking thing for myself, the rest of the world might collapse because they didn’t come first.

It’s delusional, I know. I also know I am not that important. If I died tomorrow, the world would go on. It does not stop for death and I know mine will be no different and yet, I keep finding excuses scattered up and down the steps like dog hair.

But, I sat down to write this blog. And maybe if I could do it again tomorrow and again the next day, then maybe I will eventually get to that Google drive folder with all those stories I so desperately want to tell. And maybe I’ll finish one. And maybe it will be good. And maybe I will be proud. Or maybe I will die first.

But at least I learned how to make Key Lime Pie.