RouletteWeekend

I spent yesterday licking my wounds and unpacking the boxes that we stacked in the two car garage that were not going to get shoved in the attic. I think I got through almost 20 boxes. One was a box of mine. It was books. And I would say that is the ratio of things that belong to me in this house. Nineteen to one. That’s also how outnumbered I felt when this whole thing started and I wanted to get out of this house to start a fresh life, a smaller life, a healthier life.

I feel like Will entertained the idea just long enough for me to feel like he was on my side, but once his mom’s house was under contract, he came clean and said that he wasn’t sure we were doing the right thing. And while I may not have heard the audible sigh of relief he took when everything fell apart and we (he) decided we weren’t selling her house anymore, I could see the visible relief on his face.

I’m not a complete asshole. I do appreciate the attachment he has to this house in the sense that it was a constant after he was an adult. It was a place to bring his girlfriends home to on the holidays. It was the place where he has the last few memories of his dad. It’s the place that his mom built as her forever home and was never planning on leaving it.

To me, it is the place that stole our savings account. The place that took my plans of walking The Camino last month away. The place that my relationship fell apart in. A place that will never feel like home to me no matter how many coats of paint I put on the walls.

So much like our preferences in college football teams, we are truly a house divided.

For now, I am trying. I am trying to understand things from her perspective, but her perspective is skewed with memory loss and things that just aren’t true. Like the fact that she insists that now that we are staying, she wants to send Will and I on a romantic vacation. The idea is grand, which is what her brain is full of some days. Grand ideas that have no real possibility of coming true. She still thinks that she has the unlimited bank account that she had when her husband was alive. She doesn’t know that she’s broke after she pays all her bills. Really, before she pays them all. We pick up the slack. And she doesn’t understand that.

And I’m having a difficult time understanding whether her behavior when she thought we were moving, which was hateful, hurtful, and violent was a part of the dementia or if that is just how she spent her life getting her way with her husband…by stomping, slamming, throwing, and walking away? And if it’s the latter, am I wrong for feeling so angry because now that we are staying here, her behavior has turned into that of Mary Fucking Poppins?

Sure, we have a place to live with a mortgage that has a 2.6% interest rate, but this house is filled with ghosts. Metaphorically, and quite possibly, literally.

She doesn’t know why some days she walks into the living room and gets in a bad mood or a sad mood and then wants to retreat to her bedroom all day. I do. Or at least I think I do. I think it’s because she was emotionally and verbally abused in that room for years by her son who eventually died in that room.

She doesn’t know why she sleeps in her shoes. One day it’s because she’s had so many foot surgeries (that I cannot disprove or prove) and other days it’s because she’s afraid she’s going to lose her balance and fall on her way to the bathroom. Or maybe that’s just what Alzheimer’s does.

And the worse part is, none of it was really her fault. When we chose not to come back to “help” with the situation with her son, it was out of self preservation. We thought she was just enabling him like she had done his whole life or at the very least since I knew the family. We didn’t know about the dementia. We didn’t know about the Alzheimer’s. We thought the brother was just taking advantage of a mother. We didn’t know that it was pretty much elder abuse and he was taking advantage of a woman who didn’t know what was going on.

And that is a guilt that we have struggled with. A guilt that I think Will is still trying to make up for, even though there is nothing to make up for in my mind. Even if we did know, the brother was so toxic that we could not have come back here without ruining our relationship and losing our sobriety.

The irony is that both of those things may still end up being true.

Maybe it’s unfair of me to blame the house. I know there is nothing wrong with the house itself, aside from the deferred maintenance that is going to cost us every bit of our future savings for the next two years, but the house itself is beautiful. In another scenario, another life, this could have possibly been my dream house, but now, it is my purgatory. A place where I feel like I am just sitting around waiting to be able to move on to my “real” life.

So, I’m trying. I’m trying to change my attitude. I’m trying to understand where she’s coming from. I’m trying to give this whole situation the benefit of the doubt. And while I could name a laundry list of things that have happened in my life that I would have considered at the time “the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” I don’t think any of them compare to losing your sense of self, independence, and joy.

I’m usually so positive, but I’m having a hard time even faking it here. I feel so isolated and far away from all the things that make me….”me.”

Hopefully, I will find something over here in this part of town that feeds my soul, because the one thing I do know is that I cannot permanently become the person I have been the last 8 months.