RouletteWeekend

I almost didn’t write today. I woke up mad. Anger usually settles in as the day goes on, but I went to bed angry and I woke up just the same.

Some days I just don’t want to do this. I know I’m supposed to be this angel of a caregiver who deals with things as they come and always has a smile and an answer and it’s all just a whole load of bullshit.

I don’t have anything together. I keep trying. I keep thinking that if I just get the house organized and redecorated that maybe it will feel like home and maybe as I look around I will feel at peace, at home even, but that day has not come yet.

So this morning I ran out of the house early to get a bagel and some grapefruit juice from a place not very far from the house and at the top of every foodie list in town. As I sit here at this table, I realize this is the most normal I’ve felt in a long time. Listening to the bits of random conversations that are floating to my table next to the smell of fresh coffee. People. Life. Forward motion. That’s what I’m missing.

I know once everything is unpacked, purged, put in its place, I will have more and more opportunities to find something that feels like a life to me. I’m just not in that space right now.

Right now I’m in the space where I’m cleaning up after two adults, four dogs, one cat, and a bird and I feel like I’m doing it all alone. I’ve never lived with so many souls and felt so lonely at the same time.

Will and I are two seconds from not being together. If I had the means to leave, I probably would. Running has always been a thing I’ve done. I know this about myself. Don’t like a job, quit. Don’t like a person, cut them off. Don’t like being in a place, leave. I’ve always done it. It’s one of my character flaws. One in a long long list of them apparently.

And yet, I’m still here. Trying every day to make things a little better in a house that has been filled with bad memories and literal filth for the last few years.

Everywhere I turn, I find some stain of brother in law. A cigarette burned quilt. A stained floor. A dirty wall. Even after scrubbing my fingers until my prints probably don’t exist anymore, he still exists in that house in remnants of disarray and grime. I don’t know if I will ever get to every nook and cranny in this house to clean it up, organize it, make it feel suitable to live in.

Maybe I’m putting too much pressure on myself to make things perfect. Maybe I’m putting too much pressure on myself to even make things better. Maybe I should just let it all go like everyone else in the house is perfectly fine doing, but that’s not how I operate.

So when I want to do it the right way, and Will dismisses me to half ass it or just get it done even if it won’t hold up (yes, I’m talking about a dog gate), and when it doesn’t hold up, I’m the bad guy for pointing out that if we had done it my way, the sturdy way, yes, even the right way, we wouldn’t have had to buy a second dog gate and now we wouldn’t have to move the second dog gate to a different place because we’ve fucked the wall up.

He told me to “fuck off” yesterday. He’s never talked to me like that and I don’t handle verbal abuse well, or at all. I’m trying to be forgiving and understanding, even, because I know we are both stressed and tensions are running high, but I’m not sure that’s a thing I can get past.

So here I am today, fucking off, by having breakfast by myself, going to buy a new pair of shoes that I can’t afford, and picking out paint at Lowe’s for an unapproved bathroom project, and then getting a 90 minute massage because that’s the only way I can afford to fuck off. If I could fuck off to a new house with my dogs, my things, my thoughts, and myself, I think I absolutely would, but instead, I’m going to fuck off with some self care and a house improvement project.

Sorry for the venting. Thanks for listening. See you on the flip side.