The Fuckery Continues: 7 Months & No End In Sight

Seven. That's how many months it has been since my brother's marriage imploded, and there seems to be no end to this shit show. His divorce hasn't been filed or finished. He's just in full on wallow mode.

When I think of my own personal divorce timeline, where was I at the 7 month mark? 10 Days after my marriage imploded, I got a PO box, I got a storage unit, and I I moved into my cousin's house for that transitional first year. By the 7th month, guess what? I was divorced and moving my life forward.

He's been living in mom's house since December, and hasn't managed to pay any of the utilities in that time, and pretty much he's been a huge hinderance to the sale of mom's house.

Two more months from now will be exactly one year since mom fell and fractured & dislocated her shoulder, and landed her in Shady Pines--she decided she wanted to stay permanently. I don't know what she tells other relatives, but I'm sure she plays it up as if we had her put away. Whatever. I have neither the time nor the energy nor the GIVE A FUCK to even entertain HER fuckery any further.

Anyway, we were hoping the house would have been sold in February, but our brother has been, shall we say, uncooperative in making himself available for building inspections and the like. He's also been severely lacking in appreciation and awareness of how truly special our sister's boss is. Sis' boss not only bought $6K of our brother's hoarded collectibles, but the boss is also planning on buying the house, and plan on renting it to our brother with the option for our brother to buy it.

All of that, of course, hinges on whether our brother is capable of writing a check and paying his bills in full and on time. It has become crystal clear to my sister and I, that this will not end well.

When I returned from vacation, sis zapped me this photo, and said, "The inspection for the certificate of occupancy was Friday."

To see this photo, it's pretty much heartbreaking for me. First and foremost, it is as if my father were resurrected from the dead. All of this junk was in the garage in October. Remember October, when I went there and helped sis prep the house for the estate sale, and was left to bust my ass to empty the garage because our brother went into the garage to "help himself" a la American Pickers-style, to whatever treasures lie beneath the detritus, and of course left the garage as-is? 

By the time I was done by midnight, there were roughly two dozen black "lawn and leaf" garbage bags loaded up and the garage was respectably clean for not just an estate sale, but for new owners to MOVE IN.

Bask in the chaos of that photo. Look at the breathtaking way our shit-head brother daisy-chained those extension cords and draped them up and over the garage door opener! 

"Sure, I have a fire extinguisher," he assured sis before the inspection. Of course, he had a fire extinguisher that expired in 1997--an extinguisher that no doubt dad bought. 

Bask in the outright lack of a clear path in and out of the garage. 

The mind reels. 

If the house doesn't sell soon, Shady Pines could presumably put a lien on the house, and then we can't see it until the debt at Shady Pines has been met. 

Sis is furious, and I am hoping she is furious to actually do something that needs doing, and I don't mean for him--I mean FOR HER. She needs to just STOP. 

She informed him that if her boss does go along with the sale of the house and then decides later his hoarding is a problem, our brother could be evicted. "Are you going to do what you can to make sure that doesn't happen?" His pathetic reply was, "Uh, I guess."

He basically went from living with mom and dad who paid the bills, to being married, and his wife paid the bills (or at least paid them up until about five years ago). He doesn't have an email address and doesn't know how to balance a check book or pay bills on line or any basic household management. He was a diesel mechanic for 18 years, and for the last 2-3 (perhaps a bit longer), he has been a foreman in his garage since due to his defibrillator, he can no longer work as a diesel mechanic--so it's not as if he doesn't know how to function. I mean, he's a MANAGER where he works, and he holds down a full time job and makes money.

There is no easy or obvious answer as to how or why he doesn't understand the concept of the necessity of paying your bills or else your electric or water gets cut off, or your car gets repossessed. You would think the fact HIS HOUSE went into foreclosure would have driven the point home: you pay your bills or you could become homeless.

My sister and I devoted each of our respective sessions with our therapist to this topic this week. Sis and brother both use the same therapist and sis provided the photo above to punctuate how bad the hoarding is, and sis said she didn't know what she should do about it. Her therapist said, "There is nothing for you to do."

Her therapist further went on to say that she believes hoarding comes out of borderline personality disorder and trauma, and possibly of sexual abuse. Sis then went on to remind me of this kid (who went to school with me) who mom babysat (along with his sister), and how this kid nearly got one of our brother's friends to fellate him. The boy's mother threatened to call the cops, and of course mom only ceased to babysit this kid due to peer pressure. My sister went on to remind me how ALL OF US were molested by this kid. Mercifully, I cannot remember it myself. I won't contradict sis, she's probably right. I just cannot remember it at this moment.**

We did the math this morning, and sis was about 11, which means our brother was 10. And that pretty much could be the reason why he's got this pre-pubescent fascination with pornography. Perhaps.

My conversation with my sister started on the phone, and hilariously enough I continued talking to her on speaker phone while I was in the shower and then brushing my teeth as I was getting ready for work--and then later, after I dropped the Maharajah at the train, and I picked up the conversation via text, and this is what I sent my sister:

Here is an image for you: you and I are each in a separate canoe, each paddling away from the past the we cannot control: mom, dad, our brother, everything negative and hurtful. 

I'm a bit further from you, paddling my canoe, and you're behind me, and behind you is the Titanic, up-ended, half sinking. Mom and our brother are The Titanic in this metaphor. They want to tether themselves to us in our canoes, and instead of keeping THEM afloat, it ends up sinking ALL OF US.

JUST KEEP PADDLING, KID!!

I then sent her this song (I hope it embeds properly):

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So we're both angry and resentful of our parents for creating this monster, but who knows what the percentage of blame they should shoulder on this one. But still. It's there. And we are both nearing 50, and wondering when our own lives will begin, instead of being an extension of the fuckery that is our parents' (and now, brother's) dysfunction and abuse. 

RAGE? RIGHT ON TIME! 

Mother's Day is coming up this weekend. Great. My least favorite holiday. And every year for as long as I could remember (okay, perhaps it's closer to 35 years), I have anguished every fucking year, to try and find the least personal and most neutral Mother's Day card that conveys "I am sorry I shredded your vagina on the way out" and "thanks for not completely destroying my sense of self." 

This year, I finally figured it all out: when I finally find this year's card, I was going to buy several, so then I don't have to engage in this annual act of futility again--or that is what I dare to hope.

So why five? See, if I bought TEN, she'd die next year. And if I bought two, she'd die THREE years from now. I figured I'd split the difference and get five. And why are three of them identical? Well, there weren't five of those kitten cards available, and I had to make do with the other two cards.

I plan on staggering them, sending out the kitten card on top for this year, and alternate each year.  Neither is she a sentimental person who keeps cards, nor does she have the storage space for that. It'll just clutter up her room at Shady Pines. It's doubtful she will remember two years from now when she gets the second kitten card, as the card will no doubt find its way into the trash bin within the week.

**I mentioned to my sister how at this point in my life, I do not know with certainty HOW MANY people have molested me--if not raped me. I blame my mother for this. Her brother and cousin molested me (each, in separate incidents), the cousin digitally raped me; and part of me feels pretty certain on a primal kind of level of KNOW IT IN MY GUT that my grandfather did something inappropriate to me when I was too small to verbally articulate anything. I remember being maybe ten, and I called him a pedophile, and other than my grandfather being offended, nothing else came of it--and it makes me wonder how "ten year old me" even knew what that word meant. Then there are countless other incidents, among them Gary--the kid my mom babysat, and others. Sad, but true, but, I didn't really start to cultivate self-esteem until I married the Maharajah, and that's been only within the last 17 years or so.

Too often, I have heard people (I suppose, they think they are being well-intentioned) say, "I am sure she did her best." Well, what if her best wasn't good enough? There is much more to being a PARENT than fucking and squirting a baby into the world. A huge part of being a PARENT is sustaining and protecting a child. As I near the age of 50, I've been working at sustaining and protecting myself and conditioning myself to no longer abide nor make excuses for ABUSE.

It is pretty sobering to think that what my parents thought was "parenting" was in actuality, emotionally damaging abuse. My sister and I each have our own issues to deal with, emotionally and of course our own physical medical issues, yet, somehow, we have managed to escape our abusive past and be considered by most people (and of course, our therapists) to be "high functioning," I look at my brother and look at how much worse he's been damaged--the jury is still out on whether or not he will be able to live on his own independently, or whether his own demons will render him homeless. 

Tragic.

FIVE

No further commentary is needed, is there?

FOUR

See also: Post-Paschal Post.

Out of the blue I received a text from my aunt (aka mom's flying monkey) asking ABOUT THOSE FUCKING BOOKS.

So, on top of leaving me THREE voicemails about these fucking books she's demanding I find for her, she's now recruited my aunt to reach out to me.

I kept my replies super brief to my aunt and didn't add anything else to it. 

For someone who thinks she's so self-aware, she certainly makes herself available to be manipulated by my mother.

FUCK THEM ALL.

PS: I have been reading up on Reactive Attachment Disorder--and my god. Maybe I have it? Maybe my mother, and me and my siblings have certain stripes of this disorder? 

Almost Forgot

Audrey's house still isn't sold yet, we're now waiting for the C.O.

By the time the deed is finally transferred, Shady Pines will have absorbed it all. And with her pension and Social Security now in a trust account, that's the end of the line. 

She's still demanding and bossing everyone around, not realizing very soon, she will become what I will call "indigent adjacent." Sure, her basic needs of a roof and sustenance will be met, but beyond that, there isn't a quality of life. And if she's got to suffer, then the rest of us will, too, in one form or another.

Fuck her.

Post-Paschal Post

I sent Audrey a card on Wednesday, which she received either Good Friday or Saturday. 

Easter came and went and she didn't bother to call me.

The following week, I started my spring cleaning and found three bags of sugar free candy, so I mailed them off to her. THAT, of course, elicited a call of thanks. Of course, because I DID SOMETHING FOR HER.

Last week was about the fourth week after Easter, and it took her THAT long to get around to calling me, and not to say she missed me or that she was worried (as normal mothers would), but that she wanted me to DO SOMETHING FOR HER. See? I only exist when she wants me to exist. 

Anyway, she left a voicemail on my phone at work, slurred speech and all, and I somehow deciphered the books she wanted me to get from paperback swap, and I ordered them, and I thought my participation here was done. OH NO! It's never that easy.

The next day I got YET ANOTHER voicemail asking if I got the first message (YES DUMB ASS).  And the following day I got ONE MORE voicemail, this time on the house phone. All of these calls I have not managed to call her back, because, well, FUCK HER.

And here we are, about two weeks away from my least favorite holiday, and I had a fucking epiphany yesterday. I decided when I go out to find my pink unicorn, in this case, the most neutral, most impersonal mother's day card I can find, I will buy about 5 of them, so then for subsequent years, I don't have to go through this bullshit anymore. 

There's no way to figure out the correct # of cards to buy. If I buy 5, she'll probably die next year, and if I buy 10, she'll die 11 years from now. So I can't win for losing. But I am tired of this bullshit holiday. Resent it, even! But I think buying the cards in bulk is a brilliant idea, and one I am embarrassed to say that it's taken me THIS LONG to figure this out.

Shady Pines: A Screed on Food

So the very same weekend as "Who Flung Poo," Audrey ends up in the hospital too, this time with YET ANOTHER raging cellulitis infection. She manages to call me and leave a voicemail about my brother, and never mentioned anything about HER being in the hospital--not that it matters to me really. She has gone WEEKS without calling me, and there she is, calling me to convey that my brother was in the hospital, and I have no doubt she wanted to gossip about what got him there. I wasn't having any of that, and let the call go to voicemail. She called again this past weekend, and again, I let it go to voicemail, as her birthday is on 3/1, and there is no way in hell I am going to call her twice in less than five days. Fuck that noise.

Before I get ahead of myself, here is a photo of what her dinner on Sunday was, at Shady Pines. Now mind you, she is on "self pay," and we're still waiting for the sale of her house to go through. 

The above is a photo of what you get served for dinner at a nursing home. Mom is on self-pay to the tune of $11,000 (and as of current writing, she has racked up close to $55-66,000, which is more than half of the value of her house). I have absolutely no doubt that they have it on file that mom is a diabetic who has diverticulitis. Look at that "welfare dog," plus TWO different forms of cabbage. 

Now I'm not a tube steak snob. I've been known to have a hotdog (on an actual hot dog bun!) and some cole slaw for dinner; however, if I paid someone $11,000 a MONTH for my room and board (et al), I'd expect more than this. And yet, there's a bit of irony, knowing how mom worked for 25 years in the kitchen of a nursing home--oh those poor souls! As if they didn't have enough troubles, landing them in a nursing home, but to eat mom's cooking on top of that? Surely it's one of the inner rings of Dante's hell.

Food has always been a continual theme in mom's life--food controlled her, and by extension, she controlled us with food. 

Years ago, I worked with a friend whose mom was from Ireland, and she boiled everything. She and I would go toe-to-toe, story by story, inventorying particular dishes each of our moms made that we were forced to choke back. I don't remember which of my mom's particular dishes won that contest, whether it was her grease-laden Meatball Stroganoff or her Bluefish Marinara. I am starting to dry heave a bit just thinking about this.

Then there's the matter of mom's Killer Meatloaf, which my sister and I are CONVINCED mom never actually cooked, but instead, she'd mix up the meatloaf and leave it out on the counter, unrefrigerated, until the sad, murky meat-slab turned brown and serve it up to us. It IS plausible, especially given how every time we'd eat her meatloaf, we'd all get sick. Every last one of the 5 of us, 6 if you include this one friend who was like a stray cat at dinner time, every last one of us sick, with a solitary toilet for us to all compete. TMI: Trust me. Nearly everything can be used as a toilet if you are desperate enough. 

Then there's the matter of birthdays, and how she'd use food to control the tone of our "special day." And this isn't something unique to me, everyone has a story. Every year for nearly 30 years, mom would make a German Chocolate Cake for my brother as she got it in her head that was his favorite--no dice, his favorite is an Italian rum cake!

The very last birthday I decided to give her access to me was the year I turned 31. Before the visit, she asked what I wanted for my birthday dinner and birthday cake. "Sirloin salad and red velvet cake" was my reply. This was the first and last of my birthdays where the Maharajah attended. And I guess mom changed the menu up thinking "he's Indian, Indians like HOT food" and she made roasted chicken parts and then promptly dumped an entire jar of Italian style pickled peppers on top (the dish was damn near inedible). And my birthday cake? Entenmann's crumb. And in keeping with her lack of Give a Fuck, she didn't even invest in a small box of birthday candles, and instead, jammed a 12 inch taper candle in the cake. The whole thing was so regrettable.

The only thing that could even come close to the birthday meal fuckery is mom's birthday gift bestowment. This was done so regularly, it almost is a trademark: she'd wait until the last possible moment to run to the supermarket or pharmacy and buy the first random piece of crap she could. She would hand the gift recipient the bag from the supermarket or pharmacy--and inside it would be: an unsigned birthday card, a roll of tape, a new Bic pen, a packet of gift wrap, and the shitty gift, unwrapped. She couldn't give a shit enough to wrap the gift or sign the card.  

The last birthday gift she ever got me was when I was 30 and was in the throes of leaving my exhusband. She went to the supermarket and bought some random clown marionette, making some claim that I should hang it above my bed, given the bed is probably seeing a lot of action with all the CLOWNS I date.

March 1st is her birthday. And I will get her the same thing I get her every year: a box of assorted sugar free chocolates. On the surface at least, it looks like a nice gift. My gift is passive-aggressive as all fuck, given mom has ZERO impulse control, and will eat the entire box pretty much all in ONE GO, shoveling each piece into her gaping maw before the previous piece is done being chewed or swallowed. She does this without fail, without exception, despite the box having a warning on it that "excess consumption causes diarrhea." 

IMHO, a "thank you" or other acknowledgment is the gift you give in return when someone does something nice for you. She "thanks" me the next day, in the form of a voicemail where she snarls into the phone about how my gift made her so sick/shit her pants--never once thinking that the chocolate didn't make her sick, but her LACK OF CONTROL was what made her sick. But whatever. 

So, to know the consistent diet of regrettable foods she'd serve us, and now know she's a captive audience at Shady Pines and they are serving HER regrettable food, it is karma in action, imho.

I have gone most of my life with the awareness that, in all probability, I wasn't going to get an inheritance, when I cast my gaze upon that welfare dog with the double dose of cabbage, I cannot help but think for at least a petty hot second, "that's where my inheritance is being spent." On a tiny, tiny level, I did have a hope of a consolation prize for the assortment of abuse and fuckery I received from my mother.

More: Merde Maelstrom

So, mom has been in Shady Pines since around August. She wasted precious time "deciding" to stay (Hobson's Choice was in October), when we all could have used that time to empty out her house in a more casual manner.

When things looked like they were organized and on their way to get the house ready for sale, our brother's life pretty much imploded, as was indicated mid-month in December.

So in the meanwhile, my sister's boss has decided to buy the house. Initially with the intent to "flip" it, but also has made an arrangement to allow our brother to live there (pay rent, utilities and property tax, too), and at some time in the future, the house will be sold to our brother, assuming he doesn't fuck things up.

One of my super powers is to see problems before others. And even though I voiced my concern to my sister, the plan continued. I thought SURELY if something were to go sideways it would be AFTER the sale of the house. And to date, no, the sale has not been finalized yet. ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN. I envisioned the brother working on his car, outside, loudly drinking beer with a few of his asshole buddies, and someone contacting the HoA on him. But no. That would be an IDEAL situation.

The weekend before last, a collection of absurdities occurred. First, he was stalking the YentaBeast on FB, and when she said she was going to do a number of things, one of which was see her therapist, he blasted her back with, "Liar. He's in Jamaica."  

Then, despite being advised by our sister to NOT have the YB drop his kid off at the house, he did precisely that. Prior to the YB arriving, he was outside walking his dog. This detail amuses me, given that the dog shits so much IN THE HOUSE that I bet the dog is pretty much empty while he's out on his walk.

And the YB shows up with the kid in tow. And a screaming match ensued, culminating in him tossing the sack of still warm dogshit in the car WHERE HIS KID IS. The neighbors called the cops, and while the cops were en route to respond to a domestic dispute, with Fred Sanford-like timing (ELIZABETH! I'M COMIN' TA GET YA!), the brother's defibrillator starts zapping him. And upon arriving and making a report (see? a paper trail is being established--and will no doubt work well to support a restraining order), they then took him to the ER.

Six hours after getting out of the hospital, he then, cluelessly, calls his daughter to see if she wants to go out to dinner with him. And no-shit-Sherlock! She doesn't want to go out to dinner with him, after he terrorized her with a bag of dogshit. When our sister informed him how this is going to play out, and how he'll be lucky if after the divorce he'll be able to see his kid with SUPERVISED visits, his response was, "What's the big deal? The shit was still in a bag."

What he fails to realize is that divorce is an act of war. Every action has to be calculated. And well, he's given YB the upper hand, and if "I" were the YB, I'd sure as shit get a restraining order on him and have grounds to do so, given he terrorized their kid. 

The mind reels, and the question everyone comes to initially is, "What kind of father would throw dogshit on their kid?" And this is usually met with me saying, "The same kind of father who would throw (like a spear or javelin) the front fork of a bicycle at their kid." Yep. My dear-old-dad did that very thing TO ME (I was about 11 or 12--close to the age his daughter is right now). And luckily I am a supreme clutz and the grass was wet and I slipped and it was a near-miss. He threw it with such force, the bike fork stuck in the side of our wooden shed. I have no doubt in my mind he could have killed me, and just because I did NOT die that time, doesn't make what he did to me any LESS awful. 

So my brother has the worst characteristics of both parents: dad's seething resentment/emasculinity/hostility, and mom's lack of impulse control. All of this is going to lead to him not only losing ANY kind of contact with his kid, but no doubt, if he doesn't get a grip on reality, and start paying bills and quit half-assing things, he's going to totally sabotage having a roof over his head.