despair

The Dismality of February, and This Will All Thaw Someday

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Oh, the dismality of February yet again.  There is a reason why February only has 28 days (at least for three out of four years,) and that’s to put a lid on the number of people who die in February.  If February were 30 or 31 days, half the damn population would die in February, and that would just be weird.  We have to spread the death throughout the year better.  Not that everyone should die from heat stroke in July, but jeez.  I can understand losing the will to live when it is 90° and 100% humidity if there’s no air conditioning, perhaps a bit more than most, because I am not at all equipped for high temperatures.  I can abide cold a far sight better than extreme heat.

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But at least in July there is sunlight, and Ohio winters are notoriously dark and sunless. I can go all week without seeing sunlight save for maybe a ray or two on the weekend-  unless there is a damned blizzard going on.  And even if the damned blizzard is going on and it’s 4° below, Target still has nothing but bathing suits, tank tops, sandals and sleeveless dresses on display.  If I need a parka, I will have to wait until July when they put them back out.

Here in central Ohio we have been enduring a rather harsher than normal winter.  Oh, yippee skippy, because I just adore driving in ice and snow.  I’m all about those below zero temperatures too.  There is simply nothing like one’s ass freezing to the toilet seat unless I break down and turn on the space heater in the bathroom.

“Spring” will arrive someday. Probably sometime in May there will come a day when my back yard will transform from frozen tundra into Dog Shit Lake overnight.  Oh, the smell of Spring in the air.  Temperatures will go from -4° to 90° and 100% humidity within the span of about 12 hours.  There is really no Spring in Ohio. There is just arctic cold and wind, followed by stygian heat, usually accompanied by torrential rain.

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This is Brutus, the Catahoula^ (Catahoula Bed Hog Dog)

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This was Clara^ (God rest her sweet soul) the Malinois

Note to self: the 80# Catahoula shits according to his size.  For those unaccustomed to dogs, for an example, a 65# Malinois has the strength to overpower a 300# man.  The 65# Malinois consumes, and disposes of about the same number of calories as a 300# man every day. Imagine that kind of waste load deposited in your back yard every day for six months from October until the May Thaw arrives.

In all fairness, since a Malinois is an ultra high energy, high metabolism dog, a 65# Malinois and an 80# Catahoula are pretty much identical in strength, energy consumed, and waste put down.  My paradigms have been pretty much the same for awhile.

There’s going to be a lot of dog shit to deal with.

Stress? What Stress?, and I’m Still a Hot Mess

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My score was 360.  I don’t know whether or not to find humor in that, or to resort to despair.

I think I will find humor in that.  Despair is easy, and I don’t like taking the easy way out of anything.

If I would have to look back at the past year or so, if anything I am less stressed than I was a year ago, but the types of stress are different.  At this time last year we had finally closed on the loan, the summer-long cleaning, renovating and moving disaster was almost done, and I was moving Jerry into the house in Marion.  In retrospect I think I knew he didn’t have much longer to live.  In some ways I feel bad that I spent so much time doing so much work when he wanted my constant attention, but I didn’t have a choice given the time constraints I had.  Most of last summer was spent divided between two residences- and I wasn’t able to take off work to do anything.  It took a divine miracle that I was able to somehow get it done.

In some ways I wonder if moving him up there- taking him out of his natural habitat so to speak- hurried up the inevitable.  He made no bones about absolutely hating being in Marion.  But in other ways I can’t help but to view his passing as a merciful end.  I don’t know if this is how you’re supposed to feel when someone dies after years of being terminally ill. Is it supposed to be a relief?  He had been ill for many years- not just physically, but he was also deeply injured both emotionally and spiritually beyond my sorry ability to mitigate or repair.  He was a suffering and tortured soul, and there wasn’t anything I could do to fix that. I still feel bad that I couldn’t- as if I have failed.

I do feel guilty to some degree about all my failings with him.  I let his irrational behavior and alcohol abuse wear me down.  I wasn’t as patient and understanding as I could have been. Whatever love I had for him at one time had long since turned to regret and pity.  I felt sorry for him, but not in any way close to him. As the years went by the distance grew.  I spent almost 20 years in a sort of limbo, dancing around his rages and avoiding his scrutiny.

In a weird kind of way I almost feel guilty because I am not heartbroken and weepy. I just don’t have that kind of mourning in me.   Is it too healthy to pick up and move on, and even to breathe a sigh of relief?  I think maybe I got a lot of the mourning out of my system over the years as Jerry’s behavior issues and then the inevitable fallout from his illnesses chipped away at any affection I had for him.

I stayed because I said I would.  Not because I wanted to. Had it not been for Jerry being ill, I probably would have left him at some point because of the alcohol and the rages, the things that happened behind closed doors that well meaning friends and relatives never see.  I stayed more out of pity than anything else.  Does that make me an evil person?

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Jerry’s sisters aren’t very thrilled with me, I’m sure.  I have no reason or desire to stay in contact with any of them after their behavior at the funeral. One didn’t even bother to show up, as she claimed 45 miles was “too far to drive.”  I drive that far each way every day to work, so I call bullshit on that.   I personally think she was pissed because the funeral director declined her request to view his body, even though he had requested NO viewing and direct cremation, and I honored that wish.  Even if he had not specifically stated no viewing, I would have insisted on no viewing anyway.  He had died in the night and was sleeping face down when he died.  When I found him, he had likely been dead for an hour or two, so the blood had pooled in his face, making him a rather bright shade of purple.  I am an iron guts, and even I declined to take a peek at that.

One sister disrespected my son by stating that he wasn’t really part of the family because he wasn’t related to her by blood, while the other was scanning about for valuables to take home. So I really don’t have a use for any of them.  I don’t need their drama.

I choose to live and let live, and to step away from the past.

On the brighter side, my illustrious hillbilly neighbors are always entertaining.

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This place has been messier than this, if that is imaginable.  I think their dryer must have taken a puke. It’s bad enough that they drain the washer out of the bedroom window in the front of the house (and yes, this is the front of the house- the back is even worse) and the health department has warned them about doing that for the longest time, but to hang one’s laundry on the front porch is just a bit gauche.

This is the same pack of governmentally subsidized, poorly tattooed and morbidly obese individuals who were setting off hundreds of dollars worth of fireworks over the Fourth of July weekend.  I had to call the cops when their bottle rockets and other assorted incendiaries were landing on my roof.  I don’t want to be the buzz kill, but it’s bad enough when a.) I have to get up at 5 AM to go to work, because Monday, July 3rd was a work day for me, let alone when b.) it’s also midnight, and on top of all the racket, you’re landing flammables on my house.

My question is, you have money for fireworks, but not for a dryer…or a garage door?

Priorities, priorities.

Speaking of priorities, I am enjoying more road trips and fun activities on the weekends than I have for a long time.  Sophie got to sit in a GT car at the races on Saturday- I had never actually seen GT races or Indy car races live before, so this was a good time.

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Something Missing, Something Wrong

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I loved you the best that I was able.  I could never be the fawning admirer you wanted.  I could not bring myself to that depth of surrender.  I am not good at putting up faςades.  I wasn’t really made for maudlin sentiment or to shower forth vapid praise.

I became jaded and pragmatic and utilitarian out of practicality and necessity.  Living in the embers of unrequited love is just too bitter if you hold on to baseless optimism.  Some things are once in a lifetime offers, and once that flower blooms and fades it’s gone forever.

Even so, I remember.  I remember in vivid, living, breathing color.  I remember all too much and all too well beneath the banality of day to day, in my raw core, beneath the faςades I have to maintain. We were for a moment lost in that timeless, breathless universe of two, where time stopped and for a moment there was only you and me.  This we cannot deny, and I cannot forget.

I remember the intensity, the passion, and the fire.  I know you remember too.  I walk through your dreams. I’m there when you least expect me, a reminder of what was, what could have been, and what will never be.

Trying to Fend Off Despair (and Failing Miserably)

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I need something good to happen to me.  I need someone to say or do something nice or barring that, at least for the surrounding assholes to leave me the hell alone.  I’d settle for the second choice.

Then it hits me- I never had any faith in human nature to begin with, so why should other people’s assholery piss me off so much?

Optimism is a lost cause and I don’t need to be taking it up at this point in my life.

The observation that optimism is a lost cause is actually a bit freeing.  I know better than to expect nothing but assholery from other specimens of the human race, so I shouldn’t let it get me down when I become the community shit box for surrounding humanity.   It does wear me out when I am the object of misuse and derision, but the bad behavior of others, and being treated unfairly by others should never surprise me.   It’s the ongoing narrative of my life as far back as I can remember.  Why do I think that’s going to change now?

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If I suck so bad, then why am I still taking up valuable oxygen?

If I didn’t still have that vestigial old-school Catholic fear of suicide being a mortal sin, and a very real fear of screwing it up and failing to get the job done, I’d seriously consider blowing my head off.

I’m really trying to believe that I have some purpose and value in this life but I’m sick as hell of being the community cat box.    I’m tired of living with a drunken obnoxious old goat with a limp dick who constantly bitches up one side and down the other at me and my shortcomings both real and imagined, but doesn’t lift a finger to help himself.

I’m simply tired of living. It just sucks too much.

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I want to believe that God has a purpose for my life but it’s getting really hard to believe it’s anything good.   I guess someone has to take other people’s shit, because that seems to be the only purpose I serve.  Smile and take it.

I’ve said it before- there are people out there with things to live for.  Why can’t God do an exchange and let them have the time I don’t want?  Why can’t I just go to sleep and not wake up?