Nobody's Cryin', Nobody's Lyin', and Nobody's Dyin'.

PRESENT


Oh, my God, what a WEEK. I literally feel like I've been bound in front of a firing squad and riddled with bullets.

My eldest stepson. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I've been trying to settle Simon's estate matters, and this person has treated me like a criminal since day one, and I have done NOTHING to deserve it. I have done NOTHING TO this person! Ever!

And he communicates like a goddamned Neanderthal, and then he's angry when I can't read his mind.

And the things this person takes offense at. Jesus Fucking Christ! Apparently the normal way that most people hash out agreement and disagreement is completely foreign to this person.

But then, one needs to consider the source. Mom had a diagnosis of BPD (that's borderline personality disorder, not bipolar.) And we know that BP's often pair up with very controlling people. And, from several reports, Simon was a real asshole when he was younger, with a drinking AND a gambling problem. And there were a ton of arguments and fights. None of those three boys is 100% right. I wonder if the middle one, as detailed elsewhere on this blog, may have BPD himself. 

The oldest one, from all reports, is a long-term pothead who committed welfare fraud, moved into Simon's house and never paid rent so they almost lost it, then tore it all up. We could have been married two years earlier had Simon not had to move back there to remodel it. And the youngest one, well...grumpy, surly, depressed, sarcastic, and bitter. Has he ever had a date in his whole life? God knows.

The whole thing almost ended up in a lawsuit. Fortunately, it didn't, but it's all just taught me a little more about the tenacity of the blinders a bad childhood slaps over a person's ability to perceive reality, and to get their mind around the truth about another person's communication, no matter how desperately they're trying to get it across. And how easy it is to fall into a damnable repeating pattern; even though I had just been told (finally!) what upset the other person, I went right back and did the same thing anyway.

And I know who else had a bad childhood, and how tenacious those problems are, and that is really sobering.

Because that person hides, pretends, and lies. And ACTS, as skillfully as Robert DeNiro. If Chi doesn't want you to know something, you aren't going to know it. A relationship could wind up a long, long, LONG way down the wrong road before I ever had a clue.

And that is very scary.

I've realized my horoscopes are right. I am addicted to drama. 

All when I was younger, there was some BIG drama. 

One day I was gonna be a big, flashy success (or as much as you can be as a minor author, anyway) and prove to EVERYONE I WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR that I didn't deserve how they acted toward me and how they treated me. I was gonna do well enough at something I loved so I didn't have to stay stuck in something I just wasn't good enough at and was unhappy and terrified doing. 

Then when I realized how unrealistic that was, at least I could marry the guy who was that good.

Then I realized how unrealistic that was.

But Simon was such a great guy to be with, that didn't matter. Then--surprise!--I was battling brain cancer with the best guy in the world. 

Then I was battling Rory and childhood demons with the other best guy in the world.

Then I got DUMPED. (Being brokenhearted sure is miserable, but it's also very dramatic.)

Now all I'm battling is Number One Stepson. And I TRULY hope we've seen the last of that...but I doubt it. Something tells me he's going to hate something in the new book contract, jeopardize the sale of the book, and we'll be at each other's throats all over again.

Drama, it turns out, is not all, "Wheee! I'm not going to have a boring, everyday life!" 

That was how I was as a kid and as a young person.

But actually, most times, drama is BAD. And most of the time, drama makes you feel TERRIBLE.

                                                     ***

Soon, there will be nothing particularly happy or exciting going on in my life, at all. Nobody I'm happy to come home to, or just thrilled to stay home and cook Sunday breakfast with. Nobody to swap writing pages with and dream. No belief that anything exciting is going to happen with my writing, or Simon's. Or mine and my writing partner's. Realistically, most books that are published don't sell shit. You have to sell at least 5,000 copies for a publisher to consider you as having done anything worthy of another book contract.

No more Battling To Save My Man. (In any sense of the phrase.)

And, please God, no more battling with Number One Stepson.

It's entirely possible that I'm going to spend the next thirty to forty years just going along and doing my work, and that will be it.

                                                      ***

You just have to live what life gives you. 

You're not going to be the "best" at anything, and even if you do, you're just going to die and it won't matter in the great cosmic scheme of things, anyhow. It's just not that important. Nothing is, when you think about it.

Two years and six days ago, Chi called me and left me. And I've had this sensation ever since then that I was in a race against time, struggling and struggling to grasp a number of things about it before a deadline, before something else that was going to happen.

And now I feel like I've gotten there. I've achieved all the knowledge from it that I was supposed to. 

I can poke around it some more, sure, and the astrology is fascinating, but there's no more feeling of urgency about it any more, like there's something I really need to know and I haven't found it yet. 

I'm done shoveling shit, I'm a very different person than I was when I started, and now it's just time to relax. To just go along doing my work, and that will be it.

I won't have a dramatic life any more, or even have anything much happen to me at all--except for getting old and dying.

                                                      ***

And I remind myself that there are VERY good things about that. 

I have a new saying about my new, getting old, getting bald, getting fat, solitary, little-old-lady, almost-fifty life: 

"Nobody's cryin', nobody's lyin', and nobody's dyin'."

All my young life, my mother was whinin' and cryin'. "So-and-so did this to me, and So-and-so did that to me."

"Oh, you poor baby," was the only way she knew to feel self-worth.

If somebody done her wrong, and you were telling her they were wrong and she was right, that was a safe way, and the only way she knew how, to feel the validation she needed. Always from other people, because she was abused as a child and still all tied up in it, 

and she still felt worthless.

I don't have that in my life any more. I had to cut that influence out a long, long time ago due to some unbelievable behavior. 

(I haven't missed that behavior one little bit.)


And Chi. Sweet, handsome, smart, sharp, funny, incredible Chi.

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH HIM. NOTHING!

He is, always was, and forever and ever will be, a lovely, lovely person.


But, he was an abused child, 

and he still feels worthless.

And the only way he doesn't feel worthless is if he's making everybody else happy all the time.

And if that isn't making him happy, he stays all walled-off and fortressed-up, shutting everyone out of his reality, not letting anyone see the real Chi, unwilling to BE the real Chi, resentful and self-denigrating and telling himself he's unlovable, repulsive, and that Fate has it in for him (those, sadly, aren't my words)...

while hanging a beautiful mural outside the walls of his lonely little fortress so no one knows anything is wrong.
This is known as "smiling depression," by the way.

And "smiling depression" is one big lie. One big lie to the world about who you really are, and one big lie in your relationship about what's really true within it.

And if I'm with Chi, and I love him the way he really is, and his trust is the most precious thing I have...

He basically just shuts you out. Quietly, with no notice, and acting flawlessly as if nothing's changed. 

If you are Chi's relationship partner, one day, you are no longer his best friend. 

And he JUST DOESN'T TELL YOU.

You won't find out about it for TEN YEARS.  At LEAST!

And the whole point of my relationship with Simon, and my relationship with Chi, was that we were best friends, and we trusted each other, and I knew their real hearts. 

Simon would never have done this to me!

If Chi and I ever really were together, and he walled himself off and stopped sharing, and he basically just cut me out of his life and went on living in the same house with me and pretended like nothing was at all wrong...

I'D WANT TO DIE.

I really, really would. 

I'm not Rory. I'm no wicked witch with an attitude problem, to hide away from in the Fortress.

It's one thing if every time you stick your nose out of the Fortress, there's a wicked witch out there throwing lightning bolts at you. That would scare anybody back in. But I am not that wicked witch, and if I am hurling lightning bolts, it may be that there is something seriously wrong with me, or going on in my life. Maybe I need the support of the person I am with, not to be walled out and left while he's still living in the same house, giving an Oscar-worthy performance that nothing is wrong.

I don't know how I'd ever be with Chi, and not be absolutely terrified that he was walling me out like that--and turning in such a good acting performance that I'd think everything was okay, and never, ever know until ten years later when he wanted me to know.

That would be much, much too late.

My whole world would just shatter into pieces.

Simon would never have done that to me. He knew that I'm a good woman, and he trusted me.

That is one scary scenario. ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING.

Who wants that to happen to her? Especially after fifty.

At least if I'm alone from now on, I don't have to be afraid of that.

And brain cancer, well...

Life is peaceful now. Nobody's cryin', nobody's lyin', and nobody's dyin'.

There are good things about being alone.

                                                    ***

I just have to keep reminding myself of that, I suppose.