So I'm sitting on the iChat yakking to my brother (who is 15), making chitchat about school and shit, when he goes, "Did you hear about Mom?" Well no, I did not hear anything about Mom.
It turns out that she's back to her hardcore drinking. My brothers have been hiding the booze (knowing this one in particular, he's been sharing it with his friends), and she goes out and buys more. There was an incident on my birthday several years ago in which my stepfather came over and admitted she'd been in rehab for several weeks, and she skipped out of rehab with a guy who kidnapped her to the other side of the state, took her cell phone away, etc. She managed to get away from him and get to the police but it was a long night. Over the course of the night it transpired that this is all apparently MY fault for moving out at 18 and living a life independent of hers. Happy birthday to me.
So now, several years after that, she's evidently at that level of drinking again. I'm not accepting a single fucking ounce of responsibility for that, or for the time before either.
But anyway, it now transpires that she's had a stroke. She's in the hospital now; from what little I can gather, it seems that she started exhibiting confusion and other symptoms last Friday, and now a week later she's in the hospital and had a CAT scan and it is in fact a stroke. After talking to my brother, who said that our grandparents and my stepfather had agreed not to tell me anything, I called my stepfather's cell phone in a snit and Mom answered. She said she thought she had a urinary tract infection but it turned out to be a stroke. That makes NO effing sense to me. So I got my stepfather on the phone and I'm afraid I was a bit rude; I demanded he tell me what was actually going on. "Well, she had a stroke," he said. I snapped, "Fine, okay, don't tell me anything. But don't hold me responsible for not knowing anything if nobody in this family is going to tell me." He said that it was a stroke, and when I mentioned the drinking, he said we'd talk more later. (He was in the hospital room with my mom and other two brothers.)
This comes on top of the fact that my dad's mother is dying of pancreatic cancer but won't admit it, and nobody on that side of my family will give me any fucking information either. She just tells me she's feeling better. FUCK this stupid Southern "never-say-anything-unpleasant" mentality, FUCK IT. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this information exactly but I want the fucking information.
And on top of it all I'm freaked out too because my mama had a stroke, just like her mama had a stroke, and just like her mama's mama had a stroke, so guess what that means for me?
Argh.
Sorry. Had to vent.



Reply With Quote



. Balancing your commendable desire to look after everybody with your limits as a mere human being becomes difficult at times like this, and it sometimes creates a sense of futility
. 






Bookmarks