My Karma, My Judgement, My Life

Going to the doctor tonight for this cold that just won't quit.  I think I've gone into bronchitis.  When I'm sick, I spend too much time musing over things and...


I've been thinking about something my father told me about a year or so ago.

I had been talking about how I was afraid that I would die, like my Mom at 60 and it meant that I've already lived half my life.  He told me that I was going to live to be very old because I had honored him and my mother.

Funny thing though, I don't really feel as though I have.  I mean we can only do our best right?  Most days I don't feel like a "good person".  I am just an inherently flawed person who is seeking change.

Strict rules dictated most of my years so far, and while some of them have been beneficial many have created a certain fear within me.  I have a strong sense about how life should be lived, and I know I write a whole bunch about my Mom(who was NOT a saint) but she showed me how to live a clean life, how to be a mother someday, how to do the right thing and not lie.

Losing her is the most tragic thing that has happened to me so far.  But I remember her with LOVE.  I remember the things she taught me about God. Even as I grew older and decided to make my own rules about life, those initial character building lessons have stuck with me and hopefully will stick with me forever.

My mother never drank, smoked or did drugs.  She just wasn't into any of that.  She ate potato chips.  But my father was an alcoholic, weed and tobacco smoker.  Two extremes in life, and I've always feared of becoming one or the other.  My father was "more fun" at times than my Mom, but that was only because he didn't really care if other people picked up his slack.  He needed my Mom's straight edge ways to help keep his shit together.  He was more fun, but he had a problem.  And I've learned that life isn't just about having fun and laughs.

I also wonder if most addicts/alcoholics are just deeply wounded people who don't really like themselves or are just seriously depressed.

I've found that when people are living a deceptive way, they will do their best to over justify their actions.  They try to make it seem as though the person calling unsavory behavior to light is the one doing something wrong.   My father did this to my mother for years.  Told her that she didn't know how to have fun or let loose in life because she wasn't into drinking or smoking weed like he was.   He told her that she was judgmental too. 

I remember hearing these conversations(arguments) and thinking maybe they are both wrong.  Maybe she did need to let go and maybe he needed to accept that certain things bothered her conscience.

How often do we just assume someone is being judgmental when actually they just are afraid for us?

I know that I've experienced that with some people.   My father knew exactly how to deflect my Mom's concerns, and that is by turning it around and making it about her flaws. 

This weekend I realized how similar I am to my Mom.  For the past ten years, I've tried to NOT be similar to her.  To change my life in ways not to be alike...but I think I know why when she was dying she told people to talk to me, to ask Sarah because I knew what she wanted.

For a few years I felt as though I had failed my Mom, by not following in her footsteps.  She once said to me before I turned thirty, that she thought by now I would be married and have had a couple grandkids for her to enjoy.  When I was twenty-five she bought me a Norwegian sweater, she said that she pictured me drinking coffee in that sweater with two little ones.  Even though she knew that I probably can't have babies because of my PCOS, she always talked about it.  This broke my heart a bit.  When I found out that my brother and Pam were having Beatrix, I breathed a sigh of relief.  It took pressure off of me to give her a grandbaby.

And now I picture something that will never be.  My Mom wearing her Norwegian sweater with Beatrix or Crosby on her lap, reading a Jan Brett book to them.

Before she died, she told me that her saddest moment was knowing she wouldn't meet them and she said that she was sad knowing that she wasn't going to see what I would become.  She supported my dreams of being a writer.  But I hope that if someday, I do have babies(adopted or from my own body) that I will take all the things I learned by her mothering example and be that way for my own kids.

Extremely Honest

Why are we all dishonest?

Honesty is a rare commodity.  I think that I've worked for some of the biggest liars in the state of NJ.  That's right, I'm not afraid to say it.
My experience working in the corporate world has not been positive.  I've been lied too, told to lie, cajoled into fudging the truth, expected to accept lies...

I don't have a whole ton of faith in people.  The thing is these aren't "evil" people.  No,  these folks are affluent upstanding citizens.
In sending out my resume, I've been thinking about my past work experiences.  Yeah, I've worked for a whole bunch of dishonest assholes.  It's enough to make me lose faith in human beings. 

Five years ago, after getting laid off by a dishonest businessman, I swore that I would never again work in an office.  I had done what I had to do to support myself, but I always felt that I was not contributing anything of value to society.`

Do we all have to just come to the conclusion that in order to live, we have to compromise our own morals?  When does that happen? 

 Last night I think we hit negative temperatures here in Kinnelon. 

It was so cold in my house that there was frost on the inside of my front windows.  Yeah, I can't afford heat.

At first I was horrified to be so poor that I can't plunk down the money for oil(even though it's cheaper than last year), but now I just think if only I can make it through to March everything will be fine. 
My boyfriend gave me an electric heater, I've got an electric blanket and four cats and a dog who sleep next to me at night...and on nights he's here James the human furnace keeps me warm. (Thanks baby, I wish you were next to me every night!)

But I don't really know.  In fact I really don't know anything these days. 

I always feel the need to explain my actions to people, like if I don't they won't like me or something, or worse yet they might even(gasp) judge me.  I've never been good at accepting help at all either.  People think that maybe I'm too prideful to accept help, but it's not that.  It's more that I don't like feeling that anyone has control over me except myself.  Strings are always attached to any help that I've received.  Maybe I just look at the world in a fucked up way, who knows.

So, I prefer to manage my life on my own. 

What is the hardest for me is glimpsing into other people's lives and seeing their fabulous lives played out online.  Okay, the thing is we all seem to try to spin our lives to impress these days.  I don't get it. 

Is it competition?  Is it insecurity?  I would really like to know. 
Me?  Well I'm just trying to stay alive.

In a little while, I'm going to my current job taking care of an elderly man.  I love my job, the only problem is I don't make enough money at all.  Hence the NO heat situation.

The strange thing is that I know someday, I will look back on this time, not with fondness, but with an appreciation for others. 

We never know what other people are experiencing on a day to day basis. 

~~~~~~~
I've been thinking about my Mom a lot.  How this time two years ago, she started to really go downhill. 

How I've always worried that I would become like Little Edie from Grey Gardens.
In fact this summer I was following the "Grey Gardens Guide to Landscaping." 

 

I think that it's hard for people to understand the loss of a parent in a brutal way.  The twisted mother/daughter symbiosis that occurs.  The regrets, longing, unspoken words, changed futures...but maybe I'm just a morbid person who doesn't deserve certain things in life.

I was reading Brooke Shield's memoir about her mother and herself.  Even though my  Mom was not an alcoholic or anything close to that, our relationship was fraught with very similar issues.   She also references Grey Gardens.  I found it to be hilarious.  I was living the same way, Brooke.  The same freaking way.

Being an only child for five years, I was all parts of my Mom's world.  Our lives were so intertwined that when it came time for me to go to Kindergarten I used to cry that I wouldn't be home with my Mommy.   I always loved the story of my birth, how she would tell me that I slept right next to her, or how she wanted a daughter so much, but was too afraid to hope for one.

My father worked nights when I was little, so I slept in my Mom's bed next to her for years.   Up until I was about twelve, I would wake up with bad dreams and crawl into bed with my Mom. 

In her last months, when she couldn't get out of her bed, I slept beside her again.  There was something comforting in knowing that she was near me.  I've been longing to sleep next to my Mom again, to feel safe and whole.  To have her kiss me goodnight and touch my hair, call me "Sari".    We fought so much at times.  The last few months of her life, we had disagreements and her fear pervaded my own existence.  Yet, she always asked, "Where is Sarah?" if I wasn't around, or "Sarah will take care of such and such."   

And I don't care if people think I should be over this loss by now.  Can you ever really get over losing your Mother???

This is just me, being honest.

There are days, when I can't get out of my bed(her bed) because I miss her so very much.  There are days when I curse her and am angry at things she did or didn't do.  But mostly I remember her with love.  Sometimes I wish that she'd been a "Mommy Dearest" so I wouldn't miss her soo much.

What wouldn't I give to hear her sing, "Summertime and the livin' is easy...hush little baby don't you cry?"