At least she’s good at something
I just spent the past 12 hours with my favoritest person on earth. We shopped. We ate cheese. We drank mojitos, margaritas, wine and coffee. I got a book on Paris. And we had beignets.
The only thing that could ruin the day is, you guessed it, a call from the UEOEH.
I do feel bad for the woman. She left a VM saying she didn’t know where I was (!), and asking me to pick up Motrin. She sounded like she was in a type of pain that said pills would probably barely touch.
That was, hmm, eight or nine hours ago. I had left her $20 and there’s a store across the bridge. Walking distance, I say.
Naturally she scares the hell out of me, per usual, by appearing as I’m in the kitchen. With a small voice and the most-pathetic face ever, she asked if I brought her Motrin. I explained that I was nowhere near a “real” store (first it was mall-a-palooza; then it was chilling in an apartment). And I asked, rhetorically of course, “You mean you’ve been in pain all day and didn’t do anything about it?”
So she went to her room.
This is pretty typical of the passive-aggressiveness in this house. It’s all MY fault that she spent the day in pain. Because she was too ill to go out. Or she couldn’t pull it together long enough to hit Walgreens. And I’m mean and nasty because I didn’t accommodate.
Or, let’s put this into context, shall we … she doesn’t get her driver’s license, thus providing her proof of residency in Florida, so she can get HEALTH COVERAGE. Because even though I’ve given her money for the driver’s license a million times, she doesn’t feel well and really, let’s face it, I’d bet my next paycheck that it will take me taking her to the DMV to get that damn license for her.
Look, I’m not a heinous individual. I do have sympathy.
But I was also the asshole whose gangrene-infested appendix burst when I lived alone in Virginia and I drove my own damn self to the hospital and my family NEVER visited me. I had my wisdom teeth yanked and I was the bleeding, shivering mess in the CVS, waiting for my antibiotics. I was the one with the carving knife and no turkey on Thanksgiving, with the unending hopelessness of being broke/unemployed for months (and no one left to save me), and I somehow scraped my rock-bottom, suicidal ass off the floor and fought my way back to the land of the living and working.
In other words, don’t tell ME about having problems.
And this is why she expects me to not just help, but downright BABY her. Because, as she says, I’m strong and resourceful and incorrigible. That she needs someone to fight for her.
But who the fuck fought for me? I mean, really. I’m not saying anybody owed me anything; I’m just saying that it was my drive, my ambition and, quite honestly, the friends/connections I made who got me where I am. And as I’ve been telling her for years, show me some damn spunk already. She hasn’t shown spunk since 1974 when she had me.
Get your own Motrin. Get your damn license and I’ll help you fill out the paperwork for healthcare. Get a fucking job and I’ll help you move out. Get out of my personal space and I’ll invite you into it once in a while.
What scares me is that whatever’s wrong with her is fixable. And that I’ll lose her to it, only to learn that had she only done X, she would have lived a happy and healthy life.
But she’s like the hypochondriacal woman in Key West whose epitaph reads, “I told you I was sick.” Not, “I tried everything to save myself” but, instead, “It’s everyone else’s fault.” SMH.
Anyway, as usual, way to ruin another wonderful day, lady.