A Shower and a Wheelchair

The asthma is back in the box. For today anyway. Here's hoping it lasts a long time.

My hip is super angry. It's worse than my sliced and diced foot. Sigh.

It woke me up at 4 am and that's it, I'm done sleeping. 

All hell has broken loose since I had surgery...

My parent has had 3 run ins with the law. Boom boom boom. They've managed to make the last one a jaw-dropping doozy. And that's before we even get into the lonely heart scammer that's sunk their claws into my parent.

I have to go for guardianship of one or both now. Have to. Not sure how that's going to work out. APS did get my stepparent into memory care. Hey look! APS finally did something! If they'd acted sooner, when we all told them shit would go down if they didn't, maybe things wouldn't be such a mess now...

Honestly, 80% of my life is dealing with the fallout and bullshit from people with power who are incapable of problem solving and/or won't do their fucking jobs. 

As a result, I've got relatives calling and texting me left and right and it's just chaos. Everyone is in different stages of processing and accepting reality. Several of the older folks are confronted by their own mortality because of what's going on and struggling with that and then displacing that emotional energy onto my parents' situation. People seem to want things to happen that they would want done for them...they're not responding to the actual situation.

And then I'm coordinating with my siblings, who are much younger than me and this is a harder hit for them as a result. This is their first family clusterfuck festival. Do you want to be guardian? It doesn't have to be me. It can be one of you. I'll help you with the medical stuff. Or I can do it, set it up, and hand it off later because with my health, I may not be the right person to do this. Who's taking the dog? Where is the dog? Has anyone seen the dog?

That's a long way of saying I'm doing a lot of hand holding and nudging. It's taken up 4-5 hours a day and all my energy the last three days. Full crisis mode.

My siblings and I continue to be on the same page though, which is helpful. That has been my main goal, to not let our parents trash our relationships with their trauma drama. We're the ones who will still be standing at the end of this. We're the ones who have to go on. It'd be good if we didn't have bad feelings.

I've seen how divisive these situations can be, how siblings turn on each other, how one selfish person can ruin generations of relationships in a family. I've tried to keep open communication so we know what we're all thinking, to check in with them about the agenda. So far, it's working out?

I'm tired though. People are exhausting. We're all sad. My parents are sucking a lot of people dry right now. 

So. 

You know, several years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with the phrase 'slow motion suicide' in relation to my parent playing through my head. I do not normally wake up with dark catch phrases blaring through my mind, but that night I did and the power of it was 1000x. It had an intensity that I couldn't ignore.

At the time, the phrase didn't exist. I googled, certain that someone somewhere had thought it up, that I'd heard it before, and I think there was like, one obscure thing. Now? There's more. It's in the zeitgeist. Interesting.

Anyway, the whole thing was weird. BUT the point of sharing that is that was the moment I began to process my parent's behavior and understand it was terminal. They weren't going to survive themselves.

I wish I could say that brought me some peace. No. Understanding isn't the same as peace, but I have been more grounded, more centered, less shocked than other family members. I wish I could say that made me more useful, but no. My health makes it hard for me to be as useful as I could be. Not to mention that if you're the only one who sees it, you're just an asshole to everyone else when you bring it up. Especially if it's a sensitive topic.

Anyway, in terms of my health, right now the practical problem is I can't walk well enough to go see the memory care director to discuss my parents and the reports they've made to APS. I tried calling to ask if they had wheelchairs for visitors, but fun fact, no one ever answers the phone at nursing homes. 

Hand to God, I'm getting a fucking wheelchair. And knee scooter while we're at it because why the hell not. That's my plan for today--a shower and a full stable of mobility aids. I need something that can give me a fighting chance to keep up.