Monthly Archives: October 2023

Hospitals are the worst

I hate hospitals and I didn’t even know it.

It’s been a good four decades that I’ve been going to and leaving them on autopilot. I’ve been to every major hospital in the metro area.

Mostly psych units to visit my mom. Then cardiovascular units. Then rehabilitation centers. Then ICUs. Then more rehabs. And finally, the neuro ICU where the doctor told us she would not survive on her own.

It’s a sterile sensory overload. I hate it so much.

It was driving to sit with S in post-surgical recovery – this time it was removing 7” of her colon for a yet-to-be-determined mass – that I realized that I just loathe them.

I hate everything about them.

Thank you to the people who work in them, but fuck I haaate hospitals.

Later

The mass is a new cancer.

To recap, at 45yo, S has Stage IV melanoma and Stage III neuroendocrine.

We just laughed because, I mean, what in the actual fuck?

Tropical Storm Jojo

I was telling my child about “tricky people” recently. My fear has always been that he and his sister will encounter a sexual predator. I never considered the psychologically tricky people.

My Aunt Jojo is one such person. She’s a 5-foot trigger ninja.

I invited this wolf in sheep’s clothing into my home. I fed her dinner and exposed my children to her.

She was here for her 50th high school reunion. Fitting and so very cliche.

In 2.5 hours, she repeatedly poked — Trying to find a spot in my soft underbelly that would what? Make me flinch?

She brought up Pedo and kept bringing him up until I reacted. She pressed on buttons with a flighty laugh or by leveraging my kids with a “Did you know…?”

I mean, I’m actually kind of in awe of her one-woman battery assault. She portrayed herself as a doting grandmother, a beloved mother, a supportive aunt, a victim of common foes and a popular socialite. One humble brag (or woe is me) at a time.

She even used her own grown children as bait. From No. 3, her obvious pride and joy, to No. 1, the utter disappointment. I said more positive things about No.1 than his own mother did.

When her tactics proved fruitless, she changed strategies to elicit a reaction — looking for camaraderie among her perceived shared traumas.

She’s cunning because information is a commodity in this twisted tree branch of a family. So, like a surprise tropical storm, she blew in hoping to wash out as much information as possible.

But the weak foundation that my life was formed upon washed away long ago. Now, my life is built on stilts and the water you’re churning doesn’t impact me.

Tropical Storm Jojo, I now see you for who you are now.

I won’t make the mistake of opening my doors again.

A biological arrogance

I thought about my flight going down today. I was okay with it. My kids and TB would be taken care of financially. The kids would suffer, but people would pick up the slack for TB.

New to us, Lionheart has five imaginary friends and I’m suddenly feeling the gravity of knowingly bringing two humans who are genetically predisposed to severe and persistent mental illness into the world.

I could have let the bloodline die with me. But instead, I was irresponsible with our first child and just arrogant with the second.

I could have let the genes I carry and those that have manifested into anxiety in me suffocate with my last breath.

And now I find myself hyperaware of anything neurodivergent. And it’s awful.