Okay, now that I have gotten a small (very small) start here, where Do I start? Most people tell a story by starting at the beginning, but I'm thinking that mine might work out better if I start where I am now and work my way backwards. And why not? Most everything else I've done in my life has either been backwards or simply all screwed up either to start with or I can promise you that it ended up that way. Watch, you'll see.
So, where am I now? Well, I am 56 or am I 57? Hummm, let me think about this for a minute. No, I was born in an even year and I've already had my birthday this year, so I guess that means that I must have turned 56 years old. Okay, that works better than 57, I guess. So, I am a 56 year old widow, living in a small town in NC with my roommate, a woman I met in an online support group for people with a spinal disease. (I'll get to how this happened when I work my way back 8 years) For now, all you need to know is this is where I am. It's me and my friend living here, she also has this fun little spinal disease so our life is just FILLED with fun. We do....we do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING day in and day out. Oh we do go to the Dr's office every month or every couple of months. And one of us (mostly her) goes to the grocery store and runs the necessary errands. But thats about it. We rarely see anyone, other than her sisters, who live fairly close and check in on us periodically, usually to bring us some leftovers or extra dinner that one of them has cooked. We do NOT cook. I used to tell people that I buried my pots and pans with my late husband. But lately, as in the last few days, I have been having more of an urge to be in the kitchen. That's weird for me, but then, most things about this existence of mine are weird.
Anyway, as I said, we both have this spinal disease. Since this story is not about the disease I'll not go into a lot of detail other than to tell you that it's called Adhesive Arachnoiditis, there is not cure for it and usually a person gets it from someone in the medical community because of having needles stuck in their back. So, for future reference, do not and I repeat do NOT allow anyone for ANY REASON to jab a needle in your back no matter what! I don't care how many times they tell you that it can't hurt you. Take it from a person who knows that it CAN and very well may hurt you and hurt you severely. So, just don't do it. And yes, that means those obstetrical epidural's that your ob/gyn loves to give you when you are about to deliver a baby. Stick with the pain...it's over a lot faster than you'll ever get over this disease. Now that I've said that...let's move on.
I've been here for eight years now. My youngest son, then 9 years old, and myself moved in with her several months after my husband died in 2002. I had moved from SC back home to New Orleans, where I really wanted to be, however, I could not afford to live there and it didn't take me too long to figure that out, either. Also, I was lonelier than I could have ever imagined and scared out of my wits. And when I am scared I tend to run. I mean, after he died, I was scared. Terrified was more like it, so I could not wait to run home. Also, there was no way I could afford to stay in this monster house he had built and saddled me with along with a huge note and utility bills that would choke a moose. I had a small, and I DO mean small disability check coming in that would not even pay the mortgage, much less the electric bill. So, I ran home to New Orleans as fast as my skinny little legs would carry me. My 17 year old daughter had just graduated from high school and refused to leave the boyfriend to come, so she talked me into allowing her to stay in SC and go to work. Dummy that I was at the time, said, "okay, go for it." Let's try and keep track here; I think this was mistake number two, the first being to rush to move away. After I had thought about it, and naturally it was too late by then, I realized that all I had to do was move back next door to the mobile we owned and along with my daughter's help, I probably could have afforded to keep that place. But, like I said, dummy here was terrified and that makes me run. And run I did, too. I ran right out of the frying pan and into the fire. But don't worry, this was not the first time that I had jumped into a fire, but was too stupid to see it at the time. Hell, I couldn't see squat at that time because I had my head so far up my ass grieving that I couldn't even see my own children in front of my face needing me. The only thing I could see, at the time he died, was that I was the only person who had lost anything. My thinking back then was that in a week or so everyone else was going to be able to get on with their lives but my life was basically gone. I mean my right hand was missing. My sense of purpose and direction was gone and I had been left all alone in the world for the first time in my life. I was so unprepared it was pitiful. And who did I have to turn to? I could not see one person that I could turn to. Not one. Oh, I am sure there was at least one, if not several, but I sure couldn't find them. However, to be fair, they could have been standing right in front of my face and holding a huge sign saying, "I AM HERE TO HELP YOU!" and I would not have seen them. That's how wrapped up in my own grief I was. I ignored everyone BUT me. So, before I could turn around twice, I had sold the house and as gone. I woke up and found myself living in this tiny ass apartment in the middle of a complex and I felt like I could not breathe. I had been living in the rural section of SC for the last 16 years of my life. I had room to spread out. My nearest neighbor was not within seeing distance and here I was being able to hear them through the walls. And I had all this...this STUFF and no place to put it. I was still losing my mind. I started wondering what was I doing here? There were days that I would lay on my bed with my address book open looking for someone to call and I could not find one person. About the only people I saw were my two sisters and if you knew my sisters you'd know right off the bat that this was NOT a good, nor was it a healthy thing. These two went to driving me bat shit right away. It was like they were competing for my attention and affection. I have to interject here that for all of our lives the three of us could never get along together at the same time. It was always two against one. From the time we were pretty young. The oldest sister is eight years older than me and when we were very young she took care of us most of the time, but as we grew into adulthood, there was just no way that we could all get along together. It was eight those two hating and telling lies about me, or me and the older one against the younger one or me and the younger one against the older one, or...well you get the picture. We just could not come together. So it was like warfare! I hated it. And let's not forget that while living with this spinal disease that I had and the only thing that could be done for it was to treat the pain meant that I had pain meds. Lots of pain meds. And my sisters wanted them. They could come up with all sorts of reasons to get them out of me. And me, dummy that I am, and had never learned how to stand up to either of them and say "Oh hell no!" would give in and give them to them both. And guess who was out before the end of the month and dying in pain? Right, it was me! It didn't take me long to realize that I had made a huge mistake in coming back home. But where to go? What was I going to do? Well, between the time that hubby died and I moved to New Orleans, I had met this woman online in my support group. We had been talking, rather, "chatting" for months so I felt like I knew her and when I was packing up the house in SC she did come to my rescue and help after I had lost all of the promised help I had. So when she offered to open her home in NC to my kid and myself I grabbed it. It was another place to run, I could live a lot cheaper, plus I'd have help with this child that I was not doing right by because I was so wrapped up in my grief. Oh yeah, and I'd also lost my car because I couldn't pay for that either. So again, before I could turn around twice I found myself living in rural or semi-rural NC and this was a surrounding that I had been used to. It was a lot like where I had lived in SC, so in the beginning I felt like all my problems had been solved and life was finally going to straighten out and be wonderful. And it was....for about a year. IF that long. Then I woke up again one day and realized that I had made mistake number three. And this was a real biggie because now I had spent every cent I had almost just getting me and all my crap here. So NOW what was I going to do? Besides that, when I left NO I had made so many people mad at me that there was no way that I could call ANYONE and say, "Umm, excuse me, but I kind of made a mistake and I'd like to come back." They would have loved that one! HA! And would have laughed until they had some sort of fit, too. Nope, I knew that was NOT an option. So I told myself that I had made this bed, and I had to live in it. And I did. I lived miserably for the next 3 maybe 4 years missing my kids and my grandkids horribly. There was no way that I could afford the travel to visit all the way to NO and although I did still have a daughter about 4 hours away in SC, she was so busy trying to earn to keep a roof over her own head and gas in her car that she didn't have time to visit. Oh things got terrible where my kids were concerned. And I was as miserable as I had ever been.
And this is where I am going to end this first chapter. My back hurts and I have to get up from here. I promise to pick up this story right where I left off the next time I get back here, which probably won't be too long because this story is burning in my gut I want to tell it so badly. Just hang on...Chapter Two is not far behind. That's where we'll pick up on just how bad things were with my kids, most of them, anyway. This is going to be a fun part for me. Gee, I almost can't wait. And yes, I am being a smart ass here. What else do you expect from me?
