I couldn’t move for the longest time this morning. Like, my arms and legs refused to cooperate.

I stared at the wall with the green curtain and watched the minutes tick by on my phone. I didn’t bother opening the phone again. I saw the news.

It wasn’t like 2016. I didn’t stay up all night sobbing. I didn’t come to work with a swollen face.

But the despair? Of course, I can’t say for sure, but I am pretty fucking sure the despair is far worse this time.

Far worse.

Eventually, my brain won the argument with my arms and legs and we all got out of bed.

The thought of going to work was absurd. The house is on fire. What the fuck does work even mean? And about that. Seems like my plans for retirement are gone. I don’t even want to hope that I will be able to collect social security in a few years. I’ll be working until I fucking die.

Because worrying about my personal situation allowed me to move my arms and legs again.

The anguish for all those in peril was too much to process. The fear for my sisters and brothers in marginalized groups. The terror I feel for any human with a working uterus. The profound sadness at the understanding that tens of millions of people in this country don’t consider us completely human.

How can I process this? How can there be any joy? Fucking ever?

But here’s the thing. What will happen over the next few months and years is out of our control. Our control was our vote and that moment is over. But we are here. We are still here.

We are millions. We are here.

I will work at removing as much negativity in my life as I can. I will strive to bring positivity into the universe. Because I can. Does that mean a fucking thing? I don’t know. I don’t know if it helps, but I am goddamn sure it won’t hurt.

I deactivated my Twitter account this morning. It was fun for a few years, but that stopped in 2015. I have spent nearly a decade on that app reading every single awful thing that happened in our country. I knew about small political races in states I have never even been to. I hate to brag, but I made doom scrolling my bitch. I was tenacious. Like Robert Patrick in Terminator II, but instead of being a killing machine, I doom scrolled.

I can’t be there any more. How can I even begin to be more positive if I am bathing myself in sewage every single day?

I am not suggesting we stick our heads in the sand. We will never have that luxury. And if you are sticking your head in the sand? Cut that shit out. This is life and death. We always have to be informed. We always have to stay vigilant.

But we don’t have to eat it like junk food.

I have a suggestion for for. Maybe it is more a request.

Make art.

Make a lot of art.

Sing songs and dance. Unless your knees hurt a lot like mine, then maybe not a lot of dancing.

Write stories and jokes and plays and poems. Write a funny message on your bathroom mirror.

Act or tell jokes. Draw pictures. Glue sparkly things to something dull.

Make good food. Try new things. Decorate a cake. Paint a lamp. Deconstruct something unusable and turn it into something else.

Find the art of others. Appreciate their art. Support them and celebrate them.

There is infinite room for all art.

This belongs to us. We can make all the art we want. And if I have to end up writing words in the fucking dirt with a stick, then that is what I will do.

We need art. We need it so bad.

Tell people that you love that you love them.

I love you.

I’m sitting at my desk right now. I have so much to catch up on since being out most of the week last week because my dad died.

I’m listening the VP of purchasing talk through her office door to a buyer. I think they’re discussing their kid’s sporting events or something, I can’t tell. I keep my door closed so it is muffled.

It is comforting, though. Usually I am mildly annoyed by other people talking when I’m working, but I guess I’m not really working at the moment. It feels nice to have people close who are having normal conversations and not mildly freaking out.

Mildly is a lie. On a scale from “having to tell my sons that their grandpa is dead” to “waiting to see how my mother’s procedure to fix her broken back is going”,  I am at a “curl up in a fetal position and whimper under my desk”. 

I’m trying to get a grip on what fire needs to put out first while watching my inbox fill up one by one with new embers. I can’t remember simple commands that I run every day. Not gonna lie, I’m kind of curious how this is all going to work out today. It’s not looking awesome at the moment.

Right before I started writing this, just at the moment where I decided to do the very first most simple thing, I noticed the toolbar. I read the words “home home home” and they became a spell and a reminder and a desire and sadness.

Home home home

I don’t think I ever noticed that before. Why is it on there 3 times?

home home home. Yes, I wish that would just zap me back home. Where there is comfort and really good coffee and a big TV for binging.

But then I started thinking about home. How very many I have had. How some were sad and some were lonely.  I thought about my dad.

When I saw my mother a few hours after he died, she was fine. Smiling. She assured me she was good and so very happy for my father that he is in a better place now. I told her that this wouldn’t be linear and when she was sad, it was okay. She assured me that she wouldn’t be sad and this was just a joyous occassion.

My heart sank a little because I knew the sadness would come. They were married for 63 years. How could there not be some sadness.

I mean, I would be fine. Our relationship has been pretty non-existant for many years now. I was kind to him, but I never really liked seeing him. I never looking forward to it. Not once.

As as I said in my last post, my mother fell and broke her back in two places. She is getting a procedure some time this morning that should fix it. Before she fell, my sister told me that mom came to her room at 1:30 in the morning to tell her that she was sad. And then she fell a few hours later.

I was with her yesterday and her pain is better. She is groggy, but she seems pretty good for a recent widow with a broken back.

Home home home

A huge part of me considers where ever my mother is to be home. I need for her to get better. I am so worried.

Also, I am so fucking sad today. I knew my mother would have to feel it, but me? Why? Why do I have to feel this shit? It’s not fair to feel this goddamn bad over a man who did not love me. Over a man who injured me in so many ways.

Other than all that? I’m doing fine! Haha.

I am, though. I am okay. I know all of this is expected even if I didn’t really expect it. I know that my worry over my mom is making this worse.

Okay. Now I am going to get to work. Wish me luck, this should be interesting.

So, I have written a lot about parental narcissism. I could go back through these posts and figure out the exact range of years where I was most active, but y’all, I have had a majorly fucked up week and I can’t handle anything that might even be a little bit like a word problem.

Anyway, I have written many many words about my experience as the adult child of a malignant narcissist. I have written shit that was angry and sad and tired. The process allowed me to figure out who I am. The process allowed me to stop hating myself. Somewhere in that range of years that I can’t be bothered to identify, I learned that I wasn’t to be hated. I learned that I could be okay with myself.

So, my boogeyman died.

He just dropped dead. Last Tuesday.

I remember when I used to write about my dad and my issues and his issues, how it would be when he died. What would that look like. What would that post look like?

Then so much more time passed. I stopped wondering what it would be like. My dad has been declining in a big bad way for a few years now. It is not shocking that he died. But you know what? It is still goddamn shocking.

I have to say, getting a call from my baby sister where she is sobbing and saying she found dad dead in the garage is a terrible experience. 0/5 stars. Do not recommend.

That whole morning was fucked. F U C K E D.

It started with me making lunch plans via text with a work friend. We are both dealing with a lot of work stress, though our jobs are completely different.

In the middle of making lunch plans, she got fired.

I had texted her about the time we were going to meet up and then about a half hour later, she told me she got fired.

Then a few minutes later, my sister called.

She said no more than a few sentences before I told her that I would call her back. I lost feeling in my legs and arms and I felt removed from pretty much everything.

Oh, this is shock. Right? This is shock. Why are you shocked? He has been fucking dying for years now. Mom has been his caregiver for thirty fucking years and all you ever wanted was for her to be free and now she is. So why don’t your arms and legs want to work? 

Then my limbs worked again. I made stupid fucking painful calls to my sons. I gathered my things and I drove home.

My sisters and I did the things you have to do when an elderly parent dies. My parents have chosen to donate their bodies to the University of Cincinnati medical school. The arrangements for my father weren’t difficult. There will be no service and no funeral.

So yeah, my dad finally went to college!

I would so much love to wrap this fucking post up now. I would love that all I have left to say is that I feel more sadness than I thought I would. I would love to say that we’re all just navigating grief the way people have to do and then wrap up.

But no.

There’s more.

Yesterday morning. my sister (the same one who found our father) called to tell me that she was taking mom to the ER. Mom hurt her back a few months ago and was struggling a bit. She woke up yesterday and was in too much pain to move. My youngest sister lives with my parents (parent). Mom called out to her and said she needed help. My mother never needs help. My mother hates help. If she needs help, then there is something terribly wrong. She told my sister she thought her back was broken.

Then my mom walked to the car and into the hospital, so you know, no way this 84 year old, brand new widow had a broken fucking back. No way.

As it turns out, mom wasn’t completely honest about what happened. She got dizzy and passed out. That is how she hurt herself. And not only is her  back broken, but it is broken in two places.

My mother is a goddamn super hero. With two broken vertebrae.

Anyway, it’s been a shitty week. You know?

The good news is, and I cannot express enough how good this news is, is that mom is a candidate for vertebroplasty. She will get a cement-like substance injected into the two broken vertebrae and it is supposed to be like a miracle cure. She should be walking by later next week.

Seeing Martha in this much pain is difficult. Navigating the death of a horrible parent is difficult.

Randy and I are watching videos of Norm MacDonald. Which is helping.

I have to go back to work on Monday.

Wish me luck.