Post by DolorNoir on Jun 21, 2012 16:13:15 GMT -5
I’m sitting in the TV room in the back of the house. I’m listening to Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill. I figure Alanis has a pretty good insight into normal awful stuff. She seems clever enough if my judgement of her lyrics has anything to say about all this. Now the mood is set, it’s time for the nitty gritty.
Does life have this fucked up pattern where whenever good stuff happens the universe has to even out everything by chucking bad stuff at you? Because I am getting pretty suspicious that these patterns are present. If you have proof, or even an opinion on the matter let me know. Fuck, if you even have a yarn to spin I’ll probably pay attention for at least five minutes.
Nearly two weeks ago I was job hunting. I went to the cottage for four days and while there I received three invitations for job interviews. On Thursday afternoon I pleasantly ran into someone I liked and delightfully proceeded to get laid. Low and behold on Friday I got signed to a temp agency, which doesn’t sound like much but I got on with the interviewer lady really well. Later that evening I checked my e-mails and there was one from the professor of my political economy course. Apparently there had been a mistake on my report card, and my final mark was bumped up from a B+ to an A, placing my university average high. Needless to say I was ecstatic with the events of the past few days, and went out drinking with my closest.
I started working on Wednesday of last week, at the same plastic injection moulding factory I was at last year, for an eight hour shift. There is a new supervisor there now, she was impressed with my work (according to the temp agency). But just before the six hour break my cellphone started ringing like crazy in my pocket. When I got sent for break I checked my phone. There was a missed call and a text message from my dad’s sister, saying “Family emergency, call me back ASAP.” My first though was “oh fuck something has happened to Nainie!” Anyway I called back my aunt. She answered on the second ring, crying. She said my dad’s step-mom, my step-grandmother, to whom Grandad had been married for over thirty years, who was another grandmother to me, had suddenly died. I took all this information calmly, asked if she was alright. Apparently I was the only one in my family she had told, nobody had answered their goddamned phones. I hung up. I called my sister to ask her if she was okay and also if my brother or the rest of the family was around. She was at work and didn’t know what I was on about, so I just hung up. I told the people at the factory what had happened, said I needed to go. They asked if I was alright. I said probably not. I said I was probably in shock, I seemed to do that a lot. I just said I had to go. The supervisor lady was really nice, put her arm around my shoulder and said I could take the rest of the week off, that I should call the agency and let them know when I was ready to come back to work, not to worry about that. So I left and I walked outside and I called my brother.
I waited outside for forty minutes for him to get around to picking me up after I broke the news to him and asked for someone-even the neighbour-to come get me out of here. When I got home things only got worse as I remained in tearless shock while everyone else broke down. I made them tea and brought them Kleenexes, and held my family when they cried. Only cried alone, quietly, for a few little minutes, when I went to bed.
We had a Radiohead concert to go to on Saturday. My brother was acting very strange on Thursday and Friday, which I suppose is to be expected with grief, but I couldn’t stand it all the same. He was trying to give our tickets away to the cool people across the street, then he suggested to the next door neighbour boy that he and his pals might want to buy them for ten bucks, which I immediately protested to. First off because I had my own friends who loved Radiohead who I might want to give MY ticket to. Second, we had originally paid $80 per ticket, and now that the concert was sold out we could easily resell them for hundreds if we really wanted to. Thirdly we had no idea what was even going on yet. Nobody had told us when any sort of funeral service was going on. I told him the first argument, my ticket mine to give to my friends. (In my head I was happy that they were in my sister’s possession, not his. He ignored me. Which made me feel worse than my unexpressed and bottled up grief already did. My neighbour was there at the time and acknowledged what I said, acknowledged that my brother was completely ignoring me. He also pointed out point number three: no sense getting anyone else excited to go to the concert in our place when nobody had any idea what was even going on yet. I said “Thank-you!” and went inside to find my sister. Found her, and cried.
We went to Radiohead, but just as we were getting into Toronto we heard from multiple sources that the stage had collapsed and killed someone. The concert was cancelled. Our tickets would be refunded.
By this time my sister and I were already on our second or third drinks. We were parked outside a convenience store, drinking beer out of coffee cups and deciding what to do. My mom texted me to pick up the Toronto Saturday paper, it had the obituary in it with a nice picture. I picked it up, got back in the car, and we drove off for downtown. I read the article in the car and started crying into my beer. My brother was driving and playing Beatles music, I had to get him to stop playing it, it only reminded me of her more and made it worse. We parked the car in the High Park neighbourhood. I tried to explain to my brother’s girlfriend why the obituary had upset me, that my name being in it had really done me in, called me out, made the whole thing far too real. She didn’t get it. She just nicely argued (she was gentle about it but was definitely still arguing, something I didn’t want to do just then) that my name was in there out of love, which at the time was total bullshit and had nothing to do with what I was rabbiting on about. This was about the time I also realized I was drunk.
So we were all hungry we decided, and went to a little bistro. My face kept watering, so I texted my brother that I needed some drugs because I needed to cheer the fuck up. He handed me a little tub of peanut butter into which my sister had stirred a large quantity of dope. I took a large forkful, and ate it all in one bite. Over the course of twenty minutes I gradually became quite stoned and calm. No more tears, Mary Jane is here.
We walked through the actual High Park. Funny named place for my circumstances. My brother and his girlfriend climbed a tree and started making out. My sister and I sat on the bench on the ground, both bored, and respectively drunk and stoned and drunk. After fifteen or twenty minutes we got bored of this, stood up, I ate some mushroom stem to keep me awake, and we walked away, leaving the fags making out in the tree. Both of us were miserable, over our step-grandmum’s death and because of the cancellation of Radiohead. The only friend I had in Toronto whom I would have been comfortable being around in the state I was in was out of town. So we spent the next two and a half hours bored drunk and miserable out of our little skulls sitting on various park benches as it got dark out. I had never felt so sharply how much I wished I had just stayed in the city over the summer and taken summer school. If I had then I could be home by now, and take my sister along with me for some needed nap time. When my brother and his girlfriend finally made their way back to us, I was in a very thorough miserable drunk stoned stupor. My sister had even bummed a cigarette off strangers for me.
We went downtown but it was too late. My night had been completely ruined. We went to a few different bars and I pretty much looked sad and stared at my glasses of beer until they disappeared. My brother finally realized how bad and boring a mood I was in and asked if there was anything he could do but it was way too late for that.
On the way home we went to our Grandad’s old house in the High Park neighbourhood, a llovely three story plus finished basement affair that they had only moved out of a few years ago. It looked the same but it felt empty.
On the car ride home my brother’s girlfriend and my sister both fell asleep. I cried my eyes out and thought of how much I would cut open my skin when I got back to my room. It was a pity because I hadn’t cut since last August, I’d been happier when I was away from my family and their influences over my time. I fell asleep in the car crying. When I woke up it was 4am again and we were just pulling into home.
I talked all this over the next day with my good friend. She pointed out how the really shitty part was that we were all still grieving, and should have been together, and also that we had went to Toronto on a fun group activity, to go to the concert as a family. She said we should have done something good together as a family, not split up for reunion dates instead. Especially when we were drunk and I had taken drugs specifically for the reason to stop crying. The day was already fucked up before we were left bored and sad for hours. My sister and I had felt like Jay was simultaneously babysitting us and going on a date with his recently reunited girlfriend, who I am secretly disappointed in for taking him back after all that bullshit. At the same time though she annoys me so much (even though I like her a lot) that I can’t care enough to be on her side anymore.
But bullshit to cutting from dawn to dusk my step-grandmother was a really lovely lady and now she’s dead. Supposedly. My parents saw the body but I can’t help but feel that the paramedics have made a terrible mistake. She was only sixty-five and it was very sudden. We are going up to stay with Grandad tonight. Mt sister and I both figure that the whole thing will hit us when we get there and realize that he is alone for the first time that we’ve ever seen. She really was lovely though. Always had nice things to say about everyone. I remember when I was little it was a hot day so my sister and I were sitting in this kiddy pool in the yard, one that was dirty and cracked and held together by duct tape and three years old and only half full. She came over and saw us crankily flopping around in the temped leafy water and said in all her shiny good nature with a smile on her face “Oh my! Well that looks very refreshing!”
I don’t know why this memory is so vivid. But I remember it very clearly and to me it speaks volumes about her perspective on life. My parents told me that she was the only one who was happy when they first got pregnant. Everyone looked kinda grouchy and concerned. She clapped her hands and opened a bottle of champagne.
My brother went to go see Grandad on Tuesday morning, and before he went he asked me to water his plants. I agreed to, telling him it wasn’t because he wanted me to but just because I liked plants. A little while later, just before he left, he said something really rude to me and my sister. I can not even say how sick I am of him and the bullshit he says and the way that living here with him and the rest of my family has made all of my depression and suicidal thoughts come screaming back to attack me. I need to get out. I wish I had stayed in Toronto. At least when I go back to work next week I will be out of my house for nine or ten hours a day.
So I didn’t want to water my brother’s plants for him but I don’t want them to die either. I ignored them, but told the previous sentence to my dad in hopes that he would take care of them. But he didn’t.
Last night I had this really horrific vivid nightmare that my brother was killed in a car accident or something, then cremated, then we buried his urn of ashes in the backyard. The emotion was very real, and I said, “He was an asshole, but he was my brother and I loved him.” What a perfect way to sum it all up. And I couldn’t stop sobbing my eyes out. I woke up crying, and texted him to make sure he was okay, which of course he was. I watered his plants. They were looking pretty sorry, so I figure that this way I win: they look crappy and I really didn’t take care of them, yay successful spite towards my brother. And on the other hand I don’t have to feel bad because I didn’t kill them with neglect, I gave them enough to stay alive.
I have to fuck off now. Time to get ready to go to Cobourg and see Grandad. Time to face reality and tomorrow attend her memorial service. Wish me luck.
Does life have this fucked up pattern where whenever good stuff happens the universe has to even out everything by chucking bad stuff at you? Because I am getting pretty suspicious that these patterns are present. If you have proof, or even an opinion on the matter let me know. Fuck, if you even have a yarn to spin I’ll probably pay attention for at least five minutes.
Nearly two weeks ago I was job hunting. I went to the cottage for four days and while there I received three invitations for job interviews. On Thursday afternoon I pleasantly ran into someone I liked and delightfully proceeded to get laid. Low and behold on Friday I got signed to a temp agency, which doesn’t sound like much but I got on with the interviewer lady really well. Later that evening I checked my e-mails and there was one from the professor of my political economy course. Apparently there had been a mistake on my report card, and my final mark was bumped up from a B+ to an A, placing my university average high. Needless to say I was ecstatic with the events of the past few days, and went out drinking with my closest.
I started working on Wednesday of last week, at the same plastic injection moulding factory I was at last year, for an eight hour shift. There is a new supervisor there now, she was impressed with my work (according to the temp agency). But just before the six hour break my cellphone started ringing like crazy in my pocket. When I got sent for break I checked my phone. There was a missed call and a text message from my dad’s sister, saying “Family emergency, call me back ASAP.” My first though was “oh fuck something has happened to Nainie!” Anyway I called back my aunt. She answered on the second ring, crying. She said my dad’s step-mom, my step-grandmother, to whom Grandad had been married for over thirty years, who was another grandmother to me, had suddenly died. I took all this information calmly, asked if she was alright. Apparently I was the only one in my family she had told, nobody had answered their goddamned phones. I hung up. I called my sister to ask her if she was okay and also if my brother or the rest of the family was around. She was at work and didn’t know what I was on about, so I just hung up. I told the people at the factory what had happened, said I needed to go. They asked if I was alright. I said probably not. I said I was probably in shock, I seemed to do that a lot. I just said I had to go. The supervisor lady was really nice, put her arm around my shoulder and said I could take the rest of the week off, that I should call the agency and let them know when I was ready to come back to work, not to worry about that. So I left and I walked outside and I called my brother.
I waited outside for forty minutes for him to get around to picking me up after I broke the news to him and asked for someone-even the neighbour-to come get me out of here. When I got home things only got worse as I remained in tearless shock while everyone else broke down. I made them tea and brought them Kleenexes, and held my family when they cried. Only cried alone, quietly, for a few little minutes, when I went to bed.
We had a Radiohead concert to go to on Saturday. My brother was acting very strange on Thursday and Friday, which I suppose is to be expected with grief, but I couldn’t stand it all the same. He was trying to give our tickets away to the cool people across the street, then he suggested to the next door neighbour boy that he and his pals might want to buy them for ten bucks, which I immediately protested to. First off because I had my own friends who loved Radiohead who I might want to give MY ticket to. Second, we had originally paid $80 per ticket, and now that the concert was sold out we could easily resell them for hundreds if we really wanted to. Thirdly we had no idea what was even going on yet. Nobody had told us when any sort of funeral service was going on. I told him the first argument, my ticket mine to give to my friends. (In my head I was happy that they were in my sister’s possession, not his. He ignored me. Which made me feel worse than my unexpressed and bottled up grief already did. My neighbour was there at the time and acknowledged what I said, acknowledged that my brother was completely ignoring me. He also pointed out point number three: no sense getting anyone else excited to go to the concert in our place when nobody had any idea what was even going on yet. I said “Thank-you!” and went inside to find my sister. Found her, and cried.
We went to Radiohead, but just as we were getting into Toronto we heard from multiple sources that the stage had collapsed and killed someone. The concert was cancelled. Our tickets would be refunded.
By this time my sister and I were already on our second or third drinks. We were parked outside a convenience store, drinking beer out of coffee cups and deciding what to do. My mom texted me to pick up the Toronto Saturday paper, it had the obituary in it with a nice picture. I picked it up, got back in the car, and we drove off for downtown. I read the article in the car and started crying into my beer. My brother was driving and playing Beatles music, I had to get him to stop playing it, it only reminded me of her more and made it worse. We parked the car in the High Park neighbourhood. I tried to explain to my brother’s girlfriend why the obituary had upset me, that my name being in it had really done me in, called me out, made the whole thing far too real. She didn’t get it. She just nicely argued (she was gentle about it but was definitely still arguing, something I didn’t want to do just then) that my name was in there out of love, which at the time was total bullshit and had nothing to do with what I was rabbiting on about. This was about the time I also realized I was drunk.
So we were all hungry we decided, and went to a little bistro. My face kept watering, so I texted my brother that I needed some drugs because I needed to cheer the fuck up. He handed me a little tub of peanut butter into which my sister had stirred a large quantity of dope. I took a large forkful, and ate it all in one bite. Over the course of twenty minutes I gradually became quite stoned and calm. No more tears, Mary Jane is here.
We walked through the actual High Park. Funny named place for my circumstances. My brother and his girlfriend climbed a tree and started making out. My sister and I sat on the bench on the ground, both bored, and respectively drunk and stoned and drunk. After fifteen or twenty minutes we got bored of this, stood up, I ate some mushroom stem to keep me awake, and we walked away, leaving the fags making out in the tree. Both of us were miserable, over our step-grandmum’s death and because of the cancellation of Radiohead. The only friend I had in Toronto whom I would have been comfortable being around in the state I was in was out of town. So we spent the next two and a half hours bored drunk and miserable out of our little skulls sitting on various park benches as it got dark out. I had never felt so sharply how much I wished I had just stayed in the city over the summer and taken summer school. If I had then I could be home by now, and take my sister along with me for some needed nap time. When my brother and his girlfriend finally made their way back to us, I was in a very thorough miserable drunk stoned stupor. My sister had even bummed a cigarette off strangers for me.
We went downtown but it was too late. My night had been completely ruined. We went to a few different bars and I pretty much looked sad and stared at my glasses of beer until they disappeared. My brother finally realized how bad and boring a mood I was in and asked if there was anything he could do but it was way too late for that.
On the way home we went to our Grandad’s old house in the High Park neighbourhood, a llovely three story plus finished basement affair that they had only moved out of a few years ago. It looked the same but it felt empty.
On the car ride home my brother’s girlfriend and my sister both fell asleep. I cried my eyes out and thought of how much I would cut open my skin when I got back to my room. It was a pity because I hadn’t cut since last August, I’d been happier when I was away from my family and their influences over my time. I fell asleep in the car crying. When I woke up it was 4am again and we were just pulling into home.
I talked all this over the next day with my good friend. She pointed out how the really shitty part was that we were all still grieving, and should have been together, and also that we had went to Toronto on a fun group activity, to go to the concert as a family. She said we should have done something good together as a family, not split up for reunion dates instead. Especially when we were drunk and I had taken drugs specifically for the reason to stop crying. The day was already fucked up before we were left bored and sad for hours. My sister and I had felt like Jay was simultaneously babysitting us and going on a date with his recently reunited girlfriend, who I am secretly disappointed in for taking him back after all that bullshit. At the same time though she annoys me so much (even though I like her a lot) that I can’t care enough to be on her side anymore.
But bullshit to cutting from dawn to dusk my step-grandmother was a really lovely lady and now she’s dead. Supposedly. My parents saw the body but I can’t help but feel that the paramedics have made a terrible mistake. She was only sixty-five and it was very sudden. We are going up to stay with Grandad tonight. Mt sister and I both figure that the whole thing will hit us when we get there and realize that he is alone for the first time that we’ve ever seen. She really was lovely though. Always had nice things to say about everyone. I remember when I was little it was a hot day so my sister and I were sitting in this kiddy pool in the yard, one that was dirty and cracked and held together by duct tape and three years old and only half full. She came over and saw us crankily flopping around in the temped leafy water and said in all her shiny good nature with a smile on her face “Oh my! Well that looks very refreshing!”
I don’t know why this memory is so vivid. But I remember it very clearly and to me it speaks volumes about her perspective on life. My parents told me that she was the only one who was happy when they first got pregnant. Everyone looked kinda grouchy and concerned. She clapped her hands and opened a bottle of champagne.
My brother went to go see Grandad on Tuesday morning, and before he went he asked me to water his plants. I agreed to, telling him it wasn’t because he wanted me to but just because I liked plants. A little while later, just before he left, he said something really rude to me and my sister. I can not even say how sick I am of him and the bullshit he says and the way that living here with him and the rest of my family has made all of my depression and suicidal thoughts come screaming back to attack me. I need to get out. I wish I had stayed in Toronto. At least when I go back to work next week I will be out of my house for nine or ten hours a day.
So I didn’t want to water my brother’s plants for him but I don’t want them to die either. I ignored them, but told the previous sentence to my dad in hopes that he would take care of them. But he didn’t.
Last night I had this really horrific vivid nightmare that my brother was killed in a car accident or something, then cremated, then we buried his urn of ashes in the backyard. The emotion was very real, and I said, “He was an asshole, but he was my brother and I loved him.” What a perfect way to sum it all up. And I couldn’t stop sobbing my eyes out. I woke up crying, and texted him to make sure he was okay, which of course he was. I watered his plants. They were looking pretty sorry, so I figure that this way I win: they look crappy and I really didn’t take care of them, yay successful spite towards my brother. And on the other hand I don’t have to feel bad because I didn’t kill them with neglect, I gave them enough to stay alive.
I have to fuck off now. Time to get ready to go to Cobourg and see Grandad. Time to face reality and tomorrow attend her memorial service. Wish me luck.