Fired Up

Glass of wine. Check. Laptop. Check. Enough raw emotion spilling forth that I NEED to sit down and rant for a minute. Check. So let me just go ahead and warn you now, Tigress is about to vent...I'm posting it in a blog so that you can freely decide "I don't wanna hear that shit" and close the window now if you so choose.

I guess first of all I need to fill you in a little bit on the dynamics of my family structure. I live next door to my mother, with my girlfriend of ten years, our houses are actually semi-connected with an open walkway between them. My mother lives with my older sister (sister is three years older than me), my niece and my oldest nephew, (which my mother has had full custody of since they were both infants) and also my youngest nephew (whom my older sister IS actually raising, he'll be two in September). Confused enough already? Just wait.

I live next door to my mother for two reasons. The first is that she is not in the best of health and though my oldest sister lives with her, *I* am the responsible one, so when anything happens, I'm the one that has to handle it. I've helped my mother through a hip replacement, a knee replacement, two heart stints, a quadruple bypass, and countless stays in the hospital. The second reason is that she is on a fixed income and because she actually owns the house I live in, we pay "rent" to her, which is effectively...half of all of her bills, so that helps her out.

Not only do we pay rent...it is also I that does virtually any repair or upkeep. Cutting the grass, replacing steps, painting, taking care of the way too damn big swimming pool, hell replacing the entire fucking corner of my house because faulty gutters had caused it to rot, (hand rearing 4 suprise baby bunnies). Yeah. I did that. And that's just a drop in the bucket.

But my mother is so ungrateful. She doesn't give me credit for a damn thing I have ever done in my life. ::taking another sip as the tears well up and impair my typing ability for a moment::

She doesn't realize that effectively, my whole life has been on hold for the past 6 years, because my priority has been to try to take care of her. She was the one that took care of my great grandmother, my grandmother, and my great aunt during their last years/months...I was her backup even then, the one to be there and help her. So I guess you can say that I was just raised to believe that when your loved ones need you, you're there. Regardless of how much it cramps your own lifestyle. Family comes first.

So, she's bitching about some things that need to be repaired right now...I have told her, not only does it take money...I do not have the skill set to fix EVERYTHING...for instance, I can pull up your damn toilet, replace your wax ring, and hook the toilet back up (add that to the list of things I've done). But I'm not a fucking plumber. There are busted pipes leaking into our yard right now that I can *not* fix...I've told her we need a plumber for that, instead she buys a trampoline. I told her no one had the money to put into that gigantic pool this year...she filled it up anyway, now the filter is broken, the water is turning green and a cracked piece of pipe is all that's keeping all 33,000 gallons from draining into the neighbors yard. (I think I can fix that though..but she's gonna keep pushing me with her ungrateful attitude and I'm telling you...I'm just gonna slip right on into the "fuck it" stage).

Needless to say, *I*...the ever responsible daughter, have been telling her she needs to get her priorities straight. I told her the house was falling apart. Her response was "I shouldn't have to take care of everything". Fucking what?! Did I just hear you right? I said to her "Is it somehow my job to finanacially take care of this house until your death, is it not enough that I do all the labor, that I've saved you countless thousands?". To which her response was "I hope the whole fuckin' thing burns down!". Fucking what?! Did I just hear you right? You just wished your house would burn down, knowing that is the home of three of your grandchildren...This is when I started crying and told her she had to be one of the most insensitive people I've ever known. Then I told her, perhaps all her fucking negativity draws negativity right to her. Told her that the universe was listening, keep talking shit. That's just the jist of it, we argued over things she likes to throw at me that aren't even closely relevant to the issue at hand.

Don't get me wrong...I love my mother. Dearly. It was just a little over two weeks ago she was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance...and I was honestly scared out of my mind. ::fighting back another well of emotion:: But what can I do when I *know* she needs me, but I might as well be fucking invisible...because that's how much my opinion (or my common sense) counts? What can I do, when I long for a little freedom of my own, but there are bigger responsibilities that need to be taken care of? What can I do when she purposely, willfully hurts me--for seemingly no reason, despite all I've done? I don't know. All I know is that my "heart" tells me I should be here...but being here causes me a little heart trouble of my own...and sometimes, I just feel broken.