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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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4:17 a.m. - 2003-09-06
I lost it big time today. I�ve often complained of being She Who Knows All. Even before we thought of buying the new house, a couple times a year I�d reach the breaking point with being the decider, the knower, the one everyone else forced into making the decisions. Sure, it sounds like Spoiled Brat Heaven, I get �my own way� all the time! It doesn�t work like that though. It�s not like I sit on my throne and they all do my bidding. Being the decider and the knower means I am endlessly, constantly at everyone�s beck and call. I do nothing but sift through everyone�s priorities and dislikes and favorites and try to make the decision which makes THEM the happiest. Being a people pleaser and being the �boss� is weary, weary work. Take making dinner. Please. It�s not like I consult my taste buds and think, �Okay, pasta sounds good.� and fix it the way I like it. To make a pasta dinner means I MUST remember that Mike doesn�t like meatless dinners and will be a pissy asshole if I don�t make a heavy meat sauce, if not actual meatballs. So if I decide at 4:00pm to make pasta, there�d better damn well be some hamburger meat defrosted or I�m fucked. No meat means I have to find a NEW menu. I sub in hot dogs and then realize we have no French fries. Alex will have a cow. I accidentally bought the BBQ flavor beans instead of the country style and that means I get to hear it from all of them because that one doesn�t like smoky flavor and this one doesn�t like the little onions and the other one wishes that I�d made mac and cheese instead. And that�s just ONE decision and I�m forced to make hundreds a day. Plus I�m still in charge of knowing where everything we own is and where to buy it if we don�t. And what hours the store is open and how to get there and if we have cash on hand or should he write a check? And if he writes a check should it be from the house account or the business account? Be it Dijon mustard or lag bolts, I�m supposed to know and will get bitched at if I don�t. The buying and renovating of the new house has put the demands on me into warp drive. Months and months and months of being �in charge�. Where to mount the toilet paper spindle. Which ceiling fixture. What color this. What shape that. What size t�other. Where it goes. When to sand and when to paint. It�s gone on and on until I want to run away and live in a refrigerator box in an alley. Now we are starting the actual moving. A thousand different factors for every stinking stick of furniture. I�ve had to plot and plan and prioritize and have to know on the instant when someone asks what goes where and which order the stuff should go over in. To make it worse, Mike�s sister and family are here to �help�. So instead of 2 or 3 people to take care of and tell what to do, I had 6. And they ALL do it. They make ME decide EVERYTHING. �What�s next?� �Where should we put it?� �What do you (har har har) want for lunch?� �Who should sit where?� �How many cars should we take?� Ad infinitum ad nauseum. The eyes. The eyes staring at me waiting, waiting, waiting for me to tell them what to do. The eyes that glare and demand I get it right. The mutters and pinched faces when I screw up. The constant pressure to perform and perform and perform. The overload of guilt and panic from their demands. The terror that I won�t get it right. The frustration of never being able to say, �Jesus Christ! You people! How fucking hard is it for one of you just to DO something without me having to tell you how and when and why?� This morning I snapped and went sailing over the edge into Overload Land. The in-laws came up last night and checked into the Super 8 down the road from the new house. Guilt #�s 1-4. 1) My house is too disgusting for them to spend the night in. 2) I hadn�t made enough plans to make coming up at night worth the money for the motel instead of them driving up in the morning. 3) My BIL wanted Dunkin Donuts for breakfast and I had to hope like hell that I�d given explicit enough directions how to get there. If they got lost it�d be all my fault! 4) Further embarrassment that not only was my house too filthy for them to sleep in, my in-laws couldn�t even bear to eat at my table. And of course I had to choose which type of fucking donuts we wanted! You see how this goes? I�m a goddamn performing seal honking a thousand horns with my nose. All day. Every day. So this morning I got Wolf ready for school. (Was it warm enough for shorts? Was it a gym day and he had to wear the sneakers with the no-mark soles? Did he have enough green things packed in his lunch? Did I have the right change for milk money? Had I properly filled out the second wave of forms which came home with him? Where did his lunchbox go? Was I the worst mother ever for sending him out the door with damp hair? Should have planned better and left more time to blow-dry.) As soon as I got Wolf on the bus I raced inside to wash. Mike took off to rent a U-Haul and before he left informed me that BIL�s trailer hitch was stolen in the motel parking lot last night. Guilt. My fault. My fault because my house was filthy and they couldn�t stay here. My fault that I was such an incompetent idiot for not being able to move all the furniture myself and needed them to come take up my slack. My fault for moving near a motel where things get stolen. Where would we get the money to buy them a new hitch? How long were they going to hate me for fouling up their lives like this? Race up to my room. Undress. Come out to hall and hear voices. GAAAAAH! It�s them already! I wasn�t ready! I fucked up! They were going to be waiting around! Shit, I was a complete failure! I beg their forgiveness and madly shower. Race back to my room and dress. Race downstairs. They�re gone. Oh crap! Could I screw up anymore this morning? It wasn�t even 9:00am yet and already I�d fucked up beyond repair. They were so pissed about being made to wait (when they were here to help me because I�m a loser who can�t handle a move on her own) that they left! I was starting to go runny around the edges. I started crying. I couldn�t keep up with everything they wanted from me. I went into the dining room and began picking up the mess in there. The dining room furniture was to be moved RIGHT AWAY and here I hadn�t cleaned off the table and emptied the china closet yet and taken all the platters off the buffet and there was a trashy collection of spilled bill inserts and junk mail and snippets of wrapping paper on the floor and what would my BIL the neat freak think of that? So I�m crawling around trying to scoop everything up and get it crammed into bags and I find a pile of napkins in the corner which are soaked through with cat piss. That�s when I lost it. I scooped it up, vomited into the trash bag, crawled backward and sat against the bookcase. I cried and cried and cried and cried. I could not do it. I could not take one more second of being responsible for everything. I couldn�t. It was that simple. That�s where Mike found me. Huddled on the floor, reeking of cat piss and vomit, crying and crying and crying. He was furious. I HAD to have a breakdown today of all days. I tried to explain. He cut me off and dragged me upstairs. I begged him to stop yelling at me. For a wonder, he did. I explained as best I could (which probably wasn�t very well) about how I couldn�t do it. To please, please, please not make me be the boss anymore. I couldn�t take the pressure. Please, please, please leave me alone and handle things on his own for once. I was sorry, but could not do it today. I was sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I think he truly looked at me for the first time in months. Disgust, anger, and a weird sort of pity came and went on his face. Then he did something that made me cry even harder. He patted my shoulder. Smoothed my hair back. Kissed me on the forehead. I staggered away into the can to wash my hands and he was actually waiting for me when I came out. He helped me into bed. Tucked me in. Patted me again. And said, �Don�t worry. I�ll take care of things. You rest.� I slept all day. He woke me once to tell me to be awake for Wolf�s bus and my teeth started to chatter. I couldn�t. I couldn�t do as he asked. I couldn�t handle even the simple (ha!) task of getting my kid off the bus and being his mommy for the rest of the afternoon. Mike nodded and said that someone would be back to get Wolf. I went back to sleep. It�s 4:00am. I woke up and started typing this about an hour ago. I�m trying so hard to quell the panicky voice that says I�d better start making up for my break-down. I�d better make serious reparations for my �sin�. Boy, had I fucked up or what? I�m refusing to listen to that voice. I�ve done enough. I�ve done more than enough. I�ve done my share and everyone else�s share for years. I can�t be She Who Knows All anymore. In spooling all of this out I can see how absurd I�ve been. How I�ve allowed myself to be the patsy. How I�ve taken responsibility for shit that is in no way mine. No more. I quit. From now on I�m going to let others take care of themselves. I don�t give a rat�s ass what they think of me or whether they believe I�ve failed them. When they start in and demand I do and know and fetch and decide I am going to remember those awesome and vital words from the late great Freddie Prinze. If someone demands why I won�t tell them how late Sam�s Club is open or which underwear they should wear I will smile and say, �It�s not my job, man.� With resolve, ~LA Today�s Wildly Obvious Pick: �Take This Job and Shove It� by Johnny Paycheck
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