Lovestoned

So he’d wormed his way back into the house…my home was full of his shit, full of his kids’ shit.  It never felt less like a big happy family or home but for some reason I was still there for him.  The financial aspects of our life became more prominent after this.  I was working full time but Tucker needed to be able to buy cattle for himself. Because of his “unfortunate and undeserved” incarceration, he could not get a checking account of his own and he convinced me we would have our own business…together.  I had come to love riding and training horses during the year and half I’d spent with him and he made it all sound perfect.  In hindsight of course, I was giving myself a good reason to stay. He painted the most grandiose pictures of me being able to train and sell the barrel horses and help him with the roping horses and he’d be able to broker cattle as well.  All I needed to do to make this beautiful dream come true was to get a DBA and a business account at my bank. 

Again, I should have taken this time to extricate myself instead I said, “Sure!” It didn’t happen as easy as all that; I mean I was sort of sane.  As it turns out though, when you’re hanging with a conman, you get your shit conned.

Freddy

There is time to explain now the powerhouse that is my son.  Again, we must name him for the interest of storytelling and though I do so love his name, we’ll call him Freddy.  My Freddy is an enigma wrapped in a mystery shrouded in controversy...yah not really but he is a handful.  When he was 3 ½ and his sister was 1½, I left their dad.  He worshiped his dad but couldn't understand what was wrong with him either.  He wasn’t the attentive Daddy he’d always been and was often hateful and angry.  He had descended into a very real, very frightening meth addiction.  There has been much talk swirling in the family about "whose fault it was" and blah blah blah but let me just come clean right now.  The first time he ever did that shit, I was with him.  Some friends of ours we’d gone to dinner with had stopped and picked some up when we'd gone out one night and he asked me had I ever, and I told him I had. He asked, “Is it ok?”

I said, “I guess so if you want to party.”  We did it together.  We did it every other weekend then every weekend then the weekends began to stretch over Thursday to Monday and I chose to pull myself out of that headlong descent into fucking madness.  He did not.  I realized it was too much and my children needed me.  So after a year of trying to get him to quit and trying to give him help he didn’t want, I left him. It made my little man upset that Daddy wasn't there anymore and he blamed me.

Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeezy

I loaded him in the car with all of his really cool hospital accoutrement.  His yellow slipper socks, his barf basin, his water jug, his decapitated angel. He was still the same asshole as a result of the meds and though I had silently pledged to myself that I would care for him and thank God I had been there, I was wishing that I could get down off the cross. It was uncomfortable and martyrdom just isn’t for me.  It’s for people with an actual cause, not just stupidity.

Once I got him home, the give and take between him and my son got even worse.  His limited patience became even less so and it became harder for me to negotiate peace in the house.  Tucker started slowly working horse and cattle deals from the house on his phone but seemed to have me more and more at his beck and call to take care of his business, to drive him everywhere since he “wasn’t cleared to drive” and loved being chauffeured about.

There was a night that we had an argument so heinous whereby I spilled every bit of pent up frustration and told him I’d had it.  That if I weren’t in such dire financial straits because of his overuse of my checking account and behind on my rent and electric and the screwed up OTHER checking account I’d had to close because of him that I’d have dumped his ass long before.  He threw the $700 he had in his wallet at me and walked out saying he’d be back for his things later.  I was elated.  My entire being already felt light and airy and hopeful. There was also my cling-on self in the back of my brain who was saying, “What are you doing?!?”  it kept thinking about how he wasn’t supposed to drive and where was he going and ohmigod what if something happened to him…but the joy was bubbling.  I was already taking mental inventory of every piece of shit that didn’t belong to me in the house and wondering how long it would take to get it packed in the motorhome. 

He called 30 minutes after he left.    

Unfuckingstoppable

There are good days and there are bad days and then there are exceptional days.  I had an exceptional day.  When they say money can’t buy you happiness, I know that shit is real and no matter how much money you have it can’t buy you love or acceptance or a hug.  Well it most definitely can buy you a hug and more from some hard working ladies on the corner and maybe it can get you love and some form of acceptance…like from Visa but whatever I’m not doing a write up on credit and hookers. Do you wonder though, if any working girls have those card readers on their phones? Ok, digression, the word you’re looking for is…anyway.  Money does not buy happiness.  Sheer joy comes from accomplishment, acceptance and love. I'm only 42 and I figured that out today. 

I have no money in the bank after selecting the most important of my bills to pay this month. As a matter of fact, my phone bill blasted in and I’m in the red, but guess what? I still spent most of the day with a stupid grin on my face.  Thanks to the help of TKC and her exceptional pimpage of my blog today.  It was mad fun watching the ticker tick and the comments made me cry with happy.  Then when I thought it couldn’t get much better, I got a job offer which will help me be able to pay all my bills not just the “good ones”. 

I did not let the 18 collect call attempts from the jail bother me. I did not let the crazy people coming out of the woodwork to collect things from me that HE still owes them fluster me.  I gave them the address to the jail and bade them good luck.  I was unfuckingstoppable today.

 

I know I will make it eventually.  I will shake it off, though probably with much less zeal than in my younger days. I know from time to time I will still find myself curled in my bed wishing I could sleep for a month.  It may take longer to get back to just crazy and not crazy, broke and desperate but I will.

So if you decide to follow me down the path to ruination…we’ll be back.  

<3 

Decapitated Angel

I had to force him to go to the hospital.  Hindsight being 20/20 …never mind.  Once we get there and I’m truly, absolutely concerned for him.  He's lying there and he’s crying …not like sobbing but silent tears squeezing out and trailing down into his ears. He’s refusing any treatment until the doctors have cleared it with me.  He’s telling them we may not be married on paper but I’m his wife and he needs me with him.  What I should have been thinking was, Not such a big tough dickhead now are you fucknuts? What actually happened was it wiped away any memory I had of our fighting, his treatment of my son, the money worries, the constant running like a crazy person to meet his and his children’s needs.  I was Superwoman.  I was needed.  He needed me and he was ill and I had to take care of him because that’s what I do. 

They stabilized and transported him to a larger city with a cardiac center in the hospital and I hurried home to pack a bag and make sure the kids were all looked after.  I raced to the city 2 hours away and rushed to his side.  They put him in ICU and said that he’d need a stint.  Not exactly nothing, but fairly mundane.  He threw a fit until they let me stay with him overnight in ICU.  His oldest daughter came the next day to wait with me and we kissed him good-bye and reassured him he was going in for a routine procedure and we’d be right there when he got out.