Be a Good Girl and Do as I Say

My life has become an informercial in my head.  You know the one with the plastic bags that you can fit a swimming pool in, turn on the vacuum and voilá! You have an ice cubed sized container.  You can nearty store it under your bed, and next year wipe off the cat pee, unzip the zipper and again, voilá!  Swimming pool, cabana boy and a floaties all ready for you.

I am a inside that bag and someone has turned on the vacuum.  Only at an excruciatingly slow level.

Each day I feel my world shrinking.

Normally I would prefer this, being the anti social-socialite that I am.  

Normally I would be in control of the vacuum and at what speed, and what I will or will not bring with me inside my clear (yet durable) bag.

Now I feel like I have been shoved in the bag and as I desperately cling to the things I want with me, they are being grabbed out of my hand.  Like a cruel parent taking away a baby blanket.

I have also been eating my feelings, trying to stuff them down even further, with  half a gallon of cookie dough ice cream on top.  Surely if I cover those feelings with enough food they will stay down?

Sadly, all this has gotten me so far is ten extra pounds and a lot of silence and anger building up inside of me.

A fellow writer friend of mine warned me years ago to be honest, but know that I will piss someone off with my writing.  Mostly that has been my family.

Not always pissed off, okay maybe once or twice, but usually a phone call saying I got the facts wrong, or the dates wrong. Or not owning up to my mistakes and being a sympathy seeker.  If only they knew how much a hate sympathy.  I am not good at receiving or dolling out sympathy.  It does not mean I am unsympathetic, I just feel awkward with it.

If they are my facts as I knew them, they remain.  I can't do anything about the timeline.  Too much partying in high school has taken away exact dates.

Today living with Mom is a challenge would be an understatement.  My brother had it right when he said "Brutal".  That was after a quick two day visit.  His take away was one word, "brutal."

Oh how right he is.

One family member suggested I watch I documentary about a person with dementia, which I will but do not want to.

To me that is akin to telling someone in the throws of labor pains during natural childbirth to watch a movie on natural childbirth.

I will eventually watch it.  Maybe during one of the long hours I sit with Mom.  Not during my precious little free time.

People have the best intentions for me, which makes everything even harder to swallow.  I feel an obligation to read the book, or see the oscar award wining movie about alzheimers, which has absolutely no baring on my life.  My life is not nearly as neat and tidy as the book (or movie).  The only resemblance is the person with the disease had her partner leave her, (conveniently glossed over in the movie.)

"Wasn't is great?  So sad right?"

"Umm yeah." Thinking I wish it was that easy for me.

To make matters in my life more shrinking into the durable life sucking bag I am in, I have had a multitude of suggestions of what I can do, as a caretaker, as a person, as a friend, as a "daughter".

As if people collectively got together and said, "Hey! wouldn't it be awesome if we took away any last thing that gave Amy any pleasure at all?  Oh and on top of that let's tell her she needs to go to confession for having an abortion when she was not yet fifteen, because "You were not properly punished for it."

Oy.  This person also wants me to take Mom to mass while I go to confession.  I understand the meaning behind him wanting her to go to mass; to try and stir up any memories.

It was a bit much to tell me I have failed at ever endeavor in my life because I was not punished for something that happened when I was 14.

My entire life has been failure because of that?

I feel the bag getting tighter now.

Being the pleaser that I am, I will take Mom to Mass, I will not go to confession.  Not because the church does not want a lesbian, divorced, pro choice woman in its pews (which it doesn't), but because people think Catholics get a free "do not go to Hell card" when they go to confession.  They forget that one must be "heartily sorry for having offended thee and detest all my sins,"

I do not feel that.  I am not sorry, much less detest myself.  I am sorry for the little girl that chose a fast life and had to deal with some tough issues.  I have mothered that little girl for years.  So no, I will not ask for forgiveness, and no I have not failed at everything I have done in my life.

The bag is getting smaller now, like a little black dress that clings to everywhere, including my head.

Wait! before we zip up the bag, let's take away any free will.  Grab her cigarettes, grab her diet coke, grab her intellect and reasoning to choose for herself!

There, all zipped up.

What remains?