Irate Irene

that is what they called my grandmother.
she was always grandmother to me.
she used to call my father chicken legs.
and the fight would begin.
when I was little, my grandparents took care of us while my mother would work.
my parents divorced when I was 7.
So instead of getting stuck taking a nap with grandfather(which was horrid in ways I can't even begin to explain) I would hide against my grandmother.
she would be drunk, my grandmother was Irish.
she would drink to the point that she would have blackout binges for weeks.
her binges were famous.
and it was plain that she was hurting, and stuck.
she was only a woman after all.
women mean nothing unless they produce male children.
it was a very chauvinistic house hold. my grandfather held the funds. so when he died she was at a loss cause she didn't even know how to balance a check book.
she and I would talk of a time when we would leave the family, it was a secret, our secret.
we would run away, and she and I would live together. away from all of the family. and we would be able to live our lives as they should be lived.
she would cry and I would hold her, she was such a pitiful mess. drunk all over herself, crying. and wishing for anything other than the life she led.
it was our secret. the ties that bind. it made us cohorts.
she was the only one who ever loved me. not my parents and the rest. I was a burden who had yet to full fill her potential.
the only thing lower than a woman, was a woman with out children, she might as well kill herself! god forbid she wasn't doing her duty to a man and providing children. she was a waste of space and resources. better off dead...
My mother took away my ability to carry children.
thank whatever that I didn't have any. they would have been as screwed up as I was.
she was not an easy person. every thing was a fight with her.
I grew up and away. My grandfather died.
he was only human in in last years cause they basically castrated him due to cancer.
so she was alone, with all of her money, cause it was hers now.
so my youngest uncle kills himself in the downstairs of her house. almost exactly a year before she died. this happened in November of 1993. she was dead the next year.
she had been sick awhile. it was cancer.
she died in November of 1994.
after my uncle died, I spent almost 2 months with her, alone.
it was what we had dreamed of all of my life. it was the hardest and best 2 months of my life up to that point. My grandmother was the love of my life, the only person that loved me.
the love was sick, but it was better than nothing else I had. then she kicked me out of her life.
she told me that she was sick. well I knew that I was cleaning up after her. she sat me down and we had a talk, well she talked and I listened. she said that she probably would be dead by the end of the year and that she was sure it was cancer, it was.
she also told me that she didn't want me to remember her as and invalid.
and she sent me away.
I raged against her, and she would not give.
after 6 months and her surgery had passed she finally relented.
it was the last time I would ever see her alive.
she was thin. she never weighted over 100 except when she was pregnant.
she was starving herself to death, not by choice. the cancer was all over by that point, she was in diapers and hooked up to a morphine drip.
she was dying, by inches, one second at a time. she told me she loved me and that I had to go and never come back.
that is when something inside me started to die. the rest of me went the day she died in November of 1994. I would call every day as I had for almost 9 months, hoping to be told to fuck off. there was no answer. I knew she was dead.
my life as I knew it was over. the only person who had ever loved me was dead. my best friend was gone, my partner in crime.
dead.
I turned to drugs, I was a whore to pay for my habit.
it didn't matter my life was over.
******
so many years later when I woke up from the coma that my last overdose put me in, I was angry. I was sick of the life I had. all of these things contributed to my life as it is today.
a better life, one never dreamed possible.
I am in pain, and you know what, so what?
we have our defining moments in life. we all have our pain.
I actually have people who love me. who ever thought that I would have love?
not me, ever. I was damaged. I could never get my parents to love me.
what was so wrong with me?
nothing, it was never me. it was them, some defect in them, there failure of me.
such a small being I was. all I did was be born to defective, deficient people.
that is just what it was, and the way they are.
I decided I was better than that, that I deserved to be loved and I didn't have to settle for assholes.
so I had to stop being an asshole.
I found things in myself to love, which was really hard.
after all of the shit that I was taught to believe, it was almost impossible.
but not quite.
and I found people that love me. My stars that was something that I just could not believe.
today lots of people love me, and I take it quite for granted.
why would they not love me?
I am adorable, and fun and all kinds of other neat things.
I am still a terror, and I get moody and sometimes (well allot) I am in pain. you know what? I have always been in allot of pain of some sort.
I would not trade today for anything.
I am happy, although you would never know it by my posts.
sometimes this is a hard place to be.
this is my life, more than I would of ever hoped for.