If you were mine…

If you were mine…

Bad advice from the wrong people can sometimes have a positive result. I won’t go in to the details, but someone who was not qualified to give me advice about my relationship, went ahead and did so and her words danced around in my mind wreaking havoc all day yesterday. I completely withdrew from the world and hated everyone. I stayed to myself to figure out what my game plan would be to attack back. Who would be this new & impervious me that no one could touch and no one could affect? How could I do it? Finally the phone call: “Why are you blocking me out? I want to talk to you… I want to help if it’s something i can help with. I want to know what’s on your mind if I did something wrong. Please don’t shut me out.” Okay, Impervious-me…. guess we should call him back. And I did. And we talked for hours. I let him know the throng of bad advice and instead of dismissing it, “Don’t listen to her… she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about,” I was regaled with stories of our past present and future. How we met. Funny things we did on the road to loving each other. Ultimately loving and standing by one another through great difficulties. Preparing to wed. Looking forward to long life. And how he wants to continue with me… all the way down the road. With only me. “The only one who can take me away from you is God… when He decides my time is up. We’ll have our kids and grandkids and great grandkids and whatever else the Lord will bless us with. And then when the time is done… you and I will ride off into the sunset together. I don’t even want to go to heaven without you.”

You hear these words in songs all your life… and never think someone will actually SAY them to you and MEAN THEM. It’s so much for me to wrap my mind around. Can I accept love this big? Can I manage love this all-encompassing? I used to be the one giving it, unselfishly, straight from my heart. And now I’m wrapped in its embrace… warm and protected. At least until someone else puts crazy ideas in my head. But he seems to know how to deal with that too.

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Rude Awakening

Rude Awakening

Sometimes, music in the waking world seeps into your dream… maybe as the band that’s playing at some grand ball that you’re attending. Maybe as an instrument that you’ve somehow become adept at playing in your dream… or just as your alarm, waking you from your actual dream. Arguments, however, crash into your dream and you wake up completely aware, not groggy at all and you spring to action to find out what’s happening.

My morning started the latter way. Raised voices and fevered pitches made me wonder what was happening in my living room. Sleep was done and I ran in there to make sure that no one was harmed. Physically no one was. Mentally and Emotionally it was the bloodiest shoot out this household has seen in 30 some odd years. I immediately took my position… somewhere between my brother and my father to keep them from killing each other. Usually in days of yore, it would have been my mother to take that position, but in her debilitated state, she was an audience to this theater of anger, yelling from her chair at the screen but affecting nothing. So much anger in that little room. So what happened?

Today, my dad was supposed to begin the first in a throng of Chemo therapy treatments for his prostate cancer. Understanding how difficult it would be for him to get around after the initial session, and after having been told entirely too late for me to do anything about it, my brother agreed to take the day from work to assist my dad. In a sense, I felt is was fair. I live with them and have to help on a day to day; I appreciate when my brother can step in and assist. But my dad is scared. And rightfully so. He’s seen what chemo did for others… his family members, his friends. Now he’s faced with treating his cancer (again… a whole 6 years after having gone into remission). The problem with my father, is that instead of admitting his fear… he takes it out on everyone. He becomes difficult. He yells. He broods. His just of completely bad humor and makes sure that EVERYONE gets a taste. No one is exampt from his negativity… but God forbid you dish any of it back. It’s sacrilege.

Quick deeper history. My dad and my brother do NOT get along. My brother has 35 years of pent up aggression towards this man he calls father. And he has every right. Something happend when I was born, and my brother took an immediate second place. He became the bald headed step child and was treated as such as often as possible. No matter what happened in the house, Domi was the recipient of the anger my father felt. Wheter it was by yelling at him, beating him (which was his catharsis of choice), ignoring him, discouraging him… my dad spent my brother’s life time crushing who he could have been. And now my brother has been crippled by it by not believing in himself at all. Or enough to become anything substantial. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I got the other side of it all where he was loving caring and supportive to me. He was just as rude. Just as stupid. And it made my mom, my brother and I this little cohesive unit in the house. With mom occasionally defecting under the auspice that “that’s your father, kids.” “Yeah, well, you chose him, mom, not us.” So for this many years, my brother has pined for the relationship with a father he could have had. One where dad teaches you how to play football or how to fix the car; going on fishing trips together. We used to watch The Cosby Show and sometimes just be so silent afterwards, wishing we had a fraction of the love and understanding that family had. We knew it was unrealisitic. But somehow Heathcliff and Claire managed to discipline AND love. Somehow, mom did that too. But dad… that’s a big hell no.

Fast forward to today. So he’s scared, being difficult, AND my brother is the only one available to take him to the dr. today. Does anyone else see a formula for disaster here besides me?

Domi woke up this morning at 5 to make it here for 7. Took the day off of work (after missing work yesterday due to a mix up in the dates thanks to mom and dad). Headed over here against his will really, if not for mom’s request for this. Showed up promptly at 7, from what I could tell by the time it was when I sprinted out of bed to keep them from killing each other. Dad was getting a new lightbulb for a lamp in the dinette. Domi, aware he was walking on eggshells, said, “Excuse me, dad,” as in he’d just arrived and needed to get by to say hi to mom. Dad fired off a volley of stupidity in his face to the tune of, “I’m doing something here, why can’t you wait.” Raised voices don’t go well with my brother. Because he retaliates with twice the venom. Details are sketchy about what happened at that point… but somehow, mom had gotten up from her bed to make it to the dinette to “mediate”. But that wasn’t working. By the time I got there, the argument wasn’t about a light bulb and ways to pass, but about dad’s lack of reason and Domi’s lack of respect. I asked for both stories… half way through his story, dad waved his broken, casted hand and said, “Let him go. I don’t want him.” In dad’s broken english, I understood this to be, “I don’t want him to go with me today; forget it.” “You don’t want me??? I DON’T WANT YOU!!! I HAVE NEVER WANTED YOU!!! FOR 35 YEARS I’VE REGRETTED HAVING YOU FOR A FATHER. YOU DON’T HAVE TO WANT ME, BECAUSE YOU NEVER DID AND NOW I DON’T NEED YOU… YOU NEED ME!” hurled from my brother’s mouth. And stood there feeling happy. Happy because Domi was finally able to tell my father what was on his mind for 30 plus years. The anger and yelling didn’t stop there. Domi got everything pretty much off his chest, but it fell on deaf ears. After a while, Dad stopped listening, like he always does and resolved to himself that he wasn’t going to need Domi to help him get around today. Me and mom are yelling at him trying to get him to understand that he doesn’t really have a choice. There is no reasoning with dad.

I take Domi into my room where he vents out the rest of his anger, and I let him. I can tell, if Dad was willing to be reasonable, we could have convinced Domi to go with him. My mom and myself have a hold over Domi that he can’t really squirm out of. He loves us. We love him. Unconditionally. And that’s it. Wish it could be so simple for him and Dad. I go out there and try to reason with Dad. Mistake number one. (read up to the part about dad’s LACK of reasoning) and I can’t converse with people who don’t have a shred of common sense or regard for human feeling. Now it turns into an argument between he and I. I’m yelling at him expressing what an ASS he’s been to all of us SIMPLY BECAUSE WE’RE TRYING TO HELP. And it’s been this way ALL of our lives. No one elses feelings are regarded except for his own and he wonders why he’s such an outsider now. “How could you yell at him for saying “excuse me”??? How absurd is that, dad? You yelled at him for being polite?” I was interested in hearing his answer. “I had to yell at him. He’s impatient and rude.” I stood there aghast. Nope… there wasn’t going to be a resolution today. Dad was in rare form. He was in the all for me and me for none mode. And I had no patience for it. “You’ve only ever cared about yourself dad. We’re all here bending over backwards to help take care of you… and you can’t seem to give a fuck. It’s all about you and always has been as far as you’re concerned. But we have feelings. It doesn’t matter to you does it? That you hurt us REGULARLY?” Silence. I walked back into my room and escorted my brother to the door so he could leave without killing my father. I walked into my room to get my towel and prepare for the day ahead of me at work and i shut the bathroom door.

And now here I am, getting ready for work, going over everything in my mind and wondering where the want to please my mother and keep the family in tact snapped. Furthermore… when did I stop caring?

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Right Beside

Right Beside

Me, Max and my baby went to a bridal “expo” tonight. It really wasn’t an exposition of any kind. Just one company that pesters me INCESSANTLY. But they lured me and Max in with promises of free liquor (Wine and cheese reception). So we attended, hoping it would be something where many companies went to peddle their wares… but alas, it was just the one. They are a DJ / Photography / Videography set up. And really, I felt their stuff is mediocre. Being in the music industry (surrounded by djs); pioneered my own photography program and do my own video editing… it makes me a very tough customer to sell to. Nothing is good enough.

So we’re sitting there as they’re going through their presentation and they bring the DJs out. Max and I are sitting in our “much-too-classy-for-this-foolishness” stance as the djs make their rounds and start soliciting people to come to the dance floor. They start working on us and we do all but turn our noses up at them. When they come around the second time, the dj assigned to our section says directly to me, “You’re getting married right?” and I responded, “Yes.” “You could win something if you come up.” Say no more I thought to myself. My baby and I need all the help we can get. So I didn’t hesitate and stood up to go to the dance floor where I KNEW they’d have me do some foolishness. I scooted past Max who snickered at my demise and rebuffed further advances from the dj. I got to the dance floore, thinking about the kind of embarrassment I was about to partake in… when I looked to my right… and my baby was standing right next to me. “I wasn’t going to let you do this alone,” he murmered into my ear. Man, I tell you. It might have been SO small… but it was HUGE to me. Between him talking me down off my mental ledge yesterday (because I’d HAD IT… I was going to pack a bag and go sleep at the office). And offering to get my house back to working order this weekend and the talks in the car and at his house this weekend about my insecurities… Now this. Subjecting himself to utter folly like doing the dance for “Grease Lightening” (from the movie Grease)… to doing the cha-cha around the room to the YMCA song and the electric slide. He even beat on the fake little tambourine they gave him to the music. All the while through his teeth he’d say to me “If it wasn’t for how much I love you… I wouldn’t be doing this.” I believe him. And questioned why I was freaking out this weekend.

At the end of it all we won nothing from the dj company. But ultimately, he and I are the winners of much bigger and better things.

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Skeet-ah, I say…

Skeet-ah, I say…

For the benefit of those who don’t know what me and my friends are joking about at parties when we begin saying… SKEEEETAAAAAHHH!!!!

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Insecure, con’t

Insecure, con’t

I went back to sleep, fairly easily, only to find myself in a the next disturbing dream.

We were in our house. Apparantly married now. BEAUTIFUL HOUSE. Everything I ever dreamed of. Full of light and lovingly designed. Old house with family history. Spacious and billowy. At least 3 floors and just gorgeous. And he and I are fighting. Knock down drag out style yelling at each other. About what? I don’t know. But just angry words flying between us. Culminating with him telling me, “Well why don’t you go the fuck upstairs then and get outta my face????!!!!”

A little background. Me and my baby DON’T yell at each other. The one time we did was November 17, 2001 and we broke up for 16 hours and it was the WORST time of my life. But in that convo all sorts of expletives flew (mostly from my mouth). He was calm and collected and just basically said, “I don’t have to stand for any of this. I’m out. Go find someone else to treat like this.” Really… CALM style. I think that was what as most frightening of it all. That’s why he and I just don’t yell. I was used to going head to head, ram style, with my ex’s. One ex used to OPENLY smile when I fed into the anger he was giving me. Like…”yeah… now I’ve got you.” They enjoyed drama a LOT. Luckily, my baby does not. And I’ve since given up that part of me that enjoys fighting. Life is easier lived that way. I mean, we disagree… but it’s never to the point where we yell… and the only time we get animated is when there’s serious misunderstanding.

So the yelling on his part… totally not in his character. I woke up completely frazzled. Why was I having all these dreams? He felt my discomfort and woke up. “What is happening to you over there? Talk to me.” I told him about both dreams. And he held me and said, “Are you having some insecurities about marrying me?” I told him no… we talked at length. He basically said he wouldn’t have put himself through the physical and financial strain of getting the ring if he wasn’t serious about getting married and staying that way. He only wants to marry once… and then it’s for ever… and it’s with me. He held me and we talked some more and I felt better. He always manages to do that. So until I have my next bout of crazy dreams, I’m okay.

Getting ready to go and look at more houses today. Will have pictures

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