Home A Year

Obviously I've blogged about this before and, presumably, will do so again - so I'll put the next bit in blue so if you're familiar with the background story you can just skip ahead.

On Monday 16th April 2018 my mum (then 73) had a severe stroke. To us it was blatantly obvious, to trained medical 'professionals' it was a mystery; while she was in A&E they seemed to think she was there with a stomach bug of all things! A consultant in Acute Care the next day said it definitely wasn't a stroke...5 hours later they confirmed it was - as we recently discovered, the NHS can't even record a stroke as affecting both hemispheres of the brain cos their software just won't accept that as being a thing. The usual FAST symptoms don't apply, or at least not so clearly: no facial drooping, no one-sided weakness - because EVERYTHING is affected. My mum was in hospital for nine-and-a-half weeks; this blog marks one year since I brought her home.

There was never a question that my mum would come here after her stroke, it wasn't a 'decision', it wasn't 'considered', it was just how it was going to be. We got the call at 8pm and I stayed with mum until she was admitted to Acute Care a little after 4am. I walked the four miles home, mooching, catching Pokemon, trying to wrap my head around what we'd been through that night... getting in about half past six. Collapsed into bed and got up at 8am when my dad rang for a status update.

At that point we felt certain it was a stroke, but there was still a chance that the 'experts' knew what they were talking about and that whilst she seemed desperately unwell it might pass with little-to-no long-term consequences. It just never really crossed my mind that a day or two (even a week or two) in hospital and she'd be fine. Instinct said this was it: major life changing event.

HOWEVER, even at that point I was planning for my mum to come stay with me. Even if our hunch came down to nothing more than paranoia whatever the problem was she was bound to be weak and in need of some looking after. I had already started looking around the house thinking how best to tidy / rearrange furniture in order to make things more comfortable for her.

I did not however think about the long term. Partly cos I feared we didn't have one, partly cos my grandad lived to 91 after his big stroke SIXTEEN YEARS EARLIER. If my mum's future runs to those lines I'll be looking after her until I'm what 55?! And then where will I be? No savings, no pension, precious little chance of a job... 
I was relieved she survived the first year past the stroke but as we then closed in on the anniversary of her homecoming (21st June) the weight of the future really started bearing down on me. A couple of weeks ago I hit a really low patch.

Y'all can think I'm selfish - I don't care. I had a miserable childhood; my parents were not nurturing / affectionate / supportive / whatever. I was bullied at school and my parents didn't want to know. I wonder if my grandad's stroke, when I was 6, may have been a significant factor in my parents' disintrest in all things Heggie-related. At 16 they forced me into an abortion. At 17 I was a single mother and still desperate to get as far away from them as I could manage - I laughed at people who said things like "you'll really need your mum now" like that was even a thing. I got as far as Somerset...where they bought a house for me to rent, ensuring I'd never escape their influence. Twenty-odd years later and my youngest has reached adulthood...and I moved back home-adjacent cos I was out of options after decades on welfare and minimum wage jobs while I raised my kids and earned my degree.
I might've had to come home but my kids were grown, I had my BA - SURELY this was my time??? I had hopes and dreams - I wanted a social life, to meet people, to pursue my interests, to travel. And here I am stuck at home again, drudging. I have no income.
I have been single since my kids' dad walked out...in 1998. And I mean SINGLE. No dates, no friends with benefits, NOTHING. Now I'll never meet anyone, let alone anything more. I kinda suspected after all these years alone that'd be how it went but foolishly I'd still hoped.
I'm grieving hard for the life I wanted, the life I'll now never have. 
Cos even as and when my mum's gone I'm still responsible for my dad (who is an almighty asshat) and my 'stepdad' (who is less of an asshat but only came into my life in my late 20s). AND I DON'T WANNA! 
Firstly, cos I have no inclination to 'caring' - being stuck at home with my kids was hell enough. I am agender and all this caring, cleaning, domestic drudgery shit is entirely too much of a feminine cliche for me to want to touch it with a barge pole.
Secondly, because I describe my familial feelings as Stockholm Syndrome-esque. It's about enforced proximity and bonding through trauma.
But mostly because I want to have MY life. Shit childhood, shit adulthood and everything has been about other people; my parents, grandparents, my kids...no one has ever put me first so why the hell shouldn't I? I just need the dratted opportunity!
I did not have a good relationship with either of my parents before this and the current situation has only made it worse cos we can't escape each other. I wish I was the sort of person who could dump annoying elderly relatives at the gates of a care home and walk away without a qualm. It would be so much easier.

I can't tell you how much I just want to ditch everything and GO...not that have anywhere to go, you understand. Or the resources to get there. To be honest though, just being able to leave the house would be something. Mum doesn't want to go out, she doesn't want people here. I am so bored.

This article (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-48458760) is about new mums struggling with changes to their bodies after childbirth and linking it with more profound loss of identity - "I think it's really important in that transition between young woman to mother that people are actually allowed to grieve the loss of their old identity." Well, that's what I've been doing - grieving for the person I was finally becoming.
My midlife crisis was FABULOUS. So many hair colours, gigs, tattoos, piercings...getting out, meeting people (bless the Lost Hearts!), working on the self-confidence I hadn't lost...I'd never had any!

In the last couple of days I've had a glimmer of hope...The Broken Kings (the band 3/5 of my beloved Fearless Vampire Killers have since become) have announced their 1st ever live performance - supporting former LostAlone front man Steven Battelle. With the help of my younger beastie I AM GOING!!! Also the combined blessings that it's somewhere I can get to and from fairly easily from here (and won't cost the earth to do so), and the fact it's almost 2 weeks before her new semester begins. My adults can look after her (she also agreed to it, I hasten to add) for one evening so I can have a very special break.

So that's where I'm at. Glad my mum's doing okay, but generally fucking miserable because I'm not. 

An Open Letter To My Ex

Today marks the 24th anniversary of the day we met, next month will be the 20th anniversary of our breaking up. If that's not a clue as to how pathetic this blog entry is gonna be I don't know what would be. Feel free to leave now and save me the embarrassment...but ye gods I needed to get this off my chest. It's been a long time since we were together and we weren't exactly together for those four years either - not just the standard drama of breaking / making up either. I wish that the fact I'm still thinking of you, and our anniversaries, meant ours was a wonderful relationship, but it wasn't.

Believe it or not, this would be a lot easier if you had been the love of my life but you weren't. The love of my life, so far as I can tell, is a person I met five years ago tomorrow...but will never be with. Even knowing it's not gonna happen the lowest moment of the past five years has been better than the highest point of my time with you. And if those two extremes weren't enough, the next bit is extra difficult to say - that's all there's been for me.

One shitty relationship (dat wit u) in my teens and the unrequited love of my midlife crisis. Nothing more. It's not something I'm proud of because it hasn't been by choice. Twenty years single.

I swing between wanting you to know that and hoping you never do. Today I'm in a wanting you to know that mood. You didn't have to pretend to love me...not that you made much of a pretence about it really but that's what you did. You didn't have to lie and plan a future with me; you chose to do that. What did I do to deserve that, and why should I pretend that you didn't cause me immense pain? Why shouldn't you know that your actions had consequences that I still live with?  Do you even remember that we were still planning our wedding to the day you walked out?! YOU were the one that insisted on a wedding, why would you even do that??? 

Obviously I was an idiot for imagining that was ever going to happen but all I had ever wanted was to be loved, that's why I believed all your BS; because I desperately wanted to believe no matter how much evidence was stacked against it. Even after you left I spent YEARS believing it was my fault, that it was something I had done. I tore myself apart over it and I know damn well I was hard to live with, I know I wasn't perfect but I also know I did everything I could to keep my family together. I would have done ANYTHING; I gave EVERYTHING I had. It wasn't even close to being enough. Because I would rather take the blame than face the truth: you never wanted me. I figured it out eventually but it didn't help any. I had spent such a long time thinking "well XXXXXX loved me so eventually someone else will" - that thought had given me strength and now I don't even have that. Just like for years I thought it was because I was fat...so I lost a load of weight and discovered that no, it's just me, no one's interested and I'm gonna die alone. Maybe one day I'll make my peace with that.

I swing between being pathetically grateful I even had your pale imitation of love and being angry at you for giving me false hope. Today angry wins. You didn't owe me anything but you also didn't have to do this to me and I will never understand why you did. I assume you never considered what it would do to me, or what would become of me after you were through. Maybe you just never realised how much pain I was capable of feeling.

Over all the years I don't suppose you've ever given me a second thought. I've thought of you though... Sometimes I hope karma's being a bitch to you, even if I was the only one you ever hurt this way. Sometimes I hope you're a better person today than you were back then. Sometimes I hope you're happy, cos what's the point of us both being miserable? Mostly I hope you never treated anyone else like this; if you did, I hope that they found someone else...I wouldn't wish my life on anyone. Even you.

I've wondered what you would have thought if you'd ever seen how things were with us. Whether you'd have been shocked at how broken I was, or at the fact that I'm still alone. Maybe, in your mind, this is what I deserved... Did you ever consider what it would do to our kids to grow up without a father, or did you imagine another man would step up and take that role? I don't suppose you ever thought about any of us. Sometimes I wish you could know what we've done and achieved without you, that you knew what you missed out on, that we're better for not having had you be a part of it but I do realise you wouldn't care. You chose not to be a part of our lives, you chose not to even stay intermittently in touch. You got exactly what you wanted: you got out.

I'm glad you walked out and stayed gone, for all the hardships it brought on me and our kids. The only way you could have possibly hurt me more was for me to have to see you being the husband and father in another family the way you couldn't be for us. Whatever the last twenty years have been like for you I am sure I didn't need to see it. 

Obviously I'm still an idiot for thinking about such things. You weren't capable of caring when I knew you. And if you changed, as I hope you have, then the man who hurt me is long gone. It's all pointless.

But as a bit of a footnote: don't get to thinking I miss you. I don't even miss what we had cos frankly it was actually pretty awful. I've known all along I had a lucky escape. The only reason I even think of you is that there was no one else. If there had been, the memory of you would have long since been relegated to the dustiest corner of my mind along with all the other things best forgotten - like school bullies and that bad pizza in Malta. I deserved better than you but you were all I got...and that pisses me off.

I want this post to serve as a warning. I don't care about the whys and wherefores of what caused your destructive relationship(s) to be that way. Just remember that while the shit you do can come back on you it definitely stays with whoever you did it to in the first place. I will go through the rest of my life wishing I knew why my life had to turn out this way...why my karma is shit...what sin I committed and how could I ever atone for it...all because he said he loved me. I'd have been better off never having had a relationship at all.

Sour Apples

It has been quite a while since I last blogged and I apologise for coming back on a sour note.

Today I am feeling...resentful.

My sort of step dad is going into hospital today for surgery tomorrow due to suspected bowel cancer. He's a wonderful bloke and I'm very concerned for him - yet cautiously optomistic as, so far, all the tests have come back clear. My mum has been with him since the alarm bells sounded (they don't live together, hence the "sort of") and I don't resent the fact he's getting the care and support he needs. Not at all. I'm glad she's come through for him. Nuturing isn't in her nature.

Meanwhile, my dad has been expressing concern for his on/off girlfriend who has recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer of the mother. I don't like the sound of the mother in the slightest but I sympathise with what her daughter is going through, and will go through in the coming months.

So what is it that I resent? I resent that when I was going through my last cancer scare 4 years ago my mum didn't come and hold MY hand through all the appointments... Not, I suppose, that I really would've wanted her there but I don't think it ever occurred to her that I might need support.

I don't mean to sound like a stroppy adolescent but I've never felt loved or cared for by my parents. I'm an independent minded woman because I've had to be. I learned early in life that being sick or injured wouldn't make any difference. If my kid had been hit by a car at age 7 I'd have been beside myself with worry; I'd have cried and held my child for hours and I'm not exactly Ms Maternal myself. That's not how it was when I was hit by a car...

My ex left me just before my first cancer scare when I was 20. He was the only person I'd ever really believed cared about me but as I lay in hospital, frightened and alone after emergency surgery at 15 weeks pregnant with our second child, he told me on the phone he couldn't be bothered to visit me and bring me in a nightie. My parents were over a hundred miles away.

So, four years ago, I'd found another lump. My mum was taking me and my kids on holiday and I found the mass just hours before we were due to depart. I told my mum straight away and her reaction was to carry on regardless: a week's delay in going to a doctor wouldn't make any difference...after all, it had been okay last time! I agreed, partly cos I knew she'd be furious if I insisted on staying behind.

It WAS okay. Perhaps they were worried about me and didn't show it so as not to frighten me more than I already was... But ultimately I don't believe that.

I don't want to be needy and greedy and selfish but I wish so badly that I had someone I KNEW loved me, knew there was someone who'd be there at the drop of a hat to hold me and tell me everything would be all right. It frightens me that instead this searing loneliness may be all I'll ever know.

I want my step dad to be okay. I don't want to feel this way. I want to feel like a 33 year old independent woman and not like a lost and lonely child...