Tuesday

Pictographic Divider

a helping hand

I do not look back for to look back is not healthy. To talk about the manipulation and the play on my vulnerabilities at a time when I was struggling to understand the truth, living a life that consisted of medical tests and procedures and words like possibly terminal, permanent, serious gave you power and control over my life as I was sliding into having neither, concentrating more of the here and now and when I heard your voice, the calming voice and those that you spoke of that surrounded you and were throwing their support my way, you made it even more difficult for me to understand something that I now know, was not mine to understand, only to accept and move forward.

Instead, you played on a relationship that was shaking at best, used your others as sounding boards and promised that which I never had, a family unit of unconditional love. And by using the vulnerabilities of others, my then drunk sister-in law, my brother who was busy with your antics and hers, and my mother who you claim is yours for over forty something years that knew nothing of your plans, nothing of my arrival only that I was ill, and still you and you alone were able to convince me of my options and the option that worked in the world in which you lived was to return to a place I never had, but always dreamed of, a home.

And yes, a roof was provided and food wads provided by nothing else was here. All the times you said, 'don't worry about the small stuff', I listened and instead of worrying was getting closer and closer to being once again within your reach after having left many years before.

And now I sit her in amazement of how your intelligence persuaded me to believe so much and so many things that never were. The concepts sounded great and thus I made my move to Texas without help, to be with family and lean on my family to assist and help me through the most difficult days of my life only to now know that my family did not know, had no clue what you were planning. That the son who had been gone from the family circle for so long was returning without warning and sadly, quite ill too.

You brought me here to be here for you. To cook and clean and help like no one else was helping as you sat and stared at the television set and the television set is how you got me here, making me believe all that you were doing and all that everyone else was doing too, things you were learning by flipping channels and watching commercials and never leaving the house, even more sad, the chair unless it was time to feed yourself or go to the bathroom.

And I was here. I left everything behind per your advise as why did I need anything if you had everything and anything else could be bought? The signs were on the wall when I lived 1,500 miles away. Nothing has changed. Nothing had changed. Only me going through a very seriously, not to be taken lightly or twisted as you so easily did, time in my life that ended up leaving me were I was most vulnerable terminal, alone and without anything that was familiar to me.

I no longer look back as to look back congers up feelings and emotions that are too close to hate and I am ashamed that I allowed your ability to control one final time. And control you have or tried to and when you cannot, the house disrupts and the compound as I have named it, becomes even more unsettled than it was prior to my arrival and now, I wait and wait patiently to save enough to walk away one final time and lock the doors behind me never to return. Giving you the opportunity to visit me, but on my terms and not on yours.

I shutter at the thought of being treated like a thirteen year old and yet I have been since I arrived and I hasten to think how you could be more cruel or uncaring as once the team of physicians leave and the door to the compound is locked, you and my mother discard what you choose not to believe and continue on doing nothing in your lives, leaving me to think alone, be alone, eat alone and question alone, for I am alone.

More alone than I was when I was so many miles away and thought I had no assurances, no help and yet here, I have even less as my continued deterioration, but survival, has become an major inconvenience that no longer can be denied as the anger is so often displayed to other people and they know simply by speaking with me that the support promised, the family unit so eloquently spoken about never was and never will be. It is me and the world and soon, I will make a change, hold no bitterness and walk away from the mess that you choose your life to be but not me, not mine. I am different and the differences are too many to list and I will see an ending soon, but on my terms and no longer on yours.

And grateful I am but with my gratefulness comes a bittersweet feeling of what if only and I know it was me who was vulnerable, me who was scared and me who took the bait and did exactly as you said, against my better judgment and those that knew me and so I sit here today , knowing that the time comes soon when I can put this chapter behind me and live my final days as I want them to be lived, not as you or anyone else would want them. And all that was promised will happen under my terms without expectations and certainly surrounded by those that can offer and provide love instead of watching me vacuum and telling me I missed a spot or accusing me of doing too little to help my mother when the doctor tells me to do less as my body can no longer do, but still, you expect it, demand it as it is all yours and I am here to borrow it under your guidelines and your terms, period.
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