Don’t stop ’til you get enough

If I could show you a photo of Aunt Crazypants, it would look a lot like this.

This morning, I spent an hour at Aunt Crazypants’ house for a quick visit. I don’t spend a lot of time with her or her husband anymore for a reason: because they’re such depressive people to be around. Aunt Crazypants in particular, at 82 years old, has slid down the hill of hopelessness for so many years, she’s made it her permanent career.

She is my only living relative residing in this part of the country (though my estranged sister visits in the summertime), and she and my Mom (when she was alive) were virtually inseparable sisters. I make it a point to go by her house at least once a week to check in.

This morning, Aunt Crazypants was droning on about the press coverage of Michael Jackson’s death. Now, I’ll grant you, it has been a little overwhelming, but at the same time, he was an American Icon—for good or bad—and his sudden tragic death IS news. Aunt Crazypants, however, holds Michael Jackson in such lowly contempt that every salacious news story discussing his rumored drug use only feeds her fire. “UGH,” she spat at the television, “I wish they’d stop! He’s nothing but a druggie! A pill popper addicted to pain killers! UGH!”

She, of course, has no idea about my up close and personal relationship with Captain V, but I couldn’t help pointing out her hypocrisy. Addiction runs in my family—both she and my late mother were raging alcoholics.

So I got my back up. “You’ve got some nerve calling him an addict, Alchie!” I taunted.
“What do you mean?” she cried innocently, “I only have one drink a day.”
“Only because your husband won’t let you. But if you had your druthers, you’d drink every day. If you had a bottle here now, you’d be at the bottom of it by now.”
She rolled her eyes. I hit a nerve. I know that there is nothing she’d like more right this very moment than to get her hands on a big bottle of Jim Beam. She looked at me and admitted, “Well yeah, but I know when to stop.”

I continued the argument for a few moments longer because I know—and she knows—she wouldn’t stop. Not ever. I just wanted to underline the obvious because she’s not fooling me. The only differences between her situation and Michael Jackson’s are circumstantial; the disease and overindulgences of self-destruction are the same. And frankly, I have nothing left to lose by discussing the obvious in this case. Everyone else is gone—one less depressing person in my life can’t be that bad, can it? If I want to be depressed, I can do a fine job of it by myself.

I don’t like going to Aunt Crazypants’ house. It’s the most depressing place on Earth. Think Grey Gardens, but on a smaller scale with common people. The house they live in was once a nice little Victorian in Sobrietyland’s historic district. Much like my house, it’s come into disrepair, only much worse. The leaks in the ceiling (and it’s always leaking) are never fixed. The cigarette smoke hangs in the air like a fog bank clinging to particles of dust kicked up as you walk through, and it has coated everything in the house in a thick layer of sticky yellow tobacco stain. Everything smells of human urine, smoke, motor oil, and old people. They also live in perpetual darkness—since they both had cataract surgery a couple of years ago, Uncle insists that the light bothers his eyes, so he covered ALL the windows in old bedsheets so no light ever penetrates. And embittered angry Auntie sits in the middle of it all, eating herself up with resentment about it, referring to herself as victim, denying responsibility for any of the choices that have gotten her there. Understand that it was a series of very bad decisions that got Auntie into this position—a slow, steady, and persistent descent into indignity much by her own hand—and her refusal to acknowledge that for even one moment, is one of many reasons she stays there.

If you ever want to feel overwhelmingly depressed, visit a person’s home who lives like that. I’m especially tough, but I’d give any normal person five minutes before they’re running screaming from the place.

Such it is that Aunt and Uncle Crazypants have frightened away every person of quality in their crummy lives, and as they are the only relatives left for me, so I am for them. Thus we are here, still, together in a way. I have not told them of my plans of moving away—their rage and fury at my audacity to hope, is better handled later rather than sooner.

Living with NO support from anybody is excruciatingly hard. The best I can do is try to set up my surroundings for success (and to be honest, I don’t do a great job of it).

On the positive side, I’ve restarted the Atkins plan, and while it’s only been about 36 hours, I’m feeling much better already. I also went clothes shopping yesterday and bought a new pair of jeans and several tops, more appropriate for the upcoming summer heat than what I have currently, especially given that what I have from last year is neither stylish nor large enough for my newly fatter frame. With luck and persistence, in a few months, I’ll be complaining that everything I own is too big. Oh! Fortune, smile upon me!

On the negative side, I’m feeling very disgusted by my friends’ reactions to my self-imposed unemployment. My last two “besties” have, for all intents and purposes, deserted me. Syn has been going through chemotherapy for a couple of months, so I’ve given her a free pass on not hanging out or calling me or asking how my day is going. Frankly, when you have cancer, a little self absorption seems appropriate if not necessary. I’ve been a dutiful friend, calling at least once a week to check on her, stopping by a couple of times to her country home (quite a drive from my house) to see how things were going, asking questions and showing interest in her treatment—far more, I might add, than any of her other friends. And when I quit my job, she was the ONLY one of my friends who didn’t act judgemental, and while I knew she may have been thinking it, she never once said “You’re crazy”. She alone tried to understand, and for that, I am grateful.

But now that she is recovering, things have not changed. It’s still eerily quiet coming from her side, so I am letting the quiet be what it is. I have stopped calling, waiting for the day when she calls me. She hasn’t. Sadly, I also know Syn is the type of person who holds grudges for no particular reason, so the fact that she hasn’t called me in a couple of weeks, or when I’ve called her, spent more than 3 minutes talking to me before saying she had somewhere else to be, hasn’t escaped my notice. Perhaps I gave her a funny look one day by accident. Maybe I didn’t inquire about her treatments enough. Any perceived slight could have set her off, and while normally she will come around, I’m not there every day to make that convenient. I think she’s gone.

And my other “Bestie” Cee is also gone, but she has been for some time. She makes pretense every once in a while that we’re still friends, but it’s really not the same at all. She doesn’t want to talk about my life, now; in fact, Cee seems to struggle to make conversation. The minute I announced I was quitting Initech to strike out on my own, Cee began giving me the cold shoulder (she was actually doing that even before the announcement). She invites me over, then conveniently makes an excuse why she won’t be there (God, what’s up with that?). Cee doesn’t return emails or phone calls until days later, excusing herself as being busy—because, you know, I quit, so now she has to do tons of additional work on the job. Yeah, she always gets that jab in somewhere in the conversation.

As I had feared weeks ago, it doesn’t look like she’s going to get over the fact that I quit. She is pissed off and jealous about a decision I made that has NOTHING to do with her EXCEPT the fact that now she has to do more work than before. Apparently, I was carrying so much of the load at Initech that I covered her ass for years. I made it convenient for her to sit back and not learn new techniques, take as much time off as she wanted, and win awards for the office that ensured our budget would be renewed the following year. Now all that is in jeopardy and if she doesn’t start carrying her share of the load, she will have nowhere left to hide. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that’s the only conclusion I can come up with. That our friendship was nothing more than a matter of convenience, particularly over a span of 20+ years of acquaintanceship, is pretty damn sad.

This sort of thing makes a person think, especially when there is nothing but time to ponder such matters. These two people were all that remained of my extended friend-family, so their loss hurts me deeply. I feel anguished that with their loss, I am really, truly alone. But is it better to stay with a person for no other reason than you don’t want to be completely alone, or is it better to strike out on your own, pioneering a new life for yourself without them? Abandoning one of your friends in their hour of need is NOT cool no matter what your personal circumstance—BUT, being friends should not be about what I can do for them, how good I make them look, how pretty I am, or how much money I can make for them. In the last several years, my relationships with all of my friends and family have been just that one sided.

Not cool.

Michael Jackson made the choice to surround himself with false friends who valued only what he could do for them. Nobody stopped him, nobody ever said, “No.”. But if he wasn’t famous and (at least at one time) rich, would he still find himself inexorably drawn to the same conclusion?

I am hoping this opportunity is a positive turning point for me—as I think it is!—an opportunity where I can get my excess baggage together and leave all this stupidity behind. Sadly, I’m leaving a lot of people I deeply cared about behind too. And that’s what hurts.

Even poor old Aunt Crazypants will be missed as I turn over my new leaf of life. It’s hard being on the outside.