I had a post almost ready to go about how happy I am that things are settling down and how glad I am that I can live my life free from all interference from the recent abhorrent and improbable events characterizing the last three years of my life. The first three sentences feature the word "happy" in multiple usages.
Too bad I am not going to publish that one.
Herewith, an email received from Erika, the woman I introduced to my father, the woman my father married, the woman my father lost all interest in his children over, the woman who gained power of attorney over my father, transferred all of his assets into her own name, and finally, drafted a will (she got the template from http://www.wills.com/!) calling herself sole beneficiary and executor of this will. (The part where she took control of his assets beforehand was just good planning).
Was I about to show you an email? Oh yeah. Here it is along with my translations in the interleaves:
Hello,
As we hurtle toward "the" are the quotation marks supposed to denote the date of my father's death as superlative? Because guess what? In terms of the agony his death caused my family, the actual dying part ranks pretty low. The death march out onto the deck to have our "last" ever conversation with him probably wins the prize) anniversary, things here are pretty raw are you fucking kidding me? It's raw sitting on your ass in the million dollar house that you did nothing to earn -- in your windsock of nightgown, all day -- because you don't need a job because you are literally drowning in cash - ie, all the money my father made while he was married to my mother? THAT is raw? You want to know what's raw, sister? Raw is living in someone else's attic because you can't afford to support yourself.... because your credit card bills for all those visits to the ICU were stratospheric. Raw??? here. THERE??? You mean out on the deck overlooking the lake, shoveling food into your mouth that you didn't pay for? Maybe it's the same where you are. I wish. I would vastly prefer to lay on my ass and do nothing -- except for the really challenging part of the week when I had to go visit my grief counsellor. Must be nice. There's a really bad stretch up ahead, but some of those memories are of us sticking together and helping each other. You want to know what I remember about that "stretch"? I remember paying $1200 for a plane ticket, $400 for a rental car, and $120 for a hotel room in order to see my dad, and I remember, as I walked into my father's house, you, Erika, putting your arms around my father and saying, "You never have to talk to her again" before you pushed him, against his will into the bedroom for a "nap." A superlative one, you betcha. Was that the "sticking together" you were thinking of? Or was it the part where you fled my father's funeral because one person from my mother's family dared to show up and wreck your delusion that my father actually loved someone, ever, other than you? As hard as this anniversary is, maybe we can bring something good out of it, something that Harry would want. OMG I can hardly wait. How many buckets of blood do you want to bet that the really special and virtuous and right thing my father would supposedly want is actually something YOU want for yourself? So I will say to you all please forgive me for anything you feel I did or did not do. Never, ever, ever. Now go put a bag over your head and drown yourself. If you look into your heart and can't quite find that forgiveness, I looked. Nope! then look inside Harry's heart and things may look different to you. Well, well, well. There it is. My father would want us to forgive you... for alienating him from us, appropriating all of his assets, and making us strangers in our own house. Except to be technical, it wasn't our house anymore anyway. Bitch, for you to invoke the love and respect we have for our father and then endeavor to manipulate us into forgiving you for dismantling my family, taking what you wanted, and going out for a latte, illustrates in hi-def that you know nothing about forgiveness. You don't know what it is, what it is for, or what it means. My father was a man - not Jesus Christ himself. And you, dirty pirate whore, don't get to drop a bomb on someone else's life and then say "if you could only see this from your father's perspective, you would see that he really did want to destroy you. And who are we to question his will? Or is it His? I get so confused between Jesus and my husband. But I know they both wanted you to get fucked over, so none of this is my fault." He was the most forgiving person anyone of us will ever know, As far as I know, the only crime I committed against my father in the last years of his life was loving him so much my hair fell out - that and "bothering him" by visiting him while he had cancer. But whatever, dad. Since forgiveness is such a strong attribute of yours, sorry. I really regret having that much faith in you. If Erika got you a little confused with God, I got you a lot confused with God. 100%, actually, which is why a nine months later, I still can't believe you abandoned me, all for a piece of ass. So yeah, I am sorry. A lot. I should never have made that mistake and we all learned more about God from watching him the last couple years of his life than we'll ever learn anywhere else. If that was supposed to teach us about God, no thanks. I think I'll just be secular humanist or something. I hear those people are at least nice to each other and believe in justice. I could use a little of both of those, or a lot. Whatever is available.
We can't fix the world, but we can fix our little part of it. Solve my problem for me by saying you are cool with with what I did to you. Then we'll go to work on what? Gaza?
I love you all.
(... translation: I love that you were all foolish enough to trust me. That makes you good people.)
Yeah, I know. I know. I know. But if I can't do this here, where can I do it?
Thank you for reading.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Explanations
Hi!
I have complained a lot lately, and I should (perhaps) explain myself. Or at least elaborate on certain circumstances that (sometimes, but not always) threaten my equanimity.
Issue the first: Living situation.
After my dad died and the final round of bills associated with his illness and death hit my mailbox, I realized there was about 25 cents worth of financial cushion between me and total ruin. Many people, including you, helped me avoid actually presenting myself at the courthouse for judgment with my remaining one (or two) quarters. Instead, I moved in with a couple in their 70s who needed help cleaning out their house so they could move to a smaller one. Result: Nina starts getting financially better off, and the couple has someone around to do basically whatever they can dream up for her to do. Go ahead and notice that "help cleaning out their house" was about the last thing they actually wanted Nina to do, and forgive Nina for not elaborating on what they really wanted. Use your imagination. (Stop that! Don't be so gross). Result: frustration. But also a fair amount of comedy, because whenever you move in with new people who are absolutely nothing like you, funny things happen. Like the day when I brought Liam over and Bob refused to believe Liam was boy because Liam is so pretty. And so for the entirety of the visit, Bob called Liam "girlfriend" - which offended Liam so much he just sat down and cried. Awesome.
Issue the second: Bob's untimely exit.
Death finds me. Bob and Kate were on vacation in Montenegro, Bob came down with a little itty bitty infection and as sometimes happens when people are 76, the infection got really big, and Bob died. If you read the preceding paragraph, you know that "cleaning out the house" was low on Bob and Kate's list of things for me to do for them. In fact, it never made the list. So you can infer that a good portion of the preparations for getting Bob properly memorialized and publicly adored were left to me. Now, to be fair, I didn't do that much because there was a mountain of things to do. I only did what a person could do in twelve hours a day for the 10 days leading up to the funeral. Did my job get done? Oh, sure. But only because I skipped the heavenly sleep inducing medicine and crammed it all in - or because I snuck upstairs for 10 minutes here or there to grade a test or a paper. In the end, we buried Bob a month after he was repatriated - an event that turned out to be just about as dramatic and emotionally wrenching as the funeral. Here's another picture for you:
Issue the third: My sister.
Since my father died, I have removed my step mother and every other person associated with her from my life with surgical finality and precision. My sister called me last week, and she was hysterical because she had just found out that my dad stopped contributing money to her IRA when he got married. When she told me this, I said, "Duh. You didn't know that?" And then I carefully and tactfully explained to her that our dad really did disinherit us and that I thought she might really might be able to get her brain around it if she simply read the will, of which I have a copy. Then suddenly she said, "I am less and less ok with the will." To which I said "Then perhaps you should remove your nose from that bitch's ass crack and join the rest of your family -- you know, the other forty or so odd people who are united in their hatred of the bitch dad married. And then my sister said, without a trace of irony "If I do that she won't leave me any of dad's money when she dies."
DUH. SHE IS NOT GOING TO LEAVE YOU ANY MONEY, NO MATTER HOW DEEP YOUR BURY YOU NOSE IN HER ASS CRACK. GROW UP.
And then I had to carefully and tactfully explain to my sister why I can have no further contact with her as long as she continues to betray her entire family all for a chance at getting dad's money. Her response was "Well, you and I have never had much in common anyway. Bye."
Issue the fourth: my job.
I had a great meeting with my boss this week. Awesomely good. It turns out that despite all my fears to the contrary, I am not on the short list to be laid off. And they are not even that annoyed with me because I live in New York. Whee! Except not. For those of you unaware of the history, my dad met the woman he eventually chucked us in the wood chipper for because I introduced him to her. She was my boss at the job I still have. Think about that for a minute. Ok that is enough; you can stop now. After my current boss gave me all this good news about my job security, she told me that I have a new supervisor (which in this case is a mini-boss). And guess who it is? It is the only person at Sweet Little College who still keeps in touch with my step mother. So it's clear: I have surgically removed everyone connected to that bitch from my life - even my sister. And now, because God is apparently not done shredding me yet, I am FORCED to have professional contact with one of my step mother's best friends. And I can't do anything about it. Not one thing.
And so that is why lately I am dramatic and self pitying. I guess you didn't need all this explanation and I suppose I could have written more stuff about being attracted to inappropriate people, but hey, at least now you know why I still require big piles of sedating drugs to sleep at night. The fun just keeps on coming.
Oh but in case it is not clear: I am fine. Those meds really work.
Love,
Nina
I have complained a lot lately, and I should (perhaps) explain myself. Or at least elaborate on certain circumstances that (sometimes, but not always) threaten my equanimity.
Issue the first: Living situation.
After my dad died and the final round of bills associated with his illness and death hit my mailbox, I realized there was about 25 cents worth of financial cushion between me and total ruin. Many people, including you, helped me avoid actually presenting myself at the courthouse for judgment with my remaining one (or two) quarters. Instead, I moved in with a couple in their 70s who needed help cleaning out their house so they could move to a smaller one. Result: Nina starts getting financially better off, and the couple has someone around to do basically whatever they can dream up for her to do. Go ahead and notice that "help cleaning out their house" was about the last thing they actually wanted Nina to do, and forgive Nina for not elaborating on what they really wanted. Use your imagination. (Stop that! Don't be so gross). Result: frustration. But also a fair amount of comedy, because whenever you move in with new people who are absolutely nothing like you, funny things happen. Like the day when I brought Liam over and Bob refused to believe Liam was boy because Liam is so pretty. And so for the entirety of the visit, Bob called Liam "girlfriend" - which offended Liam so much he just sat down and cried. Awesome.
Issue the second: Bob's untimely exit.
Death finds me. Bob and Kate were on vacation in Montenegro, Bob came down with a little itty bitty infection and as sometimes happens when people are 76, the infection got really big, and Bob died. If you read the preceding paragraph, you know that "cleaning out the house" was low on Bob and Kate's list of things for me to do for them. In fact, it never made the list. So you can infer that a good portion of the preparations for getting Bob properly memorialized and publicly adored were left to me. Now, to be fair, I didn't do that much because there was a mountain of things to do. I only did what a person could do in twelve hours a day for the 10 days leading up to the funeral. Did my job get done? Oh, sure. But only because I skipped the heavenly sleep inducing medicine and crammed it all in - or because I snuck upstairs for 10 minutes here or there to grade a test or a paper. In the end, we buried Bob a month after he was repatriated - an event that turned out to be just about as dramatic and emotionally wrenching as the funeral. Here's another picture for you:
Issue the third: My sister.
Since my father died, I have removed my step mother and every other person associated with her from my life with surgical finality and precision. My sister called me last week, and she was hysterical because she had just found out that my dad stopped contributing money to her IRA when he got married. When she told me this, I said, "Duh. You didn't know that?" And then I carefully and tactfully explained to her that our dad really did disinherit us and that I thought she might really might be able to get her brain around it if she simply read the will, of which I have a copy. Then suddenly she said, "I am less and less ok with the will." To which I said "Then perhaps you should remove your nose from that bitch's ass crack and join the rest of your family -- you know, the other forty or so odd people who are united in their hatred of the bitch dad married. And then my sister said, without a trace of irony "If I do that she won't leave me any of dad's money when she dies."
DUH. SHE IS NOT GOING TO LEAVE YOU ANY MONEY, NO MATTER HOW DEEP YOUR BURY YOU NOSE IN HER ASS CRACK. GROW UP.
And then I had to carefully and tactfully explain to my sister why I can have no further contact with her as long as she continues to betray her entire family all for a chance at getting dad's money. Her response was "Well, you and I have never had much in common anyway. Bye."
Issue the fourth: my job.
I had a great meeting with my boss this week. Awesomely good. It turns out that despite all my fears to the contrary, I am not on the short list to be laid off. And they are not even that annoyed with me because I live in New York. Whee! Except not. For those of you unaware of the history, my dad met the woman he eventually chucked us in the wood chipper for because I introduced him to her. She was my boss at the job I still have. Think about that for a minute. Ok that is enough; you can stop now. After my current boss gave me all this good news about my job security, she told me that I have a new supervisor (which in this case is a mini-boss). And guess who it is? It is the only person at Sweet Little College who still keeps in touch with my step mother. So it's clear: I have surgically removed everyone connected to that bitch from my life - even my sister. And now, because God is apparently not done shredding me yet, I am FORCED to have professional contact with one of my step mother's best friends. And I can't do anything about it. Not one thing.
And so that is why lately I am dramatic and self pitying. I guess you didn't need all this explanation and I suppose I could have written more stuff about being attracted to inappropriate people, but hey, at least now you know why I still require big piles of sedating drugs to sleep at night. The fun just keeps on coming.
Oh but in case it is not clear: I am fine. Those meds really work.
Love,
Nina
Monday, April 6, 2009
Like father
A while back I met a man in his 60s. Due work circumstances, we spent a day together that long while back, and on that day, his work was easy and mine was not. But side by side we got through the day and then at the end of it, I thanked him for all the encouragement and advice he gave me. As we worked, I noticed the dark, restless quality of his eyes, as if there were a hundred thoughts all beneath the surface despite his calm demeanor. He offered to take me around the block for a coffee or a glass of beer. I declined, thanked him, and went on my way home.
I am going to say something interesting soon. Just keep reading.
So anyway since that day, I have run into him several times on the job and he is affable and gentlemanlike and every time our paths cross, I shake my head and say something to myself that surprises even me: If he were not married, I would make my attraction to him super obvious. Age? Who cares. Obvious psychiatric malady (mine) known in the vernacular as having "daddy issues"? Heh. Who cares. Obvious inappropriateness of the idea even if his wife and entire history simply vaporized?
Internet, if his wife and his whole life history simply vanished, I would brush up on my man attracting behaviors and go get him. I seriously would.
Gross, right?
It's about to get worse. Keep reading.
A while back I met another man. This one still had about him the glow of something I'll just call mid twenties, a certain high energy and stamina. We crossed paths due to work, and we spent a day together. His work was difficult. Mine was easy. But we helped each other through it and at the end of the day we took a walk around the block together. We held hands, despite the impropriety of doing so. (I justified this either because he was unmarried or because I was drunk. Maybe both). On the second lap around the block, someone started talking (probably me) and by the time were around the block three times we had exchanged our utmost saddest stories and due to the liquor and perhaps the howling wind and the desolation of the block at one in the morning, we were both in tears. We got to our various train stations and I rode home in the empty train car congratulating myself for leaving him be despite his apparent "gameness" you know, for whatever happens between unmarried people in a booming metropolis at 1 in the morning. I tried to figure out what about this young man I liked so much.
Reader, I just ran into his father on my way home from the grocery store. I know this because as his father leaned over to give me to customary cheek brush that we all do on the block, I got a good look at his eyes. Dark, restless and absolutely the eyes he had passed to his son.
So there you have it, internet. I broke up with my last boyfriend resigned to live single and celibate forever, and in four years I have been attracted to exactly two men. See above.
Love,
Nina
ps the flowers are there to perhaps take the edge of your gross out factor. If it didn't work, I am sorry. As it turns out, I am gross, and I am in this case unwilling to hide it. See you tomorrow (maybe).
I am going to say something interesting soon. Just keep reading.
So anyway since that day, I have run into him several times on the job and he is affable and gentlemanlike and every time our paths cross, I shake my head and say something to myself that surprises even me: If he were not married, I would make my attraction to him super obvious. Age? Who cares. Obvious psychiatric malady (mine) known in the vernacular as having "daddy issues"? Heh. Who cares. Obvious inappropriateness of the idea even if his wife and entire history simply vaporized?
Internet, if his wife and his whole life history simply vanished, I would brush up on my man attracting behaviors and go get him. I seriously would.
Gross, right?
It's about to get worse. Keep reading.
A while back I met another man. This one still had about him the glow of something I'll just call mid twenties, a certain high energy and stamina. We crossed paths due to work, and we spent a day together. His work was difficult. Mine was easy. But we helped each other through it and at the end of the day we took a walk around the block together. We held hands, despite the impropriety of doing so. (I justified this either because he was unmarried or because I was drunk. Maybe both). On the second lap around the block, someone started talking (probably me) and by the time were around the block three times we had exchanged our utmost saddest stories and due to the liquor and perhaps the howling wind and the desolation of the block at one in the morning, we were both in tears. We got to our various train stations and I rode home in the empty train car congratulating myself for leaving him be despite his apparent "gameness" you know, for whatever happens between unmarried people in a booming metropolis at 1 in the morning. I tried to figure out what about this young man I liked so much.
Reader, I just ran into his father on my way home from the grocery store. I know this because as his father leaned over to give me to customary cheek brush that we all do on the block, I got a good look at his eyes. Dark, restless and absolutely the eyes he had passed to his son.
So there you have it, internet. I broke up with my last boyfriend resigned to live single and celibate forever, and in four years I have been attracted to exactly two men. See above.
Love,
Nina
ps the flowers are there to perhaps take the edge of your gross out factor. If it didn't work, I am sorry. As it turns out, I am gross, and I am in this case unwilling to hide it. See you tomorrow (maybe).
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