Ok, so 2010 is almost over and not a minute too soon. It has been a year that started out with resolutions, hopes and ambitions however very early on it became apparent that this year was a test…a very harsh, long winded and unfair test. There were no warnings or subtle clues as to what might happen until about March/April…the point at which my grandad kept getting infection after infection but he still fought until he lost his battle in May. After this time I found things very hard and the reason why i am writing it all down is so that I don’t need to carry it all with me into the new year…2011 will be a new beginning, where i can only move forward.
So lets start with my grandad, a proud man who loved his family very much. I didn’t really get to know him as when i was younger he never really interacted with me (or my sister) except at family gatherings like Christmas etc. By the time that i was able to approach him like an adult, he had started to deteriorate in respect to his movements, thoughts and attitude. He couldn’t see me as a woman, only the grandchild that he had seen for very short peroids of time once a week growing up and i understood that he was getting sicker…i just wished that i had tried harder to get to know him when i was younger! Ever since my gran passed away he has openly willed himself to die in order to be with her, to see her again and to stand beside her like he had promised in his vows. So when he began to catch infections i beleived that it was the will of my gran to bring them closer together because she could no longer watch the suffering on his face. I have to admit that the number of times i visited him declined as time went by and for this i apologise to you grandad, not because i didn’t love you but because when you looked at me all i saw was pain, desperation and yearning for gran which then reminded me of how much i missed her as well. I couldn’t face the prospect of not being with her for a long period of time and so i slowly removed the cause of my anguish. The night that he died, i was working. I had promised that i would visit the next day because i wasn’t working but mum texted me about an hour before my shift ended and asked me to stop by after that Tuesday night’s shift because ‘it would be a good idea’. When i read the text there was a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach and so i asked to leave work straight away and i drove to him…i went well over the speed limit on every road, passed through red lights and even screamed when the level crossing barriers were down on the route trying to get to him. They eventually lifted and i managed to get to the care home, parked on a squint and left all of my valuables in plain sight, jumped out of the car and then i saw dad at the front door. His eyes were red and he only had to look at me. Turns out that i was only 4 or 5 minutes at the most too late. I am truely sorry grandad for not making it, i would have seen you the day before but i instead chose to participate in a quiz night with my ‘friends’. I cried because of all of the broken promises i had made and how i never really got to know you and before i knew it, you were beside me at the crematorium confined to a coffin. It was very small, too small i would say because he had a big personality but lost it with gran almost 6 years prior. This is what made me cry. I took comfort knowing that you were happy and with gran and together can watch over this family…BUT WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU TWO BEEN PLAYING AT?! Everything continued to fall apart after that!
Before this time a number of obstacles started appearing with health of myself. A consistent problem with stomach aches that wouldn’t go away and vomitting that, i now realise, seemed to only happen when out with my ‘friends’. I would have headaches everyday and eventually started to rely on painkillers to get me through my university timetable everyday so i started to pick up the specials on painkillers so that i didn’t have to return to the shops so often. I went to the doctors with so many complaints and ended up seeing a few doctors at the same time for different issues. This was mainly so that i could keep it fairly organised and could associate one problem with one doctor. I had bloods taken numerous times but it made no difference because everytime they would come back the same “You’re aneamic” and yet again i was on iron tablets, each time a stronger dosage but it never worked! I was constantly on the go and struggled to sleep. I would come home from work and study until the wee hours in the morning and then fall asleep in textbooks until my alarm would go off at 6am. It was a horrible routine but eventually my body got used to it as i would find myself waiting for the alarm to sound. I got irritable at uni and with the people around me but nothing would settle me to bring me back down from this rush and unsettling feelings. I had no idea what was causing the issues in my body so i kept my focus on my studies and kept arranging to do things like going to the movies and lunches etc. This meant that my focus was always on something, anything! This happened all through the summer, I had increased my hours at work, i had people to make arrangements with at all times and i asked to meet up with the all together and individually however together no one would really take interest so i would have to arrange with one person and then invite the others saying that i was already doing it with someone else anyway so it was entirely upto them if they joined us. I relied on these people to be there, and i could never explain to them how i was feeling becuase it was too hard and i hated instigating confrontation. These people are now no longer my friends. It was their decision as they belived that i had been lying about a number of things that happened throughout the year, some of them minor and won’t be metioned and others too big to mention. However when they confronted me it was through text and i asked them (individually, and only if they had text me to confront me) to talk to me face to face instead of having a conversation in black and white. To me, texting can be misconstrued and misleading but face to face can pick up on things that you can only determine when speaking to someone directly. I offered to have them all talk to me at the same time if that made them feel more cofortable but it didn’t work as they had already made up their mind. Anyway it was the loss of them that ultimately led me to getting a therapist, amongst other things. However now that i am at the end of the year i have been able to source the cause of my stomach ache as them because since i have not been around them they have cleared. I have to admit that when the fussing with them all started the pains, cramps, vomiting and aches got worse but now i can safely say that i am free from that other than a few bouts of butterflies.
So why am i still nervous? There have been many issues throughout the year, one of the closest is my gran developing breast cancer. It came at a time when i was able to come down and speak to her at any time, i could watch dvds and play games and share things. It was great. But the prospect of possibly losing her was so immense that i couldn’t face up to it. So when she was being tested, i didn’t confront it. When she spoke about it, i remained positive about it. When she asked me about it, i never uttered a negative word. I hated that as i got close to someone, they seemed to disappear out of my life and i couldn’t bear to face that again. So i backed off. I have been there for her to talk to me, but she hasn’t come near me or really talked to me. She’ll say what she thinks i want to hear but i just want to hear HER! There’s no right way to deal with it and i’d much prefered to have gone down to see her everyday and her cry to me if thats how she felt. The way she put up this barrier felt horrible even after i said to her that i can handle it…as long as she can talk to me. Being protected all of my life from things ‘until i was ready’ hasn’t helped me. I find myself unable to deal with situations properly. Thankfully she is better just now, surgery passed and chemo finished. There’s some radiotherapy still to be done but then its over. I just would like her to come to me because all i can see is false feelings and i dread going to see that, i would like to see her as herself…even on a bad day! Gran, can you understand that?
I also have had to deal with my mum’s dramas from work to her health to her petiness about everything else. The fact that she has to be a martyr has always bugged me but now i have seen it properly and she feels this need to be right. She has asked my advice on my sister and when i give it to her, she says but thats not right. Maybe to your standards, mum, however this is the 21st century and its the way things work these days so try to be a bit more understanding. It works well for you at work and you laugh at other people’s situations and say ‘here is an easy fix to them’. Take a step back here and tell me, what would you say if you were your own employee?
I mean even about your health, you decide that you would rather a risky and painful procedure now that might not work but a cure is available to you and you don’t take it?! What are you doing? Do you realise that was one of the reasons why my ‘friends’ decided that i was lying…because your logic that you followed to get better didn’t match up to their opinion and felt that i was lying because it didn’t make sense! All you could say was, if something that small breaks you up then are they worth it, i accepted this explanation but i realise that you never even answered the question. So maybe i resent you a little bit just now because ‘you are always right’ and won’t face the possibility that what you did caused a problem between my friends and i.
My mum has always been a person to dramatise things, blow things out of proportion and when i go away to think about things in order to work out what makes sense and what doesn’t she believes that i am away sulking. Apparently i blame myself for everything and stress out over everything and all i hear is chill out or relax. Please stop telling me that. My problem is the perception that people have of me. I may over analyse but it makes me who i am and i have to admit that i am cold, unlike most perceptions of me, i don’t care enough. I am narcissistic and i beleive that i am bordering on infantile histronic…no its not over analytical and no i don’t believe its unreasonable. Its what i genuinely think (but i’m not psychologist) and i would like it not to be rubbed off the board until it has been considered.
It’s almost time for me to go out for the bells and i am gutted that i didn’t have enough time to say more but this, i guess, will have to do. I have met so many amazing people these last few months and they have helped me no doubt trying to get back into uni and out at night and seeing people. They know who they are and i want to cry out for you guys and say THANKS! If it weren’t for you, i know that all of those pills i had collected would have made a very bad cocktail or that my car might not have made it to 2011 either. Let’s see how this next year pans out…like they say,
“An optimist waits for the new year to come but the pessimist makes sure the last year disappears!”
