I’ve been unavailable lately. Not on purpose. I’m not ignoring anyone or mad at anyone. I’m trying my best to get through the days nights days. Trying to fit 35+ hour days into 24 hours. It never seems to work, I always come up short and find myself standing at the kitchen sink at 1AM, eating a ripe mango in the dark or throwing a last load of laundry into the washer after my loved ones are settled into bed for the night - my cup of tea sits cold at my desk. I’m lucky to have had a sip or two.
It’s not due to poor time management, ignorance, stupidity, lack of judgment, bad charter. I’ve been busy surviving.
I work 15 hour days, everyday. Sometimes longer. and yeah I know, I don’t have a degree, own a home and I shop at thrift stores and Walmart, but my jobs do require intelligence, fortitude and ingenuity. It takes intelligence and ingenuity to create something out of o thing. To be able to rub two sticks together and create a miracle.
You see, all this Academic elitism and classism, isms of all kinds has tried to disappear my accomplishments. My jobs, my responsibilities. My workload. These isms have pointed their ugly finger and tried to shame and criticize my Walmart food and drugstore lipstick. Pointing out my GMO oatmeal, my used tires.
I’m exhausted. I care for my family. My husband has endured 7 strokes. Some major, some minor, all devastating. People tell me I need to take care of myself, need to eat better, need to take time off, I need to do all these things. and, I know. I’m not trying to intentionally suffer myself, not trying to be some martyr or appear to be one, no, It’s what happens when family and commuity run the other way in the face of blindness and those who have endured strokes. People scram, they leave, they go on vacation and have dinner parties, have babies then use that as an excuse for not showing up, they lay down the new carpet and pay contractors for custom work, they go to Baha and Costa Rica but I digress.
What I’m doing is moving in a situation in a normal way. This is a normal response to an abnormal dynamic. We are not suppose to get sick and be alone. We are not suppose to have babies and be alone, we are not suppose to die alone, to suffer alone. What people are seeing in me is exhaustion and zero support for the past 10 years of taking care of my husband who has endured 7 strokes, the 6th on leaving him blind. His own children have not even came to see him since he went blind 10 years ago. Expect once when one of them had business in San Francisco. Shame.
Those who have left, please stay gone. And don’t, don’t ever reminisce with me about my husband and who he is was.
