It Never Gets Any Better.

It Never Gets Any Better.

I've been in a battle for my life for as long as I can remember. A bout of polio at the age of four left me with weakness of my body. I had to get stronger before I could stand up and run away from an abusive "uncle" who enjoyed sexually assaulting young girls, and tickling me into asthma attacks. Of course when I told my mother she beat me for saying such evil things about such a good man.

I was smaller than any kids my age, and soon my younger brother was bigger than I was. He was a bully and mother doted on him. He would get into trouble and I was punished because either he would convince our folks that I did it, or my folks would decide that that it was my fault by proxy. I was the older one and I should have stopped him, even if he was bigger and stronger than I was. I'd get a beating either way.

At the age of 5 a local bully decided to target me. She terrorized me so thoroughly that I had a nervous breakdown. I put up a mental block to forget about anything about my personal history, a hysterical amnesia. I couldn't remember what I did the day before and I could not pick my parents out in a crowd. General knowledge was still there. I had a "genius" IQ and could read by age 4. It took ten years for my memory of me to resolve.

At school at least my love of learning was something to look forward to. But there were bullies there as well. I was too smart and too weak and I didn't fit in. I made a good target throughout elementary school. There was no safe place for me to be.

My mother did not believe in vaccines, so I got none. I did get every bug that I came in contact with. I was often sick.

By Junior High I was able to get away from my tormentors for a couple of years. My mother died that first school year. It was hard. My brother acted out. He was much bigger than I was, and nearly double my weight. Somehow our father still felt that I was supposed to keep him out of trouble and doing his chores around the house. I'd get beat if he didn't do his stuff, and beat if I did it for him. When our father wasn't around my brother made sure that I got very little to eat by taking it all himself. Father was a shift worker and often we had to cook for ourselves.

I caught a flu from hell in December of 1971, that left me unable to remember how to do math. It was terribly frightening and no one had any idea what to do about it. I had to relearn what was easy to do a month before. I was never physically all that strong, but after that flu I never did get entirely better.

My father remarried to a woman he did not love to give his children a mother figure and to provide a caretaker for the family. He was conned. What we got was an evil step mother #1. She moved the family to another town in a different province, then took as much money as she could, and left. Her idea of taking care of family was to raid the family vacation piggy bank that we all put coins into, lock the doors and go into town leaving my brother and I standing outside shivering in the winter cold until she got home. We were not allowed a key because it was thought we would get into trouble and wreck the house if we did. In less than six months she was gone. One day she was there, the next she was gone. Where she went I still do not know.

Of course, when she left I got the blame. Somehow it was all my fault that she left.  

Father took it all in stride. He got a divorce. He decided that I needed woman training and told me to get dressed up to look older and dragged me out with him to his favourite watering holes. I didn't get any booze, but plenty of "old men" as old as my father or older tried to send me drinks. I was terrified! I wasn't allowed to wear makeup, or date, and suddenly I was thrown into a place where I didn't want to be. Underage people are not allowed into bars and lounges where I live, and I learned that if I whispered to a barman while going off to the ladies room that I was underage my father would be politely told to take me home and not bring me back again. Otherwise there would be a scene when someone else brought it to the attention of the staff. Even when my father got a girlfriend he tried to take me along a couple of times, until he was threatened with the police being called.

The girlfriend ended up moving in, along with two of her sons... and she tried her best to get rid of my brother and I. Evil step-mother #2. Her youngest could do no wrong, and the other son was the same age and size as my brother. As the target of the same kind of bully-boy shit as he had pulled on me he soon stopped targeting me. I often went hungry as I was no longer allowed to cook for myself, and for a full year I came home from school, by bus, after the supper has been served. There was never anything leftover for me to eat. The boys got allowance money, while I had to babysit to pay for my kotex, clothes and school lunches.. which when I could afford any was a tiny cup of yogurt. It was often my breakfast as well.

I got a boyfriend who was a year ahead of me at school. His family often fed me, and often it was all the food I got. At home I was forbidden to touch anything that the boys claimed as theirs. Only the rare leftovers were available and they were often rendered inedible with salt, spit or even excrament. My father did nothing but beat me when I made an issue of it.

So when I turned 18 I got engaged. That was the last beating my father ever gave me as it was the first time that I fought back. I moved out two months later, as soon as we could arrange for an apartment. I soon was pregnant, and hospitalized with a kidney infection. I was married on my high school graduation day. Somehow I had kept my marks up enough that I graduated with university entrance grades. 

I ended up as a young mother, with fragile health... and no idea what I was doing. I learned. I did the best that I could do with what I had to work with. We struggled with poverty and two children with behavioural issues. We went to university to better our educations and to get better chances of employment. We battled with the schools on behalf of our children, they both have genius IQ's along with the behavioural issues. Poverty followed us. Life was never easy, but I always put my family first and did the very best that I could with the resources that I had.

Over time my body grew weaker and sicker. I saw doctor after doctor. No one could help. Their ideas of more exercise only made things worse. I didn't give up. I just worked harder, often to collapse. Then I got myself together again and did it all over again.

A hysterectomy in 1989 was a hit to my body that it could not recover from. I was already so ill that I couldn't work. No employer wanted a worker who was sick in bed every third week, as I was with the effects of endometriosis at that time. I nearly died during the surgery. My strength never recovered. I tried to go back to work. I went through a retraining to work program. I worked as a chambermaid, and then a driver for a florist shop. I had an accident at work where I injured my shoulder, and my health collapsed. 

Finally I had a diagnosis as to what was happening to me. Not the fibromyalgia that I was diagnosed with in 1986. Not the IBS/IBD that I was diagnosed with in 1978. No, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis... a disorder that had been draining my health since that hell flu in 1971 and a disorder that is much misunderstood and maligned by the medical world and society at large. A disorder that has much overlap with atypical MS and with Post Polio Syndrome. A disorder with no cure and few treatments. Something I needed to learn as much as I could about since few doctors knew anything at all about. 

Even after I became so severely disabled by ill health that I was unable to work outside the home I worked at home to battle poverty with my skills in gardening and cooking, and working the local grocery stores and thrift shops for the sales to keep us clothed and fed. I was the house mom for the local teenage hangout for the throw-aways and run-aways and generally troubled kids. Our home was a known safe house in the community throughout the 1990's. 

Come the new century, life centres upon my hubby, my cats, and myself. The family is grown and gone. My hubby had job changes. We moved to another home, one bought with our son where he lived his own life for some years in the large lower in-law suite. Cats grew old or got sick and died. Hubby had a heart attack and has stents in his heart. We saw the one son for Sunday dinners, if he didn't have anything else to do. The daughter moved to OZ. The fosters kids went their own ways. 

For 20 hrs a day, up to 7days a week, I am alone with my cats. My health continues to fail. I live in my bedroom. I have my laptop and my TV. I have a door to the deck and a small garden of pots with plants. This is my world.

Two years ago I was able to enjoy a veggy garden, able to do artwork, able to go out on my mobility scooter for a few hours a week to go shopping or just ride for the pleasure of being out and about. That was then. In the past year I've become housebound and bedridden. My sight has taken a hit and blindness is a possibility at any time, quickly from one condition or slowly from a second one.  My gallbladder has filled with stones and has been causing all sorts of problems. My blood pressure suddenly went up causing all sorts of concerns from my doctors. My hubby suffered two years of unemployment. Our son got a girlfriend who got pregnant and he bailed on his financial obligations on our home, and moved out. The girlfriend has used aggression, threats and general nasty behaviour to make life difficult in order to have the family home sold so that she can gain access to the proceeds, and she wanted all of them. That the upshot of her actions would have rendered my hubby and I homeless at a time of his unemployment meant nothing to her. When we said "No Way!" she went into mind-fuck mode and the grandchild has been used as a weapon to use to cause anxiety and anguish. She has withheld access and made whatever access I have had torture of look but don't touch, don't interact. The year from hell included poverty caused drug withdrawal for me, which on top of the ongoing hell caused an emotional break down on top of the physical one. It included accusations of abuse and neglect from the daughter in OZ for things that never happened, threats and blackmail attempts in order to extort confessions for acts that never occurred. It ended with acts of such unforgivable cruelty on the part of the supposed family that I wanted to die to make it all stop. I have been hurt beyond all hurt that I have ever been hurt before. Full PTS hell and then some. I am broken past all hope of healing.

It is early March of 2013 and life has not gotten any better. I am weak, I am sick of body and spirit. I await gallbladder surgery at a date so far unknown in the future. I await the next hit from so called family to come to destroy what fragile stability I may have attained. I know that we will have to move no matter that this was supposed to be my forever home and I love it. The hell goes on, and on, and on.

I've been getting counselling, of various kinds from folks from various disciplines, for more than 40 years now. I've learned to meditate, do yoga, and biofeedback became automatic many decades ago. I've done gluten free, dairy free, low sugar, and red meat free. I've done high fibre and low fibre. I've done organic gardening and cooking from scratch. I used diet to help with one child's ADHD problems and the other's gut issues.

For 40 years I've read, I've struggled, I've learned, and I've adapted.

Heck, even writing up this blog is my taking the advise from those who counsel me as a way to deal with my struggles with living. Even my blog has been a source of attack by the cruel gold-digger who was embarrassed by what I have written. If she did nothing wrong, why would she be embarrassed?? She did not accuse me of lying, only of causing her embarrassment. 

How can a person "get help" without talking about what they need "help" about??

The very best results that I have ever been able to achieve was to hold the shit at bay, for a time. The shit always wins, in the end. IT NEVER GETS ANY BETTER. IT just stops getting any worse, and it can be adapted to. Getting better is an illusion, only an illusion and nothing more.

Today, when I woke up, my misery was at a level of 8/12. I have no idea why it is on a scale of 12 rather than 10, but when I asked myself that is what my mind replied. 8/12. 

I did not want to get out of bed. If my cats had not urged me to get up I would have stayed in bed. That misery scale includes physical pain and illness, and mental distress. Maybe that is why it's a 12 point scale. 12 is blind misery, overwhelming misery. I was there on January 1st, 2013. 

Maybe some day it won't stop getting any worse. I have given up on the idea that life will never get any better for me. Only in death can I be sure that it can't get any worse.  

Christmas: The most terrible time of the year.

Christmas is not one of my favourite times of the year. Christmastime of 2012 was the worst of all.

Not only did we have no family to spend the holidays with, we were subjected to cruel mind games on the parts of our children.

What our son did to us was beyond cruel. We were not allowed to spend any time with our grandson at all, but were twice invited to spend time only to have that invitation revoked at the last minute. It was rubbed into our faces that there would never be a Christmas where we would be able to spend time with our son and grandson again. They would be moving away in the coming year sometime, to where they did not yet know. The only family that counts is his wife's clan, and they hate anyone not of their clan.

It's OK for her to attack us, but it's not OK for us to fight back or defend ourselves.

It's not OK for me to take the advice of my councellors and blog my pain.

It is not OK to do anything but go away and give them all I have before I do.

The Christmas Time Blues

The closer it gets to Christmas/Yuletide the harder it gets for me.  I have hated this time of year since 1969, the year that my mother died. I was 13 years of age. But I did my best to not let my feelings about this time of year get in the way of providing the best holiday season possible for my family. Poverty was always an issue, but I found that if I started as soon as the new year started in my search for gift suitable items that I could come up with something nice for everyone. Come December the food was the focus with holiday baking and the feast the focus of my work. X-mas eve was gifts time, with a coffee and finger foods party for friends and family to drop by. X-mas day was the turkey feast and often we had guests. It was a family tradition from my husband's side of the family that our feast was open to anyone who had nowhere else to go.

I spent all of my adult life making Christmas for my family. My family shrank as folks died, moved away, or just got their own lives and families and didn't need my husband and I any longer.


The past two years have been two years of sheer ongoing hell. 
Two years where so many things went wrong.
Two years when loved ones died.
Two years when friends were lost.
Two years of severe financial stress due to my husbands unemployment.
Two years of health problems getting worse.

The past year things got worse.
My family fell apart.
We are being forced to sell our home and move.. where we will go I do not know. How we will manage I do not know. This was supposed to be my forever home.
I lost my beloved garden.

I feel very betrayed, and abandoned.

How many losses can a person endure and still be alive??

People ask me about how my children and grandchild are doing. I do not know.
They are not in my life.
It hurts like hell.

It is only recently that my husband has started a new, good job. Not enough time to pay off the bills. 

The TV is a source of misery. All the stuff about family. Family get togethers. Gift giving. Buy, buy, buy.. decorate.. celebrate. Go to this function or that event.. spend, spend, spend.

I am poor, and I am ill. I am housebound. I feel alone.
My best cat died in October. My Princess Squeeky II, my feline alter ego. She has 14. Princess Squeeky I lived to be 16, and died in October as well. After having 30 years of having a Princess Squeeky beside me I miss her terribly. I feel that part of me died when she did: "I am her, and she is me, and together us are we."

My house is cold. We cannot afford to keep it warm. We cannot afford to use too much hot water either. 

There is little comfort in my world.

I find myself silently weeping. I do not know why. My heart is breaking every day.

I am lost. I feel useless, worthless, un-needed and unwanted. 

At least my husband is working. That is one good thing. 

October 30th, 2012

A Fibro Flare Day

There is nothing as slow as a day when the body won't work, but the mind is active and needs something to focus upon.

Today is a high pain day. My body aches everywhere. The soles of my feet hurt when I stand. My entire feet hurt when I walk. My legs stiffen with movement, and cramp if left to rest too long. Muscles feel bruised and weakened. Fine motor control is difficult. My insides have a burning feeling. I've been plagued by heartburn and reflux again. My face hurts. My left side has nerve damage making my teeth ache and cheek burn. My cheek turns red and swollen. My lips and tongue burn. Pain like this doesn't respond well to pain meds. I have to just endure it, cope with it, and try to not bother anyone too much over it. 

The day outside is grey, wet, and cold. Inside the house is dark and cold. It's depressing. 

It would be an easier day if I had brain-fog enough to not think about depressing things.

 I miss my beautiful Princess Squeeky very much. She would be sitting here beside me, cuddled up close. She would follow me everywhere I would go inside my home. I miss her very much. I find myself looking for her, and when I realize that I will never see her again I cry. 

It's been a week since daughter Melody's last attack email. I dread opening my email inbox. What crazy things will she say next? 

I dread the next question some one will ask me about how my children are doing, how my grandson is. I do not know how they are doing.

Life isn't easy right now.
It isn't easy any day any more.

Sat. Oct. 27th, 2012

It's been a bad week. 

The dark grey sky and the pouring rain is fitting with my overall mood today.

Two evenings ago, my beloved Princess Squeeky II died. She was going on 14 yrs of age. I called her my feline alter-ego. I was she, in human form.. and she was me, in cat form. I use her photo, when she was young, as my internet ID photo. She caught a virus that caused her to cough, and she coughed so hard she threw up and could not keep food down. She heaved so hard that she tore something inside and she bled inside. She rapidly declined and died. 

I felt so helpless. I could nurse her thru many things, but not that. Veterinary care is beyond our reach right now. We do without many things right now in order to keep a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. It's not easy being poor at any time, but being poor and sick makes the daily struggle ever more difficult. I feel like a part of my soul died when my lovely old friend passed over the Rainbow Bridge. 

The other cats had all said their good-byes that afternoon. They always do, I have noticed. They pay their respects to their dying companion, then they leave them in peace. They mourn their dead. Yesterday we all mourned. Each of the other cats in our family went apart from each other, instead of interacting with each other and congregating on my bed. 

Today, life is getting back to as normal it can be with someone important missing. Squeeky was the boss cat, the one who mothered all the rest. Each morning she greeted me with a happy tail wiggle, a lick of her chops and a dance to remind me that it was milk time. Time for a drop of milk.. and whomever also wanted milk showed up in the kitchen for milk. Since she got ill, there has been no milk dance. Until this morning. Squeeky's sister Gidget was there, waiting for her milk offering.

Life goes on even with a broken heart.

On Losing Another Old Friend

It never gets any easier when a beloved friend in fur and fangs dies. 

Last December old Spooky trotted about the house on the day of his death. At age 16 the old cat could no longer digest his food well enough to not slowly get thinner and thinner. His last day he ate well, chased the younger cats around the house, and purred on the laps of his humans. He fell asleep in a favourite windowsill that evening and slipped away, off across the Rainbow Bridge. 

The year before old Samantha crawled under the covers of my bed and cuddled close. She didn't want to leave the bed except to eat and use the litter box the next day. The day after that she became unable to manage to get out of the bed, so I laid her on a favourite cat bed on the floor beside the heater, close to my bed and covered her with a thick towel. She snuggled into her covers, fell asleep and drifted over the Rainbow Bridge. I miss her to this day. She was 18 yrs old.

I miss them both.

Princess Squeeky II got sick about a week ago. At first she just seemed to have gotten a tummy ache, maybe a hair ball or something she ate or a tummy bug of some kind. Her sister, Gidget and her niece Doris were both doing more hairball barfs than usual. Her brother TigerTail started sneezing now and then.
A virus can be a deadly foe to the old and the very young.

Last Friday evening, Squeeky wasn't interested in her evening cat treat. That got my attention. She seemed OK other than the tummy upset problem. Saturday she went out before I got up, and didn't come back. After a good deal of searching she was found hiding out under the neighbours house, in the crawl space. When I crawled in after her, she lead me out and back home. She seemed to be OK, but again she didn't eat her treats and barfed up a foamy yellow mess.

She kept getting worse day by day. She stopped eating all together and could not be enticed nor forced to eat. I tried a gelatine, sugar-salt mix with a bit of ginger for her tummy by syringe into her mouth. She took it OK, some of it anyways. She was getting weaker but still moved from room to room.

Yesterday she started to cough up blood. She refused to swallow even dribbles of water. She went into a closet where she lay down, blood dripping from her mouth. I do not know why she bleeds or where she is bleeding from. 

There is no money for a vet. I do not know what is wrong with by beautiful cat girl. But I have seen this process before. She is going on 14. Princess Squeeky I was 16 when she died, in October. The next spring Princess Squeeky II was born. That is 30 years of having a Princess Squeeky in my life, my heart, my home. I call her my feline alter-ego.

My beautiful cat lies dying. Today she is accepting the sugar-salt water by drops in her mouth. She swallows some, some dribble through her sore, dry mouth. It is all that I can do to keep her comfortable now. She is very weak today. I was surprised that she survived the night.

It never gets easier, watching a fur baby die. I've done this many times before and I will have to do this again. The slow deaths are the worst, the wasting from cancer or some other illness that takes it's time to kill. Some deaths have been sudden.. hit by a car or a heart attack. Then there are the old cats who just grow frail and just go to sleep and never wake up, with no suffering.

There is always grief. In a very slow death the grief starts as soon as the hope is gone.  A sudden illness is very painful for the human care givers. We are helpless, and the death vigil seems to stretch out time. It is exhausting. A quick, sudden death is a sudden jolt with a jolt of deep grief.

My heart is breaking. Part of me is dying with this beautiful kitty cat. She loved so very much. She mothered every kitten she came across, no matter who's kitten. She took care of her kittens even when they were grown. She even mothered her brother and sister. She loved her humans as well. Very well.

This is another heartbreak, on top of the many heartbreaks of recent months.
I already miss her very much. 

October 22nd 2012

The weather has turned cold and wet from warm and wet. brr. I have a juice jug of turkey soup stock jelly in my fridge that will become a veggy-noodle soup. The hardest part is already done, and that was in making the stock. I have a bag of egg noodles in the pantry, peas and green beans in the freezer, and carrots in the fridge.

I had to go down to a drug store yesterday to pick up some things, and the store I went to has a food area so I checked out the loss-leaders for supplies for the kitchen. They had ice-cream treats freezer with lovely trays of frozen cocktail shrimp.. huge shrimp.. with a cocktail sauce. I love shrimp with that tomatoe- horseradish sauce. I have been craving that for months, so I bought one and it is in my fridge on a slow defrost. I am thinking of turning cold shrimp into hot, since they are more prawns than shrimp. I think that if I cut some into chunks, remove the tail parts ( some of the cats like those) and add the sauce, heat that up, and toss that mix onto some hot spaghetti noodles that it will be quite yummy.

I need comfort foods right now. On top of all the other stresses lately, my cats are sick. They have a cat-cold. Poor old Princess Squeeky crawled under the neighbours house yesterday and didn't want to come out, until I crawled under and got lost in the darkness. She then decided that I needed to be saved and lead out and back inside. The cat flap is now locked. I have been having to coax her to even drink but I am as stubborn as she is. Her brother is sneezing and her sister has a throaty cough. Cat-colds can lead to deaths in the old, the very young, and the already ill. They lose their sense of smell and stop eating and drinking.

I had planned to be down on the grounds of the Victoria, BC, Provincial Legislature today to take part in a rally and sit in against the proposed Endbridge tar sands gunk pipeline. It's one of my "bucket list" items, to take part in a rally like that. But this one wasn't possible. ~sigh~. Oh well. Maybe I'll get one in yet ;-)