This too shall pass.
Tuesday, Oct. 04, 2011 3:11 PM

Alcohol is necessary for a man so that he can have a good opinion of himself, undisturbed be the facts. - unknown

It's been almost a year since I've written anything - not just in this diary but overall. My sense of creativity is lost for the time being. It probably won't return until this stress is out of my life.

So what has been going on with me? Quite a bit actually. Then again, I have almost a years worth of catching up to do.

Let's start back with the last entry. In it I said that an ambulance had arrived at my grandparents house and that I was afraid something happened to one of them. Turns out, my grandpa was taken to hospice. He died on November 11, which is fitting since that's Veteran's Day and he was always so proud of being a WWII Vet. He went peacefully, and as it turns out, just moments after a nurse came in and pinned a veteran pin on his hospital gown. He just opened up his eyes, looked directly at my grandma, took in a deep breath and was gone. I miss him, but in the end he's been gone for years. Alzheimers took him from us slowly over the last decade.

What else has happened? Let's see. Kent ended up in the hospital. Turns out he had a huge tumor blocking his pancreatic duct which was worsening the symptoms of pancreatitis when he'd drink. They did a scan and found that he head 4 tumors in his stomach, one on his spine, the huge one blocking his duct, and of course all the ones he's always had on his liver. Needless to say, they started him on chemotherapy right away. Intense chemotheraphy. 6 days a week of the "red stuff." I don't know exactly what the red stuff is, but I do know it's the most extensive chemo drug out there.

Quickly he went from 160 something pounds down to 130. Now he goes back and forth between 125 and 145 lbs depending on how much food he can tolerate and keep down. He's lost all of his hair, even his eyebrows and his eyelashes. When he goes anywhere in public, people glare at him as if he's done something wrong. People of other ethnicity and race call him terms like "skin head" and "Nazi punk." Others approach him thinking he's addicted to crack because he has tracks on his arm from all the needles they prod him with during the week. I want to scream at these people. I want to look them in the eye and say, "Can't you see its cancer? Can't you tell he's sick?" I never do, though. I don't because I'm afraid that if I start saying these things, I won't stop. I'm afraid that if I open up my mouth just once in anger, I'll blow a gasket and fall off the deep end.

To top it all off, he's been drinking. He is now a cancer patient whose alcoholism has intensified since he started treatment. Yes, there I said it. I married an alcoholic. And it's NOT FUN! It is so stressful dealing with his illness, but to top it off with his drinking? I can't take much more of it. He's been passing out over the last month. He blames it on taking too many pain pills at once. I know the truth though. I'm not stupid. I'm not blind. I see the water bottles full of vodka. I know his hiding spots. I know that when he starts to stumble and slur his words, it's not the pain pills doing it to him. It's the alcohol. It's the combination of the two together making it ten times worse.

Last night was awful. No. I take that back. The build up to last night was awful. Last night was beyond awful. My grandma was bit by her cat so me and JR took her to the emergency room. Her hand was severely swollen. While we were there, I guess Kent passed out in the yard. Our neighbor across the street, Ora, came over and lifted him up into a chair. When JR and I returned home, Ora was sitting with Kent out on the front porch. JR and I knew right away that Kent was drunk, but Ora.. poor Ora.. he assumed Kent was having problems because of all the medications he's on. When Kent got up to go to the restroom, he was using one of Ora's canes. When he made it into the bathroom, he fell again. Stumbled straight into the bathtub. He puked up bile, which looked a lot like melted butter. Ora and I had a heck of a time getting him up into a sitting position. The moment we did get him out of the tub, Kent fell flat on his face in the other direction.

By this time, JR started stressing out so much he called 911 and handed me the phone. Kent started crying, "don't call 911. No. Call them off. Tell them not to come." But by this time, the wheels are in motion and the fire department, an ambulance and two cop cars arrive on scene. The cops are there because pain medications are involved and nobody knows if Kent overdosed or not. JR swears he did. Add drinking to the mix and you have one hell of a guy stumbling around. Either way, the paramedics checked him out and his vitals were good. As soon as they told me there was nothing wrong him - well, nothing wrong enough to warrant him going into the hospital overnight - I knew for certain, 100% sure, that it was the alcohol. Heck, the minute the FD pulled up, he ran into the garage to hide his "stash."

Once they all left for the night, Kent grabbed the bottle he had hidden and started to chug it. Then he fell over between the car and the garbage can halfway between the garage and driveway. This set JR off. Needless to say, no 13 year old should ever have to live like this and I think Kent has lost his son to the drink. JR even begged me to leave his dad because he didn't want to leave me alone with Kent, and he definitely didn't want to continue living with Kent.

So that's where I'm at now. I'm at a crossroads. Do I leave Kent because I'm unhappy and his child is unhappy? Or do I stay because his child needs me more than ever? As my dad likes to say over and over again, "time will tell." In this case, that's all I have to go on right now. I don't want to live in a relationship where my partner is an alcoholic. I don't want to fear coming home to a verbally abusive man. I don't want to be woken up at night every hour on the hour just because he's stumbling about drunk. I'm tired of it, but I will put up with it for the child. If I had any legal power, I'd take JR away from this all and raise him somewhere far away from his parents where he could at least have somewhat of a childhood before his youth is completely gone. What's happening for him now is that he's being forced to grow up way too fast. He's so stressed out he's failing classes. He can't keep his eyes open during class because his dad keeps him awake at night with worry, too. He's taking on the brunt of his dad's angst because he's attempting to protect me from it. It's enough to make you want to cry. No child should have to experience that. I know there are children out there with it much worse, but those children don't deserve that either. No child deserves a parent who can't properly raise them with unconditional unselfish love. And sadly for JR.. both of his parents are utterly selfish and immature. And they've both lost their son. He'd rather go live in a foster home right now than continue to live under either one of his parents' roofs.

And then there's me thrown into this mix. While we may have had our rough patches in the beginning, we've now bonded over this shared stress. He feels protective of me and I feel protective of him. I can easily walk away from it all, but he can't. This is his father we're talking about. He's bound to him through a bond thicker than just blood. So what am I to do? WHAT DO I DO? Whatever do I do?

On another note, another phase of my life has come to pass this last month. With all the undue stress in my life, my FORMER (former because I disowned him) brother-in-law, whom I now refer to as MJA (short for Major Jackass), fired me from my job at the end of August. A week before he fired me he said, "Do what you need to do for Kent. We'll help you out all we can at the office to keep your work caught up." And then bam. His excuses? They aren't good enough excuses to me. Turns out that one of the major working interest partners checks weren't cleared on his account and it was MY Fault. MJA threw quite the hissy fit there only to find out that the man NEVER paid. When that didn't work to get me fired, they used the excuse that I wasn't getting one of the LLCs work done. See, the girl who was training me left to work for someone else and a new girl took her place. I was trained to just do payables and receivables and to leave the accounting side of things like the financials to the accountant. So that's what I did. I made sure the receivables and payables were done on time.. but you see, this new girl wasn't doing the financials. She asked me why I wasn't and I told her, "that's not my job. That's your job. My job is just the payables and receivables. The rest is up to you." I don't know what she said to MJA. I don't care to know what she said, but that was the catalyst to me losing my job. That was the excuse MJA was looking for.

So I took a month off from work. Sadly, I spent at least a week of this month off sicker than a dog. The rest of the time was carting Kent around from one appointment to the next. Fortunately for me, my dad had gone off to build another company with someone else and I'm now working for him. My dad made me a promise that I hope he sticks with. If he doesn't, I'm not exactly sure what I'll do, but I will have lost faith in all of mankind then. He promised me I would never have to work with MJA again. EVER. And I hope it stays that way.

While I am initially still bitter over the whole thing, I have let some of it go. I tore the picture of my sister and MJA in half, throwing MJA's half away where it belongs... in the trash. My parents are constantly nagging me to take the high road here, but I don't want too. MJA is dead to me in more ways than one, and it will probably take eons before he ever gets a kind resurrection from me. Ever since he started up his office fling with the company whore, I have disliked him. The power of running the company has gone to his head, as well. I often wonder if my brother had been born differently (which I don't want him to change at all because I love him so much for who he is now and will become) if things in life would have turned out better all around. Only because that was Scotty's place to be. Not MJA's. It was never MJA's position to fill. He's just damn lucky my dad was kind enough to let him fill it... although my dad and I both agree on one thing.. he will never ever fill my dad's shoes. He's not good enough of a businessman for that. I'm talking about MJA here... not Scotty. MJA will NEVER be good enough.

You know what the funny thing is? The new girl who, in essence, got me fired... or better put helped create the means for my firing... quit. Yep. She quit. Just up and quit. The once profitable company that had high ambitions has gone from a total of 18 in office employees (the rest were out in the field) to a mere 8. The 8 that are left are the people who are to old to find work elsewhere. And the office whore, of course, but does she really count? I thought about that today. Every single young person is gone. All the young people that have been brought in have left. The only people remaining are near retirement age - so why would they leave now? MJA has his work cut out for him. I just hope Karma kicks him in the ass hard enough that he realizes just what a major jackass he really is.

As for the rest of my life? We'll see. I do feel much better having written this all down. I need to come back more often to let it all out. I just hope it doesn't take me almost another year to do so.