First, I’m okay. But I’m also super heated, right now, and I really need to write it down. Figured I’d do it here since it’s an area of struggle, and that’s what this recovery blog is about.
Anyway, to completely overexplain everything:
I have a job. It’s a tiny one. It’s not Uber (I do that too, sometimes), but it’s a job. It’s 3-4 days a week, and I go in whenever (usually first thing in the morning) to complete one task, which takes 3 hours, maybe 4, to complete. Super simple. It’s not a job of sustainability, but it earns me enough to cover basic necessities (and a little more) while I look for a full time hourly position somewhere (like the retail place with whom I’ve been playing phone tag for a week or more). When I combine said job with the gig work, I can bring home a decent bit of money for the week. I’m using it to maintain my gym membership, keep healthy groceries in my kitchen, and keep gas in my car.
I called my grandmother this morning, as I do, to share a daily dad joke and check in with her. She wasn’t in the mood, and brought up how I’m not paying any of my bills. Let’s not bring up how, when she enticed me into moving here rent free, bills paid from the halfway house in exchange for taking care of the place, she started demanding my entire paycheck, lest she would kick me out.
Then she got mad because I couldn’t afford to even get to work on the $20 weekly allowance that she’d give me. She disconnected my cell phone and internet since I stopped trying to look for work after she repeatedly would make a scene if she saw me working at places, prompting me to leave or be asked to leave amicably. All the while, she and my aunt would both chase off anyone who tried to come over and check on me. It’s why I gave up completely and just rotted here for so many years.
But you know, let’s not actively remember that while telling me how I’m lazy and irresponsible when I am doing my absolute best to find a full time job and heal from this shit without breaking my baby-fresh eight day clean streak.
So she shifts the conversation from bills to how much I was going to get from my step dad from the sale of the house where I grew up. When Mom passed, Dad was going to sell it and divide the earnings between himself, my twin sisters, and I. Things changed, as they do, and he ended up with a bit less than he expected from the sale. He’s also quite hesitant, and understandably so, to just drop $30k on me since I’ve been in survival mode and also have been consuming half of the town’s liquor supply practically every other night up to now. We have a goal, and he’s helping me get it. We’re planning on setting up a bank account that my grandmother will have zero access to, he won’t have direct access to it, either, but he’ll cosign if I need it.
Now, I’ve told her most of that, but obviously omitted parts (like her not having access to the money I’d get) due to fear of her reaction. But it isn’t the answer she wanted, so she wrote a nasty letter to him reminding him that she could sue him for what he did to me as a kid.
Wait, what? No she can’t! That is my history, and I have already forgiven him. He is doing his best, and I can see that he’s really trying to be helpful and supportive despite our fractured relationship in the past.
She wants me to drum up all of that history with him that I’ve chosen to lay to rest over a decade ago, text him and tell him (again) that she’s going to file a lawsuit for all the abuse that happened thirty-three years ago. Thirty. Three. Years. Ago. She even gave her intentions away by telling me she was going to take it and put it in her bank to divvy it out to me as she saw fit. Go ahead and fly that red flag.
Then she called me a liar out of thin air about my current tiny job and about waiting for the retail job to call back. Like…I’m 45 years old. I don’t have the time, energy, nor memory to lie like that anymore.
I then said “man you woke up and chose violence, this morning.” She started crying, said she had been praying and her god told her this was the right thing to do and she didn’t want to make him mad, and got off the phone.
I’ve been steaming ever since. Part of me wants to be brutally honest with her about everything and just let her decide if she wants to really do what she’s threatened in the past. But part of me also wants to literally just stop talking to her. Another part of me wants to try to leave again, even though this house is apparently willed to me, but I’m in no shape to do that right now. I’m not sure which method of fucking around I want to do in order to find out. I’ll see my sponsor tonight at the meeting. I’ll see what he thinks about it.
Anyway, if anyone’s actually reading this, sorry to vent. But I don’t want to leave things like this out of my recovery journey when it’s as emotionally charged as it is. I’m still clean, that’s what matters.