Monday, January 04, 2010

Yellow Mouse Comeback is Dire

I am here to tell you that money most certainly does not buy happiness. It buys choices, as the saying goes, but you can have a whole pocket full of cash and a whole array of choices and still be having an absolutely suck time.

This is the first time in my life that I can say that; at least the part about money. The Playboy of the Western World (my father in law, now gone to that big bath house in the sky) left us pretty well off. Having money is definitely better than the alternative, but it made no difference in the quality of the suck factor when everything around here decided to take a massive shit.

I am a person who likes my home life stable, happy and free of drama. I work hard to keep things that way. Growing up surrounded by alcoholics, criminals and sociopaths, I swore that I would never let my family life be tainted by that kind of chaos, once it was my turn. That decision had absolutely no magic 'drama-averting' effect on my life subsequently, but it did mean that, like any other vermin, problems were hunted down and exterminated as they arose, instead of being left to fester and multiply. I loved my family, I sacrificed, I made good decisions, blah blah blah blah fucking blah.

I don't know if it's just American culture or just me or what, but once you have achieved the home and family thing, the societal models kind of peter out. So I assumed,like a doofus, that things must pretty much just peter out on the inter-familial stress front since there was apparently nothing left to report. I figured the kids moved out, you got wrinkly, you went to Vegas a lot, then had a hip replacement and eventually died.

Ahem.

There are times over the past year that I wished I'd never made the decision to have a family. That's a new one for me. I went into the endeavor thinking that if I did everything 'right' that things would, you know, turn out right. Which in retrospect was astonishingly naive of me. Had I been raising feeder mice perhaps that expectation might have proven closer to the mark; feeder mice don't cause a lot of drama and either way you end up feeding them to anacondas. During the course of this past year, there were people in my life that I would have liked to have fed to anacondas. I would be surrounded by obese anacondas right now. Obese, non-dramatic anacondas.

Half the problem is me. I might be pushing 50 hard but the rotten kid who used to vandalize things at random and get into fights is still very much alive and well here. I should be mature enough by now to be able to keep my shit together; to be able to pull back, to separate from things that are no longer under my control. Am I? I am not. I want to leap onto things that are no longer under my control and rend them into bleeding shreds, kind of like what happens to stray teenagers out for a casual walk through the woods around Forks, Washington on a moonless night, only everyone involved would be wearing a shirt. The only difference between me now and then is that back then I used to get off on being enraged. Now it just makes me feel like shit.

So are we in counselling? You bet your little red wagon. This rotten kid does not give up. Ever. Resistance is fucking FUTILE.

18 comments:

  1. I love the way you vent and am sufficiently removed in distance to appreciate the various colors of the fireworks. Keep reloading.

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  2. I should be mature enough by now to be able to keep my shit together; to be able to pull back, to separate from things that are no longer under my control. Am I? I am not.

    But you ARE mature enough to assess the situation and reach out for a helping hand.

    Unlike Retro Blog, I am just across the border from you so I shall be battening down the hatches lest you come rampaging north.

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  3. *blocks doorway with giant wheel of Cheddar*

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  4. Exactly what MJ said. Who knew that that old tart could be so wise?
    You have made it. You have escaped from the crap and done your best to do things right. Not many even see that there is crap to escape from.
    love and peace

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  5. Contemplates Dugongs cavorting (even though they don't exist)as ridiculously as a Duck Billed Platypus.

    I mean, come on.

    I'm with John Lennon on money:

    "It might not make you happy but at least you afford to be miserable in comfort".

    Sarcastic, arrogant, and Scouse.

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  6. Retro: everyone has something they're good at. Me, its vitriol!
    At least lately. Watch this space.

    mj: your cheese, howsoever assfooty it may be, cannot avert the red fury which the queen of the flatbutt tribe will be raining upon those who piss her the fuck off!!!!*bites head off small animal*

    vicus: thank you my darling. just for you i will embark upon one more intensive search for the lost photographs of my colon. XX!

    garfy: And he got it exactly right, too. I've been happier, but now I have a carpet cleaner, new place settings, a chipper and a motorcycle to keep me company in my misery. Its better to be miserable and have a chipper, turns out, than otherwise!

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  7. Thought I'd add for the record: none of the family who've been pissing me off read my blog. So if you ARE related to me and you read my blog, you either are not pissing me off, or you already know that I'd like to feed you to an anaconda, or I already have fed you to an anaconda, in which case get digested already and stop pissing me off.

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  8. Actually, I'd like to feed my effing "inner child" to an effing anaconda. Or a chipper. Mine used to hide in the hall wardrobe, yours sounds much more fun.
    This growing-up malarkey just never ends. I'm rooting for you.

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  9. ***Beats the anaconda with the dyson flexible crevice tool***
    Who the hell put that in my bed :-(

    I am rejecting the offers from Madonna and Angelina , you have to adopt me RIGHT NOW :-))

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  10. Anonymous5:27 AM

    It's alright to bite off heads of small animals. Ask Ozzy Osram. Ach, Drama ...

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  11. Ok with the anaconda's - quite understand where you're coming from. Mind you, it's a two way street - I love my parents dearly but often wish (especially now I've moved closer to them) that I could feed my parents to the anaconda's (and I bet they feel the same way about me. In fact I know they do).

    And absolutely agree with you on the money can't buy happiness front. I think that's because money can buy food and somehow once you have enough to eat then there's a whole heap of other problems raising their heads.

    But...(you knew there'd be a but)when it comes to interfamial stress I think that the fact you have it shows that you did a great job by your family. Because in my experience if you hadn't then they wouldn't be secure enough to give you shit. They'd just be permanently worried that they weren't good enough, that you didn't love them, and/or that you'd desert them. Or, they'd be so screwed up that they wouldn't feel anything or have the guts to raise their voices if they did.

    And as for the inner child that likes to vandalise thing at random and get into fights and can't seperate from things that it has no control over...well, counselling is good (it is, I've seriously changed my view on counselling over the past couple of years) if it stops you feeling like shit, but don't get too rational. Too rational is just as bad. Just learn to keep it on a leash till you really need it.

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  12. I watched part one of the Emotional Life on PBS last. We are our relationships..especially the one that we have with ourselves.

    Like most people I spent so much of my life sabotaging my personal happiness...now I am nurturing it..it being my relationships with me and those "other people" living outside of my head.
    I'm getting better at it..being able to say NO to myself certainly helps.

    I worked alongside of very wealthy people for decades and watched them tear through their "designer" problems like a hot-knife through butta.

    They bought lots of sh*t and had waaay more sh*t than I did but I realised that I was happier than them, waaay happier. One guy said "if I had your problems I'd burn mine"...
    I'll never forget that line.

    P Diddy Puffy whateverthef*ck his name is now was right
    Mo Money Mo Pwobwems.

    You have such a good BIG heart and believe me, it will win...resistance IS futile.

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  13. Money...we didn't have any when Rocky was alive. We pinched pennies and got by. When he died, I thought that I would have to move and make some more major changes. but his work had life insurance on him with me as the beneficiary. It was weird, like: 'here is a prize for your dead husband'. I needed therapy. so yes money allows choices.

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  14. You must not employ such foul language in your posts; for you risk Me ceasing to read them.

    Alas,

    Silley

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  15. Money can't make you happier, but it's one less problem in life - that's all. The fact that I'm facing a bit of financial uncertainty at the moment (husband probably losing his job in the next couple of months) means that the lack of money could cause potential problems, but there you go.

    I'm still a surly, awkward adolescent but now I'm one who's stuck in middle age. The only difference now is that I feel guilty about acting like a moody teenager. Perhaps that's all that "growing up" means - you become more self aware!

    Anyway, I think you're being too hard on yourself.

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  16. My Dear Percy , reading your comment made my inner child want to jump up and down shouting F%$£k , *r%e ,*&£T etc etc .
    Does that make me a bad person :-(

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  17. As far as I am concerned you are a wonderful kind clever raging Boadicea. Don't leave the chariot at home - and I'm waving my ever so childish flag for you in the wind as hard as I can. Yours trying to be grownuply RM. And a massive big hug too XXX

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  18. Arabella: What is your inner child doing in the closet? Toss in a sandwich every once in a while!

    Beast: with attachments like that I'm surprised you haven't been approached by PetroCanadas R&D team.
    ...just a little 'flexible drilling rig' geology humor there.


    ...ahem.

    Mago: It might be ok, but it certainly isn't clean.

    Hendrix: and thats what we're there to learn...how to keep that shit on a leash. At 50. Insert your favorite 'Old dogs learning new trix' aphorism here!

    Mr. Morningwood: Thank you XO! I figured it was probably time I learned how to deal with things in a way that didn't involve anacondas, planned incontinence or kerosene. It seems like what this is going to amount to is, learning how to let other people be miserable if they want to. Life is wierd!

    Gale: Man, that is exactly what it was like when we lost the Playboy. We had no idea there was anything to inherit and then suddenly its like 'Here's your prize!' It was just as stressful and fucked up as losing him was.

    Percy: Welcome! You have to bear in mind that you're in the Colonies now, Percy me oulde tampon. If it's an absence of 'fuck' you crave, go here:
    http://www.eastvillageboys.com/2009/11/07/no-fuck/

    Betty: Thank you my darling. I hope things end up good for you. Re self awareness; I already knew I was acting like a moron. Now I'm old and I know I'm acting like a moron. Its....wrinklier here.

    BEast: Yes. Yes, it fucking does. Now sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.

    Rocky: I want one of those cool chariots with the drill thingies that stick out of the wheels, and you drive up next to the other chariots and it destroys up the spokes on their chariot or like drills through the side of the passenger part and the guys are all like 'EYAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!' and they're all cut up, and their chariot falls all apart and the horses reins get all tangled up and they run away but they're dragging one of the guys on the ground and he's all screaming and crap and the horses are running and he's getting dragged over rocks and other dead guys and stuff.

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