Alright, lets Leeroy Jenkins this shit. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Rob. I'm just a 27 year old guy who moved all the way from New Jersey on down to Florida to pursue my dream of becoming a doctor. I guess I started this thing as a way to keep me from going absolutely insane. Exactly how deep into my mind I'll let the world see, I haven't really decided yet. But I needed some place to put all these swirling thoughts down. I still think Rob's Anatomy sounds like the name of a medically themed porno, but it's the best I got, so I'll stick with it.
I like to say that my life is better than a soap opera, or worse depending on how you look at it. Sure medical school has it's own host of drama and has caused me enough neuroses that threaten my sanity on a daily basis. But that isn't what I'm going to write about today. You see what I will be writing most about on here is my family....And they are all fucking crazy. Sure I'm pretty crazy too. I've jumped off snow covered cliffs, vaulted onto the backs of horses, scaled the side of an abandoned mental asylum at 10 at night on Friday the 13th (And was later assaulted by rock throwing meth hobos), I've run from the police in an abandoned library, been abandoned in Vegas strip clubs at 3am, and I was even extorted for money by the local transit authority of the "beautiful" city of Prague (Which I will NEVER be going back to ever again). Now my family...my family is full of pathological liars, alcoholics, drug addicts, thieves, deadbeats, the bipolar, the clinically depressed and at least one person that I am convinced is the biggest scumbag on the face of the earth. Given the people in my family, I am amazed I have come this far. Luckily for me, I've only inherited a portion of their mental illness...But maybe we'll get into that later. For now, I am going to tell you the tale of the last 3 weeks of my life. So pull up a chair, grab some popcorn, put the kids to bed and get ready for a story fit for any cheesy daytime soap opera.
About a week before I was about to leave for medical school, I found out that my grandmother (technically step-grandmother, as in mother of my stepfather) had 7 tumors in her stomach. I've known people with stomach cancer before, and I knew well enough that there is no coming back from that. No one on earth deserves to die of stomach cancer, least of all her. My grandmother was the kindest, nicest, and most religiously devout woman I have ever met. And my family wonders why I don't believe in god. I remember visiting her in the hospital for the last time, showing her the pictures of my recent trip across Europe. The thing was that at the time I knew her diagnoses, and she didn't. They told my stepfather and my mother, but not her. I had to sit there knowing full well this would be the last time I ever saw her. I don't know how I held it together. But seeing the pictures made her so happy. I pretty much broke down when I left.
Being the devout Christian that she was, she accepted her fate. She was at peace with it. I only wish that could be me when my time comes. In all honestly I'll be kicking and screaming until the bitter end. So I went off to medical school to go and become a doctor. My family was scant on the details every time I called. It was only until about 2 weeks ago that I squeezed it out of my sister and found out that my grandmother had died. My family hid this from me for fear it would mess with my head and cause me to fail my tests coming up. And honestly I can't blame them. I wouldn't have told me either. By the time I had discovered the news, she had been dead for at least 2 weeks. And this is the story that was dropped on me:
My grandmother decided to go into hospice care. She didn't want surgery, or chemo. She accepted her fate. And so my mother, who is a nurse, took her home, took the entire month off work, and did everything for that woman up until the end. Meanwhile her fuckups of children (my stepfather's siblings) who are equally as screwed up as my own family, did nothing but sit in her house and get shit housed drunk. They trashed the place and did nothing but criticize how my mother was taking care of my grandmother. They would go into this dying woman's room and shove legal documents in her face trying to get her to sign them when she was too weak to even sit up. They said things like "Well what if mom gets worse? I don't know if (my mother) is capable of taking care of her then. We should get another nurse." Worse? Someone clearly doesn't have a concept of what hospice is. You don't get better in hospice care. There is no coming back. In fact, in my grandmother's last few days she was in a coma. And one of my stepfather's sisters said this golden line: "Why isn't mom talking to me? You think she's mad at me?" What....the...fuck. How much of a self absorbed fucknut do you have to be to say that? She was in a fucking coma! One of my stepfather's sisters even tried to send a text to one of her brothers stating something along the lines of "I don't think (my mother) is taking good enough care of mom. We need to get a different nurse." Only problem is she sent it to my stepfather's cellphone...My mother saw it.
But my mother took it. She took the abuse and the insults and did every last thing for this woman until the day she died. My grandmother called her her "patron saint." Meanwhile my stepfather was too fucking drunk to step up and defend her. After my grandmother passed, my mother didn't attend the funeral. She did however spend $1000 of her own money on a reception for the family, which she was never paid back. And then shit got even more interesting. My stepfather was an emotionally crippled and drunk mess. When confronted at the way he didn't defend my mother, he went on a rant saying he never should have married her, and the only reason he did was because we forced him to. Now normally he is a relatively nice guy. I am quite certain he would literally walk through fire for me. But when he is drunk, he is a nasty drunk. Combined with his inability to handle his mother's death, he was a mess. And so he took all his clothes and left. But as they always do, he came back a week later. He has since sought our grief counseling, but hasn't been the same since. There is certainly going to be more drama to follow. My grandmother's will left her house to all of her children. Either one could buy out the others for ownership. The problem is the will did not have enough witnesses, and is therefore not legally valid. My stepfather wants the house, his siblings want to sell the house...It's not going to end well.
I bet you thought that was the end of this story right? Well don't get up because it's still going. My brother in law (Who I will refer to as Chuck) has been with my sister (who I will call Jess) since high school. They have 3 daughters together...And he is a fuckup. He's an on again off again junkie (who was also once robbed out of 20 million dollars...yes million. But that's a story for another time.) who, after at least 2 years of being clean, fell off the wagon again. Jess kicked him out of her house, and my mother, thinking she could fix him, let him move into our basement. So while the story of my grandmother's last days was going on, he was texting Jess literally 300 times a day, showing up to her work, and basically harassing her every waking moment of his day. He gave the same song and dance, "I'll change." "I'll get better." "I won't do it anymore." He even tried, "I only did it cause it was my birthday." What the fuck? Really? Jess, who is the only sane person in my family I can consistently rely on, is currently seeing a therapist over this whole ordeal. She would have probably divorced him already if it wasn't for her belief that she could actually fix him. Though she is beginning to realize that may not be possible.
But wait! There's more! You see, I have another sister, who I will refer to as Alice. I really wish I had more words to describe the members of my family. But I don't. So Alice is just a fuckup. Dropped out of high school, joined the military and managed to get out of that by claiming the recruiter sexually harassed her. She has quit every job she has ever had and won't look for a new one because either "they don't pay enough" or "it's beneath me." She lives above my grandmother's (genetic grandmother) garage and pays no rent and eats all her food. For money she currently sells random things she picks out of people's garbage at a flea market with her scumbag boyfriend. Oh and some of those things she's stolen from my family, but again, story for another time. And this is where Alice's major fault lies. She has no personal identity. She has no opinions of her own, and she floats from boyfriend to boyfriend being molded into whatever they wish. And so currently she has "found god," been baptized, and has spent her time trying to convince my grandmother and me that Barrack Obama is the antichrist, Obamacare is evil (which is odd coming from her seeing as she has not had healthcare in a decade), and that because of Obamacare, my grandmother's medicaid will be taken away from her. This can be all attributed to her boyfriend, who is a backwater hillbilly and religious fanatic. I would find it hilarious that she tried to convert me if it wasn't for the fact that what is happening to her is fucking frightening.
And so here I sit, 1500 miles away from my family that is currently disintegrating as I write this. And there is nothing I can do. Worst of all the transition here has not be easy. And oddly enough it has nothing to do with school itself or the tests or any of that. I'm doing fine passing tests, well except that one physiology test I failed...But everyone failed that one so I'm not worrying about it. Life is getting to me. In the last 3 weeks I have been a neurotic mess, depressed, angry, confused, lonely, and miserable. There are days where I feel like I am barely holding it together. But there is one thing I have learned throughout all of the shit that the universe seems to dump on me with the force and velocity of a defecating African Elephant: I'll survive it. I always have. Maybe I'll get into this more later. But I think that's enough for now. If anyone is curious about any of the stories I casually mentioned in this post, tell me which ones. They might become the topic of the next post. Until then, don't let the man get you down.
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