Thirty Three in Twenty Twenty Three: The Complexity of my own life.

I don’t know what to do.

My mother is beyond sick. I don’t earn much money. I more or less have to move back home to live with more to

a) take care of her and

b) save some money on rent.

But it’s complex. You see, I also want to actually want to build a career around teaching and when my mom is sick, it’s hard to focus on anything. My sister put so much damn work into that apartment, and all to just end up moving out. My mother is a saint, but she’s getting older. She’s turning 73 next month and the truth is, I think she’s developing dementia. I don’t know what that’s like, and it’s scary.

There’s so much I want to do in my life, but it feels like the odds are stacked against me. I don’t know what to do.

Did I mention I have over 14 biological children? They all have 14 parents, or maybe even more. There are so many layers of complexity and the honest truth is, I can’t contain it. It’s like it has short-wired my brain and I just can’t figure it out. Sometimes I want to give myself permission to not even deal with status anxiety, or American ideals or really any type of ideals. I feel trapped, but not in the traditional sense. I feel trapped by one moral dilemma after another; so much so that I don’t think I can actually function. I try to please as many people as I can, but I’m at the point where, well… I don’t think I ever remembered myself. I have social anxiety and so it just feels like…

Man, am I complaining a lot. I swear I am turning more and more into my dad. I think, as a INFJ, I internalize it. I am not the type to externalize or voice my complaints, but maybe I just have a lot of them. Maybe I am just trying to chase something that isn’t there.

I think moving back in with my mom may actually be the best route as far as my financial health. My rent is currently at 1195.00 USD. If I move back in with her, even with the bills I could make it work. But my mom’s not the same as she was when I moved out. This was pre-COVID, when she was still sane enough, when she was 69, when she had a mother who was still around, and when she was still living with her daughter and grandson. All that is gone now, and so she has the empty nest depression. She has the dementia. She has arthritis and a litany of mental health disorders. She needs help. She needs help to survive and I guess I see it now.

My whole life I wanted to be THE GUY. The guy who got all the girls. The guy with the nice car, the nice clothes, and the nice home. Maybe a dog that would tag a long with me, a dog with a scarfe-like bandana donned around his neck. His name would be ‘Bet’ or ‘Spanky’ or something like that. I would drive a Subaru and on occasion visit the local Asian Massage Parlor.

Things are different now. I am experiencing status anxiety. I am house-poor. Children are addicted to social media and video games, and not unlike us, they probably hate themselves and don’t believe other kids hate themselves to. Some type of spiritual gridlock in a age of mass information, outrage culture, and political disintegration via political polarization largely due to technocrats obsessed with funding pet projects with unregulated, tax evading ad revenue.

Even if I move far far away, to Argentina, nothing will escape me. I will still be with myself, with my problems. It isn’t always out of sight out of mind. And then there’s my sister. She does too much for me, her mom, her son, and it isn’t fair for her to be doing all this. We all need to step up, but we are all so busy with our own lives. Maybe it does make sense for me to live with my mom, but … similarly, it feels like no matter what I decide on, hell will always just end-up following. Also, I don’t want to live in that home. It’s a mess, a pastiche of traumatic artifacts of 3 generations and people who often moved in and out as it was. And now my mom is there. Does she want to be there?

Sometimes I think, too, if it may be a good idea to just move with my mom and dad to El Salvador. They’re not going to get any better. They may as well be with their families. That would also allow my siblings to just sort of live their life. I’m telling you: from birth to death, siblings compete over resources. Whether it’s time, or money, or both, sometimes some siblings get dumped with certain responsibilities. My oldest sister says my mother said she wants me or my other sister to pay the rent. Like, we already pay rent in our own jobs. I know why- it’s because my mom is sick and we had lived there for the longest. I could get the money from my mom but she says she is too feeble to go to the bank. I wonder how this works. My mom gets enough in SSI to pay her rent, but what if she can’t? Maybe there’s a way to pay her rent online and she could just give me the money that way. I already help her pay the light bill and the phone bill. My sister and I already visit, help with groceries, taking out the trash, and even do dishes. We already do all this stuff anyway.

It’s just how it is. The circle of life, which mind you predated any type of American obsession with greed, independence, the personal success story, and fame and glory. You are born, you are take care of by your parents. They do well to take care of you and see you grow up. And there comes a time where they grow up and then you take care of them, basically until they die. Maybe I am avoiding this altogether as a possibility, but I can’t be in denial about a parent’s death, to say nothing of death in general.

In short,

FML