this imploding heart

It's 1:09am, Happy Birthday To Me!

Okay. So the job that moved my parents out here is ending. The company was poorly managed, they're folding, and my dad needs to find a new job. To my suprise and delight, they both really want to stay in Seattle. Maybe move a bit farther into the city, even. But dad needs to find a new job with decent pay in the area before any of that can happen. This is his last week.

My big focus lately has been to try and arrange my life in such a way that my more basic needs (food, housing) are provided in exchange for some kind of part time work. When the housecleaning/cooking thing fell through, I started looking at situations like living with people who are learning to function with their mental illnesses in a group home (with other non-mentally-ill people as well) to help them adjust to regular life before going out on their own. And nannying school-aged kids in exchange for a basement room in the south end.
This is a pretty huge goal, because it means that I'm going to commit to going to school full time, and probably changing my entire lifestyle.

I was talking over some of the things that've been bothering me with my mom today when she said: "You know, Sonya. I know you don't really want this, but your dad and I would love to have you live with us. It's really the only thing we can offer in terms of helping you through school."

--Now, if you're thinking like I thought, you think: No. Freaking. WAY am I moving back in with my parents. No-Wippety-Do-Da-Way. I started packing to move out of their house when I was 16, I must have had SOME kind of motivation, right? I've been living alone forever! I'm still CAPABLE of living alone! Moving in with your parents is admitting defeat! What about the three basic fun groups? No Sex! No Drugs! No Post 1965 Rock N Roll!!--

So I sat there for a minute on the phone. "Well... hm. Mom, the thing is that I've carved out a life for myself that suits the kind of person I've decided to be, and-"

"I know. It would be limiting for you. You can't have friends over being loud at night and you have to be quiet if it's late, but we understand that you have your own life and ways that you do things. We can respect that and get used to changes."

My mom has had this fever for the last few weeks. Maybe more than a month by now. Just a pretty constant, low grade fever that makes her tired all the time. Her regular monthly bloodwork came out fine, so now we're waiting on liver biopsy results. Persistent fever is often a sign of organ rejection.

As we've been over many times before, my mothers aliveness or pending death has been an iffy subject for years now. She keeps getting unbelieveably sick, grinning her way through spinal taps and bile drainage tubes and infected cellulite that gets hot to the touch, and then miraculously getting better.

"What did the biopsy say?"?

"Oh, it isn't back yet. But it could be my liver, it could be my robot heart, could just be nothing. OH! I..ha! I had a dream last night that you spilled all the lentil soup I made for the ladies society dinner tonight all over the backseat of the van and I kept shouting "Scoop it up, Sonie! Scoop!" Isn't that funny? I just remembered that."

And it hasn't failed to strike me lately (again) that each year is a year closer to the inevitable. Of course the inevitable may delay itself another amazing 15 years. I just don't know how many years of modern medication one body can take.

And I start to think about it for a minute. My parents are going to move out of the place they're in now, and if I can convince them to get something closer in...

Lets look at the facts:

My parents moved to where I have already carved out a niche for myself and started going to school.

I hated living with my parents when I was younger because my parents lived in Idaho. I still can't stand town-life in Idaho for more than a week or so.

Having the opportunity to spend a substantial amount of time close to my mom and dad as an adult is actually really appealing. I know that my father wishes every day that he had spent more time with his parents as his own man, because his appreciation for them was so much greater. Many of the former dividing factors tend to melt away when everyone is responsible for their own decisions. I'm so jealous of my sisters for having my mom while she was healthy, and now for how much more time they'll have had her as an adult just by virtue of being born sooner.

All the room-and-board covered exchanges required some kind of work and thus, some kind of work ethic. I would have to have given up something in every one of the situations I looked at. If I treat my parents house as a workplace where I'm receiving compensation for a certain kind of or lack of behavior, working at my parents house is a fuck of a lot easier and reaps a much greater benefit than any of those other jobs. I can work at a more pleasing part time job and go to school full time without accruing any debt.

I can move out whenever I want. No lease, no long term commitment, and how often do your former roomates help you move into your new place and then make you dinner and tell you they love you more than you could ever know?

All this is entirely up in the air. Dad has to get a new job, I've got to make some key decisions, etc.

There's such a stigma about living with your immediate family, as if it's some kind of failure. Would I be commiting social suicide, or taking advantage of the greatest coincidental opportunity ever?

Posted by Sonya at January 25, 2005 04:19 PM