Partially, the reason I was late was because this restaurant has cable, and with the men's college basketball tournament a week away, I wanted to catch the ends of championship games and coverage of which bubble teams are in and out. But a bigger reason is one that I usually feel when I'm out and about, moreso these days: I don't want to go home.
It's sad in there now. My folks are getting older and want to throw Grandmother out of the house. There has been no love in there for some time now, but with threats to impending action, it's gotten real tense in there. Plus, if they're retiring in the next month, which is what I think they're going to do, they're going to be at home 24/7. I love my folks, but shit, I don't want to be near them 24/7. It's going to be really, really weird to be in the same house as them for so long. So even though I don't make an excuse to go out, if I do go out, I often stay out as long as I can just to gain some distance and feel some privacy.
And yet ... I still love home. Why? I can't go anywhere else. I can't afford to go anywhere else. And I hate moving.
I remember when I interned in El Paso 11 years ago. I had no money to turn on the heat in my efficiency apartment, so the March nights, when the winds blew through the mountains and into my place, made it so cold that I couldn't sleep. And then the vehicle I was using, my parents' work truck, got stolen. It showed me that it's a very scary world out there, and I am not prepared to brave it on my own. So, even though I planned on going back to Minnesota, I never left -- neither the state nor the house.
The familiarity is what I love most about home. It's the place I've known all my life; besides El Paso and four years in L.A. (where I came back home anyway), I've lived there all my life. I have stuff here, stuff that's important and sentimental to me. All the work I would need to do in order to move out would be so overwhelming that I would probably change my mind and just stay here.
What is a paranoid fear I have is that if I ever decide to leave -- say, for example, I decide to head back out to Los Angeles for graduate work -- my parents wouldn't even wait for all the heat from my bed to dissipate before throwing all my shit out and remodeling everything. They totally can't wait for retirement, and to have their place all to themselves. I totally understand, but they are fiercely unsentimental, and if I go back and see, say, my bedroom entirely changed, with all my shit either somewhere else or, probably, tossed out ... well, I have serious issues with my parents already, but I don't think I could ever forgive them. Yes, that's enough for me to stay.
But I'm unhappy there. So what to do? Well, right now I stay out as much as possible. I go home for dinner, of course, and if there's something on TV I stay home. But I make excuses to leave -- if I need to work out, for example. And there are some nights where I have to go work or have a thing with a friend, or I just go out because I don't have anything to do at home. Friday and Saturday nights I'm always out because it's deathly boring at home.
I take every chance I get to escape the humdrum, sometimes-toxic atmosphere of the house. But I always go back to it. I'm the flirt at the nightclub who always, always, leaves with his date. Is that a good thing? Can I keep that up? Or do I have to go soon, and forever?
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Same thing with The Store. When Mother was working at their rival as part of their buyout, I had a legitimate reason to go "work" there: To help out Father. I wanted to see the business that helped sustain a middle-class lifestyle before it's put down. But now that there's no need to (Mother quit the job and so is helping out Father), my fears about The Store, and about death as a concept, currently rules me.
I haven't been there in, I think, two-plus weeks. Let's see ... haven't been there yet this week, for sure didn't go last week, and the week before? Just remembered that I always buy lottery tickets at The Store whenever I'm there. And the tickets I have say February 17. That's the last time I've been there. OK, so it's about three weeks. And I'm afraid I'll be too scared to ever go back in -- not just until they shut down for good, but ever.
What I'm afraid of is that I'll go in and what I see is unlike anything I've seen before. Already it's difficult -- no commotion of working in the back, no lights on in the back, some of the freezers have already been shut down and some of the decorations have been pulled from the walls. But I have no fucking clue what they've done in the past 20 days, but I'm scared that the slow crumbling of The Store will knock me to my knees and bring tears to my eyes. That image so haunts me that I think I'd rather never go back to The Store than be emotionally devastated like that.
But ... I have to. I can't just walk away from it. I need to pay my respects. I don't know if I can spend even half an hour working there because my parents' being there makes it unnecessary. But if I stay away, and then I hear that one day they shut it down for good, I know I'll instantly regret not being there every day, every hour, just showing how much I love the place and respect all it has done for us.
I feel guilty staying away, but I feel absolutely horrible if I come around. You don't want to be around death, and yet I feel I have to be strong for those dying ... yeah, I know it's a building, but still.
And hey, my Grandmother constantly harping on how The Store's about to close and that it has no business and that's why it's closing (man, I don't know the real story; business has been slow, but I think my folks are getting older and just don't want to run the place anymore ... shit, that's the story I'm sticking with because I'll melt down if I believe otherwise) is only adding to my anxiety.
Complicating all this is Grandmother. The next step in My Fucking Parents' plan to throw her into a nursing home involves a release of her medical records. I blogged before about getting that release for My Fucking Father. He asked me about it once a couple days ago, but not since.
Maybe he forgot. Maybe by the time he remembers this slot for the nursing home would be taken by someone else and Grandmother's in the clear ... for the time being. But going to The Store will almost certainly prompt My Fucking Father to ask for the release. And I don't know if I have a good excuse as to why it's taking so long -- well, besides "I'm busy working." Yeah, that'll have to do.
So that's the choice I have that somehow pits Grandmother against The Store. Do I go to The Store and restart the process that ends up getting her into a nursing home, or do I stay away in an attempt to make the 'Rents forget about the release form and potentially risk never seeing The Store open ever again?
OK, that latter scenario is farfetched, and they'll ask for that release form anyway, so I might just go to The Store, maybe even as early as tomorrow. But it seems as if anything I do these days, whether I do do something or I don't do anything, causes something to happen that I don't want to happen. Things just can't fucking be where they were.
The Store's closing. Grandmother will be evicted. My parents will bug me now that they're home every single second. The two places I have loved I can no longer love in the same way. And I will have to make choices that I don't want to make.
Fuck my life.
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