Crisis Line...How Can I Not Help You?

Dear Hearts,

I am alone! I am fucking alone! Dr. Swede took G-Pa out for coffee. Halle-fucking-julah

I reached my limit.

I can’t do this one more day. I cannot be responsible for G-Pa for one more day. I can’t deal with eye doctors, dentists, urologists, mechanics, appointments for one more day. But, I will. And, I can. Why? Because I have to.

I actually turned my phone off this afternoon to take a nap. I have never turned my phone off for at least three years. I slept well and peacefully.

When G-Pa gets back from coffee with Dr. Swede I will make up some excuse as to why I didn’t join them. The coffee fucking sucks and I get to be alone!

Mom says I am putting this on myself. I feel 100% responsible for G-Pa. What he is doing, when he’s doing it, his medication, his comfort, his being bored or entertained.

I still have not unpacked my room. I have a pile of clean laundry growing like some petri dish experiment out of control. My room is in no particular order and I can’t summon the energy to put “nest” and display all my things the way I do. I don’t know how I want stuff to set up. I started setting my things out in their orderly, lovely fashion and stopped because I was just re-creating where everything was in the Albatross. I don’t know how I want my room to be set up.

Your house, or your room is a reflection of your inner psyche to an extent. I don’t know what my inner psyche wants. I want to be Kate with the Wolf Heart who howls, not Kate who wants to kill herself and cry. I just haven’t figured out what that looks like yet.

I am not running today. Fuck it. Just fuck it. It’s humid and I felt light-headed/dizzy this morning. It’s hot and humid out. I have my coffee chilling in the freezer. I will say my prayers and have my sacred Coffee Hour in the backyard.

I just went into G-Pa’s room to give him an antibiotic I forgot to give him earlier. He got back maybe half an hour ago. We talked briefly—about dinner and my just not wanting to go out for coffee. He has no recollection of that conversation. He thought I was gone. That disturbs me. That scares me.

But dinner is done. I cooked the special microwavable potato wrapped in some kind of special plastic wrap. The beans are done. And I have thawed meatloaf or I can do eggs. Or soup. That is the extent of my cooking. Thank God for Auntie Faerie and her meatloaf.

Note to Self: when cooking/drying out food in the microwave, if you put a little bit of butter on everything including the meatloaf—it makes G-Pa like it.

He is fucking mowing the lawn. Dr. Blane, this morning, said he could do what he felt up to and I guess the neighbor (the one that likes to check out my tits when I smoke outside at night) left lots of fallen leaves on G-Pa’s lawn. There is some dispute as to who lawn that little swath belongs to…but God forbid anyone sees leaves on the ground in October!

I have not vacuumed this house since I got back. There is spilled sugar next to my purse and I just put a shoe over it. Seriously. I keep the bathroom and kitchen clean. Well, not so much the floors.

It has been a rough re-entry here. Working, like really working, two days a week is something I have to get used to even though that sounds pathetic. And, they are going to give up on me if I don’t learn how to handle crisis calls during 1^st Shift.

“Good afternoon. Burning Bed. Kate speaking. How may I help you?”

“I need an order of protection now even though it is 4.30 p.m on Friday…My son, who is an adult, was raped and it’s all my wife’s fault. Can you stop her?...I am in Florida, but I used to live in Illinois and Burning Bed helped me out—I need money and legal help now…My daughter is being abused by her boyfriend, fix it…I am scared of my husband but I don’t know what to do.”

I am supposed to answer these questions intelligently. Compassionately. Efficiently. But there is always more to the story and I just don’t have the knowledge yet to help a battered woman put together a safety plan…tell a father that if his son is an adult, we can’t do anything unless he himself calls…

I have been up and down so many mother cock fucking times! G-Pa has a Club meeting tonight. I forgot. He is out mowing the lawn. He was discharged from the hospital yesterday. And he is mowing and I can’t stop him.

SSSSSCCCCCRRRRREEEEEAAAAAMMMMM

That would have been a perfect break for me tonight.

I digressed. I don’t know what to say to these people who call in crisis. There is no amount of pre-made scripts, or role-playing, or training that can give that to you. It’s like teaching. But I feel incompetent.

I always felt like a “not good enough” teacher. But, in my heart, in truth, I was a good teacher, but I didn’t get there overnight. It took years. But, I expect myself to just know what to say to an abusive mother who is lying and has foster kids with DCFS involved, and wants her daughter, who is not only being abused by her mother, but also her own husband to get the fuck out of her house and come to BB for the night.

I want to get good at this stuff…I just can’t do it yet.

What if BB fires me or gives up on me...

I feel like a fraud. I feel emotionally, spiritually, mentally beaten.

I haven’t drawn. I cross stitch. I haven’t put my things away. My clean laundry is piling up. My CHECK ENGINE light is on. G-Pa will want dinner while I am having my SCH (Sacred Coffee Hour). I am selfish. I don’t think Angel loves me anymore.

Aunt Faerie—get the fuck home! Please?

You need to go with G-Pa to see Chung tomorrow. I have therapy. I have to pick up chicken n’ biscuits from a trough at some church for G-Pa. And, Dr. Chung, who told G-Pa a day before he was admitted to the hospital, and said his problems were not urological, is gonna get Jersey Kate tomorrow.

Smoke ‘em if ya’ got ‘em. God Bless

In the name of The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Mother Mary, Saint Brigid; Saint Jude; Saint Therese Lisieux; Saint Ailbhe; Saint Peter; Archangel Michael, and my Guardian Angel, Jed.

Grateful For:

Coffee

Health

All my blessings

Ice cream

My tattoo (on which I will write a blog post)
Family
Cigarettes

PS: I de-friended T on Facbook. Boy, bye.

PPS: I ordered a cheap metal ashtray with a wolf on it to use outside. Let's see G-Pa break that!

God, please forgive the shortened prayers.