Listen To Yourself Churn

Besides reading — for which I’ve had very little concentration during my recovery — I’ve not had the ability to do much besides sit for the past couple weeks. And while I’ve been sitting, I’ve been bombarded with Sky-Is-Falling chicken-little-isms and truly End Of The World As We Know It real complaints from people who, though held intentionally further than an arm’s length away and only on the periphery of my life, are family.

Which is all kinds of exhausting.

The biggest thing:

My niece is in a psych hospital.

Her mental health is a mess, which is a result of both genetics and circumstances, and her first stint was a little over a year ago. (After which, some things came out that started court proceedings against her father’s family. I stay out of it as much as possible, because I’d be homicidal if I knew too many details. But it’s bad.) And now, just a few short weeks into the school year — junior high, ugh, poor thing — and already on a continual regimen of mental meds and trauma therapy, she’s had a breakdown.

Another one, essentially.

And y’know…

I feel bad for the kid. I do.

But I also think my sister (my niece’s mother) is just…

@#*%&!

I mean, I remember when she (my sister) was born. I felt like, “What the fuck is wrong with my parents, having another kid right now?” (I’m a full decade older than her.) At the time, my parents were very obviously having very real problems. I was a tween. My younger brother was already a disaster in the making. And I could see that this squalling pipsqueak of an attention-hog baby sister was going to be a problem.

A problem for me to deal with, much of the time.

And for all kinds of reasons, both reasonable and not, I hated the little fucker.

I hated that she took up space in my room and stole my sleep and demanded attention from our parents that was barely available for the two of us (my brother and I) who came before she did and that every goddamn thing was about The New Baby. I hated that between her physical needs and my younger brother’s attention-seeking behaviors, I was relegated to the post of Non-Existent Person.

It wasn’t my sister’s fault. But that time of my life was awful. (And it just got worse when Parent 1 and Parent 2 figured out for themselves that having a baby was NOT the way to make things better between them.) I felt neglected, unappreciated, unloved, forgotten.

And I was stable. I was a good kid. I was a conscientious student and a respectful-of-rules child who took responsibility (often for things that were NOT my responsibility, but I guess that happens when your parents are assholes) and who helped and tried and cared.

So I’ve been thinking about this over the past several days, while distracting myself from healing pains and returning to work, because here’s the thing: If *I* felt like that about an infant intrusion, at that age, during that time of *my* life… and I was mentally/emotionally healthy…

My niece — who is not stable and healthy — is no doubt feeling everything I felt, only feeling it on an exaggerated and personalized insultive scale.

Because my sister just had another baby.

There are twelve years between her eldest and youngest. A bigger stretch than what I dealt with, with the “new baby” that invaded my life at a similar age.

Oh, and that baby (my sister’s) is from a different father.

And there seems to be no plan in place for parenting, or for integrating families, or for making sure that everyone is all right (in the head, in the heart).

But everything is ALL ABOUT THE BABY.

While my already-hurting, already-damaged, already-struggling 12-year-old niece is likely dealing with a much-compounded version of what my reality was all those years ago, and I think: No wonder she just got admitted to a psych hospital.

Jeezus.

Sometimes there’s nothing to do but just think. And sometimes those thoughts are haphazard and introspective and feel fairly fruitless, but just getting them out there is helpful. That’s what the song It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) — the lyrics of which have been borrowed in the title — has always felt like for me. It’s also always been a tune that maintains a sense of humor. I’m trying to keep my own sense of humor, but I’m not managing very well about this. All I can find to say (or feel or think) about family right now is that family = the chaos you are born to. I’ve spent a lifetime escaping mine. I hope my niece can eventually figure out how to do the same.