You don't know me...

This one is more for my 3D friends than my online ones... you people who say you're my friends, who call me sister, friend, whatever. Do you even look past the surface? Do you ever see what the makeup and the smile cover?

I sat for 10 minutes and cried on Thursday afternoon, because one of you let me down badly. I know you don't really care, but sometimes, I just have to say something. You claim to be my friend, and you're glad of my help, but you don't have the decency to be upfront with me? Thanks a LOT.

You who come into my house and make the "ewww" face because it's not spotless... how would YOU like to have to take care of it on your own, from a wheelchair? I can't stand or walk long enough to run the vacuum effectively, even... and the place is NOT dirty. It's cluttered, because sometimes I hurt too bad to finish a project, so it sits where I left it. Sometimes the weakness and pain is so much that all I can do is sleep. So... things get left. When I can, I clear some of it. I can't do it all anymore...I get the stuff that has to be taken care of, the rest, well, to whom does it really matter?

I get people all the time saying 'let me know if you need some help'. Sorry, can't do it. I can not beg.  I can not ask. You know what would really be a help? If someone was good enough to OFFER to take me grocery shopping at a time when I actually have some money to spend. You could find that time out by  ASKING me. Really. I have no filters. I'll tell you almost anything. If I think you care. If I don't, you get, "oh yeah, I'm fine".

It'd be nice to get a phone call once in a while. I know most of you have my number. You use it when you need me to help you get some printing done, or something like that...

It'd be nice to have someone say, 'let's do lunch on Monday'... pretty much any Monday, lol....I wouldn't ask you to pay for mine - I'm good with taking care of my own needs. Heck, I'd even pick you up, if you asked me to. Because I also maintain my own vehicle and insurance.

I don't ask much, but I'm tired, SICK and tired, of only being noticed or talked to when I can do something for YOU. Call me once in a while, just to talk. Let's do lunch, or supper, or, with enough prep time, breakfast. That's another thing: It takes me longer, MUCH longer, than it used to, to be able to get up and get out. When I first wake up, it's a tossup whether I get to the bathroom without falling when a leg gives out. My legs are not strong...I'm working on that, but it's not easy. I was doing ok till my right knee, the one that I use to support myself, quit bending. That, if you like, was a fun day. I had to physically pick it up with my hands, to get out of bed. I'm really REALLY glad there isn't much room there, I could use the wall to hop into the bathroom...and whirl to sit, lol... So don't expect me to be awake and ready to go by 8:30. It's not happening. Some nights the pain won't let me sleep till 3 or so in the morning. To be ready to go at 8:30, I'd have to be up at 5, to take the medication that lets me use my hands and legs, wait for it to start working, get a shower (you ever try to shower or bathe when you can't stand up? the barstool is my friend.) and get put together. Sometimes my hair isn't well done...sometimes it's even worse than that. Does it matter? Really?

I came back to Texarkana from Longview because several people said, yeah, come back, we'll be there to help you and make sure you're all right... and... I never hear from them, never see them, unless I'm calling them, or going to their place. I don't really blame you, it's not a lot of fun to hang out with someone that can't get up and run to this or that place - someone who has to take a beat up wheelchair everywhere they go... it's not much fun. For me, either. I only remember the handicap when I try to walk... the rest of me still thinks and acts and wants to be like  I was.

I've spent most of my life doing my best to NOT be the one about whom they say, 'oh god, here she comes...look, I gotta run, I told X I'd meet him at 4'... I didn't do this to myself, you know.  I wasn't hugely fat before my legs gave out, in fact, I'd gotten under 200 pounds for the first time in forever... I try very hard not to be the bitchy sick person who's always complaining. I won't tell you how I really feel, unless I think you care...you'll get "I'm fine! And how are you?" and then I'll listen to you tell me about all your troubles and the things you can't have or do, and who did you wrong and who said something ugly...

Like I said, you don't know me. And you don't appear to want to.

Sometimes I wonder

I really do...I wonder what kind of thinking I do, lol...before I make a life decision. Coming here: I was "in love" with someone totally inappropriate. Then, my friend Sharon, who has since died, said she wished I could be closer, as both her daughters adored me. OK, I can get closer. Texarkana is 71 miles south of DeQueen, Arkansas, where they lived. So I moved to Texarkana. And they moved to Raine (sp?) Louisiana...which is a wide spot in the road near Crowley...on I-20 waaaaay down there, almost to the water. And THEN they moved to about as far north in Arkansas as you can get. (Preachers move a lot, especially snaky ones.) And then she died.

I really loved her younger daughter, Rebekah...she was so funny, and such a PERSON, even at 11. Um, oh shit. She's like, 30-what now? Let's not go there. She's older than I was when I moved here. I have lost touch with her over the years; my ex-husband didn't like me keeping touch with my friends from before his time. No, he didn't *say* that. He just made life miserable when I did. I'm a little shy about making contact again with people who knew me years ago: I have changed SO much - not the inside me, but the outside, crippled-in-a-wheelchair-can't-dance-anymore me. I don't look the same, much, either. The inside me is slowly -very slowly - returning to the person I was, but the outside is permanently altered. There are days when I look in the mirror and go 'what the f'. That's not who I remember being there. *sigh*

Having been divorced nearly a year, I still find little things he did...and is doing...to pay me back for letting him go...dumping him... things like - hiding the paperwork for the house where he knew I'd be unlikely to look for quite a while. I don't know WHAT he did with my birth certificate. And just recently, he's found himself an apartment in his home town - and of course, needed electricity...but did he have to put HIS address on the account that has served this house? No, I don't think so. So now I have the hassle of having to call the electric company and get that fixed. Like when he moved out, and put in a change of address - for the entire household. Yeah... that made sense. Can YOU say 'passive aggressive'? As is always the case with him, he gets mad, but 'nice' people don't get mad, so he hides it...and does something mean and sneaky in another direction. It will be fine, eventually. I'll have gotten rid of all the stuff he left behind...including that little bitty sense of resentment that I feel for what he did to me in those 11.5 years...11.5 LONG years.

I came to Texarkana

I came to Texarkana in 1988, February...coldest month of the year in Minneapolis. Had to leave my car running all night to make sure I was able to leave in the morning. I left the city wearing two pairs of pants, a sweater, mittens, and a fake-raccoon-fur coat that, zipped up, made me look like a brown striped sausage with legs. (Note, this is not my car, I have no idea what happened to the multitude of pics I took of the green meanie, but this is close. Mine never looked that good.)


In Minneapolis, I routinely took home over $600 a week. I moved to Texarkana, and accepted $5.50 an hour. I still wonder what I was thinking... I had nothing but an antique table, a sewing machine, several boxes of glassware (antique, etched crystal) my clothes, bedding, 30 pairs of shoes, and a huge persian cat. I found a place to live, which cost more than I could afford...and had to move immediately - not because of the cost, I would've managed that, but the landlady went from, oh, yes, cats are ok to 'you have to get rid of the goddam cat' practically overnight. I have no idea why. Toby the persian was the least offensive cat I've ever known...he had no claws (due to the accident which made him mine) and he hardly ever got on ANYthing but me. No clue. 


So, the boss I was working for offered to get me into his Mom's rental. OK... and she went ballistic on me. Started leaving nasty notes and threatening me...still don't know why that, either, lol, but the common denominator there was me... boss then moved me into an old house he owned half a block from the printshop. BINGO. Stayed there several years. It was a great house, a double shotgun - you yankees won't know that that is, I didn't. so here's what it is: a house that all the rooms run together. It was a 3/3;  front door opened into a living room, a second large room followed, dining room? I don't know... and then the kitchen. Off the living room, a bedroom, then a large bathroom with a large closet, and a second bedroom, which opened, weirdly, also into the kitchen. From the kindness of their hearts, this boss and his wife loaned me some furniture, so now I had a couch and a bed, and my dining table and sewing machine, lol...why I brought the sewing machine, I don't know, but I still have it.


First lesson learned from that house: Lock the back door. A man who lived in a shed on the next door property was coming into the back porch and draining water from my water heater...I added a padlock. I'm all for helping people out - but I'd like to know i'm doing it. Second lesson: DO NOT put anything on the outside of the house saying you love cats. Trust me. Dangerous. My friends' daughter asked me to do the guest book at her wedding, and my 'gift' for that was a hanging art thing that said 'I Love Cats'. I put it on the door. Shortly thereafter, people started giving me cats. At 3 a.m. I would hear a car pull into the parking lot of the Housing Authority next door. A car door slam. Car revs off... 'meow?' 'meow?' oh shit. Now I have another mouth to feed on that 5.50 an hour.


Then, another lesson learned: People who stand on the corner with signs saying 'will work for food' want neither food nor work. And probably have more money than I do. I gave a man in that position a bag of food (half of what I had) and got cursed for it...and laughed at back at the shop. Stupid Yankee got suckered. Yeah, but only once.


Ok, that's enough for now...