Too Much Stress
I have a headache that won’t quit right now, and it’s caused entirely by too much stress. At this point I am ready to cut bait with nearly everyone I know, sell my house, and move to Montana where I can live in a shack like Ted whatever-his-name is and raise dental floss like Frank Zappa.
This nonsense with my father and my sister has reached ludicrous proportions. To go through the whole thing would make my headache into a full-blown migraine. Put it this way: after starting an argument that lasted two weeks or more, and after promising to put the same pressure on my sister that he’s put on me to “make nice”, the old man admitted that he never did any such thing at all. The onus has been on me the entire time, and he tells me “I do not recall specifically saying I was going to put the same pressure on Kate to apologise that I was putting on you to forget about it.” Pretty carefully chosen language, if you ask me.
After I objected to this manipulative and mendacious behavior, my old man, not content to have gotten caught playing some bullshit psychological game wrote to tell me “I’m sorry I don’t measure up to your standards. Am I now expected to apologize before I am permitted to enter your house?” Roughly translated, that means “Fuck you, Brendan. Who cares what you think?”
At the same time, he tells me that “We certainly hope to see Sam during his visit I hope our not choosing to come for Thanksgiving dinner does not preclude us from visiting afterwards, or your visiting us.”
Well off course not: it’s the lying, the manipulating, and the unrepentant assholery that precludes you from visiting.
So that’s part one. Part two is our new housemate, who is proving to be a royal pain in the ass by overstepping just about every normal boundary tenants recognize. Eating our food without asking; using my soap and shampoo; paying her first month’s bills late; adopting our common space as her own; invading our personal space. The list goes on: it’s annoying to me, but it’s driving Christina up the wall as well. Thus the annoyance is doubled: it’s frustrating enough living with a difficult housemate, but it’s worse when I have to hear about it secondhand as well. Not that Christina doesn’t have the right to vent at me about it, but damn. So sometime this week I have to sit our new addition down and explicitly spell out the basic rules of renting a room in a house. You know: the rules that freaking everyone else in the world already knows without having to be told.
On top of this, I haven’t spoken to my son in a week, despite calling pretty much every single day. This morning he was in the tub when I called and his mom promised to call me back: an hour later, on the way to work, I was the one who made the call. And Sam was already off to school. They “forgot” to call. They got “too busy”. It “wasn’t deliberate”. Who knows, maybe it’s “the truth”. All I know is I haven’t seen him since September 6, and i won’t see him again until November 15. But hey, i get him for a whole 20% of the year, so I guess I should stop being a dick and enjoy my 70 days. Whoop-dee-ding-dong-diddly-doo.
Then of course there’s the Senate giving away our Fourth Amendment rights, which is the diarrhea icing on the shit cake. Warrantless wiretapping with no oversight? Retroactive immunity for the companies that participated? When the fuck was the United States renamed “East Germany”? What the fuck is wrong with these people? This is nothing but a deliberate, calculated usurpation of the American people’s constitutional rights, as well as an attempt ti intimidate, silence, and punish dissent: every single senator and representative who votes for this deserves to swing.
So yeah, it’s been a tough day, and it’s not even 11:30 AM. I have a headache, and I’m ready to start throwing things.
4 Responses to “Too Much Stress”
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October 18th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
re: Sis - IMO, as long as she does not give some sort of indication that she recognizes her past behavior is inappropriate and will not continue it, she is a danger to your son (esp. given the level of detail you have mentioned before). You are perfectly within your rights to protect your son, and it takes a strong man to protect his son against all the pressure.
re: Dad - IMO, as long as he is emotionally blackmailing you, he is a danger to your relationship your son. I say this in that he is supporting someone who is emotionally abusing you and is himself dancing dangerously close to being emotionally abusive to you himself. You deserve to not be treated this way and you deserve to set the example for your son that a strong man can back peacefully away from this kind of abuse and at the same time not cave in to it. Treat yourself the way you would want your son to treat himself if he is in a similar situation 30 years down the line (although I doubt you yourself would play this game).
Your dad seems to be taking the easy path of backing the most unpleasant person and putting maximum pressure on you because he thinks you will cave. He is abandoning looking at this through “right versus wrong” and is being very disrespectful of your role as Sam’s dad.
You only have your son a short period of time and you are within your rights to not risk letting even one moment of unpleasantness mar that. I would limit the invitation to Thanksgiving and even mandate that unless Kate seeks forgiveness the “K-word” is not welcome. The visit should be all about Sam and not about a man who is emotionally blackmailing you.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
thanks ellen.
I’m pretty much doing exactly that and for the exact same reasons you mention.
-sigh-
October 18th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Hang in there. BTDT and hanging in there is worth it in the long run.
Yeah, I know, sometimes it seems like a very long run, but nothing will change until someone breaks the chain.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
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