steps

This is a rant.  And, spliced in with that is news. I got a new car. I like it a lot except the color. Red. I like black or white. But it was a bargain. She paid 34K and I'm paying 20. That 20K is a bargain in any language is unthinkable. It has 11,000 miles on it and she's done five oil changes. "They're free," she said. I'd be lucky to get two into my busy schedule.  I am trying a new antidepressant for anxiety. Sometimes I can't breathe. It seems important. I have stressors in my life. One is a puppy, and tonight, the other is a step-daughter who hates me.

I have written little about Nicole, knowing she reads this blog, but tonight it seems more important to express myself than protect her feelings. She is, among many things, bipolar (or borderline pd), so she requires more therapeutic ignoring than the ordinary person. I let things go. I have for thirteen years now. But last night, she actually reached out for help, acknowledging a recent suicide attempt and sincere plans to kill a step-person. Not me. Her mother's husband. I think they're married. When she reaches out to her father, via text, this manipulates my beloved into a froth, as it would any adoring parent. She dumps the text in his lap, and he into mine, and then she fails to respond for hours -- hours in which I'm sure he pictures her hanging from the rafters somewhere in SE Portland. I can't stand to see him suffer and I texted her my concern, and said that I was glad she'd reached out. What I got in return was so mean. She is so mean. She basically laid the entire failure of her life at my feet because I won't let her live with us, lay in the house, be fed, and like a lovely but moody African Violet, face due east and bloom once a year.

In her text, she said, "Maybe we could talk about how often I've been raped for a place to sleep," then, "Seriously Judy, take your worry and choke on it." I didn't have the heart to tell her I was worried about Kurt. And we could speak about the rapes, I guess, but I'd win. Hands down. If that was meant to shock me into guilt over her troubles, she's barking up the wrong tree. I know the stock in trade. In my case, like hers, I opted not to work, and I lived in a tree instead of paying my way, so the boys took it out in trade. It wasn't usually very fun for me and I'm sure it isn't fun for her, but she isn't the first girl to have a shitty life. Not my monkey not my circus.

I met the girls when they were 13 and 11. There is hardly a year separating them, but they couldn't be more different. Nicole has bipolar disease, more depressive than manic by far. She lays down for years at a time. I've tried to support her or her parents to apply for SSD, but no one will take the time. She hasn't held a job for more than a month in several years. She takes a job, any job, becomes employee of the month, realizes how stupid everyone else is, and walks away. She is the poster child for the saying, "You can't fix a broken mind with a broken mind." I've hooked her up with many counselors, many nice women, all of whom she blew off after an appointment, or sometimes two, before she discovered their idiocy. In her text to her dad she claimed to be living by "manipulating idiots for a place to stay." I think these are probably nice people. Nicole is a charming and lovely girl when she needs to be, and a smelly hermit that bites like a snake once she gets her foot in the door.

Kurt asked me not to hold her wrath against him... not to take her meanness out on him. I am grateful he finally understands how cruel she has been, and for how long. At Christmas, as I said in a previous post, Haley talked about how everyone is poor in this family. And I think I understood her to say how sad it is that Nicole "has to stay with strangers who just accept her the way she is and take care of her." But that is nonsense. Most of these relationships are with those "morons"and they last weeks at most. She's a nasty tempered couch surfer who is currently paying the bill the hard way. One family's only stipulation was that she shower and she wouldn't do that. I remember setting that limit.... didn't work for me either.

Ah, I'm ranted out. I'm too tired and too fucking old for this shit.