9:33pm What are you flabbergasted about, again?
Tita: So, this guy Victor is listening to, Illumignostic mentioned a Joni Mitchell song. Just yesterday morning, I believe, I was listening to Joni Mitchell's greatest hits. What did I think? This lady is depressed. It sounded to me that she was singing while she was depressed, singing about depressive things.
Yesterday around dinner time, seven or so the music was playing and I told Victor, "I have to change this. This CD is too depressing and I want to listen to something different. What's amazing about that is that I have had that CD forever, I don't even know who recommended it, but I don't know if I have ever even listened to it, maybe one or two songs.
The fact that I had just listened to it and it was referenced in this guy's video is just kind of weird to me. When he revealed that Joni was used in Satanic stuff, that just didn't surprise me at all. It was just a cool synchronicity because of all the CDs that I have, and I have lots, to pick that one up then the next day hear a comment on it, on the day Victor shows me this cool guy he's been listening to, there are just no accidents. Enough for now, we are going to go make a smoothie.
9:41pm Will you please recap what you just told me?
Tita: This house had some bad Juju happening, in a way. Bad or good, because this was a place that housed my dad and my mom who were senile. I didn't realize the extent of it, but they were.
I was at their beck and call since 2006 when I quit my job with my brother. Is it any wonder that one person trying to run the show, trying to get my parents healthier, taking my dad to doctor's appointments, is it any wonder that the house became messy and things got lost, when I was catering to two old people, just me.
In other words, I was running an old folk's home without knowing that I was doing that. To me I was just being a good daughter. That's all that mattered to me. They needed the help and I had nothing else to do.
They, at first asked and wanted my help, my mom even offered to pay me money. I always refused because I did it out of LOVE. Also, I knew my greedy brothers would start projecting, "Oh, you did it just for the money." I would tell them that they didn't really LOVE mom and dad, that he was only nice for the inheritance. I guess he forgot he had divorced his parents for ten years. He returned and soon had his talons in them, again.
I had even stopped buying new things for myself. I saved up all of my receipts. My brothers had me brainwashed, I brainwashed myself, because I knew that they would make it about money somehow, when it was not about money in the least. Rather than be generous with myself, I kept from enjoying my mom and dad's money. For years and years I didn't buy myself new clothing. I stopped buying gifts for my nephews and nieces, even thought my mom and dad told me I could. I told them no, because my brothers are going to make me feel bad because they don't think I earned it.
For years I thought it was my duty, my brothers brainwashed me to think that, and I didn't deserve anything.
That's a classic patriarchal way of keeping down a woman. That's going to be another story.
Victor: Thank LOVE. :]
Tita: The point being that I could've been more generous with myself and used mom and dad's money, but I was cheap with myself. I was not generous with my own self while I lived with mom and dad.
Like I said, in the grand scheme I was running an old folk's home. I was suffering sometimes because of it. When I realized that I was hanging out with Dad and I should look good. Sometimes I had part-time jobs and that money went to make myself look better, so I started feeling better. It's sad because of the pressures around me and my brothers and the greed, like Victor said, they should be paying me to take care of our mom and dad. That never, ever even crossed my mind.
Not only did I run an old folk's home for mom and dad, and no wonder the house got messy and didn't get repairs, anytime I would hire a landscaper or pool guy I would be automatically demonized by my brothers with them telling me, "Look how you are wasting Dad's money, you could do that stuff yourself. Why don't you do it?"
It was because my dad knew I had a lot of stuff going on. There are certain things that he doesn't feel I am fit for, for example, gardening. Just to show how bad it was and how I suffered at the hands of people that were cheap and did not value me.
With Kaenan, I was his last resort. He had been suicidal, had been in rest home before he started getting social security and came to live here with me. I didn't want him to stay. He only stayed with me a week. I could not stand him and he couldn't stand me so I dropped him off in Mount Shasta. Months later, when he got better after he started taking medicine and I talked to his counselor, grandmother and his dad, I missed him and decided to take a chance and let Kaenan come live with me.
I figured he could help me take care of dad, and they could keep their eyes on each other while I was working doing massage. I was up from six until twelve, working hard every single day and making a lot of money doing massage in Ripon.
I was running an insane asylum! Kaenan was at the end and he was suffering. Kaenan had already tried to be helped elsewhere and did not want to heal, he wasn't ready to. His wounds were so deep that he came to me to die, with me. Is it any wonder that the house ended up with thirteen punch holes in the wall? Is it any wonder that I still have stains of Coca Cola that he would splash in my face when I would serve him. He would get angry that I was smothering him, or whatever was going on in his head, or when he was having a bad day.
All of these metaphorical and literal stains are still in this house. This house has suffered through a lot of dysfunction, a lot of bad happenings. When you flip it around you think, "What an honor, that Elizabeth got to spend time with people she LOVED at the end of their lives. What an honor to be their someone to be with, because nobody else would!"
Nobody else would, with my father. It was ridiculous. When I went on a vacation for a week to Joshua Tree, the year that I started doing massage, 2015, I went away to Joshua Tree for two or three weeks, I hadn't been on vacation in years before that. So there I was and before I went I asked myself, "Who is going to take care of Dad in my absence? Who is going to visit him? Who is going to make sure he eats, drinks, takes his medicine and put in his eyedrops?"
The thirteen months that I was away doing yoga in Grass Valley or San Francisco, who put in dad's eyedrops? I was ready to hire a nurse, because nobody else in my family would do it. I even had my "friend" Nicole finally agree. I told her it had to be consistent, every morning.
With his shaky hands he struggles with the drops. He has Glaucoma, he needs the drops. There is no alternative. I am going to be gone. Would you, my friend Nicole, do this for my dad? She said yes!
What happened? When I told my family nobody believed me that Nicole would do this, scoffing at me, making fun of me.
The day that Nicole came, the first day, my brother showed up in his truck to put in dad's eyedrops. Well, look at that. Somehow my brother, who told my other brother and I the year before that me and my brother were nice to mom and dad just for the inheritance. Moi knew that in being nice to dad while I was gone, maybe would make dad be more generous to him with the inheritance.
Isn't that sad that it was money that motivated my brother to put in dad's eyedrops? Maybe compassion. Maybe a little bit of both. That's what happened. That's just one example of many of how shitty my brothers treated my dad. They saw him as a source of money, which I never did. I saw him as the great person he was that needed help.
Another example was in 2014 or 16 or something like that, when I went off on vacation to Joshua Tree. Not one person in my family was willing to put up my dad, not one of my brothers who live in the same neighborhood!
My dad said he didn't want to stay with them anyway. I told him, "But you have to! I am going to be gone for weeks and you need looking after, dad."
What did one brother say? "I cant, sorry. I have a nanny here taking care of my kids. She can't take care of my dad too. Cant, can't do it. I wish I could, sorry." He couldn't make space for his old dad. Not in his own house.
When I told dad that he said, "I wouldn't want to be there, anyway. I would be hit on the head by his idiot wife for any little error I make." I said, "It's so sad that you are right."
Then I asked my other brother and his wife, "Will you take care of my dad while I am gone? Can you look in on him since you live only a block away and drive by the house all the time?" She told me they couldn't, that they were too busy. She said they had other things going on.
I asked, "Can he sleep with you guys, at least? I don't feel good about leaving him alone. Sometimes he lies and says he eats when he doesn't. You know of these problems. Can you help me?"
Nope, they were always "too busy."
I went to my other brother in the hood, "Hey, brother. Do you mind watching after Dad while I go on vacation? I know your own mother-in-law, his wife has been welcomed to sleep at your house before. What about dad?"
He said, "Ahh, I don't think so. That's not going to work for me.".
My mom's favorite brother, I had no relationship with, he had been estranged for ten years. He was a single guy with a big business then, how is he going to have time for dad? He wasn't a consideration for me at all. I am not dumb.
So, nobody could help my dad. Nobody could help me when I needed help to take care of dad. Who actually ended up helping him? A woman named Nancy Gross, a Mexicana that I met at massage school.
She first said no after I pleaded with her. I told her, "Look, I need to go away. I haven't had a vacation. Things are not fun and happy at my house and Dad is an old man. Will you help him?" At first she said no, no, no, then ten minutes later she called back and told me, "My dad died of dementia, alone and depressed and in denial about his life, and there were people out there that helped me, so okay, I will do it. I changed my mind. My father needed help, so I will go out and help."
I told her, "What he needs most of all is company, please listen to him. He needs someone to make sure that he eats, drinks, takes his pills. Please check in on him once or twice a day. He is lonely and struggling from lack of LOVE." Nancy was actually generous enough that she did it all of that. Later on I even paid her some money.
When I first went to Nancy her first question was, "What about your brothers? Don't you have a lot of brothers that live in his same neighborhood?" I told her, "They ain't available. They never have been. I have already asked each one of them individually and they don't have time for their old man. Isn't that sad?"
Okay, going back to my original idea, this house has had a lot of dysfunction because I was running an old folk's home, and I was also helping a young man, Kaenan that was desperately in need of psychiatric help, or some kind of intervention. That's what happened here and no wonder the house got as bad as it got. No wonder documents got lost for months or years on end. I had my hands very, very full.
My priority was on people, not on the house, not on the cleanliness. One person alone can only do so much. That's asking a lot of one person to have everything in perfect order and harmony.
Fuck everyone who ever did not believe me, did not understand the gravity of dad's condition, his lack of LOVE, the lack of companionship in his life from the people he produced, and fuck everyone who wasn't there for Kaenan and turned their back on him too.
Even his own mother-in-law who told Kaenan's dad, "If he lives here, it's either him or me." Steven, Kaenan's dad chose the vagina and not his son. His very own grandparents called the police on Kaenan. He had lots of issues. His mom, of course had lots of issues when he tried living with her in Boulder Creek, CA.
Kaenan ended up with me as his last resort.
Again, look at what happened. I learned a lot about myself, through the dysfunction, through the codependency of it, the unhealthiness of it. I learned about myself, thank you, Kaenan.
FUCK EVERYONE WHO TURNED THEIR BACK ON YOU!
You were worth the effort, Kaenan and I don't regret helping you. You were worth getting punched by you in the face. He even called the police on himself when he did that.
So fuck anyone who doesn't hold the space and doesn't have LOVE for the lower and weakest of us. That's what dad was, my mom turned him into the lowest and weak, he was old and discarded by his family and society. Kaenan was discarded by his own family, by the institutions that tried to help him.
Of course it's because they didn't want the help, because they had me.
They had one person to be there for them when everyone else said no.
Therefore, I wish more people were like me. I wish more people were good. I wish more people were would be willing to sacrifice themselves and comfort in order to help the one person that's alone and suffering, we should all do that, we should all open our homes to people who are going through unsurmountable troubles.
Why? Because we are GOD! We are GOOD! Why would we ever shun the people we love? Why wouldn't we want to LOVE them even more and figure out a way to keep them with us? Because they are struggling and have nobody else?
It happened to me when I met Victor in Mount Shasta. With my dysfunctions and issues that I have had, he is still with me! That shows me that he LOVES me still.
He was discarded by his family a long time ago. Thank Love that Victor and I found each other, two people that were good, but got discarded. Thank you, Goodness, thank you LOVE, thank you creation for bringing Victor and I together.
Everyone deserves somebody! Somebody to say yes, come on in and feel at home with me.
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