The Last Five Years

There was a short-lived Broadway musical entitled “The Last Five Years.”   
 
It was about a couple, one telling their story from the beginning of the relationship, and the other from the end.    

Either way, it ended in divorce. 

And never the twains shall meet, except in the middle of the show, where they recreate their wedding song. 

I started to ponder why five? 

Penta. 

What else do we mark with five year success or failures? 

Cancer diagnosis: Make the five, and stay alive.  Or don’t, and maybe lights out. 

Business plan: Where will we be?   Or, did we waste our money, brains, resources, and are no better than we were when we cracked open the egg of dreams. 

Mark V: Not just a car, but the Fifth chapter of the Gospel of Mark.  It includes the calming of the sea, which, I really could have used. 

Tally Marks: Usually to count down some horrific phase or time that needs to pass in days or procedures.  Like jail.  It’s almost over…that slash is coming. 

Career: Job interview.  Your interviewer asks, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”  
Want the job: the answer is kissing your ass and making your life easier.     
Don’t want the job: In your office. 

You can probably add to the list, and I have no idea how long it’s been since I blogged.    
A friend recently asked me, “when was the last time you wrote?”   
Well, I finished my book, but blogging…nothing. 
And, then I thought of my last five years. 
There has been no greater pain than my life in the last five years. 
You would think by 57, you had it all sewn up.   
But just when you think it’s safe to go back in the water, they show Jaws on the beach for movie night.  

I survived cancer in 2004, and had five more children.    
Check. 

I survived the sickness and death of both my parents, and each time, I had a newborn.    
Check. 

I understood the significance of the Phoenix rising up through the ashes representing new life, or, in my case, Jesus presenting us with new life through death. 

I lived through my brother’s mental illness and eventual death, which as the pain of the last five years oozed through my pores, minus the comfort of an analgesic,  somehow became something I realized I never grieved. 

Nor its effect on my childhood.  

As a matter of fact, I never really grieved my mother nor my father, nor the ovary I almost lost in 1988 thanks to a six centimeter mass which had attached itself like a fleshy leach. 

My detached Achilles and its horrendous recovery inn 2021 and the confinement it represented. 

Maybe even the twin I lost at ten weeks gestation,survived by her sister, Federica.  I didn’t think about that poor baby much, but I tend to shelve things and am terrible at confrontation. 

I didn’t think I was phased by any of it,  I cried at the time, sobbed like a fire hose and dusted myself off. 

That’s what I was trained to do.     

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But the zit of life, when not squeezed at its onset, only becomes more and more filled with puss until it’s cystic, unprepossessing, burgeoning and the only cure is a humongous needle or the hands of someone with great nails.  

And it bursts, after years of accumulation, carrying with it in its wake, blood, band aids, tears, and lots of other stuff. 

Welcome the last five years. 
Without detail or victim like diatribe, they fucking sucked.  

The grief of a divorce after almost 20 years of marriage, the reconstruction of my family, the pain of a financial battle which still plagues my life.     
Infinite exhaustion. 
 
And, the forsaking of control and any privacy through the bloody Dahmer-like tactics of those slated to tighten my finances to the point of asphyxiation and mental dismemberment. 

Hatred. 

I felt humiliation to the point of begging, fenagling, sometimes lying to survive.    A trait never innately inhabiting my mostly sweet, carefree demeanor.  

A feeling one should never know. It takes energy and eats away at your innards. 

Hatred.  
I realized I never knew what it meant to “hate”.    

It is the same intensity of the greatest love you have ever felt, only the opposite. 
I was loved so much by so many people in my youth that I only learned how to give and love hard.   I also learned that only few people in your life will ever love you the way you love. 

The last five years. 

I couldn’t give anything that I wanted to give to my family, at a time when they really needed me.    

Sometimes even the bare necessities. 
Weddings. A move. Transition. 
I was empty. I had no reserve. 
Even when I wanted to give, I couldn’t. 
The depression. 
The anxiety. 
The hatred of my fat, ugly, worthless, spoiled self. 
And every day, I called into 911-FAITH. 
Save me.   
I need help.   

I’m alone in my obsessive, recurring, persistent brain that churns and churns all day but goes nowhere but worry and angst. 

I wanted my mother.    

She left me at 28 with a five week old, and although I can’t be angry at her for something she couldn’t control, I cried for her like a baby waking up from its nap every day. 

I was done being at the helm of the emotional Titanic. I didn’t want to be in charge of anything anymore.   

I wanted to bolster myself in a cocoon and emerge like a munchkin peering out from the lollipop tree after Dorothy appeared in Oz.  

Saints endured a lot of shit because they were strong, steadfast and stubborn.   Some of them were slung with arrows, bled to death, beheaded,  crucified, burned at the stake…and in the end, they were dead, but remembered for their martyrdom. 

I thought, what a legacy…at least you will be remembered. 

My beaten up self thought what a way to get your children to appreciate you. 
I mean everyone who dies is remembered, and although Shakespeare would beg to differ, we always compile some kind of virtual notebook with the niceties we miss of the deceased. 

My epitaph might read: 
“Amazing Sunday Sauce chef, former shopaholic, great mom until 2021 when she needed to protect herself from the sinking quagmire. RIP. Her meatballs will be greatly missed along with her credit cards and Dollar Store tutorials.” 

Shit, even Albert DeSalvo had some nice things said about him in the end…and he even said “I’m sorry” to his victims…well, the ones he left alive, or who didn’t own pantyhose. 
So, I figured since nobody can hear me, or see my good…my kids, my friends, my family, what am I worth? 

If nobody could understand why I did what I did… 

Why I drastically changed my life to protect myself, and I got the cold shoulder what am I worth? 

Nothing. 
Let’s contemplate death. 
Suicide. 
At least I will have some control over my destiny. 
I have had no control over the last five years, but I will now.  
Every single one of you, starting with the money controllers who killed my children’s mother. 
 
Everyone who badgered and poked me every day because the Linda they knew was already dead. 

My kids couldn’t understand how I did try to get out from under the burning lava and put on the oxygen mask so I could survive.   
I just wanted to survive. 
Nobody got that. 
I wrote the note.  
I contemplated a peaceful ending with no blood or broken bones. 
Sleep…because I did not know how to sleep anymore. 
And then the hysteria, and maybe, just maybe a tear or two for the woman who used to be so generous but who could barely buy necessities. 

And, that money the controllers claimed to save for my kids so they didn’t give it to me, have at it…now you can.    

And, my kids, here’s all your gas money…your food money, your wedding money, your shopping money. Take it.  Now it’s really yours, and if I can’t give to you the way my father intended, this is the next best thing. 

Although you might try texting in desperation hoping I’ll answer from the grave one last time,  I can’t help you.   

I couldn’t help you in life, and that was the most painful part of the last five years. 
But maybe now that I’m dead, they will give you the money you need to live, without me as an appendage. 

Ahhhhh…the peacefulness of death… 
And, anyone I owe money to, come harass me at the grave. 
Good luck with that. 
Exhume me.  I’m not wearing expensive jewelry.  If you like Francesca’s, you can have it.  
But, every day I did it.  
Every day that I couldn’t do it,  I did. 
I got up. 
No drugs in my life, ever. 

I plowed through, and felt the pain of almost having to buy Hamburger Helper to feed my kids, and prayed the pain was a road to some healing, somewhere. 
In the midst of it all, the life preserver I did not want, came, not in the form of money, but partnership. 

No suit.   
No tie.  
Little finesse.  
Hard core.  
No filter.  
No fluff.   
No white glove service.  
Everything I wasn’t.  
Or, wasn’t groomed to be. 

But the straightforward, cut the bullshit, get on your feet approach, shrouding a very gentle soul full of love, was my buoy.  

Little by little, I learned how to approach situations with less fear, less vulnerability.    
I had support. 

When I was training to be a lactation counselor, the first thing we were taught was every mother trying this will fail without “support.” 

I was understanding that, now. 

The overwhelming fear of vulnerability, abandonment, humiliation, mistrust, embarrassment, self devalue, would never be the privilege of any human again. 

My heart was in a vault. 
I handed him the combination. 
Through the magic of therapy…good therapy…and love, I managed to piece myself back together.  
Slowly and sometimes painfully. 
I could love again, but with boundaries.  
Linda’s generosity and kindness was not a free for all. 
I weeded the friend garden…there are only a few plants that survived the harsh winter.    
Some wilted.    
Some needed heat.   
Some water, but the surviving ones have roots that could never be severed. 
And through an unexpected love, I learned to love again. 
I learned to not fear my children because I couldn’t give.   
He made me realize they were the most valued commodity in my life.     
And, I thought about my granddaughter who arrived just in the nick of time.    

I purged over and over again thoughts of the hell it was for me not to have my mother when I raised my kids…and how they don’t know her at all….and I had to live.    

God put me through so many trials that tested my human survival..when I got through cancer I realized, I am supposed to be here.  

The noose of the last five years, was loosened, just a notch and the broken neck of a successful strangulation was miraculously healing. 

But, just like Dorothy, those she met on the Yellow Brick Road were figments in place not to bring her back to Kansas,  but to remind her of the things she had inside her the entire time: courage, intelligence, and most of all, a heart.     

Dorothy could always go home. 

She just had to go back to the tornado that brought her whole house down, in an unfamiliar land. 

The house that killed an evil witch. 

And the fear, the trembling apologies she bestowed upon that witch’s evil sister while crouching in trepidation became strength through support of a scarecrow, a lion and a tin man, enough to melt that bitch with water, retuning to herself, and eventually, home. 

Home.  

Who you were before. Forever changed, but the foundation of  who you are is always your home.   

The footprint doesn’t change.  

The interior decorator does, and the the contractor, but not the footprint. 
Pain is necessary to recognize joy.   

It is often necessary to experience the road to Calvary, and Gethsemane, to understand that joy is not material, but rather life is a privilege…and living is your joy.   
Good feelings and accomplishments are worth more than a new wardrobe and a trip to Sephora, and a vacation on the Amalfi coast. 

Friends, the ones who really love you, are the gift of a lifetime, but don’t expect a plethora.    

Be happy and trust the ones who fit in the palm of your hand. 
Love, whether parental, or spousal, is your gift to others and theirs to you. But it isn’t perfect or happy all the time. 
Anger can mean love too...it may seem like the opposite of love, but in order to have the passion of anger, there must first be the love of something that was disrupted that caused that anger.  

Love encompasses trust.   
Trust.  
Trust.   
The most important element.   
Trust. 
Something I am rebuilding, without the side-eye day by day. 
And prayer? 
We have no control over anything.  Our destiny is decided. 

We may think we do…but every time there is some “coincidence,” it isn’t ever.    
Inspiration isn’t a windfall and an apparition. 

It’s a thought, a word of advice, that helps us get through when we thought we were at the end. 

Survival is not easy.  It’s drastic. It is grievous. It is severe. It is excruciating. 
It’s exhausting.  

So, today, my 57th birthday, I am thankful for the broken road that was my virtual stem cell treatment.  

It brought me just to the brink of death, but with baby infusions, still in the I.V. drip, back to life every day.  

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