As is often the case with a lot of the time I write under the Dad Brog tag, things are going a little rough these days. In fact, it’s like the difficulty of my life is currently sitting at a 9 on a scale of 7, and I’m having a hard time of accepting that this is just kind of going to be the state of it, given all the circumstances around me.
Frankly, it’s not so much my children being the source of lot of my general stress and anxiety beyond the usual every day gripes of parenting. Sure, they can be little shits when they want to, and their listening skills have a tendency to become questionable at times, but in this case, they’re kids. A six and four year old, being a six and four year old; defiant, rambunctious, playful, but otherwise pretty normal as far as being kids go.
However, it’s my third kid, AKA my elderly dad who is undoubtedly the largest source of my general daily angst, frustration and reason why my mood gets tanked faster than anything else. Frankly, this wouldn’t be classified as a Dad Brog if not for the fact that my own dad has basically turned into a third child for me, and is about as functional and capable as my six and four year olds, with the exception being that a lot of his inability to function has mostly been on account of his own choices, and not because he’s a six or four year old.
I struggle on a regular basis to not let my frustrations boil over and take it out on my dad, but it’s really fucking hard at times when the things I request and ask of him are never absorbed, never honored, and never respected. And with the recent diagnosis of early signs of dementia, it’s like he’s got a permanent excuse to be inept and completely oblivious to my life or my needs, and that I’m basically expected to be available at his beck and call, because he can always just chalk up forgetfulness on account of signs of dementia.
What frustrates me a ton is the fact that he put himself in a position to let his brain rot and degrade to its current state, by his own life choices over the last 10-15 years or so. He lived in isolation, he had almost no friends, he didn’t have any real hobbies, and he basically resigned himself to stop bothering to keep learning things in life. It’s like he was in prison, except on his own volition, based on the life of low stimuli he put himself into and refused to get out of it.
Whenever I boil over from him blowing up my phone on a daily basis, in spite of me telling him to please not call me during work hours unless it’s an emergency, and he keeps calling anyway, because whenever he gets bored, lonely or depressed from the shit life he bestowed upon himself, he dials me up, and it makes my blood pressure immediately elevate at hearing my phone go off because I know it’s most likely going to be my dad, and I wince like OJ Simpson in court whenever I confirm that it is. But when we do speak, everything I state or ask or more often than I care to admit, chastise, the response always starts with “no, but…”
Pretty much everything I suggest or try and convey is met with no, but, or some other form of pessimistic nihilism, and if anyone has ever wondered why I might have such characteristics, then this is most likely where I am getting it from. However, the difference is that I’m still clear of mind and often times police myself, and try my best to not have such a tone and scare everyone because I’m like a big fucking chupacabra that scares people really easily apparently.
But I also get a ton of resistance and questioning from everyone else in my life, be it my own children, and people I work with. My kids question everything, and not always in the good way, but more like when I ask them to do something they don’t want, it’s always met with great resistance, and feet dragging, and complaining. Any time I try and flag something as (obviously) needing clarification or push back or some factor that’s coming from a place of pursuing efficiency and less wasted time, I’m the one who gets tagged as being difficult, glass half empty, or just plain fucking negative.
People like to label me as overly negative or pessimistic, but the truth of the matter is that I’m surrounded by it, and I’m the asshole if I become a product of my surroundings.
And this is where I am currently, sick beyond words at how exasperated and exhausted I am of everyone questioning me, complaining to me, resisting me, and just not giving me any modicum of respect. I don’t feel as if anyone alive these days respects my opinions or my time, and unfortunately I don’t really anticipate much of this is going to change in the indeterminate future. I see no light at the end of the tunnel, which is a really shitting feeling to feel, but with my life basically being a glorified babysitter and caregiver, there’s pretty much no time for anything else; believe me, there are a lot of things I’d like to do, like set up an old laptop to be a good emulator machine for a lot of retro games I feel like playing, or exploring the potential gold I could be sitting on with some of the CIB video games that I have, but there simply just isn’t enough time left each day for me to do anything that I want, beyond maybe catching up with exercise, going off brogging a rant, or watching 1-3 episodes of Batman the Animated Series, depending on how much sleep I want to sacrifice.
I can’t really go to bed sooner than I do, because one of my kids is a problematic bed wetter, and I try to take them to the bathroom in the middle of the night to empty out their bladder to reduce the chances of a wetting episode, with it being a cautious game of chicken to not go too early in which there’s a lot of time left overnight for a wetting episode to occur, or going too late, and for there to already being a wetting waiting for me to have to fucking clean up in the middle of the night instead of 6:30 in the morning.
It would just be great if my life didn’t have to be so fucking insufferably hard, all the god damn time, and frankly it would just be great to have something to look forward to, because there’s a real lack of that in my world these days, and so I’m just kind of going through the motions at times, which is really unfair to my kids.
But for reals though, I really need my life to stop being so sucky more often than it is, and get me back to a position to where there’s more to look forward to in the day, than dreading.
