Insomnia Sucks.... (wish it bit too)

Here I am again, the rest of the world asleep around me, waiting for the sun to come up so I can get some sleep.


Night shift.


Had I known just how lethal being a night nurse could be, I ..........would have done it anyway I guess. I was invincible once, kevlar skinned and laser guided. Apparently with enough over-use and abuse even lasers begin to burn out though. Who knew? Which is not to say I've learned a damned thing. I still push when I'm supposed to stop resisting. "I'll sleep when I'm dead" was my motto for so long. Hell, it was my life. Not that I'm complaining. 


I will never be able, even in my darkest hour, to look back on my life or my nursing career and feel I've really missed out on too much. Yeah, there have been some MON-U-FUCKING-MENTAL (emphasis on mental) mistakes I've made, and from them maybe I have learned. Maybe not. Case in point, never trust a man whose first words to you are "I was just leaving town, but now that I've met you I really want to stick around a while. Can I sleep over?" Next thing you know it will be 3 years later, he'll be off chasing some fat, skanky red-headed drug dealing dominatrix and you'll be left cleaning hair out of your bathtub and sheets.

[redacted  for tmi]


To each and every man whose heart I left bruised, battered or broken...my penance is paid. I am forever sorry, and I still pay.


As if I didn't pay enough in the Army, or in the marriage that followed. But there was little of beauty there and I choose to forget most of that, and certainly have no desire to share it here or anywhere else.


All that aside, I regret no chance taken, no adventure or misadventure embarked upon in my frequent moments of youthful and not so youthful impulse. As a child of chaos, raised by two high functioning alcoholic  parents so engrossed in one another that my brother and I were less than superfluous, I don't think "normality" would have ever worked for me. In fact I doubt I even truly understand the concept. I certainly couldn't relate to the other nurses I worked with who saw choosing the border for their new wall paper as something worth agonizing and even sobbing over. What IS it to have that much...or is it that little...in life, that wall paper becomes so important? I will never understand, and I guess that is one thing I will thank my not so benignly neglectful parents for. 


And it's not like we didn't have fun. Nothing bonds a family like misdirecting tourists from a boat launch to a deserted gravel drive that leads into woods so thick no boat was ever getting out of there easily. Yes, we actually stole the sign that legitimately led to the dock near Moonlight Bay and placed it nearby at that deserted narrow drive, and they were stupid enough to drive right on in. I believe I still have the "No Trespassing" sign we stole from an unwelcome, encroaching resort that same afternoon. Of course who can forget finding the skinny dipping couple in "our" section of beach near Cana Island and stealing their clothes. We weren't thieves though. We dropped the ostentatious (of course) clothing, a piece at a time, shoes then socks then everything else as out of order and wildly strewn as possible, along a couple miles of road, leaving the keys for their nice little sports car for last of course, right next to the underwear, so they'd have to trek back another two miles to retrieve it. We knew...we checked every pocket and around the car too. 


Of course, given what Chicago tourists have done to the Door County of my birth and youth, turning a pristine paradise of cherry orchards and acres of wild flowers and miles of public beaches into ugly cracker-box condos and trailer sized lots for Chicago sized "cabins" more worthy of Sinclair than LeClaire (my Godmother's name)...well... I really kind of wish we had stolen the clothes, and the car! We called them, the tourists, turkeys at the time...I suppose because they clucked around cluelessly in ridiculous little flocks and didn't have the sense to get their noses out of the air when it was raining (legend has it that's how many a real turkey has met its demise). I later learned a new term from Jim, the respiratory therapist I worked with for years in the NICU. He called them F I B's, which stands, as you might have guessed, for Fucking Illinois Bastards. And that they are. I am reminded every time I try to find some beloved landmark to share with family and friends and it has been paved over, built up or otherwise despoiled and marked as "Private Property" for the use of ridiculously red white and blue clad windy city wind-bags. Just too trite.


Even more fun is driving behind them on the highway--widened for their convenience of course at the cost of God alone knows how many old growth cedar trees--the ones that give Door County such distinctive and fresh air--and having them slam on their brakes without warning in bumper to bumper traffic (another gift from down south a ways) and go from 65 mph to 0 in 0.5 seconds so they can stop, ON the highway, to take a picture of something they like to oh so condescendingly call "quaint". This is of course Chicago-speak for "soon to be demolished".


We used to pretend there was a point system (I know, not original, but very therapeutic) for running them down, the speed, manner and difficulty determining the points of course. I can almost wish we'd actually played that one for real...but I'm not really the type for such unsubtle revenge...though back then it would have just been preventive maintenance. It is a good thing I'm not Catholic though, where a sin thought is a sin committed. I'd feel the flames of Hades licking between my ice blue painted toes as I linger here. 


Still awaiting sunrise.

Greetings

As I am perhaps permanently unable to log on/post to my original blogspot blogs (AcerbicRN and MarquesSpot) I begin anew.


As in many things, I start this endeavor in memory of my brother Mark, lost to us in 2006 after enduring in near silence too many years in a toxic marriage to someone I always realized was a sociopath...let me rephrase that for legal purposes...it is my educated opinion that she is a sociopath. I could go on about that, but there is really no point. It won't bring my brother back or allow our family to ever see his beautiful daughters again. 


I will try to make this more to the point. Mark was an accomplished musician and lover of life and nearly all it's ridiculous ironies. He had DEPTH--something his ex-wife never understood. The loss his daughters feel has to be immense and in reality the loss of his influence in their lives is tragic. My only hope now is that they carry forward the true Bastian genes. (Why the woman kept the name of a family she spent years tearing apart despite every kindness shown I will never understand!) At least she spells her first name with one less L than I do. Thankfully we have absolutely nothing else in common apart from our gender and names.


Mark had this wonderful equation for what he sought and was briefly able to find during the dearly paid for (and I mean DEARLY paid for) freedom he found upon escaping the day to day torture of living with a greedy, avaricious, soul sucking .... well you get the drift.  It went something like this:


 "Inner Resonance = doing good things + no one looking". 


It is likely a poor paraphrase as I have anything but an eidetic memory, but that is the gist of it and it is this legacy I will try to carry forward. 


His own blog, maintained until just hours before his death and detailing much though not all of the precipitating factors, is at www.machopoodle.blogspot.com. Please don't pay too much attention to the FoxNews stuff if you find yourself inclined to visit there...no one's perfect, and he was starving, sleepless and tortured beyond human endurance at the end. This despite my offers to have him move in with me. He just had to be close to his girls, used as pawns by his ex, and I was unable at the time to pick up and move...though I'd have found a way had I known then what I know now. 


I am glad he has finally found peace. Though I miss him terribly, I also know the hell he was living as his ex (a true woman scorned) methodically bled him dry and turned first his Church then his employer and eventually even his daughters against him for no other reason than her own bruised ego, boundless material greed and mental illness (IMO). I can only rejoice that he has found blessed peace. Even oblivion, something in which I do not believe, would be preferable.


Now, in your memory, beloved brother, I will attempt once more to leave the past in the past and renew my efforts to move forward in a more positive manner--and resonate reason.