January 18, 2021

January 18, 2021, i.e., the end of the world as I knew it.

Because of my early childhood history and numerous illnesses during that time, and my own family’s level of dysfunction, and my physical differences which led to bullying and ostracizing from kids, I never got a great understanding of normal and deviance. I was mostly alone as a child and whatever I read was reality to me. I read a lot because I was alone.

Skip ahead a lot now. I’m married to a "sociopath," diagnosed as such many years later by the VA. I have no reference of normal or deviance because I spent my childhood in a cloud of Codeine, wearing an eye patch and being exorcised, unsuccessfully, by pentacostal faith healers. Baptized 7 times.

Moved back and forth across the country, my kids in tow, for the sociopath’s non-career. He was from a good Slavic Catholic family where everyone had college degrees. I was an unwed mother from Northeast. If you’re not from Kansas City, you’ll never understand what that means.

Now, after 40 years of marriage and affairs too numerous for my mind to see, he’s had a love affair going on for the past five or six years. I never suspected a thing. We’re old. We talked on the phone every f*****g night for at least an hour! I was literally his sleeping pill.

But it was false, 100%. I never meant anything to him, because sociopaths don’t feel. They destroy, and that’s what happened with my children. He was subtle and the full extent of his crimes didn’t come out until more than 10 years after the fact. After the statute of limitations for crimes committed in another state was nil.

I didn’t have a f*****g clue. However, I had an adult child, married with a child of their own, and another child who dropped out of school in 7^th grade because of undiagnosed autism. That was my situation when I found out. I went to the police but they were not optimistic, and I couldn’t press charges myself. They said to forget about it. I had my hands more than full.

I came to Kansas City to take care of my parents. Originally, I had an arrangement with my mother to help her out following shoulder surgery. Directly prior to that, I was hospitalized with fungal pneumonia in Fresno. I worked for doctors who gave me shots of penicillin and said to get back to work. The fungus was in their building. I passed out on my kitchen floor twice. I had a fever of 103 for two weeks. My husband demanded that I accept what my employers said and specifically forbid me going to the hospital.

My son dropped me off at the ER and went home. The doctors told me I would have been in the morgue the next day if I hadn’t come in. I had no insurance. My husband hadn’t been at his job long enough to add me on without a cost, and wasn’t willing to pay it. My employers didn’t offer anything outside their own services.

I came to Kansas City for my mom’s shoulder surgery, but I stayed because my dad was very poorly and needed help. I knew that neither of my parents would forbid me from seeking medical help.

After my mom passed away, leaving me with a dozen cats, I tried everything within my power to find homes for the cats. I took some out to Wayside Waifs, but they called me to pick them up, saying they were “feral.” I talked to the Kansas City Pet Project and they told me they were only candidates for their barn cat program. House cats who had never seen the outside of the house, left in Midwestern weather, to kill or die.

So he replaced me. My little metal recipe boxes full of things I’d clipped from the newspaper, sorted out by category. Chinese, Southeast Asian, Mexican, Italian, Armenian, Cakes, Pies, recipes given by friends. Two boxes worth, with all the cards badly stained from cooking. I will never see those again.

My best friend’s oil paintings and various artistic endeavors _ she’s been dead for over a decade. They are there. I’ll never see them again.

My delusion that any person on this planet would ever care for me has been destroyed, and it hurts far more than any ripped off band-aid. It lets me know that I was one of those babies who shouldn’t have been born. Abortions can be mercy killings." I know that. But that wasn’t possible when I was born.