letter to my eldest brother, who deserves a smack in the mouth.

Dear eldest brother:

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a VICTIM.

My upbringing did not make me one. My lack of opportunity didn't make me one. Being poor didn't make me one. Moving around a lot and not spending more than five years (and that was the longest stretch) in any one place didn't make me one. Our mother getting divorced twice didn't make me one. Not being guided and encouraged during my formative years didn't make me one. Coming from a broken home didn't make me one. Being a drug addict didn't make me one. Being a latchkey kid didn't make me one. Having a mental illness didn't make me one. Our mother being promiscuious didn't make me one. Our mother getting pregnant at sixteen didn't make me one. Being told that I could be whatever I wanted didn't make me one. Not being forced to go to college didn't make me one. Making the right decisions too late in life didn't make me one.

And none of these things caused you to be a victim, either. You did that all on your fucking own.

You seem to have this idea that our mother was a completely wretched person who never thought of anyone but herself. Sure, our mother wasn't a storybook depiction with freshly baked cookies after school and gentling prodding to finish your homework. Nor was she even halfway to that. She was loud-mouthed, had a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush, drank in bars, slept around, got married when she shouldn't have, made bad decisions, spent money too easily, and was entirely too selfish to be raising three children. However, she was not a bad mother. She was human and did what humans do. Some of her choices were far from the best, but she loved the three of us more fiercely than you could ever fucking know and sacrificed her life and her dreams to raise us.

Did you know that she wanted to be an archeologist? I didn't think you did. You don't know jackshit about her. You don't know jackshit about our brother. And you certainly don't know jackshit about me.

All you know is your own bitter pain and deluded jealousy. Yes, there are people in this world who have the things you want. Our mother did not impede you from having them. You did. Free will is a marvelous thing, you asshole. Telling me that it doesn't exist changes nothing. You made your own decisions. No one pushed you into them.

Not only that, but your life isn't that fucking bad. You have your own business. You have two incredibly intelligent children who are excelling in college and will hopefully go on to be far better than you. Your life is not "wasted" because you don't have a summer home on the beach and the ability to jetset away for vacations twice a year. Your childrens' lives are also not wasted if, when they are completely grown, they don't have these things either.

And our brother's life isn't a washout because he never got his high school diploma. He's content with the kind of person he is and struggles to further himself in his career. He's smarter then you, sometimes even smarter then me and I'm the smartest out of the three of us. He may not have all the things you so dearly wish you had, but he's not an unhappy or covetous individual. Unlike some other people I could name.

Furthermore, we were not ABUSED in any way, shape or form. And to say so is ridiculous and asinine. Do you even know what abuse means? Are you able to see far enough past your own nose to realize exactly how much our mother really did for us?

You sit there and have the gall to ask me why I've gotten so defensive about this. Why am I reacting like this? Because our mother is DEAD. She died, her body riddled with cancer, in a shithole nursing home with me holding her hand to my lips and our brother sitting at the foot of the bed. Where were you?

Where were you when our brother and I got the news that the mass in her small intestines was a malignant tumour and it had ruptured? Where were you when she was told that if she didn't get a second round of chemo in the next handful of months, she'd be dead before the year was out? Where were you when she shit herself in the car on the way home from the oncologist's because of the chemotherapy? Where were you when she puked up everything she'd finally been able to force herself to eat? Where were you when she cried in the middle of the night because she was so scared? Where were you during the countless blood tests, PET scans and surgeries? Where were you when she realized she was never going to walk again? Where were you when she realized she was never coming home?

The woman who gave the three of us life is gone forever and you have nothing but bad things to say about her? Count yourself lucky that I only raised my voice slightly above speaking level and said 'walk it off, you fucking nancy'. Be thankful that all I did was go into a rant about how none of us are victims. Be fucking glad, eldest brother of mine, that I didn't break an ashtray over your thankless skull.

You tell me that I'm a carbon copy of her?
I'm proud of it.

I'd rather be a strong, hard-headed, selfish woman who's made too many mistakes than a piss-and-moaning, self-righteous, sour old man who can't see the forest for the 'could have' and 'should have' regets that he continually conjures up. I can only hope that you eventually pull your head out of your ass because I don't want your children winding up holding hatred and disdain for you.

Despite how angry you make me, I don't hate you. I used to, but not anymore. I've moved on from that.

That moving on thing? I suggest you try it. It's amazing how one's mind clears when one doesn't walk around with so much regret and bitterness in their heart.

Your sister,
tara

(no subject)

Animal updates.

Nympho seems to be doing ok. He's home, with a partially shaved leg and instructions to lower his insulin to one unit twice a day (it used to be two units) and to carefully monitor his eating. He'll be going back to the vet's office on the 7th for a glucose curve, to see how well he's taking the change.

Aleister is still hanging in there, to my amazement. Today, I decided to give her a bath because she was getting soaked in her own urine, so I took her out of the little travel cage I put her in to keep her away from her sister, who was pulling all her hair out in a fantastic feat of over-grooming. She laid in my hand and didn't protest the water, but she did lick droplets of it off my fingers and bruxed at me as I dried her off. She eats the food I bring her and drinks from the bottle when it's close enough to her face (I try to keep it as close as possible and even hold the bottle for her when I think she's not strong enough to drink from it). If she doesn't go this week, I think I may drive her to the vet's to be put down, despite how it hurts me to think of it. She still doesn't seem to be in any pain, but this is just going on for too long.

I came downstairs today to feed all the animals and check on everyone (I'd been up in the Engineer's apartment). When I went to feed the boy rats, I noticed Major Tom lying in the bottom of the cage and breathing very shallowly. It didn't look as if much of the food I'd given him and Simon the night before had been touched, maybe a Simon-portion was gone. When I took Tom out of the cage to look him over, he'd quietly in my hands and didn't struggle to get to my shoulder, as he always did. He gasped for breath and just laid there. At first, I thought he may have been choking because he can be a glutton and shovels too much food into his mouth at too quick a rate. It's happened before. I took the appropriate measures for a choking rat, but nothing seemed to help. I held him for a while, scratching behind his ears and talking softly to him. Decided that I wanted to sit on the couch with him for a while, maybe see if he'd feel better in a little bit, so I put him back in the cage and went to get a towel to hold him in, for warmth. When I came back to the cage, Simon was dancing around him frantically and as I opened the cage to take Tom back out, he took his last breath.

I'm still kind of shock over the whole thing, I really wasn't expecting this. Last week, I'd brought home a new rat for the boy's cage because I knew that Major Tom was getting old and wasn't going to be around forever and Simon was going to need a new cagemate. I thought that now was as good of time as any to introduce a new boy, so I brought home a little hooded boy that was born in August. Named him Renfield and set him up in the little cage until he got big enough to swing with the fat rats. I knew Tom was probably not going to last too many months next year because some of his littermates had already died, his father died this year, and his mother was on her way out. I just didn't think that it would happen so soon.

I suspect that whatever killed him was the same thing that killed Senor Diablo. It came quick and painless, without this horrible wasting away like their mother, Aleister, is going through.

The Engineer and I took him (and Edgar, who still had not been buried) to my father's house today for burying. We stood outside the fence in the sun and the Engineer struggled to dig around several enormous roots deep in the ground. I kneeled down in the loose soil, took off my gloves and placed him gently in the ground with Edgar right after him.

It hurts, but I haven't quite reacted yet.

Renfield, the new rat, is a joy to behold. He's just a tiny little man right now, but has enormous feet and a personality that shines. He frog hops all over his cage and climbs the bars when he knows it's time to eat. Hopefully, he'll being Simon out of his sadness that Tom is gone. Currently, Simon is buried underneath the dishtowel I have tied to the upper level of the cage and refuses to come out. He sticks his nose out from under the edge of it and glares at me for a few moments, then retreats. My poor boy, he looks so sad.