Hard

I am just so angry lately. Everything pisses me off.

I am living in my mother's house. She has never actually said, my house, my rules, and if asked would certainly deny it; still, living here is living her life, not mine.

But I can't just leave. Even if I had the money (which I don't, no way right now) she's 82 and I'm stuck. Yesterday when I asked her when she planned on going food shopping (she doesn't like me to do it, I think, because I actually bring home food) she said Friday, and that until then there was bread and water just like in prison. She said it like it was a joke.

The other day I was in the supermarket, buying fruit and honey for a spell. I scrounged my quarters and dimes and came up with an even $10.00. That's not a lot; so when there I weighed everything carefully and didn't buy very many of anything; I even opened up one of those huge bags of cherries and took half or so out to put in another bag (they sell them by the pound so I figured it was all right, but I was worried). I also got a single fig and a single apricot.

I got to the checkout and the girl didn't blink about the cherries; and I found I had calculated correctly and the total came to $9.22.

Except I hadn't counted correctly at the start. I had nine dollars even, not ten. And so I found myself 22¢ short. So there I was asking if I could put a few cherries back...

When the older guy behind me asked how much I needed. Twenty-two cents, I told him. He gave me a dollar. Then the guy behind him said, oh, he had it if I needed it, then something about how we all needed to look out for each other. I took the first guy's dollar and paid. He wouldn't take the change back. In fact, he leaned over and picked up a dime from the floor and gave that to me, too.

Two days ago I went into the local pharmacy to pick up a prescription for my mother. But when I got there they had no idea about it. I had been in a day or two earlier and they hadn't seen it then; they'd (and I'd) assumed it had simply not gone through yet. This time the woman asked if I was sure. I said, yeah, unless my mother is lying. She laughed, and I said, well it's entirely possible she picked it up but forgot; it wouldn't be the first time.

A little later Bob the pharmacist took over and went looking on the computer and checking the date sheet; and it turned out they had gotten it but not filled it for some reason. He said he was sorry and that it would only take him a couple minutes. Which was all fine and is just how it works at a pharmacy and I wasn't in a hurry anyway.

When he finished he brought it up to the counter himself to have me sign for it. Now Bob the pharmacist is an older guy who (from what I've seen) is never in a bad mood, though his sense of humor is pretty sick. I rather like him, and he seems like he'd been a really good boss to have--laid back, not easily annoyed, with an attitude that it's all good; yet kinda twisted, which I can definitely appreciate. So anyway he brought it up to the counter.

Now, maybe it was the fact that I was also getting a box of tampons and a chocolate bar, or maybe it was the talk about my mother possibly having forgotten that she'd already picked up the pills, but for some reason then Bob looked me straight in the eye and said that he thought my mother was doing a lot better. That a year ago she had seemed confused, and had just answered questions in monosyllables, but that now she was a lot more alert and communicative. I was completely baffled. I didn't think she was any different, really, and she's not got any (age-related) problems with her brain as far as I know--she doesn't have Alzheimer's or dementia or anything. So I was thrown. I mean, lately, it's true, she's come out of her shell a bit--a couple weeks ago she had an opening for her paintings (and she sold quite a few of them) and she's got more of a social life than I have, which I find very surprising; maybe that was what he meant?

And I don't know why, except that it caught me off-guard, but then I said something about my father, and that compared to him I guess I wouldn't notice anything about my mother, since he's had a stroke and all. And Bob asked if he lived at home. No, I said, thank God, he's in a nursing home. We couldn't do all that.

And then Bob said that even so it was hard on my mother, very hard. And then he looked me straight in the eye again and said, "And hard on the child, too."

When I got home it all struck me as strange. All I could think was that the Universe is concerned about me for some reason. And it felt very foreboding, very ominous--like, what does the Universe know that I don't? What is heading towards me?

Maybe that's just the depression talking, I don't know, some way my relentlessly negative brain has to turn strangers' kindnesses into something terrible. I don't know.

But it's making me nervous.