I made it through another major hurdle... or should I say hurdles (plural)? First of all, the move into the condo is largely a done deal, although there are still a few things to do, but the bulk of it is done now and I only have a few boxes left unopened.
I went into this move walking with a walker and by the time I was ready to actually make the move into the new place my back was well enough to let me lift boxes with virtually (as far as I know at least) no retributions. PTL! (that's Praise the Lord!) But, of course, I couldn't get by without having at least some kind of health issue or the other reminding me of my frailty, so about the time my back was on the mend, I started getting a headache... which I have to this day... a 4+ month long headache. And it's the strangest headache I've ever had. It's rather a moderate headache (although if I stopped the prescription pain medicine now I might not call it moderate), but even when the pain is more or less under control I can still have blurry vision and/or balance problems, which makes it difficult to walk much. I've also found that this headache has been more of a trigger to fibromyalgia than any other condition I've had since I've had fibromyalgia. So there's the extra urgency to keep the headaches at bay so as not to aggravate my fibromyalgia too.
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Anyway, the other issue is making it through the holidays after the death of mom. I'd planned to send out Christmas cards, and even ordered some, but it just didn't work out because of everything going on regarding the condo and my limited energy levels. Maybe being distracted by the condo activities was a blessing in disguise to not let me get to focused on mom and the family. Nevertheless, I did make the usual Christmas phone calls, maybe a couple more than usual, and this year I think I ended out having some longer conversations, especially around family topics. It was good for me to learn more things about the family, and I hope it was good on the other end too for those I was talking with, but it was difficult too in some ways and I learned some rather upsetting things in some cases.
Anyone who's had to deal with suicide knows of some of the difficult aspects of it. And in the case of my mom there was also most certainly some elder abuse (verbal & emotional at least), and gender discrimination issues going on. Mom's gone but the other family issues remain, and I don't think they're going away any too soon either. So I'm the next logical target of abuse, although one brother has children, including a handicapped son, who are also prime targets. But, I, being an adult, can opt out of this set up, although not without cost to me. I'm opting out by deciding that I don't want either of my brothers to take care of me when I get old. So, as one aunt so pertinently asked, who then will take care of me? I don't know, but not them. I'd actually rather have no one take care of me than have someone who is super controlling and uses physical force (my youngest brother) or someone who is very angry take care of me (my other brother).
I've opened all the boxes of inheritance things now and I didn't find the steak knives or the pysanka (singular for pysanky - Ukrainian Easter egg) from my great grandmother, so I suspect this was not an accidental oversight, since that brother is so meticulous. Each of us was supposed to get one of the eggs and I was supposed to get the steak knives to go with the rest of the knife set since that brother got both the china and silver. But, as my financial advisor put it, my brother just didn't want me to have anything, including a pysanka, it seems.
It looks like there's a pretty good consensus that among my relatives back home that my brother with the two boys is very controlling but I don't think everyone knew about my other brother's anger. My aunt there was surprised when I told her, but two of her kids have witnessed it first hand since mom's death now. I guess some in that family even think my dad might have abused mom. I'm not sure about that, but I guess there's evidence that the last few years there may have been some of this. My other aunt told me a story that sort of corroborated this too, but I would not have thought this before.
I have no idea how I can ever regain anything like a normal relationship with my brothers for some of the reasons already discussed but also because of gender issues and how I was so left out of the family when I could have made a difference in mom's welfare but they didn't really care about that evidently. Mom thanked me more than once for helping with dad but I think she didn't think I was doing anything to help her. I was behind the scenes sometimes making calls to ask people to check on her and/or keep an eye out to see if there was any verbal/emotional abuse going on, but I didn't want to have to go through my brothers to help her and she wouldn't do anything to facilitate that and I wasn't going to go through my brothers so there wasn't much possibility for me to help under those conditions. I was basically relegated to a symbolic role of cheerleader or friend or the like. Of course, my brother(s) would protest that this was not just a symbolic role at all, but very important. Basically, they were relegating me to a stereotypical female role.
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Other than that, my neighbors at the new place are a whole new book-worthy saga. I've been advised to get a lawyer to write a formal grievance letter to the board against the neighbor below me who is also a board member. They have no objection to me making all kinds of noise any time of day or night in the kitchen, but they get all bent out of shape by the use of a wrench in the construction of an antigravity chair. Let's just say that my juicer is about as loud as an electric drill and a wrench is about as loud as a toaster, maybe. So why do they call the security guard over the wrench but not the juicer? My hunch is sexism, but I'll let the lawyer figure out the best approach to this. The last complaint they had was regarding me putting glass shelves in a cabinet and then washing the glass windows of the cabinet! I'll let you guess how loud that might have been. The guard says the nieghbors could call the police and I've offered to call the police for them because I think the police would laugh in their face at the stupidity of their complaints. Oh, and let me provide some more context. I wear slippers at home, don't listen to music, have the computer set on mute by default and only recently just got my TV set up and hardly watch it at all. I'm what you might call a quiet neighbor, except for the occasional use of a wrench, that is. (?!) Oh, please, how come all the idiots in the world seem to find me?
Then there's the neighbor to the right who was walking into my condo unannounced before I moved in when the painters were working here until they realized what was going on. The condo manager had to call him and ask him to stop, but not before the neighbor asked if he could have one of the vanity tops! I'll stop there. I have a feeling this neighbor is one of the people that voted in the neighbor below me to the board.
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I've been thinking about the progression of this blog and how missions would just love to somehow wriggle their way out of how they treated me so horribly and how their whole set up was so political. If I proceed as planned they'll most likely try to mainly excuse themselves by saying that I'm just crazy, but if I skip the Vienna years (and come back to them later) and go instead to my pre-Russia period they'll get all hyped up about how awful, horrible and absolutely un-American those Soviets/Russians were... which will effectively take the pressure off themselves and justify their own malfeasance based on political reasoning (at least that's how they'll think). But then if I take the latter route, by the time I come back to the Vienna years, I think it would be more difficult to just disregard out of hand my claims because of all the things that happen after Vienna.
It's late now, though, and I should get going.
