Comes a Time When You Just Have To Say-Fuck This Shit-I’m Done!

When I moved back to Missouri in the Summer of ’85, I tried to reconcile with the Kids’ dad-we were divorced and looking back I don’t think I really TRIED as much as it was a way to get out of Texas before I killed myself with some of the best drugs in the world. But that’s another story.

After about 6 weeks, I knew it wasn’t going to work because his behavior had gotten much worse. The only thing that had changed was me. Mom and Dad came to Columbia and moved me back to Rolla, into one of their apartments that wasn’t rent-able. I think I’ve touched on that apartment, and I will never forget the feeling of complete bliss, sitting in the living room while it was raining and I had wastebaskets and pots and bowls everywhere because of all the leaks and being happier than I can remember in a long time.

We lived there for about 6 months when Dad decided that I should apply for HUD housing and that way the government to pay for a house for him. So he bought a house at Rolla Gardens. The only problem was the house wouldn’t pass HUD inspection and the repairs necessary to bring it up to code were massive. At that time my parents decided that they would just charge me $200/mo for rent.

After another 6 months(Yes, I averaged a move every 6 months for the first 2 years I was back in Rolla-just ask Gary Burns and John Ledgerwood. Two of my best friends who were always there to help me move and I will love them forever.) My mother thought it would be a good decision to start having an affair with Mike McClothern. He was an employee at their service station. I worked with him quite often and he was super creepy, Go Georgia. This apparently went on for several weeks or months? Hell I don’t know and I really don’t want to know the details. Giant EEEWWW factor here. I would have been just fine NEVER knowing about it. Georgia got caught when she met Creepy Mike at Little Prairie Lake and when she got out of her car, she knocked the deposit bag out. That was her story anyway. Not too sure that CM didn’t have something to do with it. Since she was an expert at Robbing Peter to pay Paul and now was missing over a thousand dollars that was needed to cover checks she had already written, she was forced to come clean and all hell broke loose in a relationship that was not happy to begin with.

It started with CM getting fired and Mother trying to use me as her confidant-which I shut down real quick and made it plain that I thought she was the one in the wrong and I didn’t want to hear about how miserable she was , blah, blah, blah.

Then I got the pleasure of my slobbering drunk Dad coming over every night to my house and standing in my front yard crying and having total pity party’s for himself. I hate dealing with drunks unless I was on an even playing field and I DREADED going to work at Dishman’s Interstate Mobil.

Friends of Dad’s (Bill and Denna Walker) thought they would try to cheer Dad up by taking him shopping at the factory outlet in St. Robert. He bought a new outfit for himself and a pair of jeans for me. Mother was furious and took them out of my paycheck. I was making minimum wage and trying to raise two children without child support and now I have to pay 1/4 of my check for a pair of jeans I didn’t ask for. Great.

Mother decided that she would just move into Rolla Gardens, so she evicted me and two of her grandchildren without batting an eye. But moved us (or Gary and/orJohn moved us) into another apartment building that was un-rentable.

She took all of the furniture from the house on E Highway and for two weeks she and Brother Ron lived in the house I had been evicted out of. Then she and dad decided that in a divorce the attorneys end up with all of the money so she moved back to E Highway.

Now lets bring it forward 40 years. Yes. 40 years.

Dad is in horrible health-His own fault for not listening to doctors for he past 20 years, and a heavy dose of Karma

I have spent years in self reflection and therapy dealing with my family in general and slowly have weeded them out of my life. I don’t LIKE them. You can’t pick your relatives but you don’t have to have them in your life. I have only kept in touch with my parents because after not calling or talking to them for months, I feel guilty and break down and call. Because you know-they’re my parents.

I received another call from mother that that was on his way back to the hospital. This is at least a weekly occurrence. Sometimes two or three times a week. Pretty sure a lot of it is because they are hoarders and live in a house that is full of trash and most likely black mold. I refuse to go out there, it is dark and scary and full of rats and snakes. Jesus Christ. In any case dad has C-diff, again. They diagnosed and treated him but then they sent him home. Two days later he fell and broke his wrist and arm and again they sent him home. The next day his oxygen bottomed out and back to the hospital. After a couple of days the moved him to a residential care facility. At this point he started calling me constantly. 6-7 times a day. I tried to talk to him at least once a day. It was always the same thing. They were mistreating him, they took his call button, cell phone and tv remote away from him. He wasn’t telling me what a total ass he was being to them, but then he didn’t have to. I know him.

I was playing the game up until a week ago, Saturday. I was listening to him and he was on his usual rant and then he said, “Well, I still trust you even after what you did.” I said, “Excuse me? What did I supposedly do?” “You sided with your Mother” “What in the hell are you talking about?” “You know. When you mother had the affair with McClothern and you took her out dancing.” “Are you FUCKING kidding me? You do realize that Stephanie was in kindergarten, and she turns 40 next week? And for the record, I did not take her out dancing.” “Well, your Mother said you did-you went to the Pub Mobile”

At this point it all came flooding back. How as a 26 year old, I resented being put in the middle then and as a 61 year old, I resent it even more.

“I went to the pub mobile with friends and I did not TAKE mother, she may have shown up, I honestly don’t remember because that was the night I built not one but TWO pyramids out of shot glasses, do you even know how many shot glasses it takes to build a pyramid? I couldn’t even crawl, I got slung over someones shoulder, driven home and unceremoniously dumped in my living room floor, where I woke up the next afternoon. I will not be held accountable for the actions of a grown woman and you are not putting me in the middle of your toxic relationship.” I hung up and called mother, and told her the exact same thing. Except I added, “I have had enough-FUCK this SHIT-I am DONE”.

She called a few days later and I rejected the call. She left a voicemail, which always sounds like she is holding a conversation with someone. She wanted to let me know that Dad was coming home-umm don’t care.
D-O-N-E

Michael told me that he has listened to the stories I tell but when I told him that I really don’t think I’m going back to Missouri for any funerals of my immediate family. He would always shake his head and tell me I would regret it. But after listening to these conversations, he could honestly say that he wouldn’t blame me. Good to know. I had always told him that he could go, and stand around with the surviving parents and/or siblings and their spouses. I also like to remind him of the last time I attended a family gathering where everyone made a point of ignoring me and making me feel like an outsider. Thank GOD, Allah, Buddah, Mother Earth-I am ecstatic not to be associated with any of them.