[Prompt: Who do you lean on [or] who leans on you? (NYWC tasha June 2022]
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I’m actively looking for someone to lean on, as my current crutches need a lot of support.
My neighbor, who is my neighbor and almost friend, is an excellent neighbor. Perfect mix of privacy and friendliness, always willing to let the dog out to pee if I’m stuck behind a disabled vehicle in the left lane, and willing to rescue me if I happen to be the disabled vehicle in the left lane. When the storms rage and transformers blow, they’re the first to check in and make sure I’m okay. They start the generator, pull debris blocking my driveway, and bring gasoline when days turn into weeks.
They’re moving.
After 25 years of leaning on them, they’re moving to Florida – why who the fuck knows – but I now desperately seeking a new neighbor.
And my best friend: my voice of reason and sanity so when I call sobbing in the middle of the night – my night, not hers, thank you time zones – she reassures me I’m not crazy, I’m not losing it, that maybe things are not okay now but I’m okay and will be tomorrow.
Or the tomorrow after that.
Or some distant tomorrow in the future.
While I think my life is unraveling – dead relatives and dead dogs, dying sister, jealous of all sickness mom, broken furnace, broken heart – it’s really not. My life is stable and strong.
My friend’s?
Not-so-much, as she plans to be gutted like a large-mouth bass to remove the organs with the potential to kill her before they actually do. Thank you science and BRCA gene, but her life, literally, is falling apart and will be put back together, but in the meantime, I’m in no position to complain about a divorce she saw coming years ago, and I still refuse to accept.
So I got a dog and named her Dr. Melfi, Melfi for short – named after the shrink in the Sopranos because if Melfi could fix Tony, or try to, then perhaps she can fix me. Or try to.
Except Melfi is a puppy and I certainly am not. My old-as-fuck crackhead dog, Lola, looks at me with cataracts that say – what the hell were you thinking bringing that furball of energy into our house at this stage of the game – I can’t help but agree.
What was I thinking – a puppy? Now?
It’s like those wackadoo women who have babies at 50. That means teenagers at 65. They don’t even know what they’re signing up for, and apparently neither did I when I brought home a canine shrink to help heal a broken heart. Thus far, she’s eaten three bras and two remotes, and won’t even sleep in my bed. FFS, that’s what I got her for. The cuddles.
I am desperately seeking someone I can lean on.
My dying sister, she leans on me, a lot, and I’m happy to be leaned on because not for nothing, I’m an expert dying doula, if that were a thing, specializing in terminal cancer. Except she’s not dying, not yet anyway, treading life, not sick enough for me, and I’m not well enough to help her until she’s sick-sick – not this pre-gaming sick. Her demands? Order take out. Wash her dishes. Take out the garbage out. Walk the dog. Get her a coffee and itty bitty egg bites from Dunkin. Clean her car. Do her laundry. She’s driving me insane, barking orders and pulling the cancer card, thinking it’s funny.
I’m not laughing.
Call me selfish, but I won’t have her hospice at my home unless she’s unconscious or intubated.
Gross, I know. But factual.
And while I have this in writing now, I will 100% delete it lest I self-destruct when the request comes in. Because it’s coming.
My little sister, they’re all little to me, but the one right under the dying one is my favorite. We split the mom duties and dying sister duties, and she’s even helping me with the dog dooties (ooh, I said dooty). She’s amazing: half vet, half Dr. Doolittle, but she herself is escaping from a whack relationship, plus tag-teaming as we struggle to care for both our pain-in-the-ass dying sister and pain-in-the-ass-not-dying mom.
And while I need her now more than ever, the last thing this sister needs is me and my pathetic oh-me, oh-my, I’m so sad what am I gonna do now bullshit as my cookie cutter cliché of a marriage disintegrates before my eyes and slips through my fingers. My marriage is like trying to carry an almost alive goldfish to the toilet, the water dripping all over the floor, and the fish, circling the bowl, the dog barking, and me wishing I could go with it.
So I’m desperately seeking someone to lean on, someone without cancer, without BRCA, without their own shitshow partner – without eating my flip-flops and digging holes in my yard.
Something, someone, anything, anyone but without anyone in sight, I’m weeding the garden, walking the dogs, feeding the birds, hitting the gym, and typing the words, leaning on writing groups to get outta my head and onto the page, because, at this point, I need to stop leaning and learn to walk straight and tall, all by myself.
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