Mind Sludge

This is not going to be a good day. The new front desk girl at Jethro's work quit. This is the eighth one they've lost this year. It couldn't possibly have had anything to do with his hag of a boss lecturing for hours on why it is so important to put the green paper clips in the blue container and the red paper clips in the purple container. More likely it's just her caliber (as his boss so logically explains to anyone who asks why she has such trouble keeping employees).

Every time I see her, I want to rip every feathered, lacquered strand of hair from her head. And I'd be doing her a favor. You can take the girl out of Jersey.....

Anyway, Jethro is going to be doing the front desk work and seeing patients while she busily talks without ceasing. I'm not sure what I can do to make him feel better. I honestly don't know how he got out of bed this morning.

So I put the question to the Blogosphere. What would make you happy after a helluva day at the office?

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Now on an even more personal note, my mom filed for divorce from Stepdad again. But this time she paid the attorney. I guess she's serious. So this means she's going to be single again. Anyone want to be my daddy?

The thing is, I don't care anymore. I think she's batshit crazy for leaving Stepdad since she is unskilled, uneducated, and Stepdad is a vindictive bastard who will begrudge her every penny of child support, but she is the one who got herself into this mess and she refuses to acknowledge any idiocy on her part. I want to say she's suffered enough, but she really hasn't. I don't think she knows what to do if she's not suffering.

I read somewhere that everyone grieves differently and the length of time one grieves is different to each person. In response to a question on how long the grieving process takes, the answer was "whenever you don't want to grieve anymore."

And this is true. I grieved for years after my dad died. I drank, I wept (usually at the same time), and I suffered. I cut myself off from any true emotional contact with anyone unless it was to commiserate over mutual tragedy. And then I stopped.

There was no grand revelation that my health was on the brink of collapse, or even that Jethro's love was healing my troubled soul. I didn't have an epiphany where I realized that my dad wouldn't want me to suffer so. I'd already known that. And my stubborn mourning was probably as much a form of rebellion as anything else.

I wish there was a nobler way of saying that I simply didn't want to grieve anymore, but there isn't. I might have made a few half-hearted attempts to revive it - it was almost a security blanket by that time - but it was no longer reliable. It aroused no passion or emotion, just pretense. And living on false emotion is no way to live.

I wish I could share all this with my mother, but it wouldn't do any good. She married Stepdad too quickly and never properly mourned my father's death. Besides, adopting someone else's grieving process is like wearing someone else's used underwear. No good can come of it.

So as it turns out, I don't want to help her. At least not right now. I want her to suffer until she no longer wants to suffer anymore. It will only be then that I can help her. Until then, it's wasted effort.

I'm sorry if anyone's died of boredom by now. Sometimes I just need to organize some uninteresting thoughts.