Rounded Apathy
Longing to return to stardust
- Aug 8, 2022
- 772
Now this one really feels like it ought to be a diary entry...
My grandparents are rather young, and throughout my youth I'd visit and stay with them regularly. They lived under two hours away by Greyhound (when it still served that line). We'd go for thanksgiving, I'd stay for most or all of Christmas break, as well as march break. Both children of the counterculture to some extend, and were pretty "hip", all things considered. I would play a lot of vidya games while there, but we also watched neat movies, walked their dog in nature, and as I got older connected about deeping things like workers' rights, music, existential topics, and so on.
They later bought a fixer upper in the maritimes and lived there half the year, and in my teenage years I started to visit in the summer. A tiny, spread out town rather in the middle of nowhere, with them working their land and doing their own renos on the house. I was becoming more of a fleshed-out human and enjoyed the chance to disengage from city life. My intellectual grandmother and I got on quite well as my mind continued to broaden, and as I aged into my 20s I always enjoyed visiting, as well as the trip all the way out there, often taking a day-train.
Other family members would joke that my grandmother hated everyone except me, and indeed would do things like cook stuff she usually didn't when I was around. I of course only had the evidence of my own experience, which at that point was quite limited. I didn't see them much for several years to due moving to Asia, and after a visit for the first time in three years, when I was still in the early stages of my descent into darkness, really noticed how badly she treated my grandfather. Not in an "obvious, outright abuse" kind of way, but in that insidious, not-far-off kind of way. She even admitted to me on a trip to town that she felt he "lets her get away with it" too much, which I thought was kinda fucked up.
Anyway, I uncomfortably stomached it for the remainder of my visit, wondering whether the change had been in me, her, or perhaps both such that I had never been aware of this before. Well, a year later I went back to stay a while again, and was still not recovered (obviously) from my own issues, and for the first time in my life felt as though I was on the receiving end of this vitriolic behaviour. Granted a hurricane had followed my arrival by a day cutting our power for almost a week, and I got sick right upon arriving, but it was such a shock, and so uncomfortable to feel like an unwelcome guest. I sort of wanted to talk to my grandfather about it all, but had no idea how to get into it; he's a good guy, but has never seemed to have the aptitude for weighty emotional interaction - that kind of thing was more for my grandmother. I didn't know if I would ever want to rely on their hospitality again, it was so unpleasant.
I moved to the opposite coast right after the visit, then pandemic came, etc. etc., so it's been another three years since that visit. I've started to let on to some family about how rock-bottom I am (after the first post-Asia visit I experienced a few significant instances of various kinds of trauma, after which I was offered little to no help from family, or was offered something only to have it be rescinded), and my grandparents have said that if I was in dire enough straits that I needed a place to live, they might be able to arrange something. I'm not, but said it might be nice to visit anyway. Gramps came to visit in the spring but today I had a real-time conversation with grandma for the first time since the last visit. She told me all about how much older she's gotten since my last visit - she has cataracts, needs a hip replacement, has lung trouble, their pension isn't enough to pay for many things anymore, including gas...it was really depressing.
All of this to say, on top of the apprehension I already had about staying with them given the last visit, I feel like it might be just a big fuckin' sob fest, these two people in their seventies whose biological lives are in their twilight hours, and this adult who feels a similar way yet for different reasons. When I was young, physically and mentally well I absolutely loved the visits and their company. Now, despite how excruciatingly isolated I am all the time, I don't know whether I would feel better during a stay, or worse. I've done my best to be honest and open with where I'm at with my pwn physical and mental wellness state/requirements (minus the ctb desire) so there are no surprises - grandma can be rather particular - but I never know if I'm communicating effectively or thoroughly enough. Other people are always a mystery. I know too that it'll be a time limited thing, that before I know it I'll be back in the stupid city I'm in now, the trip behind me...I guess it just seems sad to resign the context of my last visit to being the theoretical final time I go out there to see them before, well, any one of the three of us is gone.
I don't owe them anything but I figure the fewer family members alive when I die, the better. I think my own fear of mortality is likely a factor at play here. I know in the long run, everything returns to the soil whence it came and nothing matters beyond the span of my human life. I just...am already grieving for the irrecoverable, beautiful innocence of the time I used to have with these people, the beauty of the natural landscape there I loved, the fullness of life I can see being leeched away from my grandparents by the ravages of time (despite them being super active and healthy). Like, going will somehow hasten my own death, or whittle away my will to live. Ugh.
Getting too emotional to conclude this properly. If you read it, thanks, and feel free to share whatever.
My grandparents are rather young, and throughout my youth I'd visit and stay with them regularly. They lived under two hours away by Greyhound (when it still served that line). We'd go for thanksgiving, I'd stay for most or all of Christmas break, as well as march break. Both children of the counterculture to some extend, and were pretty "hip", all things considered. I would play a lot of vidya games while there, but we also watched neat movies, walked their dog in nature, and as I got older connected about deeping things like workers' rights, music, existential topics, and so on.
They later bought a fixer upper in the maritimes and lived there half the year, and in my teenage years I started to visit in the summer. A tiny, spread out town rather in the middle of nowhere, with them working their land and doing their own renos on the house. I was becoming more of a fleshed-out human and enjoyed the chance to disengage from city life. My intellectual grandmother and I got on quite well as my mind continued to broaden, and as I aged into my 20s I always enjoyed visiting, as well as the trip all the way out there, often taking a day-train.
Other family members would joke that my grandmother hated everyone except me, and indeed would do things like cook stuff she usually didn't when I was around. I of course only had the evidence of my own experience, which at that point was quite limited. I didn't see them much for several years to due moving to Asia, and after a visit for the first time in three years, when I was still in the early stages of my descent into darkness, really noticed how badly she treated my grandfather. Not in an "obvious, outright abuse" kind of way, but in that insidious, not-far-off kind of way. She even admitted to me on a trip to town that she felt he "lets her get away with it" too much, which I thought was kinda fucked up.
Anyway, I uncomfortably stomached it for the remainder of my visit, wondering whether the change had been in me, her, or perhaps both such that I had never been aware of this before. Well, a year later I went back to stay a while again, and was still not recovered (obviously) from my own issues, and for the first time in my life felt as though I was on the receiving end of this vitriolic behaviour. Granted a hurricane had followed my arrival by a day cutting our power for almost a week, and I got sick right upon arriving, but it was such a shock, and so uncomfortable to feel like an unwelcome guest. I sort of wanted to talk to my grandfather about it all, but had no idea how to get into it; he's a good guy, but has never seemed to have the aptitude for weighty emotional interaction - that kind of thing was more for my grandmother. I didn't know if I would ever want to rely on their hospitality again, it was so unpleasant.
I moved to the opposite coast right after the visit, then pandemic came, etc. etc., so it's been another three years since that visit. I've started to let on to some family about how rock-bottom I am (after the first post-Asia visit I experienced a few significant instances of various kinds of trauma, after which I was offered little to no help from family, or was offered something only to have it be rescinded), and my grandparents have said that if I was in dire enough straits that I needed a place to live, they might be able to arrange something. I'm not, but said it might be nice to visit anyway. Gramps came to visit in the spring but today I had a real-time conversation with grandma for the first time since the last visit. She told me all about how much older she's gotten since my last visit - she has cataracts, needs a hip replacement, has lung trouble, their pension isn't enough to pay for many things anymore, including gas...it was really depressing.
All of this to say, on top of the apprehension I already had about staying with them given the last visit, I feel like it might be just a big fuckin' sob fest, these two people in their seventies whose biological lives are in their twilight hours, and this adult who feels a similar way yet for different reasons. When I was young, physically and mentally well I absolutely loved the visits and their company. Now, despite how excruciatingly isolated I am all the time, I don't know whether I would feel better during a stay, or worse. I've done my best to be honest and open with where I'm at with my pwn physical and mental wellness state/requirements (minus the ctb desire) so there are no surprises - grandma can be rather particular - but I never know if I'm communicating effectively or thoroughly enough. Other people are always a mystery. I know too that it'll be a time limited thing, that before I know it I'll be back in the stupid city I'm in now, the trip behind me...I guess it just seems sad to resign the context of my last visit to being the theoretical final time I go out there to see them before, well, any one of the three of us is gone.
I don't owe them anything but I figure the fewer family members alive when I die, the better. I think my own fear of mortality is likely a factor at play here. I know in the long run, everything returns to the soil whence it came and nothing matters beyond the span of my human life. I just...am already grieving for the irrecoverable, beautiful innocence of the time I used to have with these people, the beauty of the natural landscape there I loved, the fullness of life I can see being leeched away from my grandparents by the ravages of time (despite them being super active and healthy). Like, going will somehow hasten my own death, or whittle away my will to live. Ugh.
Getting too emotional to conclude this properly. If you read it, thanks, and feel free to share whatever.
