The more time I am stuck at prae the more I am convinced about Midas nan Garlond being trans

It occurs to me that I have friends here that I don't have contact with in other spheres, so ... life update: my mother passed away unexpectedly last Friday. I'm doing as well as one would expect. Been going through her things as both a walk down memory lane and a goodbye. I keep coming across things she never got around to using, and it hits hard that now, she'll never have the chance. And I can't stop thinking of the stories we watched together that now she won't know the ending to, or shows I wanted to try with her. And then there's all the things we used to do together on the regular -- all the places I can never go with her to again. And all the places we wanted to go to "someday", but now she never will.

We were two weeks out from our second COVID shots, and 4 weeks from being totally vaccinated. We were finally going to get back to EPCOT, to see the Flower and Garden show. Finally going to get back to the Florida Mall. Going out to lunch. That I won't be doing this things with her anymore ... it's unfathomable. I can't wrap my head around it.

Thanks, anti-mask / anti-vaccine Covidiots, for prolonging the presence of this pandemic -- basically stealing the last year of my mother's life. She was anxious to see her elderly mother again, because we don't know how long *she* has left ... and now she never go to see her mother again. I knew losing my mom would happen someday, but my mother was relatively young yet, so I thought it would be a while ....

It doesn't help that she died after the second night on a new bed. See, she slept on her side all the time, what with the couch being narrow, but with a twin mattress, the bed was much wider. She snored a lot -- I highly suspect she had sleep apnea. When I found her the next morning, she was on her BACK. The doctor agreed that her cardiac arrest could have been caused by sleep apnea. In trying to make my mom more comfortable .... Yeah, I know, it's not my fault, but I cannot shake that thought away, that she's not here anymore because we tried to do something nice for her. How cruel the humour of the universe can be.

(I'd put the rest of this behind a cut, but I don't see that option anymore? Sorry!!)

And it REALLY doesn't help that, not only have I lost the person I was closest to, but now I am stuck alone with the person I least want to be with: my dad. I'm pretty liberal, and he's pretty conservative. We fight a LOT. We haven't really since mom died (things got a little tense here and there, but not like we usually are) ... but I know it won't last. It can't -- not when he believes BLM are terrorists, or that gays have an agenda. And now he keeps wanting to do things with me, like watch my shows, and a petulant part of me is like, no, this is mom's territory -- stay out. I don't want to do anything with him. (Especially since I know he'll start ranting once the shows start talking about racism and homophobia.)

My parents always had a volatile relationship. Mom didn't know you could get pregnant the first time, and when she found out she was pregnant, her Catholic family bullied her into marrying him.* And he cheated on her at LEAST once (with a girl who was only a few years older than me at the time -- I was 15, she was 19, he was 33). My mother was far from perfect, so I don't blame all the marital problems on him. But my point is they were married "in name only" for about the last 25 years, so it's ... offensive to me now that he would dare to act bereaved.

I know he can be hella manipulative, make himself seem generous so as to be loved, and then turn on you like a viper, getting irrationally angry. I can't drive, we live in a very rural area with no public trans, there are no friends or fam less than an hour away, I've had next to no job for the last 17 years, I barely feel like a functional human being (am coming to seriously suspect I have ADHD and Dyscalculia; I have diabetes and suspect have PCOS and a thyroid problem; all these things having strong interconnections; and I have no insurance, nor do I qualify for aid, thanks to living in Florida), and I feel utterly trapped. There's a reason Rapunzel is my fave princess. I've had bad experiences with cabs, so using Uber / Lyft kind of terrifies me. Plus, he'd want to know where I'm going, and likely either insist on coming too, or insist I can't go, because his house, his money, his rules. The ONLY time each year I get away is when I go to Dragon Con (and I'm worried he might forbid that in the future -- he has once before).

And then there's the problem of ... he has no one. As much as I can't stand him, he lost his job because of COVID, he's lost his wife, he has no real friends (total homebody), and like it or not, he has supported me financially for so long. Even if someone else were to take me in, or I can get a job and save to leave ... how can I leave him (a person with severe rheumatoid arthritis / in not-great health)? I owe him too damn much, and I feel like it would be entirely callous of me. Yes, I realise that that's the abuse talking, but ... it's also true?

Anyway, I feel like I'm on Sliders, and keep stepping into progressively worse timelines.

* Let me mention that I have long suspected my mother is -- was -- on the autism spectrum, but when I mentioned it to one of her sisters, the sister seemed skeptical, saying that if anything, mom had a penchant for reading out loud, so they thought maybe she had a reading disability, and took her to a specialist, but "that's it". (Mom was in "remedial" classes through high school, so it doesn't sound like they did enough -- and maybe couldn't because the science just wasn't there.) I explained that mom frequently seemed to have trouble grasping concepts, especially humour. Like when a radio ad featured someone reciting a love-letter to a tomato, she was all, "That's stupid -- tomatoes can't read!" Try as I might, I could not get her to understand that the love letter was a playful way to tell US about what makes the tomato so good.)

Anyway, when I talked to my grandmother recently, she said that my mom "always had a special way of looking at things," and that she guessed mom was "what do they call it -- neuro-something? 'Aspie'? High-functioning, but still." And I told my cousin about it, and he said, "Wait, I thought it was common knowledge in our family that your mom was autistic?" (Note: we have other, officially diagnosed family members who are on different areas of the spectrum.) People always commented when I was growing up that it was like my mom's role and mine was reversed -- like I was the parent, and she was the child.

But to think my family had *recognised* that something was up, and left me, a child, to deal with it on my own?? To think they *pressured* someone who was "special" into having a child?

I know my mom loved me, but my whole life, she said she wished I'd never been born, and so she'd never have married my dad -- I know both can be true, that she loved me but wished she'd never had me (she'd have never known what she was missing). She only survived her marriage because I was there; I've always felt she'd have had a better life if she hadn't married him. When she tried to leave him, her mother would not take her in, because divorce was against her mother's Catholic beliefs (never mind that my uncle divorced twice)

I loved my mother, but were fought a lot, and she frequently exasperated me as we struggled to communicate. She frequently left words out, but did not believe that she did; when we met her last PCP the first time, he looked at me and said, "Is she always like this, or is she having a stroke?" And she would always angrily proclaim that I wasn't listening, when most of the time, it's that I couldn't get her to understand that she was working from a misconception or misunderstanding in the first place, because she would focus on ONE THING, to the exclusion of all else.

An example of an exchange (copied from a letter I wrote to a friend): We got into a weird argument yesterday. She had asked me for pain reliever, a glass of tap water (you're supposed to drink a full glass of water with the pills), and a "cold water" from the fridge (it's too cold to drink it all at once, but we both prefer ice water in general). Later, I was picking stuff up from her table-tray, including a bottle of pain reliever, and put a bunch of stuff away. When I passed by again, she asked for more cold water. I happened to look as see that she had the tap water glass still full, even though she had asked tor it half an hour before. I asked if I needed to bring the pain pill bottle back, because she hadn't drunk the tap water yet -- had I taken the pill bottle too soon, or had she forgotten to drink the water? She was all, "no, I said I need COLD water!" I said I knew that, and I would bring it; I was just asking of she had taken her pills already, or if I needed to bring the pill bottle back too. Her (again): "I said I need COLD WATER!" Me: "I know, and I will bring that -- I just want to know why you haven't drunk the tap water yet? Did you take your pills?" Her: "No, I'll take them at bed!" Me: "So I should bring back the pill bottle? Did I put it away too early?" Her: "YOU DON'T LISTEN! I SAID I NEED COLD WATER!" Me: "And I said I will bring that -- I'm just asking if you also need your pain pills?" Her: "You already took the bottle!! Did you forget that already?"

And then I finally spotted the white pain pills on the napkin under the tap-water glass, so I knew that no, I didn't need to bring it. But it's a frequent struggle to figure out how to phrase questions so I get the answer I need -- nearly every time, I get her screaming at me that I don't listen.

She loved me, but she was never mothering. She hated to be touched, so never hugged me; I was pretty touch-starved. I learned to read because she was a very slow reader when reading me stories; I got impatient and learned to do it for myself. She couldn't help me with my homework. She resented having to take me to school recitals and science fairs. She wasn't someone I could get advice from. I admit I was often envious of characters who had physically-loving, compassionate, wise mother-figures (who weren't so binary about morality -- and so weren't always screaming that this or that character should die, no matter how small the transgression).

But I wish she were still here to frustrate me -- that's so much better than not having her at all. And I wish I had been better at keeping my temper.

She was an atheist, and firm in that belief. Maybe she's right, or maybe her firm belief is affecting me, because I would dream frequently about others I have loved and lost, and swear I feel them, but with her ... nothing. Just a gaping hole in the fabric of my waking life, threatening to suck all the light and hope into it.