Rush

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_%28biology%29

Close to the city as we were, my family were natural experts in the dramatic arts, seeking out occasions that best displayed those skills to an audience up close and personal. To this day, my mom still stages tense little dramas to give color to her day by using anyone available to her to indulge her weird whims. Lately, she's become a little too glittery and shiny in the eyes over me standing by her kitchen sink, which is one of the great joys of her life. She calls the mundane chore of washing the same pots and pans over and over again as "playing with the dishes", and in order to safeguard her treasure trove of washables for later on when she's alone to savor it gloriously, she monitors me moving around her small apartment-style kitchenette while I do something as banal as making her a cup of tea. Sometimes, she'll complain that I move "too quickly", which is her special top- secret kooky code for "I can't hypervigilantly follow your movements so as to draw freaky vibes from your handling of my precious dishes (she hoards paper in times of stress, too), so I will find some way to demean/abuse/harass you while you are in my area of keen interest."

Oh. So, I'm not your biological girl-child that you pushed out during childbirth, right? And that's actually the reality behind it. In the middle of my mom's worst head-case scenarios, I can be anyone who is blocking her road to success by "incorrectly" moving a pair of "her" glasses out of my way on "her" countertop. If I've learned anything from shows like "Hoarders" and "Taboo: Obejctum Sexuals", it's that people with compulsive obsessive addictive personality identity disorders over-personalize objects to such an extant that they exalt them far above over actual lifeforms as a priority in their lives, which is inherently incorrect in modern Homosapien. It's like this mad, sickening, crazy tilt-a-whirl of a ride that the afflicted can't get disembark from, covert as my mom's expert stylings have become over the years.

Like most seriously sick people, my mom has had to reorient her "fetishes" (her word for it, not mine, because I simply see dishes in a sink, not a soapy fairy tail of fun that's a portal to a mythical magical Neverland) in between the noticing of healthy sharp observers like myself, which is exactly why she abuses me (and anyone else) who encroaches upon "her" territories overmuch, like a rabid weasel protecting its young. She's turned boring household chores into quick conduits for biologically addictive chemical payoffs for her benefit only, like a junkie becomes an adept thief at stealing away in the middle of the night to shoot up in lots of creative ways that you and I would never think about, even during our most feverishly delusional states.

The other night, I saw an episode of "Law and Order: SVU" that totally blew my mind in its' accounts of dementia. While the detectives worked a murder case about a neurotic young woman pressed by her evil boss overmuch (they were "besties" at work!), who turned to the cold comforts of alcohol consumption and promiscuous sex over say, consulting a good doctor and getting a better job (locked as she was in a highly tense and very stressful lesbo push-and-pull with her crazy, short-haired boss over pressing deadlines that are such a rush in the workplace, if only you put off everything until the last minute), the medical examiner told them this handy little bon mot about drunks: that their victim hadn't been sexually abused by a stalking rapist. No, it was much fucking weirder than that. She used a wine bottle to push the booze directly up her butt to absorb its intoxicating elixir, which has the added bonus of keeping one's breath fresh, too. Neat, huh?

The resident M.E. went on to further explain other covert methods of alcohol addiction, like the ever-useful "Vodka Tampon" that some nifty co-eds like to use: simply soak aforementioned tampon in a glass of booze before hitting class, insert it, then go go go! I was like, what the fuck, people?! It's so fucking convoluted and weird, you should know that's why those girls wind up on a slab in their 20s and 30s; not because I forgot the key combination of event sequences for their maximum enjoyment, like the types of sponges I HAVE TO use at my mom's place (one sponge is for the dishes, and the other one is just for the countertops and they MUST BE disinfected in the microwave periodically because germs kill just like in that scifi show about zombies you got me hooked on and now I HAVE TO watch it and buy the books and all the paraphernalia and its all your fault because you're here and why are you here, no wait, it makes sense you HAVE TO let me explain it all to you in overwrought detail!), because I must be the reason that my mom does laundry and "plays" with her sink full of dishes every night until three or four in the morning. She just gets a mysterious jolt of energy at those times before the lethargy sets in every "morning" at noon, when she finally wakes up after 3 or 4 cups of black sugared coffee!

Just like any type of foreign criminal mindset that's completely batshit, it's not so much that my mom has cleverly hid her illnesses from me (hiding in plain sight as they are), it's just that it's so petty and strange to normal people like me that we could care less, and that's the point of it: if you hide your false enjoyment over common activities, you can get high from the tension that exists only in your stupid mind, because the person in "your" area doesn't know that you wiped your finger over your butthole in the bathroom, exited, then wiped your grody pinkie finger over said hated person's objects ("they" shouldn't be there anyway!), so only you know how bad it is when "they" dare to pick up "your" butt pen. It's sort of like being around that crazy bitch from a typical bunny boiler horror movie who sticks a toothbrush up her butt because that prettier roommate just has to go (tusually me in a staged role that only she knows about, teeheehee), especially if she's straight and there are "too many" handsome boys hanging around all the time, because she's just "too pretty, you know?"

Therefore, we must die, or at least get sick from your urine in the company coffeepot, because we also dared to live and breathe and not notice your crazy, or the highs you get from that huge bottle of mouthwash in the company bathroom, you fucked up, overgrown sorority girl, because deep-down you know we just don't fucking care about your weirdo routines, unless you make them an instrument of horror, devastation, and abuse. Then, after you've set the stage with your powerfully totemic "special" objects, you can kill me off or at the very least get my mom to snap out because you moved something around of hers that you know will cause a meltdown, Bernadette, you fucking bitch of a cave troll. No more "high life" from this clan, starting today. Go huff plastic from a bargain store elsewhere, hag. We get it. We know! And we can totally see all those invisible germs crawling over your skin, and the aliens are coming to take you away with those anal probes that they do because....the truth is out there. Love, X.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_%281996_film%29

Grand

http://www.equalvoiceforfamilies.org/if-you-love-somebody-grandparents-raising-kids/?gclid=CM3xoaOL5skCFc2RHwodBloIYg

Like every family out there in the real world, mine also struggle with mental illness, alcoholism, drug addiction, learning impairments, developmental disabilities, age, abuse, neglect, and sometimes extreme ethnic prejudices. My father's sister Marilyn was so challenged that she spawned (and then abandoned) two families, back-to-back. First was my cousin Brian, born to an Italian-American man I've never met, and then summarily dropped off at my paternal grandparents' door, without ever getting a "thank you" or one single, decent paycheck to cover his expenses, I'm sure. And why would she have done that, when she was proud to show off her white vinyl Go-Go boots instead of her own son, tucked away as they were under his bed in my grandparent's Queens apartment?

No, she was proud rather of being deemed "good looking" enough back in the day to dance for men for money, thus creating a generation of orphans we've yet to shake in this century. My "Grandpa Fred" made good money from his cab-driving by then (as the proud, hard-working owner of a medallion, an amazingly incredible feat given his poor, immigrant, Depression-Era roots), and so my cousin at least had my grandmother and him, a solid roof over his head, and my grandpa's really good food in his tummy, even though it still wasn't enough to conquer his drug addiction in the future.

I'm just glad that they were able to provide for him for a time, enough to be considered a real family, especially since my step-grandfather and grandmother never had kids of their own. What a blessing in disguise it must have been for them as an older couple! As bad as my father's family is with their notorious "disappearing acts", I'm extraordinarily proud of them and their loving giving to Brian, alone in the world without a father and mother as he was. At least he had them, and at least he has us. That's a lot more than many of our most beleaguered children around the world (and around the way) have.

We need to support our elders and grandparents who decide to adopt their children's children, whether from infirmity or neglect, as a way to stem the bleeding our sacred family's have been suffering under; this weight that we all need to bear as equally as we can. Thank you to my man Ernie Anastos (geez, stay positive, will ya?) and the wonderfully gentle Kathy Gibson for highlighting her parenting support platform for those grandparents who can adopt, so that all of our children may thrive to great success in the future. We need every hand we can take for this battle that we're in. Thank you! This one's for you today, fighting the good fight every single day you get 'em fed, dressed, and out the door to school. You're not alone anymore. We're here.

http://stfrancispantries.org/community-programs/back-to-school-picnic-2014.html

http://www.stfrancispantries.org/community-programs/back-to-school-picnic-2015.html

http://stfrancispantries.org/community-programs/mothers-day-luncheon-2014.html 

For the rest of you, you need to do this NOW. That means tech support for those elders in your community who have school-age children using computers and smartphones and tablets and laptops (standard in most school districts nowadays), free backpacks at the beginning of each and every school year that they have enrolled children, plus free pantries for food and toiletries. Ever look at a Social Security check? Yeah, make that work. Ladies, I know you feel me on this one.

The Nest

Students are human beings, too. When I was in college, I often attended class hungry, or sick, or both, because I have disordered parents who sometimes struggle to understand food, clothing, and shelter as it applies to other people, even the very small ones who would have died if it wasn't for our naturally high abilities for adaptation and survival. I had to tell my father that I needed new shoes as a toddler (before my vocal chords were fully formed) by retrieving an old pair from my room and clapping them in front of his knees as he looked down at my scowling face, because he wanted to mock me for my childish inability to speak that I didn't control. It was that hard to breakthrough to them during their more seriously disordered states.

My dad liked to say that he didn't have real parents or role models, but that isn't true. My grandfather died from cirrhosis, but he was also a war hero. My grandmother lived with my step-grandfather, and before my father was married, he lived with them. In fact, my father has never lived on his own. He went from his mama's house to the Navy to his first marriage, and then right into his second one, though they lived together for years prior to that marriage. And when my single grandma was tight on cash (she worked most of her life as a nurse's aide), my father had his uncle in Brooklyn who gave him work through his successful grocery store, providing healthy fresh food for the entire extended family during their times of need.

After my grandmother met my grandfather (and he was that, because even if he wasn't my biological one, he certainly could have been as an Italian-American man), they lived off his great earnings as a cabbie, and he after he bought his own medallion (meaning everything he earned through his fares, he kept), they never really had to worry about money again. Boohoo, right? Same thing with my mother. My maternal grandparents paid for my mom's fancy, private, all-girls Catholic school AND college AND her wedding AND whatever else a young couple needed to establish themselves in residency, with young children in tow. My mom went from her parent's place to her marriage, and after my father left, me and my brothers took care of her (just like we do now), because my mom has never earned enough to support anyone other than herself, and we chip in with that, too.

In fact, I have never had the full support of my parents, a difference that was often made up by my grandparents and their successes, because my maternal grandparents moved up here to Rockland from the city soon after we did, making sure that those times when my mom forgot to pick me up from school (after waiting for an hour or so), I could call my grandfather to pick me up because he was successfully retired from ConEd, and my grandmother never drove, just like many city women of her time and age. Without that support system, I was told by more than one expert that me and my brothers would be dead, and I know that's true because my brothers had the exact same responses to their severe lapses in maturity and responsibility.

But what could my grandparents really do? They could adopt us, but my sick youngest aunt had to live with them full-time, disabled as she is. And then what? How could we all live off of one pension? Besides, we were brilliant and they knew it, so just like them with their disordered parents during "The Great Depression", we went to work. 
I have never attended school without working a job (or two or three or four), first with my child's worker permit obtained through the principal at Chestnut Grove Elementary (my older bros told me what to do, where to go, and how to get it), so I could earn with my brothers on their paper routes, and then at age 15 I officially went to work through my mother's signed consent at the Nanuet McDonald's. All of my work history is on public record through our national Social Security agency.

And so here we are. Unlike my parents, I earned all my way through, with or without them. At my S.U.N.Y.  school, I worked and took out a parental loan for my mother to make up the difference from the loss of my father's income (I still have the paper work related to that transaction), and I also had T.A.P., a tuition assistance program through the State of New York. While there, I worked as a library aide, and then back here in Rockland at the old Herman's World of Sporting Goods store in the original Nanuet Mall, when I wasn't attending school in Oneonta during the summer like I did one year (so I could transfer to R.I.S.D.), living with my then-boyfriend who took the same required classes. It was the same thing at RISD.

I worked at a pizza parlor, as a darkroom technician, and a teaching assistant in photography. In between those gigs, me and a housemate worked as house painters for faculty who went back to the city, because he and I stayed in Providence to earn extra credits just like I did in New York. In between food from the pizza place, I had to supplement with food from the school's store, which my father and his wife noticed, because they thought books and materials were the same thing as eating food. Same thing with my mom: she didn't know (because she blacks out and has memory-related psychotic episodes) that me and my best friend practically lived off ramen noodles and a hot plate, because we couldn't always afford food from the cafeteria.

It was so bad, some of my friends stole food from the grocery store, and when the worst of us got caught (Dave, you fucking drunk), his parents bailed him out like they always do, because he did it as a lark, while his friend's starved from impoverishment. If Karen and I were short one month, we'd let our friends drink in our dorm room (risking expulsion from campus), so we could return the cans to get food from the one grocery store in town, or, if we were tired and in need of some fun, we'd get pizza and beer from the Black Oak Tavern in town, the same place my boyfriend worked the door when he wasn't working as a doorman in the city over summers, while on break from school.

So, when I saw a school program for a college on Long Island that is a free pantry for students who need to eat and use toiletries (because college students are people, too), it really resonated with me. I have never ever had anyone provide those things for me free of charge.  
Not once. Not ever. G-d bless you!! And kids, you need to replicate this program on every college campus around the world, because hungry kids find it hard to pay attention in class. Trust me, I know that better than anyone. Give. That's the reason for this season, as they say. You need to give to get back in this world. You need to give.

http://nestncc.weebly.com/