Grim

 I don't even know if it's worth it to call it insomnia anymore. It's really just my schedule at this point. I'm up all night again these days. So I've been trying to put my time to good use. Tonight, I woke up a little after 1:00 a.m.  so I had a snack and I painted for awhile and I did a walking workout video on youtube. I took my meds. I wrote in my journal. And now I'm blogging.

Yesterday my mother texted me that one of my cousins, Dee Dee, had been found dead. When my mother texted me, the family were still waiting on the office of the medical investigator to arrive, so she must have died at home. I asked my mother if she had OD'd, but my mother didn't have any other information.

She, my cousin, the dead one, was a rotten person, an addict and a thief. When I was a child, she stole my mother's camera out of a dresser drawer after she asked to use the bathroom and then snuck into my parent's bedroom. With her mother's help, she stole money given to my aunt by her coworkers to help with the cost of my uncle's funeral services. It got to the point where she was not allowed in anyone's home, because she would steal whatever she could. It all likely got sold to buy drugs or was traded for drugs. 

Now that I'm older, I have worked with kids like her. Here's what I can tell you about many of them and about her: She had a shitty childhood with shitty parents. I can tell you that her mother is violent and conniving, a nightmare to deal with. Her stepfather was a creep. I would put money down on his having molested her, though I have heard no talk about it and likely wouldn't have as a child. Kids like her don't usually go off the rails like that unless some adult (sometimes many adults) have done something really heinous to them. 

I was closer for a time to her younger sister Desa (we were about the same age) and when I was in elementary school, I went with her over to her house a few times after school to play. The family lived near the community center in my neighborhood, a short walk from my house. I hated it at their house. It was oppressive and awful. We could only play quietly in her small, dark bedroom and her mother or stepfather would yell at us if we got loud. One day Desa came home from school with me saying that I should ask my mother if I could go over to her house to play.  I walked ahead of Desa into the kitchen where my mother was and mouthed to my mother "SAY NO" and then I asked my mother if I could go over to her house. My mother said no, I couldn't. I don't recall ever going over there again. I've seen Desa at a handful of family functions over the years and she has always struck me as sullen and angry and narcissistic.

There was also a younger brother JoJo who is also an addict. I couldn't tell  you with any certainty if he is alive or dead. I could flip a coin, but I would have to ask my mother to be sure.

My cousins all, over the years, hewed close to their mother who is still in contact with my mother, so I was at the receiving ends of tidbits of information about them. I'm glad I stayed away. It's an awful thing in some ways to say about family, but I'm glad I lost contact with them and that they don't know me at all, don't know where I live or how to get in contact with me. I can't imagine having to deal with any of them now.

I asked my mother via text if there would be a funeral service, and said that if there was, maybe my aunt could go and steal back the money Dee Dee and her mother had stolen at my uncle's funeral. It was a grim joke, but that's all I had. 

Speaking of grim jokes, I started looking online at the job listings at my former workplace. There are five positions open for the same job I was doing when I left. Fully staffed would require about twenty people in that position, so they're a quarter short (and likely covering it with expensive travel agency staff).  I texted one of the supervisors I used to work with and she told me that they had to shut down one of the four units because of short staffing. Ridiculous.

I had also learned through the grapevine that the hospital director was in rehab. She has been through the drug diversion program at least twice apparently, prior to being made hospital director. It's a job with a lot of pressure, but apparently people get addicted to the six figure salary as much as they get addicted to anything. 

Sometimes I miss that job and sometimes not. I had a lot of freedom, but not a lot of support. It was a tough position to be in for a newbie. I did okay, but I never got very comfortable there. 

There are lots of jobs open right now, but with the new Covid variants that are developing, I'm still wary of taking a job with a lot of patient contact. I've been vaccinated, yes, but I still have comorbidities that put me at high risk if I get it. And looking at the kind of long Covid symptoms that people are dealing with makes me even more wary. What we see right now is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the coming health crisis related to Covid. None of it makes me eager to go back into healthcare.