still life with idiots

Fuck. I have been trying to keep it together but of course, today, my mother frustrated me so much that I lost it and ended up yelling and now she is sulking in the kitchen, yes, sulking. Because I “used exasperation” in my tone in dealing with a stupid conversation. She is like a dog with a bone. She gets in there and really gets her teeth into a subject of acute stupidity and won’t let it go.

In this case, the turning point of the case rested on the idea that she needed exacting directions to drive to a certain pharmacy to pick up a prescription I did not ask her to refill. The driving directions, and this is in the days of gps, amounted to “take the exit, then turn left on the next street, which is clearly marked.”

She turned it into such a clusterfuck of idiocy, like, but what lane will I need to be in??? that I finally lost my shit and started sobbing and she was all, well, you’re using exasperation on me and I have trouble navigating your unfrozen cave man roads, so you should be kinder to me.

That she has been to this pharmacy before made no difference. That she can navigate these roads all day long if she’s going to the healing rooms, is of no consequence. I used exasperation, and I think we can all see that that is the major crime, here. My evil failure to acknowledge her intermittently crippling Traffic Anxiety.

And so I am back to my drugs, and she is sulking in the next room because look how much she has done for me and I don’t appreciate it.

Here is the ovoid face today:

You want to see what cancer looks like? It looks like that. A stupid argument and a lot of rage and since I can’t get up and grovel in the next room, some frosty silence until She decides to forgive me.

Trust me, this is the ugliest side of the disease, when politeness has been smashed into bits and the real feelings come through. And it is inevitable that they do. And I hate every second of it. Every motherfucking second.