Bloggin' On: Musings for March 9, 2020...Insomnia and Other Not-So-Fun Things
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| Illustration by Erik_Erik via Pixabay |
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Bloggin' On, the blog-within-a-blog section of A Certain Point of View that by design is not devoted to politics or reviews. It's Monday, March 9, 2020, and it's already mid-morning in my corner of Florida. Outside, the temperature in my area is 68℉ (20℃) under mostly cloudy skies. The forecast calls for a high of 76℉ (24℃) and a low of 59℉ (15℃) is expected for tonight.
I'm really tired today. I had a rare but enervating bout of insomnia last night: I was a bit drowsy around 10 or so. but the drowsiness vanished sometime around 11 PM. I watched eight episodes of Star Wars: Resistance back-to-back, thus finishing the second and final season of that Sequel Trilogy era animated series from Lucasfilm Animation. I also read a chapter and a half of Richard B. Frank's Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War - July 1937-May 1942 in an effort to get sleepy. I eventually trudged to bed at 5:20 AM EDT but got up at 7:30 AM.
Why the insomnia attack? I suppose it might be stress over the COVID-19 crisis that's becoming a truly global issue. When I was on my brief vacation late last week at Disney Hollywood Studios and a nearby resort, I didn't see any sick people nor did I observe anyone acting overly worried, but the cleaning staff at the resort could be seen wiping down the handrails on staircases, and on the news, there were reports of new cases of coronavirus in several states, including Washington (State) and New York. At the park itself, I didn't see anyone wearing face masks or sneezing/coughing, but Disney parks are huge, so just because I didn't see anyone with a cold, the flu, or COVID-19, that doesn't necessarily mean squat.
Another stressor: my half-sister celebrates her 70th birthday tomorrow. I feel sad and angry (mostly the latter) that she's so difficult to deal with that we have been at odds for decades now. When Mom was around, we tried to get along for our parent's sake. Once Mom died in the summer of 2015, though, we both dropped any pretense of being civil to each other and are now irrevocably estranged.
Some of my Colombian relatives (who have lived separate lives from Mom, Vicky, and me for over 40 years and thus don't really have all of the facts) chide me for writing "bad stuff" about my half-sister here. They defend her "honor" without knowing the long, sad history of our dysfunctional relationship, and they think I should be fair to Vicky when I write about her.
To that, my response is twofold.
First, my cousins in Colombia have not seen any of us (including my late mother) on a regular basis since 1972. That's the year when Mom and I moved back to the States after a six-year-stay in Bogota. The return to South Florida wasn't planned; it was a consequence of a cerebral hemorrhage that put me in a hospital shortly after my ninth birthday. The pediatricians who treated me were the ones who suggested the move, and Mom acted on that suggestion.
Vicky wanted to stay in Bogota, but because my grandparents and many of my aunts, uncles, and other older relatives didn't think she should live alone in an apartment, they gave her an ultimatum: she could only stay in Colombia if she agreed to live with my grand-aunt Gabriela and abide by the rules of Gaby's house. Vicky agreed, so a few short weeks after I was discharged from Bogota's Hospital Militar, Mom either sold or gave away everything that we could not afford to ship to Miami and we were off on a plane back to the U.S.
Unfortunately, Vicky broke her end of the Grand Bargain, and the family in Bogota sent her to live with us in our new house on SW 10th Street and 102nd Avenue. And since that time 48 years ago, the relationship between us half-siblings has been rocky.
Second, Vicky has made it her mission in life to discredit the two family members who were closest to her: Mom and me. She lies constantly about both of us, or at least, she used to. Mostly about Mom, but she's told some huge whoppers about me, as well. And, frankly, I don't think that is appropriate behavior.
So, yeah. Vicky and I have not celebrated each other's birthday since Mom died. I have people who love me and try their best to make my birthday special; I only hope that Vicky has someone with her to observe her 70th orbit of the Sun tomorrow.
You can only do what you can do. Not everyone will understand or agree, but you have to be honest with yourself.
ReplyDeleteMy best wishes.
All I can say about the toxic relationship between Vicky and me can be encapsulated by an anecdote told to me by our parent long, long ago.
DeleteMany years ago, when V was still a child, she had a tantrum over a doll in the middle of Macy's in New York City. (It was a life-sized doll, very pretty but too expensive for Mom to buy, don't you know...)
After Vicky had calmed down and stopped crying, my mother calmly said, "My child (mijita), you need to learn how to control your temper, or else you will end up all alone when you are older. No one will want to be around you if you continue on this path of 'me me me all the time.' Someday, I'll be gone, and so will your grandparents, your aunts, and your uncles. If you don't learn how to govern your feelings and impulses, your cousins won't want to be around you. You'll never get married or have kids of your own. You'll be alone. Do you really want that?"
I suppose my mother shared this story with me as a child after I'd had a tantrum of my own, otherwise, why would she have? Mom, for the most part, loved both of her kids, but she certainly did not want me to follow in my half-sister's negativity-laced path. So even though she taught me to love and respect my older sibling, she sometimes told me a few stories about how V had behaved as a child (we are, after all, almost exactly 13 years apart) so I would at least try to not do some of the things she had done.
Later, when I was an adult, Mom was more forthcoming about my half-sister's childhood years. Trust me, even at my worst, I was a veritable angel in comparison.