Mid-Life

And I have to admit that I am miserable.  I have been handed so much, but done nothing with the gifts I've been given.  I don't know.  The house on Birch Street was pretty fucked up.  I know that the whole addiction thing runs down the line.  Each of us passes it on like the air we breathe.  I don't want to end up like my uncle Joe.  But what do you do? My mother was a horrible alcoholic for years, and was scarier than any boogie man in any movie to me, but then she cleaned herself up.  She held the family together.  So where does the anger go?  In a real sense, the person I'm mad at/afraid of isn't around anymore.  Instead, as you get older, you realize that this person was dealing with her own demons and did the best she could.  And she did a pretty good job.  I know that any bullshit is on me; she has done more than I really should ever have asked. But why did she have to be so mean?  My mother is all smiles to anyone outside of family, but within, she is pretty much a cunt.  Ouch.  That hurts to say.  But it is true. She has a strength, which held us together, I will warrant, but she was evil about how she did it.  She never expected to have to work: that was the way things were back in the day.  And as the economy changed, and she had to work, and be the one to pay the bills, she got BITTER. Now, to me, a functional family works this out; how do we deal with this, how do we pay the bills, etc. In a dysfunctional family, Mom gets super mad that she has to work: I think that she had the idea that my father, with his degree, would be her Knight in shining armor. He was very tall, very handsome,and he was the smartest man anybody had ever met.  But guess what?  Being a historian for the government doesn't pay all that well, no matter how smart you are, and when you are Irish, not 20 or 30 years after the "No Irish Need Apply" signs went away, you have all the fixings of tragedy.