XXVII? I think I've been writing these chapters for years now, so are 27 too many or not enough? Sometimes I think I should express myself more bc that's what this is—or at least that's what this is supposed to be—but other times I think I only complain here—which is also true, tbh.
Anyway, there are some things that I wanna get off my chest. Mostly 2 that had happened in the last few days—the last one like an hour ago.
The first one started last October. I was doing some cardio on the treadmill and I guess I was over doing it bc I ended up hurting my hip. Now, tbh I don't really know what happened, I just felt like the bone attached to my hip was a little loose or wasn't attached correctly anymore. If I tried to run again I'd eventually feel the bone going a little bit outta place and the attaching itself again. There was no pain, though. I could walk normally; the problem just came when I tried to run.
I then went to a "chiropractor" that my family recommended—I don't know what he actually studied tho. He told me to lay face down on the massage table. He then gently grabbed my heels, put them together and started touching his thumbs, like he was counting something. At the time I was worried about my injury. That guy—let's call him ######—put my feet together to show the that they weren't aligned, one was a little bit lower than the other, but he didn't seem worried about it. He used a thing to supposedly relax my spine, it was like a machine that he used to knocked repeatedly at each bone of my spine. Most times were ok, but it kinda hurt when he did it at my lower back. Then he put some electrodes all over my back that released a little bit of electricity at some interval for like 10 minutes.
And that was it. I went back to the gym a couple days later and started running pretty slowly. After a few days feeling fine, I turned up the speed just a notch, and I kept doing that for the next few weeks. I was getting better, but sometimes I felt a little uneasy in that area, like sometimes I'd feel like the slightest pain in the hip for particularly no reason. Also I still felt that bone get loose when I started going faster than I should have. I started to doubt if that treatment worked at all.
But time passed by and I stopped thinking about it and everything went back to normal for a few months. I didn't end up jogging at the speed I used to bc it was so fast I needed to grab the handles all the time to keep the rhythm. tho. I decided to get used to jogging without grabbing the handles—you know, to jog like you're supposed to—and obviously there was a part of me that didn't like that I couldn't run as fast as before, but I knew at that time I was simply overdoing it.
Time passed by, and last march I went to the gym and picked one of the new treadmills, the only ones available at the moment. I didn't like to use those bc I had noticed that even though I picked the same speed, inclination and time I'd end up way more tired when I used those ones. Idk why. And it's not like one used miles and the other one kilometers. I didn't feel like one was going faster than the other, they both felt the same when I used them. But I'd always get tired faster in the new ones. And that's why I'd always jog a little bit slower in those ones.
Anyway, I used one of the new and bc I'm a stubborn piece of shit I decided to jog at the exact same speed as I do with the old ones.
You know where this is going right?
I overdid it again, but this time I didn't feel the bone getting loose again, I just felt that unease on my hip, but I also started feeling a ticking in different parts of my back at random times and I started hurting the side of my left foot. It was like something in my spine moved and that affected all my body, like a jenga tower that gets all wobbly after you take out one piece.
I went back with ##### and he did exactly the same thing, but now he basically told me my back was pretty fucked up—basically I was pretty close to have scoliosis—and it was all emotional. Now that I think about it, he didn't say anything about emotions the first time, he just did his thing with the electrodes, and that was that.
He also told me to come back in a month to check how much I've gotten better.
A week or two passed by and one Saturday my dad told me my grandpa and my uncle had a huge fight. Now, that was not unusual, unfortunately, but I guess I have to tell you all the story.
Some years ago, my grandma was diagnosed with dementia. She knew that disease would affect her more and more and sooner or later she wouldn't be legally able to manage her money and properties and everything she had—idk if it's the same in other countries. So she gave her youngest son, her favorite one a document where she let him manage everything she had. No restrictions.
She trusted him that much.
And that was her worst mistake.
At first it was fine, he hired nurses to take care of her, he started building a little room where she didn't need to use stairs—which he'll probably never finish—but he started spending more and more time in the businesses he was starting at the time. Before that he was living with her bc he didn't have anywhere else to go, he didn't even have money to pay rent and stuff, but suddenly he started investing lots of money in different businesses, he bought a car, he took some of his mom's properties, and just when the document his mom gave him was about to expire, he and my aunt, decided to basically ignore my grandma's will and distribute all her properties even before she died.
They obviously took most of it.
But that wasn't the end of the story. My uncle had way more money than he needed, and idk if it happened bc of it or he just showed his true face, but he started to antagonize absolutely everyone around him: friends, girlfriends, associates, workers—even someone he was allegedly a criminal who threat to kill him, but I don't know if that story's actually true—and my grandpa. Now, the relationship between those 2 was never the best. I guess my uncle wanted my grandpa to praise his as my grandma did, but that never happened; my grandpa never seemed to like him maybe bc my grandma idealized him as this virtuous savant and always help him financially in all his projects and businesses, even though all of them failed miserably—I think the one that failed the fastest was a churro stand that only lasted like a week.
So, maybe after my uncle took everything he wanted from his mom's, he decided to get his dad's stuff too. At the time, my grandpa was struggling with something regarding his properties—idk what that was—and my uncle offered to help him, but he needed to sing a document that would allow him to fix that problem.
He trusted him, and that was the worst mistake he could make.
That document gave my uncle the power to manage my grandpa's properties and stuff.
My grandpa then asked my brother—who's a lawyer—to help him cancel that document. He started the process, and my uncle got so mad that they had that huge fight I've told you before.
I absolutely hate to hear stuff about my family bc it's the most stupid shit for the most stupid reasons, and that stresses the fuck outta me. It's like my dad and my uncles love conflict so much they are just looking for excuses to lose their shit and argue with someone.
Everything they bring is conflict, every time my dad tells me the news about them is like this.
My uncle didn't need to scam my grandpa, he didn't need his stuff, and also what else did he expect? He was taking his stuff, he was gonna do something about it.
Man, my uncle's so privileged that he needs to create his own problems out of thin air. He could just enjoy his money and his life but no, he needs to fuck around and find out. That's basically his life in a nutshell—and tbh the same goes for all his siblings.
(Yeah, I know I'm also a little bit like that, but I'm trying to stop it. I mean, am I? I'm still not going to therapy and I'm just making excuses about it. Knowing the problem doesn't solve the problem. But more on that later.)
Anyway, I got so stressed for that bs that I couldn't sleep that night and noticed that my back problems got way worse. I felt more pain in more parts of my back and hips at random times, and even though I tried jogging slower than before my knees just started to hurt. That hadn't happened before, but now it did. It disappeared when I stopped jogging but still that wasn't supposed to happen. I then googled my symptoms and it said it maybe had to do with me wearing sneakers that weren't made for running. I knew that couldn't explain everything that was happening to me, but I thought this made a little bit of sense. I never had an injury or anything when I was using running shoes. When the last ones started breaking apart, I decided to use some old sneakers my dad gave me like a decade ago—and were not made for running—just bc I didn't want to buy some new ones. So I thought that using the right shoes would at least solve this new knee problem and maybe help me a little bit with everything else.
Tbh idk if I was right bc I bought some running shoes last week, but I decided to stop using the treadmill for now and use the elliptical instead to let my knees rest a bit, and it's been fine so far.
Anyway, I said something happened in the last few days, and all of this has just being context, so let's go a little forward. Yesterday, I went back with #####. Remember he told me to come back in a month? Well, that's what I did. I told him about my knees and asked if the running shoes could help with that. He just said something like "Yeah, maybe. Anyway. Why don't you try just walking instead".
He didn't know or care.
What he did was exactly the same thing as in the last sessions: touching my heels, that counting thing, that machine through my spine and the electrodes. But now he didn't say anything about my spine, he told me both my heart and my lungs have considerable emotional damage. Yes, emotional damage. Like that meme. Not physical, emotional. First, I tried to make sense of it. I have hypertension, so my heart is not at 100%, but I've been taking care of myself so that I normally don't need to take anything to control my blood pressure, and when I do it's bc my pressure's a little higher than usual but now something to worry about.
But the lungs' part took me by surprise. I've never had any problems related to those. I've done cardio 5 days a week for more than a decade, and I've been perfectly fine in that regard. But I remembered a long time ago, when I got sick and went to the doctor, he told me I had a deviated nasal septum, meaning one sinus was partially blocked, so I couldn't breathe that well from that one, and he could solve that with a simple surgery. At the time I didn't think anything about it bc I've never had any breathing problems.
So I asked them if this sinus thing could be the cause, and he straight up told me "no. It's not a physical problem but an emotional one."
He started doing that counting thing with his thumbs and told me that I had a trauma as a child, around 7, and it was related with death. Apparently, someone close had died at that time and it had affected me a lot. I tried to remember and told him my mom died when I was 10. He immediately dismissed it—it seems that my mom's death was not important for me. I then remembered my brother's classmate had died around that time—but now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I was 6 at the time and not 7. He told me that was it and, after doing that counting thing again, that represented around 55% of the trauma I've been dealing with—don't ask me how he got that number.
Now, I barely knew that kid, and I remember that at the time I thought that, yeah, his death was pretty sad, but that's about it. My life was about the same afterward.
(Now that I remember, my great grandpa died when I was little. I don't remember when exactly, but I've only seen him a couple times, when all the family gathered. When I saw him in the coffin, I got teary eyes, but that was about it. I barely knew him.)
(If someone's death had affected me greatly is my mom's, but what would I know?)
##### recommended me to write about that kid's passing to get over it and heal—which I intend to do here later; I mean, I have nothing to lose, and I'll also do that with my great grandpa and my mom—and also showed me some page of a book where it said something about emotional damage in the lungs. The book was called something like "Metaphysical interpretations to diseases and ailments" and it basically said that bc lungs are related to air, breathing and therefore life, an emotional damage in the lungs meant dissatisfaction with life, life being hard to deal with or trauma about death.
He then recommended me to go to therapy—fair—bc the emotional state of my lungs was a 2/10, and my heart a 1/10. He also said it surprised him that I was so damaged at my age and, bc all of it was emotional, he could do little to help me.
That time my sister came along and was in the waiting room. I went out and, bc #####'s office is pretty small, she could hear everything he told me. She said everything was probably bs, which I kinda knew since the beginning, especially when ##### told me something different in each session.
But I've been thinking about what he told me last time. It didn't make sense that my lungs and heart were at 2 and 1/10 respectively; that would mean my sadness is on a critical level, like I was dealing with clinical depression, dealing with self-harming thought, or even had tried to kill myself, which isn't true at all. I'm pretty good rn. I should go to therapy to deal with all the things I haven't resolved yet, but I'm still functional, and I'm trying to be more positive and to relax more, to look at things on the bright side.
There are people who can't get out of bed bc they just don't see the reason to do so, they don't enjoy life anymore, or they suffer so much they just want everything to end, and ##### telling me I feel the same sadness than them is absurd, is disrespectful for them.
And if I'm as damaged as he said, the recommendation of maybe starting therapy sounds extremely mild, don't you think? Shouldn't it be something like "you need to go to a psychiatrist asap? You need medication" or something like that?
Anyway, for the rest of the day not only did I doubt all his diagnostics, but I started questioning his knowledge. What was that touching-the-heels diagnosis? What type of alternative medicine—bc I'm pretty sure they don't teach you that in medical school—was that? I searched online but couldn't find a definite answer. The closest thing I could find was that it could be a mix of traditional Chinese medicine with kinesthesia or something like that. Also, to no surprise, I found out that you needed tests and studies to give any on the diagnosis he gave me. No doctor can tell you your back or inner organs are all fucked without looking at an x-ray at least.
But not everything about him was negative. I googled that electrode treatment, and that seemed to be quite effective in easing the pain and helping heal the muscle. So not everything he said and did was bs, it seems.
At the end of the day, I don't think he's a scammer—his sessions were way cheaper than the regular chiropractor's and he never asked me for more money or tried to make me go back. He even told me that he couldn't really help me with my stuff. His knowledge may be a little bit based on bs, but he had good intentions. He told me to try walking instead of jogging bc he thinks my lungs are so fucked up jogging would just damage them even more. He tried to give me the best advice he could with his knowledge.
I won't go back with ##### tho. If I'm still dealing with back problems, I'll go with a chiropractor like I should have since the beginning.
Now that I think about it, when I went to the first session I was a little worried bc I thought maybe I had injured my hip badly, and when ##### told me it wasn't a big deal, I relaxed, and maybe that helped me feel a little better. I say that bc last time he told me my back was fucked up, and my back kept hurting a little bit at random times. And now, when he told me my heart and lungs are fucked, the back pain practically stopped—only to come back almost every time I realize my back's not hurting anymore—but I started feeling out of breath when I go up the stairs or something, like my lungs started to fail right after he told me my lungs were fucked, and my back's miraculously fixed bc he told me it wasn't a problem anymore.
Anyway, the second thing I talked about in the beginning of this chapter has to do with my grandpa. I haven't written all this in one sitting, so now that happened yesterday and it kept going throughout the day.
Yesterday morning, while I was running some errands, I was thinking about writing all of the ##### stuff. When I came back, I parked in my grandpa's office as usual. He was extremely agitated, he was talking to someone from his bank and he asked me to give him my number in case he went to the hospital or died. Everything shocked me for obvious reasons. Despite being 86 at the time, he has always been this extroverted, full-with-energy type of guy, joking around and such. He has been so healthy that I've always thought that sooner or later he would just fade abruptly instead of throughout the years.
After my grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she started changing overtime. She still remembers all of us, but now she barely has energy to do anything, and she has become more like a little girl, liking toys are cute stuff. That has happened over 6 years.
My grandpa hasn't really changed in all the years I've known him. He still talks and moves and talks like when he was 60. It's like a miracle that I know can't last forever.
So, the moment I saw him like that, saying he was gonna die, I thought "it's happening right now. This is the beginning of the end."
He went to the hospital hours later.
I visited him in the afternoon, and he was back like he used to. He had a panic attack, and the doctors told us that he needed to live in a stress-free environment. He has been living in my grandma's house—well, now is my aunt's bc she took it when she and my uncle distributed all my grandma's properties bc in her will she didn't give them as much as they wanted, so they just ignored it and took all they wanted even when she's still alive—and my uncle kinda still lives there, and he always argue with my grandpa when he has the chance.
My grandpa is so convinced that my uncle would end up killing him eventually that the last days before his panic attack, he locked his door with a chair so my uncle wouldn't kill him while asleep.
Now, to be honest, my grandpa was diagnosed with anxiety and delusions of persecution, so we don't think my uncle's gonna kill him. But he's a narcissistic asshole who can't control his emotions, so he would sooner or later end up assaulting him.
In that house, my grandpa also had the responsibility of taking care of my grandma every night and on Sundays. When my uncle received that document that gave him the power to administrate all my grandma's belongings, he was supposed to use them to take care of her, pay her taxes and all that stuff, but he barely did that, he just hired a nurse to take care of my grandma during the day from Monday to Saturday and paid most of her taxes.
Mediocrity has always been a constant in his life.
Well, he has hired a bunch of nurses throughout the years bc he always fired them for one reason or another—like I already said, any relationship he has made throughout his life ends up in conflict.
At first, my grandpa wanted to move to a house he bought like 20 years ago and lived there for a while, but he gave it to my aunt like a year ago, and she wanted him to pay her rent.
I think that's fucked up, specially when my aunt got divorced like 30 years ago, and my grandpa has always helped her financially to take her of her daughter. He has helped both so much they had never worked a single day in her life.
They are so privileged that they don't even put gas to their cars—one of my grandpa's workers has to do that for them every single time.
As I said before, when my aunt and my uncle basically emptied my grandma's pockets she got shit a ton of properties and all the rent money they're making every single month. She doesn't need that money she wants my grandpa to pay, especially when she's so cheap that she basically doesn't leave her house and spends all her life scrolling through Facebook and binging Netflix.
She has lived like that for decades.
When the pandemic came, her life didn't change at all and hadn't changed in six years and counting.
The fun part is that she has always wanted to be this basic rich girl that travels all the time and is always shopping in Prada, Gucci and brands like that, and she could do it with all the money she's earning, but she just doesn't bc it's expensive.
So, she'll probably spend the rest of her life at home.
And my cousin—her daughter—probably will too; they have this codependent relationship where my aunt will never let my cousin move out and start her own life—kinda like Rapunzel and her adoptive mom that had her locked in a tower.
Now my grandpa's still in the hospital but he's pretty well rn and the doctors are only trying to identify some weird rash he has in his skin, but it doesn't seem to affect his health.
He's gonna move in with us, and we're gonna make our best to make him feel at home, but all of this had made me think about death. When I saw him that agitated, I realized that his death—let's hope it happens in a very distant future—would be a huge impact for me, and I don't really know how to handle death. ##### wasn't that off in that regard. I haven't gotten over my mom's death, and that happened 25 years ago.
So I wanted to write this chapter to give some closure or at least try to.
And I don't know what to say. After pages and pages of me complaining about these last few months, I have nothing to say.
It's funny bc sometimes when I'm surrounded by people, I start thinking about sad stuff, like a really emotive short story I want to start writing after this, or a sad song, or my mom, and I just want to cry at that moment, but I end un repressing myself.
And when I'm alone at night and I'm like "hey, this is a perfect moment to let that out and cry. To cry sometimes is not a bad thing" I just can't or is way harder to me to cry. I start thinking about what I was thinking before, in that crowded space, but I just don't feel anything at that moment. I need to play some really sad scenes from a couple series that I know I always cry to. And sometimes, when I think about doing this, I just feel too tired for that. It's like my mind is teasing me, letting me cry only when it knows I won't.
I'm just so used to repress myself I can't help it.
I just don't know what to say. I'm sorry? Mom, I need to move on? Mom, I have to accept that even though I miss you I need to move on with my life? I hate the idea that I see you as an infinite source of pain, like your absence is a wound that will never heal. I just wanna remember you as you were, a loving mom that did the best for us, that helped me out to understand math when I was struggling with it, that sometimes put these cassettes filled with English lessons when she was taking us anywhere on her car, or created these moments when we took turns to tell the rest a short story we made on the spot—she even made up a story about the triforce when we asked her to even though she didn't have any idea of what that meant.
Maybe I feel guilty that I don't visit you. I don't know exactly where your ashes are, in which crypt.
I say that I miss you so much but don't seem to care.
I hate that I get teary eyes, but I just can't cry. My body instantly swallows them with all my sadness.
It's like my body loves this pain so much it just eats it, it doesn't even make me feel it, it just slurps it down and lets it rot inside of me.
It's like I constantly deserve to suffer, and I don't know how to fix that.
Try to be more positive, remember the good times. You would probably hate to see me still suffering.
Maybe I didn't study psychology bc deep down my mind knew that it'd give me at least some knowledge of how to deal with all of this.
I think my body's just trying to protect me from the pain, and that's why I have a hard time being in relationships. I hurt people before they hurt me.
But I need to understand that that pain is valid, that it's ok to feel pain, but not to keep it.
But this goes from even before that, when I decided to repress all my pain.
Pain is not a nuisance, pain is normal. I must accept it.
Mom, I love you and I miss you, but it seems I'm stuck.
How could I be the only one still struggling on that? How bad am I to handle my emotions that I'm still here?
It's funny that I said my uncle can't control his emotions when I only shove them down my throat.
I need to accept them.
It's ok to feel pain, it's ok to feel heartbroken, it's ok to cry.
Maybe pain is all that I have left of her, maybe if I release that pain, I'll forget about her. Or maybe I just don't visit her bc I don't wanna feel more pain. I'm running away from her.
Idk but it's a cycle that has to stop.
Thank you, mom, for all the time you were with me. I was so lucky to have you, and maybe you loved me more than anybody else had, and that's ok.
It's not a competition.
It's just that I feel so happy that you got to be my mom. I'll never forget you.
I hope you knew how much I love you and how important you were for me.
I'm just so thankful for that.
Maybe it was brief, but it made a huge impact on me. Maybe I became a writer thanks to you, thanks to all those storytelling sessions.
I wish I was more open at that time. I never told you much I love you in all those years, and that's my biggest regret.
And thank you.
Thank you for being my mom.
I love you and always will.
Maybe I should go visit you, to talk to you, to bring better closure.
I can't do it all in just one day.
But I think today I made a bit of progress.