I purposely missed my last appointment with my psychiatrist. Something happened, I was angry at myself and depressed as a result, and didn’t feel like talking about the incident. So I skipped. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve skipped an appointment because I didn’t want to talk.

My next appointment is Friday, August 13, and I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to talk about what happened by then.

Our appointments have been fairly infrequent this summer. Generally we see each other for seventy to ninety minutes every two weeks, but he’s had some deserved vacation time, plus a couple of conferences. Or something.

So, the last time we were together was July 16, 2010, and we discussed a lot of stuff… most of which had me ready to throw a chair through one of his large windows.

But the beginning of our appointment — this is from memory, and my note taking still sucks, so some of it might be a little off — was spent talking about my new recovery tool… the archives of our local 120-year old newspaper.

The idea was to search through the archives, find out what happened in this region during the Great Depression, write about it on my other blog, put together a larger piece for the newsletter of the local historical society, then offer something to the local paper.

Having a place to go, having a reason to leave my apartment, felt great. Semi-business attire instead of sandals and cargo shorts, interacting with adults. It all comes from my decision to start up my other blog, and to give it a purpose.

Most importantly, it gave me something to think about other than my relationships and the diseases and the mind numbing everyday bullshit I have to think about otherwise.

As a recovery tool I don’t think I could have had someone else plan it out better than this, and it worked for almost three weeks.

Unfortunately it just hasn’t worked for the past two weeks.

Two, almost three weeks ago, the crosswalk lights in the intersection outside my window started to malfunction. For ten days the sound beacon wouldn’t stop it’s electronic tone-deaf beeping. So I couldn’t sleep at night, which meant I was sleeping during the day, or I was exhausted. So no newspaper archives.

Once that got fixed, my girlfriend’s work schedule got messed up, so I ended up taking care of her 4.5-year old son for most of the week. At least it felt like most of the week. So no archives.

But, back at the time of the appointment, it felt like a huge weight had come off my shoulders. Just having something to do, something I could talk to my grandfather about… it felt great, sitting in my psychiatrists office, to have a plan.

And, personally, I think it’s a great plan. Nothing too fancy, no grand goals, just something to do that I’m interested in doing. I just have to actually get it done… which is almost always the problem with most of my plans.

Then we got into the relationship between my son and his older brother. Last week most of this got sorted out, but back during the appointment… my girlfriend’s oldest son is 4.5-years old, and he’s neglected by his father (STBEH). Neglected to the point where it’s really abandonment.

STBEH has visitation rights on Tuesdays, Thursdays and every second weekend — Friday at 4pm until Sunday at 7pm. Over the summer, and on long weekends, the weekends get stretched to Monday at 7pm. As it stands, right at this moment, STBEH has seen his son for four hours over the past four weeks.

On his visits STBEH will drop his son on the couch, turn on the Wii, then disappear into his room where he’ll play online poker for hours at a time. We’ve had phone calls from the kid begging us to come and get him, because his father hasn’t done anything with him all night.

All that to say, the kid is getting really fucked up.

He basically has his most insane outbursts when he realizes he’s going to his fathers, and a few hours — maybe a day — after he gets back.

He’s also starting to take some of his frustrations out on my son. Which has me worried. I caught him, just before my appointment, getting ready to hurt Victor. He had Victor’s arm in his hands and was getting ready to twist it — it was bizarre, he was looking at me and smiling the whole time while, in slow motion, he twisted my sons arm.

I was on the couch, but when I realized what was going on I bolted across the living room, grabbed his hands away from Victor, pointed right between his eyes, and said ‘you do not do that, ever.’ And, once I let him go, he just asked if I’d like to play a game.

So… my worry is, my son has a brother who is going to grow up somewhat broken, and he’ll have a large influence on my son’s life. My bigger worry is I’ll see him hurting my son, and I’ll react badly.

But last week we spent a lot of time together, and it went way better than I thought it ever could. So there’s hope.

My mother, at the time of the appointment, had been pressuring me to allow her to take my son to visit my grandfather at his retirement home. The only problem I had with that was her mother would be around at the same time. I do not want my grandmother to be near my son.

It’s pretty simple. My grandmother is an evil, psychotic bitch who has abused every member of my family, and I want the abuse to end here. My mother, meanwhile, has spent the past five months defending the woman who abused her for sixty years.

Just before my appointment my mother talked to my grandmother about what was going on, and my Granny said she didn’t remember demanding to know why I hadn’t gotten my girlfriend to have an abortion. Or the time she told me my son probably wasn’t even mine.

So, after getting some partial assurances from my grandmother that nothing bad will ever happen again — assurances, but no acknowledgement of the bad shit — my mother asked me to, basically, just get over it.

After all the stories my mother told me when I was a child, of the abuses done to her by her own mother… after all that indoctrination, after all the bullshit my grandmother pulled on my brother and I, after everything she said about my son… fuck that, I wish the old bitch would hurry up and fucking die.

So… it was about here that I wanted to throw the chair through the window.

But something occurred to me in that appointment that I hadn’t thought of before. Twenty-five years ago my grandfather — who does have some coin — went out and bought himself a bunch of really expensive stuff. A new car, a leather jacket and a satellite dish. And my grandmother flipped out.

Because there’s no pension. When my grandfather resigned he took his severance package from 50-years of service, and invested it instead of relying on the pension plan. So without my grandfather, and his money, she’d have to rely entirely on her own nursing pension.

One of the things she said to me during her bizarre interrogation, was someone had overheard me saying I was going to inherit all of my grandfather’s money, so I wouldn’t have to worry about looking after Victor.

…I think the idea of being poor, like she was growing up in Alberta during the Great Depression, is like a giant glass sliver in her brain, and she’s trying to make sure it doesn’t happen if my grandfather dies before she does.

It explains a lot of her psychotic behaviours over the past twenty-five years… like how she made sure my mother always knew there was nothing in the will for her, but just gave 200 acres of land to my uncle.

I don’t know… there’s something there.

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