A look at my mean side…. yikes
I want to take a moment to look at the dark side of me. My number one pet peeve… people who refuse to take care of themselves, even at the cost of those around them.
I have been mulling these thoughts in my mind again because my dad is currently in the hospital. He is only 64 and has congestive heart failure. He is a little guy, and I always thought he was in good shape. My mom was a nurse, and she is basically a healthy person. But my dad was a wild seed. He wont admit it, but he had many good times at the cost of his health. He is not a drug addict. If he were, he would have been gone long ago, because he doesn’t do anything half way.
A couple years ago my dad almost died in the hospital of congestive heart failure. The doctor said, "that is it, no more drinking and smoking cigars. You need to take your medicine!" Here we are two years later. Dad was good for a while, but then slowly went off the meds and started drinking again. Slowly put himself back in the hospital.
This reminds me of another person who has been very frustrating in my life. That would be my first husband. We met in college. He was a handsome, smart, outgoing baseball player. We dated and got engaged. In order to graduate and get married he took 28 units his last two semesters and gave up baseball his last year. We had been dating a year and were engaged a year before we got married. During our engagement he slowly gained weight. I don’t mean a little weight. He went from 185 to 350 lbs. I am not a shallow person so something like that was not going to stop me from loving him. We got married and within the first few months he was diagnosed with adult onset diabetes at 22…. Now if this were me, I would have gone on a strict diet and brought my life back into control. But he never did. He just kept eating what he wanted and got sicker and sicker….. The sicker he got, the meaner he got… Over the years I got more and more angry with him. I got sick to my stomach every time he covered his plate with ranch dressing, or got a monster size bowl of ice cream covered in fudge topping and whipping cream. The size portion that should feed a family. I got to where I hated food and his love relationship with it. I don’t know of many things harder than watching someone you love slowly kill themselves.
Needless to say, that marriage ended. I didn’t bother him about how he ate. I would never have let him know how discusted I was on the inside with his eating. But as he got sicker and meaner he became abusive. He was angry all the time and unhappy. I have since gotten divorced and remarried to a wonderful man. However, I have three children with my first husband. He is passing on to them his bad eating habits. He is 39 years old and has an insulin pump. Still he bakes brownies and desserts all the time "for the kids". If they are for the kids, why does he eat half the batch in one sitting? Come on….
I am not afraid of dying. But I want to really live. I don’t want to have a hard time walking, or running, or breathing or spending time with people. I don’t understand how people can be content to feel like crap all the time! I hate being around people who complain about how sick they feel, and yada yada yada…. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!! Now if you have no control over how bad you feel, or whatever ailment you have that is understandable. I have sympathy for those people. But when it is your own fault wake up to reality and make a change….Stop slowly killing yourself. Your killing the relationships with people around you in the process…
December 4, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Amen to that sister. My philosophy is "you owe it to your spouse to be as healthy as you can, and to try and look your best" (we all gain some weight and that is fine, but letting oneself go was not in the marriage contract.
December 4, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I bake cookies for my son…..but I eat them because too much sugar is bad for him……….wait…….um…….oh o.
Unfortunately we can’t change people. Sometimes it takes something major to wake people up and even that doesn’t always work.
December 4, 2008 at 3:41 pm
I wrote a blog about this the other day. For me it’s my parents. My father had a noncancerous tumor removed from his lungs and with it about 1/4th his breathing capacity. Yet they both still smoke and eat whatever they want and won’t listen to any of their children. I need to make peace with it.
December 4, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I know how ya feel. My dad - same as yours. 5 by-passes in 1997, type 2 diabetes, overweight. It wasn’t until the fall of 2007 he started getting serious about his health and going to the heart rehab center 2-3x/week. He’s getting better about taking care of himself, but has a way to go. He’ll be 64 in Feb.
They gotta want it. Unfortunately, we can’t want it enough for them to make them change.
December 4, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Thanks for all the encouragement. I do need to find peace with it. I am not a control freak, and I rarely care what other people do. However, I was scared on Tuesday when I thought my dad was going to die. Now I have to live with that thought as I watch him go back to his old ways. It is a road of acceptance.
December 7, 2008 at 8:36 am
I can definitely relate. Seeing my dad eat what he does is just horrifying. I worry that he’s putting himself in an early grave. Unfortunately the person isn’t going to change unless they want it from within.