I have way too much shit going on right now. Bleh. I mean, it's not all bad, but there's just so much of it. I'm feeling very weighed down by all of it.

Took my parents to a doctor's appointment for my mom on Friday that took 2 fucking hours. Crazy. And while we were waiting, my stepdad felt like it was a good time to drop a huge bombshell on me. Didn't I say that I knew there were a bunch of family secrets that no one wanted to tell me but that I was cool with not knowing? NOT KNOWING. It's big, so big. Shocking and yet at the same time, not really. I haven't even talked to Brian about it yet. I don't know what to do with it either. Tell the rest of the family? My brothers have a right to know too. See what I mean? Too much shit.

And yeah, I really needed to hear that my dad abused my mom when they were married. I like the way he called him "her first husband" instead of saying that it was my dad. I can't decide if my stepdad just needed to tell someone else these things or if he's punishing me because he's pissed that my mom is going to visit her mom next week without him. His choice, totally, but I'm the one who made all the arrangements for her to go so maybe this is his way of getting back at me for it. I don't know.

What I do know is that I'm tired. It's been an insane weekend and I'm starting to crack under the strain of it. On the positive side, I did talk to Casey today. It was so healing and uplifting to hear her voice and laugh. She's having a great time and she's bringing home a manual typewriter. She decided before she left that she wanted to get one. She wants to be a writer, pretty cool to write stories on an old typewriter I think.

I spent hours cleaning up her room today. Literally, hours. She's such a little pack rat and hates to throw anything away, including gum and candy wrappers and water bottles apparently. It's tradition for me to clean her room out while she's gone. It was nice though, because so many of the things in her room just really fit her perfectly. It made me feel like she wasn't really that far away. She has about forty of those colored metal bangles that she wears all the time and she stores them around a bottle of bubbles, it's so perfectly Casey. Bracelets wrapped around bubbles. I love it.