Free At Last

WARNING:  This is not a nice blip.  It involves quite a bit of ranting which probably won't say anything very nice about me, but this is -- and has been -- very much a part of my life for the past four years, and so it has earned a place in my journal.  Please don't feel the need to continue reading if you are squeamish or easily disturbed.

For the past four years, we have had my sister (who I've never been close to) living in our guest house.  When she moved here, the guest house was just in the final stages of construction, so she moved into a brand new, fully equipped little jewel box. 

About twenty years ago, she was diagnosed with diabetes.  Since that time she has done everything in her power to ignore medical advice, and to make her already precarious state of health even worse.  Her two favourite phrases being "Why deny myself?" and "I have no self control."

She has never been a responsible person, and never bothered to "waste" money on piddly little things like health insurance.  As an artist, she never had a lot of money, and with her declining health making it at first difficult and eventually impossible to work, she had no means of making a living, and that is why she came to live with us.

I won't go into all the health issues facing her now (all preventable if she had done what the doctors told her to do), but let's just say she is a medical disaster.  For the past four years, she never let an opportunity go by to complain bitterly to us about how much she hated living in Bridgewater, and how she felt as if she were serving a prison sentence.  Let's not forget this "prison sentence" was spent in the lap of luxury, with everything paid for by us.

About six weeks ago, she stepped way over the line with me (after a particularly trying day spent cleaning up all manner of hideous and disgusting messes and catastrophes both in her house and on her person, including my having to clean vomit that had been sprayed all over the interior of my car ...)  By the end of the day, she was at the local emergency room, because she felt "awful".  The hospital did not admit her, and called me to come pick her up.  She was spitting mad, screaming at the doctors, and being incredibly unpleasant and rude to everyone she came in contact with.  She then turned on me, accused me of being "unsupportive", and dismissed me, saying she'd find her own way home.  Things devolved from there to the point where we were no longer speaking to each other. 

Yesterday, I took her mail over to the guest house, and found a note stuck to the front door announcing that she had moved out and gone to live in Texas with a friend!  This disgusting collage shows the state she left our house in.  A large dumpster will be arriving on Monday, and everything will be pitched into it.  Then we will call a cleaning service to sanitize the place before we hire painters who will have to come repaint all the walls.  What a thoughtful "thank you" for the past several years.

In the immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King, all I can say is "Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last."