Long time, no write

So, it’s now November. I was ‘released’ from employment back in July; I’ve been on disability ever since. I spend my days bored as shit, feeling like a useless nothing that is contributing nothing to the world. My doctor thinks I won’t be released from disability until Christmas.

So why haven’t I been writing? This blog used to be my almost daily release, my catalyst. I guess I have been so incredibly BLAH that I cant’ bring myself to say I have nothing worthwhile to say. I keep trying to convince myself I’m ready to go back to work, and then I spend 30 minutes standing in a department store while my husband shops for shirts and I feel like I’m going to die. I’m doing the treadmill, the recumbant bike… and I still feel like shit.

I haven’t seen or spoken to my daughter since March. Occasionally I can get her to reply to an email, but usually with attitude and we just aren’t getting anywhere. At this point it looks like there is no way she is graduating High School, and it doesn’t seem like her or her dad think it’s even an issue. It makes me crazy that trying to care and reach and help her seems to only give her ammunition against me. I can’t imagine what she thinks she is going to do with her life.

My marriage is doing great. I don’t know why, but I feel incredibly guilty about that. I feel like my husband should be so angry at me at this point for still being so helpless, but he’s been better than anyone else at understanding what I don’t even understand. I apply for jobs I know I’m not ready for, and I’m crushed when nothing works out. Sometimes I feel like there is no future for me now. That’s a really fucking depressing feeling.

So why haven’t I been writing? I don’t know. I guess that’s just how dead I feel inside. It really sucks.

Well this has been a roaring success. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow. Or the next day. Or maybe I won’t. I guess we’ll see.

…And she’s back again

Hey out there. I know I’ve been gone for a long time again. This time there’s just been so much bad stuff and I’ve been SO depressed I couldn’t muster the energy to even put it all down in words.

So, in a nutshell:

My boss wants me out. She has been riding me since last October (when without a single warning removed me from salary to hourly over attendance I had never been told was a problem) and had been making a bi-weekly to monthly habit of keeping a little list of all the things I do wrong, saving them up until she has a long enough list to pull me into a little ‘You’re a loser’ meeting. Things like not completing a task that was not in my job description that I had asked for training on repeatedly and was not given… Or not updating her on another project where I was able to prove to her she had received the email and lost it. Everytime, I took the criticisms and swore I’d do better, kept a good attitude and told myself I wasn’t being targeted.

Finally, mostly from the stress, anxiety and a grueling schedule that was hard on me physically, one moning BOOM! I threw my back out big time. My husband called my boss and let her know we were going to the ER. I called her later that day under medication and told her I needed to be off my back a certain time. I guess I mixed up the days, because she apparently expected me back a day before I came back. All smiles, so concerned about my health, she says ‘meet with me this afternoon so I can make sure you’re alright’…

We sit down and she goes over FMLA stuff with me, so nice and concerned, wants me to take time off and get better. Like I didn’t see the blank folder in her hand, like I didn’t know what was inside it. I’m so tired of these games.  SO she finishes off with whipping out a written warning and hitting me with that before telling me to go home.

My doctor insisted I go on full time FMLA. I didn’t want to do that, but EVERYBODY insisted they HAD to hold my specific position for me if I was back within 12 weeks. People, DON”T BELIEVE IT. The very day I handed in my FMLA paperwork from the doctor my specific position was posted. I have had nerve block shots. An epidural. A discography, which TOTALLY sucked. Meanwhile, I am trapped in my house unable to do anything, and my boss hires a SECOND person for my specific position. Evidently I was lazy and unproductive but as soon as I went on leave it was determined TWO people were required to handle the workload… I just love it.

Tell me kids, do you think she’s waiting with baited breath for my return? She’s already cleared out my cubicle to make way for one of the people taking my job, she and the rest of “my pals” packed up all my personal belongings and shoved them under a desk.

So here I sit, waiting for the end of the month, when I will undergo spinal fusion surgery to save a job I know I’ve already lost. And how did I lose it? I did what everyone told me to do, and tried to be nice about it. Yay me.

God, I loved my job. I thought the people I worked with liked me. Not one person in my department has even sent me an email since I left. Apparently it was my evil plan to get hurt to make their day suck. Shame on me.

The pain pills don’t work. None of the therapies so far have worked. I am scared to death of this surgery, we are talking about my SPINE here.

Meanwhile my dear husband juggles work and home, manages everything on one salary right now because there have been repeated ‘mishaps’ with my disability money and I haven’t seen a dime of that yet, and it’s been almost seven weeks. I don’t know how he has managed the stress, and me being a basket case on top of it all. I am climbing the walls here – I don’t go anywhere, I don’t see anyone. Certainly no one cares to see me. And I am losing it.

Wow… big nutshell, huh? I’m exhausted. I need to go lie down, this computer chair sucks. It’s Percocet time.

Yay me.

Fly in the ointment

So, things are going pretty well with the marriage counseling and the hubby and I are feeling pretty good about the progress we are making. I think we both see improvements in each other and our ability to listen and respect each other, and that’s been a huge improvement. We are definitely headed in the right direction.

Here’s the problem: my daughter is absolutely against the whole thing. She won’t even entertain the idea that we might work things out, she has said she won’t move back in to the house if that’s what I decide to do, and when I suggested she accompany us for some counseling, the next thing I know I got an angry phone call from her father about what I was supposedly “forcing” her to do against her will.

This kid has spent the last six months overinflating every negative encounter she has ever had with my husband and convinced herself he is Satan in human form, which he certainly is not. In fact, overall he has not been nearly as disciplinary with her as I have been. Now, everyone else in the family is willing to put the past behind us and work on the tools we need to move forward in a more positive way, except her. She absolutely will not let go of every tiny little injustice she feels she’s been dealt, from as far back as second grade (she is going on seventeen). And her dad is just fueling the fire. He uses terms like ‘outcast’ to describe her and it makes me absolutely nuts. She has never been treated like anything but a complete and total member of my family, often to her disliking.

So what am I supposed to do? If I let her move in with her dad full time, I can guarantee her diploma and any purposeful future will go right down the drain. But I have spent sixteen years trying to love this disrespectful, hateful little user, and when is it time for ME to get a break? I have tried, and tried, and tried… and her affection and respect for me only go as far as what she’s getting from me. The minute ‘NO’ comes in to the picture, I’m a rotten bad guy all over again. People, I am so exhausted.  She has worn my heart right out.

My husband feels hurt, and is hurting for me right now that she would turn away from me and her brothers simply to avoid the effort of making a new start with him. She can’t face the fact that she has been truly awful to him over the years, and our entire family has spent a great deal of time walking on eggshells as a result of her moods and tempers.

So what do I do? How can I move forward? I have told her I will never choose between her and my husband, but it seems she HAS made a choice… how do I deal with that?

Self-Affirmation

Long nights of half-sleep

Anxiety over the nothing

Plodding through the tight stomach days

Living for the sunshine on my face

Slowly shrugging off the nonproductive habits

Learning to be okay with it all

Looking at life from a fair perspective

Taking stock of where I am and how I got myself here

Assessing what’s really important

Letting myself be human, even in my own eyes

Taking responsibility

Setting a better example for my children

Trying to put my life back together

Reminding myself what I can be capable of

Allowing myself to hope

Setting my sights on what I deserve

Communicating in positive ways

Developing better tools to relate

I will be okay.

I will be OKAY.

Magpye’s Big Adventure

Boy has it been a busy week! You can tell because I haven’t even had enough time to waste at work to post even one blog entry all week long. And I had stuff to write about, too.

Last weekend, my friend D and I decided to hang out. So I met her at her place and we were sitting and talking, and somehow the conversation turned to ‘toys’ and I mentioned that I could never go into one of ‘those’ stores. Well, that was it – D was determined that not only was I going to one of ‘those’ stores, but that I was going to BUY something. I fought hard against the idea, I really, really did – I stonewalled with all my might… but D was not to be swayed. So after lunch, she dragged me to one of those places. I tried to make light of how embarrassed I was, saying to the clerk on the way in “If anyone calls, I’M NOT HERE”, and off we went to the little walled-off private area where they keep THOSE sorts of things.

May I say OH MY GOD????

I had NO IDEA what kind of stuff was out there. Holy crap. Frightening? Confusing? Awe-inspiring?? Just plain physically impossible???

People, if you have not been to one of these places, I suggest you go. And I suggest you be drunk when you do. It was the most hilarious thing I have seen in many years. I mean, sure, there were your average and sundry items that you’d expect, but then there were things… I had no idea how they would even be used. And I didn’t want to know. My knowledge base has increased exponentially through that one trip.

And of course, there was that one, creepy older guy, wandering aimlessly, seeming to try casually to saunter ever closer to me… ICK!

Well, whether I made a purchase and/or what it was I shall keep to myself. But the moral of the story is, go check out one of these places! They are a RIOT!!

Magpye’s ‘Life Sucks’ Poem

 

 

Stumbling blind

Reaching wildly

Finding no purchase

The sound of dark, smell of cold

I am enveloped in lonliness

I see

But I do not see

I feel

But feeling is excrutiating

I fight

But the struggle pulls me further under

Until I cannot breathe

Voices around me

As if from underwater

Unreal, distorted

Time is a sharp wire that winds ever tighter around me

I scream

But no one wants to hear

I am truly alone

Same ol’ same ol’

Maintaining current flight pattern…

 

Well it’s been a little while since I’ve written, and I can’t exactly say whether it’s because I have nothing to report, too much to report, or don’t know how to report on what there is worth reporting on… so hopefully you appreciate my conundrum, and forgive my absence from the world of Blog.

Some things have changed dramatically. Some things remain the same. Some things… well, some things you just never can tell. But one thing I can say, is that I feel hopeful about life, and whether that scares me or not, I’m taking what I can get right now, and it’s pretty okay.

As we all know, I am the Magpye, and it’s quite possible I will be suicidal tomorrow. You see, that is why I have to enjoy feeling good today. If there is one thing I have definitely learned, it’s take it while you can, because by tomorrow you could be knee deep in shit. And to tell you the truth, I can’t tell right now if Im dancing away from it or straight towards the middle of the pile. So what the Hell! Have a good time doing it, and be prepared to buy new shoes, if it comes to that. But don’t sit out the dance.Am I making any sense?

NO?

Good… mission accomplished.

Just wondering

How do you know? When you live in limbo land, how do you possibly know what step to take next? When everything is turned upside down, and nothing is the same from one day to the next, and you’re cut off from everything and everyone that can give you any insight, how do you know where to turn?

When everyone has their own agenda, when nobody knows what’s really going on inside you, when you have no idea what’s going on inside him, how can you possibly make any reasonable decisions about your future?

When everything that can go wrong does, and nobody wants to give you a break, and you just gotta keep on chugging but you are wearing your emotional fingers to the bone, how can you trust yourself to make sound choices?

When black goes a shade blacker, and the dark before the dawn just keeps getting darker, and you’re waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel and realize you haven’t even reached the tunnel yet, how do you convince yourself to keep going?

When you are killing yourself to do your best and it’s nowhere near good enough, and you spend what little free time you have just waiting for the other shoe to drop, when you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in months, or a decent meal in days… when the latest glimmer of hope has turned to the sheen of a teardrop on your cheek, what do you do next?

These are the things I wonder lately….

SSDD

I am so freaking depressed.

I try so hard to keep my chin up and keep smiling, and I just don’t know what I’m doing it for, or who I think I’m fooling.

I have to take my dog back in to see the vet tomorrow. She is concerned that there is something wrong with him that he is acting MORE aggressive since being fixed, and she’s talking about the possibility of him needing to be ‘medicated’.  I just can’t afford that.

I know Mike has to be home from his trip by now, but he won’t answer my calls or emails. Obviously that doesn’t bode well for our relationship. Damn.

I get paid Friday, and half that check is already gone for bills and such. I feel like I will never get caught up, let alone ahead. How will I ever get to where I can afford to retain an attorney for my divorce? Which apparently I need to complete for Mike to take me seriously? If there’s even a chance left, that is, which I don’t know, because he’s nonexistent at the moment.

I feel like I am walking a tightrope in a high wind, and there’s no net. How the Hell did I get up here?

Oh yeah … I believed.

And now for something completely different

I’ve had it, I give up, I don’t know what to do anymore. Things just keep getting worse and I don’t know how much more I can handle.

Last night my son took my little dog for a walk. He has been acting unusual ever since being neutered, unusally agressive – the dog, not my son – anyway, to my horror, my son comes home in tears to report that while walking my dog has lunged and bitten a man who is now at my door wanting to talk to me.

The man was calm and reasonable, and actually apologetic for having yelled intitally at my son upon being bitten, but my dog got him good on the upper thigh, which means he really went at him, considering he’s a little thing of all of thirteen pounds. He wanted to make sure Gus had been current on all his shots and hadn’t been acting strangely and that sort of thing, took all my information and so on. I was devastated. The guy said he would just treat it topically and not persue anything further unless it got infected, but still…  I’m just freaked out, totally. If he changes his mind, I could be ruined. I was so apologetic, so sorry that my dog had done that, I don’t know what has gotten into him lately. I have to call the vet today and see what she has to say about this wierd behavior; I thought dogs were supposed to mellow out after getting snipped, not turn into maniacs.

My son feels horrible. I’m frustrated with him because he knows better than to let Gus near strangers and I can just picture him standing there with that dumbstruck look on his face watching it happen, but at the same time, I know he’s freaked out.

What next???