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.

Brain scans, and other things

So, I came home from work yesterday to find a voicemail on my message machine from the eye doctor’s assistant saying they had already scheduled my MRI appointment for this coming Monday. I have to arrive an hour early so they can give me the little pill that makes it okay to shove me all the way in that tight little tube and leave me there for an hour while all the horrible noises go on all around me. And since they’re giving me the little pill, I have to have someone to drive me home.

This is ridiculous. I have such a high tolerance to the little pill, they could give me three or four and I could still pass a field sobriety test without blinking. Oh, I know it’s procedure, its protocol, it’s for the hospital’s safety as well as my own… but it’s still stupid. Now I have to hope my husband will be available to drive me all the way uptown in the middle of the day Monday, which I won’t know until he gets back from Italy, which won’t be until late Sunday night, by which time it will be far too late to reschedule. Arrrgh, why do things have to be so complicated all the time?? On a lighter note, I started taking the medication he prescribed, and maybe it’s too soon to tell, but my eye seems steadier already…

I thought it would be nice housesitting for a week while my husband was away, being back in my house again, but I find that staying there as a visitor is really bizarre and frustrating. Things are weird right now; I’m feeling pulled halfway between two worlds – the married world and the separated world, and I don’t feel like I belong entirely in either one right now. I feel… displaced, I guess. It’s an odd feeling, and I don’t know quite what to do with it.

Part of me is sure that eventually I will move back home and resume my marriage. But another part of me believes that to do so would only continue the unhappiness I had been feeling for years. Things seem much better now, but is it only because I’m gone? He treats me differently, but is it only because he’s trying to get me back home? Would it last, or would he go back to being the same indifferent, distant roommate he was before? I know this is why we are in counseling. And it’s early yet. But I just wish there were easy answers, and I know there aren’t. What to do, what to do??

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

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….

Snowy Wednesday Blues

Today is a crappy day; I woke up to snow everywhere and below freezing temps – had to make my first scary snow-drive from my new place all the way down to work. Not too bad this morning, but I was lucky – tomorrow, the roads will be iced and slick and I don’t feel so good when I think about it. If I had been smart, I would have brought what I needed with me today and just stayed with the kids at the old house – my ex is out of town for 10 days on business. But… it did not occur to me.

SO… it will be back up the mountain I go tonight; and gingerly down again in the morning. I HATE SNOW!!!

I was supposed to get my raise and bonus today on my paycheck… but I didn’t. I had been counting on that money, and now it will be another two weeks on ramen and tap water before I get a little cushion to get ahead. My dear friend J tried so hard to give me money today, it was sweet at the same time it was depressing. I’m 14 years older, have a better job, should be responsible enough to care for my kids.

And yet there he was doggedly trying to get me to take his cash… I didn’t. I can’t. I won’t.

Haven’t talked to R in the last day or so… tried to log in and chat with him last night, but when I got in there he was trashing someone because they had irritated him, and it only took a few minutes to realize he was in no place from which I could reach him. I don’t know. It really makes me uneasy when I see him like that. It makes me nervous. It makes me doubt. I just have to be so careful about what I do with my life right now, both for me AND my kids.

I care for him. I really do. But when I see him in one of these moods, enraged in the chat rooms, the things he says and the person he is… I don’t like it. The story it tells me is not one with a happy ending. And as he himself once told me, I deserve better than that. I know better at this late date than to think I’m going to fix him, change him, HEAL him. I have to let him be who he is. But I hurt for him… I wish I could make things better, I WISH I could do those things. I see the good person struggling inside all the torment and the sadness, and I wish I could pull him free. But I know better than to think I have all the answers…

So… what to do? What to do… I wish I knew….

It’s not Fatal

Sometimes, you have a saying that gets you through, a credo if you will. And you use that credo to spur others on in their times of crisis, and it becomes that thing that keeps you going, and you see it hit home with those around you when you speak the words, and you know it to be true, and it gives you great comfort, and you know nothing can stand against the simple truth of it.

And sometimes, you completely forget it, and you become a wreck.

And then, after floundering pathetically for an unspecified length of time, something clicks, and it comes back to you, and you’re like, “Oh yeah, that’s right – what was I thinking!”

Mine came to me by way of Linus Van Pelt.

I don’t remember what Peanuts TV special it was, but there was one in which Charlie Brown was in a Spelling Bee, and he lost. He was despondent and feeling like there was no point in living – as usual. It was then that Linus spoke these sage words: “But did you notice something Charlie Brown? The world didn’t stop spinning, did it?”

And from that came my personal credo of inner strength and perserverance: It’s not fatal.

This is not fatal. Being broke, being alone, being afraid, being hurt, starting over, having nothing, these things are not fatal. Until just recently, I had forgotten my own credo, and as any good Gunslinger would say, I have forgotten the face of my father.

I will survive. I will overcome. I will triumph. I will do all these things.  And why?

Because I AM THE MAGPYE!

UUUUURRRGGHHHHHHHH

Well, just when you think life can’t get more ridiculous…

I have discovered it most certainly can.

Now, my stepdad and I are not on speaking terms, because I blew up at him yesterday. I am really hurt at the fact that since the separation he has definitely seemed to have taken a side, and it is not mine. He came to town and stayed at my husband’s, did not even come to visit me or see my new place. He took my entire family except me (including my ex) to his awards ceremony, and when he wants to talk parenting regarding my boys, he calls my ex. How does that all add up in your book?

Also, out of nowhere now my ex suddenly “wants to talk”. This is all I need. You know, it made me mad that he let me go without a fight, but once I’m gone, I’m gone, too bad, so sad, your loss. Don’t start trying to backtrack on me now, can’t he see that this is part of the whole problem? It took him over a month to admit he even cares that I’m gone? Can you say EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE??

It has now been almost four weeks since I have seen my sweetie, and he continues to blow me off. I don’t know why I am still hanging on, I really don’t, other than what else would I be doing? It ain’t exactly like I’m fighting  ‘em off with a stick, people… he leaves for a ten day trip this Friday and so I know it will be at least that much longer, and I really wonder if he’s just waiting for me to get fed up and go away, but I can’t believe he’d be that chickenshit, and I can’t see where things would have gone that wrong all of a sudden.  Am I being tested? I really wonder sometimes. The problem is, I am every bit as stubborn as he is, and I’m not giving up that easy. It sucks being lonely.

I know I won’t go back. But I’m scared as Hell to go forward alone. I know I can do it, but… I just don’t WANT to. I am Magpye God Damnit. I can DO this.

Right?

Lonely Sunday Blues

Okay, so I have pretty much survived the weekend, and my mothers’ visit was actually pretty okay. Other than a lot of doom and gloom advice that left me more stressed out than before but was still important advice, she was pleasant, and she listened and accepted my feelings and overall was very supportive. She listened; so much that I heard myself in some new and informative ways, if that makes sense. So I recant on my previous negativity about her visit. Although I am now convinced I’m a stone’s throw from beinig screwed by everyone in the known universe because I am too trusting… again, perhaps some sage advice, but I’m already doing fine on my stress and anxiety rations for the week, month, year… you name it.
I don’t have any lease agreement, I just moved in here pretty much on a handshake – and THAT was with the upstairs tenants, not the landlord. I didn’t even meet him until I’d lived here a month already. My mother has explained to me the fourteen ways to Sunday I’m going to get screwed on this deal. AWESOME. You know, could it possibly be that everybody in this deal is trusting like me, and if we all mind our manners and play fair, we’ll all be fine? I know, I know, please don’t start lining up the horror stories for me. My upstairs neighbors are nice people, and I do feel like they’re honest and fair. GOD I hope I’m right.
My mother then went on to explain how many different ways my husband can screw me in the divorce, now that I’ve moved out of the house. Well it’d be a new one, he certainly wasn’t very enthused about screwing me during the marriage. Not well, anyway. But that’s another story.
Then it was time to talk finances. People, I’m just SCREWED.
I know I did the right thing… I just wish I had done it… better. I guess I wish I had used my head and not just my heart. I’m just not calculating like that. I couldn’t hang around in the marriage and play nice while squirreling up savings to make my move, I just think that sounds so… evil. So underhanded. When I decided it was time to go, when I knew it really was, then I just had to do it, I couldn’t bide my time and play games, I just don’t work like that.
Now he’s saying oh yeah, we can still be friends only I’m not paying any support, and stuff like that, and there’s that knot in my stomach again, because the only thing he’s willing to credit me with is half equity in the house I know he ain’t selling any time soon. So where does that leave me? I don’t know. I have no idea. I am starting to realize I may actually be scared to death.
So what next? No money, MIA sweetie, feeling pretty freaked out. I keep telling myself I have done the right thing, I have done the right thing, I have done the right thing…