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.

Little Jagged Hole

The day dawns cold but bright

Chug chug, off to work

Never enough time, can’t even see my desk

Always worried my time is coming

He leaves today

Another round-the-world trip

Another two weeks at home with the boys

Our boys, our silly goofy boys

And that little, nagging, jagged hole

She left.

It looks much smaller than it is

But I keep telling my self it’s hardly there

That little place

Where she ripped herself out of my life,

Out of my family.

That little place that’s empty now

We all pretend not to see it

But it’s always there

And it’s not always a bad thing

But it’s always there.

I tell her goodnight every night

Even though I know she isn’t listening.

At least she knows I think of her

And I still see

That little, nagging, jagged hole.

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?

GRRRRR!!

 

Grrr.

That’s my commentary on the day; Grr.

Grr for the snow that has returned to my finally melted world

Grr for the executive busting my chops over his own oversight

Grr for the cold and that groundhog’s stupid shadow

Grr.

Grr for the auditor who wrote up really stupid findings

Grr for the FDA visit that has to be just around the corner

Grr for my ever shrinking bank account

GRR.

Grr for the laundry

And Grr for the dishes

And Grr for the freezing conditions in my apartment

Grr for the projects I should have finished by now but haven’t

Grr for people who don’t listen

Grr for kids who won’t help out

GRRRRR for the traffic

Grr, Grr, Grr!!!

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??

Evil Among Us… and they have Mops

Here’s something I have noticed around the office…. Our janitors are evil. Not like, steal your children and sell them to Gypsies evil,  or pee in the coffee pot evil… but they are evil, just the same.

This is what they do: Right at coffe time first thing in the morning, they close off the cafeteria for cleaning so you can’t get to the coffee machine. They make you… wait.

Then, they’ll open up the cafeteria and there will be a mass exodus of drowsy employees anxious to get their morning caffeine fix. We go in, we fill up, glug glug glug.

Then those evil janitors…. They wait. They wait just about an hour to an hour and a half, when all that coffee has run it’s course. Then they shut down the restrooms. For… cleaning. They secretly laugh their evil little laughs as we all do our tippy-toe gotta-go dances back and forth from our offices to the restrooms to see if they’re open yet… and you KNOW they are taking their time….

They think I don’t know what they’re up to…. But I see their little games, I know what they’re trying to pull. Evil, I tell you. Pure evil.

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

GRRRRRRRRR

 

I am an angry Magpye today. Why do people, so many people, have to be such idiots? Sheesh. I give up. You think someone is your friend, a person you can trust. Then they come on to you. And when you try your hardest to let them down easy, they retaliate by trying to publicly humiliate you. Did I ask for this? I say most soundly, and with great conviction, NO. I did not. I have always been very clear with this person about the status of our friendship. I NEVER led him on. So now I have lost a friend and had my name dragged through the mud in the process. AWESOME. The hits just keep on comin!!!!

Relationship Confusion

So… these are the things I am dealing with. My husband and I are considering reconciling. I know he wants to, and there are parts of me telling me I want to. But I have to be so, so careful about making sure they are the right parts of me, and they want to for the right reasons… there are a million reasons why my life would be so much easier if I went back home. Life on my own has been extremely hard, much harder than I ever expected, and at times brutally depressing. Not to mention that financially I have never been more challenged, ever.

But after all I have been through, the things I have learned about myself, the me I have discovered since I have had the freedom to be this me, I worry that all that is for nothing if I just turn around and go back home. Granted, I would not be considering it if I did not still have deep feelings for my husband, but I can’t forget that I spent years being deeply unhappy there. Maybe it sounds shallow, but I don’t want to give up my Captain’s Quarters, my pirate flags, my pirate bathroom… those things are ME, and I know I would lose those if I went back. I like those parts of me. He never understood it.

I feel like he really wants to rush back into a relationship, and as much as it is nice to have some closeness with him again, I really worry about taking things too fast. I was kind of glad that we couldn’t get in with the counselor until January, I felt like that put a little mandatory waiting time in place. I don’t know if he really understands the level of commitment to change I will require before I consider giving up my independent life, hard as it is, to come back. I know right now he feels motivated and willing to change, but he has made so many promises in the past, and never kept any of them. Work always comes first, then the boys, then the gym, then sleep, then hunting, then… what ever else he might be forgetting. Helloooo?

I know if we are going to move forward, IF, then my main responsibility is putting those grudges behind me. It’s just hard to trust again. I want to… but it’s hard, I so don’t want to be hurt again, it’s so demoralizing to practically live for someone who tends to forget you exist. It’s taken me these many months to start building back my sense of self-value, and that has been one of the best things to come of this separation for me. I don’t want to lose that.

I hope being around more and opening the lines of communication isn’t giving him the idea that we are automatically getting back together, he has already suggested I move back home first and then we start counseling, and I was like, ‘no way!’ Maybe I need to discuss that with him openly to make sure there are no misunderstandings about where we stand.

Communication….. isn’t that always what it comes down to in the end??