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?

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.

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??

So Long, 2008…

 

Well, this has been one of the most bizarre years of my adult life.

I entered it in a stable marriage, a secure job, a comfortable house, and good financial status.

I am leaving it in a state of separation, a job I worry about keeping, a cold basement apartment, and never enough cash to stretch from one pay day to the next.

It’s been interesting.

In between there have been lost loves, internet relationships, and plenty of heartache and heartbreak. It has been tough learning to be on my own, but I really think I am making progress. It’s hard, and it’s lonely, but if there’s one resolution I make for 2009, it will be that I refuse to sacrifice my self, my personality, my happiness, to appease a man. I have rediscovered what it’s like to really be able to just be me… and I like me.

My husband and I are getting along well, spending some time together, and will start counseling in January. But I have been very clear that I have made no promises, aloud or inferred, that I will be returning home. It seems I like him as a friend, but as a husband? I still have no idea if we’ll ever get back to that point. Much change is needed.

My kids will return from my parent’s place in Southern Utah on Sunday; I have missed them and can’t wait to see their little faces again (reminding myself they’re just not so little anymore). School starts up again Monday, and life resumes as normal again for everyone… well, as normal as it can be right now.

So what will 2009 bring? Hard to imagine. So many things in the air right now, I can’t possibly predict what might happen next… but stay tuned,  faithful readers, it’s sure to be entertaining!

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

Darn Those Doldrums

Well here it is the Monday after Thanksgiving, and who isn’t depressed about being back to work? Man, I feel like I’ve been here for ten hours straight already and I STILL have two hours to go. My head is pounding, my eyelids are heavy, and I can’t concentrate on anything. Im watching my bank account quickly dwindle to nothing as I await my landlord’s knock on the door for December rent.

Yes, people, the winter doldrums have officially arrived.

Oh, they have been hanging around, loitering in the neighborhood, peeking furtively through the windows – even lounging daringly on the porch a time or two. But now they have swung the door wide open, strolled in like those cousins you don’t like to mention, and taken over all the comfy seats in the house, asking when dinner will be ready and is it something they like. And they didn’t even wipe their shoes on the way in.

I hate the winter doldrums. Hate hate hate them.

This year, I have the added fun of being separated, most likely alone on Christmas, and with very limited income to provide gifts for my three kids. I had a flash of brilliance and bought one blowout gift they will all love – a nintendo Wii – but that’s got me totally tapped out. I hope it will be enough, and I hope everyone else on my list needs a hand-crocheted scarf. Yarn, I got. Time to crochet it… well, let’s hope.

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Well, I guess I blew it again. This time I went into the chat room where R and I always meet, and I went under a different name, because he always does, and I thought maybe I’d show him how it felt not to know who you were talking to.

Long story short, BIG MISTAKE. He was in under a different name and we got in a huge fight not even knowing who we were and now it seems the whole chat room I have frequented for months as my solace in a lonely life hates me. I don’t know that he has been saying things about me, so I won’t make assumptions, but something is very strange about the sudden hatefest going on in the room where everybody knew and liked me. And I can hardly get him to talk to me because he doesn’t think I understand his point of view about what started the whole thing. I do now. But it was still a scary side of him I had never seen before and it shocked me.

So… what now? I don’t know… are we done? I wish I knew. Part of me says if he can be like that, I need to take my leave. But honestly, a bigger part of me still deeply cares for him and is extremely dismayed over what has happened. I don’t want to let go. But I don’t know that it’s my choice anymore.

Hey, Newsflash… Magpye screws up again. Stupid, stupid me.