Fear, Angst, and Suffering in Redding

It's absolutely insufferable, the fact that I have such a block against doing something that's going to make me feel better and help me out. I've been avoiding it, to the point of telling myself that I'm not letting myself go anywhere fun until it's done and then STILL not doing it, for months. Literally. It's not even the idea of getting it done that's bothering me. I wish I knew what it was. I wish it were easier.

Grateful

They say people draw to them the things they dwell on, so I'm trying to focus and dwell on what I'm grateful for. I'm in a lousy mood, so here's my attempt. Just in thinking about those things, I'm having trouble not thinking ",even though" at the end. But I won't type it, even if it's there.

I'm grateful that I own a home, and that it's a nice home.
I'm grateful that I have a vehicle that runs and that I can afford to put gas in it.
I'm grateful that I have a good job that I usually like.
I'm grateful that I work with people that I like.
I'm grateful that I still have friends who would drop what they're doing and come to my aid if I needed them.
I'm grateful that I've had friends who aren't around anymore, and that I learned lessons from them.
I'm grateful that I still have family in this world.
I'm grateful that I have a boyfriend who loves me and wants to be with me. I'm even more grateful that I'll be seeing him next week.
I'm grateful that I have my two great dogs and cats, who seem to love me at least most of the time.
I'm grateful to have life experience that I can share with others.
I'm grateful that I can point out the positive aspects of negative events in other people's lives, and that I can at least see the positive aspects in the negative events of my own life.
I'm grateful that I have the ability to do what I need to do to survive in this world.
I'm grateful to have knowledge of many things.
I'm grateful that I'm able to feel love for and be kind to people who aren't always loving and kind to me.
I'm grateful for a place to record my thoughts where people can know what I'm thinking, but not necessarily know who I am or have reason to judge me.

Those things being said, I think I feel better.

It comes and goes

It's interesting to watch what comes into and goes out of focus in my life. Some days, it's all I can do to get myself to roll out of bed. Other days, I just want to make it through work. There are so many days where things I think about first thing in the morning don't show up again until I'm trying to quiet myself for sleep because of all the little things that move in and out - work deadlines, birthdays, what to eat or when to leave for lunch, whether I'll get to talk to the man of my dreams.

A few weeks ago, I won a sweepstakes, of sorts. It was an online contest and I won a (low carat weight) diamond-studded ring, a "right hand ring," if you will. Well, it made me feel like, yes, my life has been sucking, but there is still a silver lining - I deserve something that makes me feel like I've been taking the right path. (I've won a lot of contests in the last year that have made me feel fortunate even in my pain.) The ring was a sparkly reminder of my ability to get pretty things without needing a man, or even a paycheck.

So what does it mean that my ring fell on the kitchen floor the other night and one of the sparklies - right in the center, mind you - jumped ship? The ring has moved off my radar for the moment, until I have the patience to go to a jeweler and have him or her replace the little tiny princess-cut chip that sailed.

Now I have Hawaii on the brain again because I got an email about what's planned for my birthday...a long horseback ride into a secluded valley with hidden waterfalls and picnics. Ah...a rendevous with my loving man and a couple of horses (oh, and a guide and whoever else goes on the same trip) in a tropical painting of an area. I'm still on the right path, I think.

Nothing, really...

Oh, hormones. I'm pretty sure mine are surging right now. The moods are swinging from the trees. Don't know if today's really a day to write, but I have some things that have been floating around in draft form that I don't know why I didn't post. It's probably because I didn't feel like they were finished or perfect, or that I wasn't ready to release them. Then again, it might be that I'm not okay with feeling lousy, or letting people know about it. But that's why I opened this blog - to be okay with posting whatever comes out, whenever it does. No names, no real identifying info except feelings. Safety in being honest with myself.

The following two posts will be dated at the top for when they were written.

Bastardized

I'm tired.

I've been yanked around on a variable-length chain for what will be a year tomorrow, and I'm not sure for how much longer. He said he wanted a divorce, then waited almost two months to file...on my birthday. He said he'd keep the house and I'd be paid off in a matter of weeks, then changed his mind a week after I'd put a contract on a new house. He wanted to sell, but not to do any work to make that happen. He wanted us to be friends, but wouldn't tell me he was back to swimming in the dating pool and neglected to tell me when he was going to bring the new person around - to a company event - and that she'd be staying in the house I used to live in. He said he wanted us to be fair to each other, then I realized it would only be fair if I took less than I'm worth. Here we are, a year later, and the contract to sell the marital house is in his hands, but not ready to be signed; my divorce is still not final.

Basically, he's a lying, selfish bastard who didn't have the guts or the strength to make his second marriage work better than the first. He's weak and mealymouthed and doesn't have integrity. He's a genius, but has no idea how to treat other people unless they're doing what he wants them to do or he's trying to get them to do what he wants. He's manipulative and boastful and first in line to help someone as long as he looks good for doing it. He wants to save people, but after he thinks he has or figures out they don't need saving, he's done with them. It's sad, really.

There are days when you don't want to get up in the morning because you feel sad or depressed or just not like going to work. Then there are days that start out fine but beging to go terribly wrong within hours of awakening. This was one of the latter.

I say "terribly wrong" not because that's the way things ended, but because that's the way I felt when I got to work. I had projects that were behind, had a class to teach during my normal lunch hour, and then I read an email from my long-distance love that made me feel like crying. We're having separation anxiety, both of us, and it's affecting our communication. It's so hard not to feel guilt and disappointment that we can't be together in the same place, and that the separation makes us grumpy, sometimes even with each other. What we really want most is a big hug and a little snuggling, but what ends up happening is that the anxiety takes over and we don't end up talking or we just spend our precious talking time bitching or wishing that we want to be together.

Fortunately, in this case, I feel like the stress opened up communication.

Canine Explosion

One of my dogs, sweet though she is, doesn't understand carpet. Or, I should say, she misunderstands it, because she appears to think that it's grass. In my last house, the floors were mostly wood with the occasional rug; that's where my little lovely grew up. My new place has more carpet, with wood floors in the area where the dogs sleep.

None of the pets, canine or feline, appears to grasp the whole "carpet as interior" concept. The dog was the first to show her lack of concern for my new space, within the first 12 hours I lived here. She obviously wasn't well, and it was not a pleasant experience. Then, a few months later, one of the cats began to pee by the front door, beside a chair I'd had for years, but had been a side-of-the-road freebie in a previous life. I took this to be a problem with the chair; I had some confirmation of that when I found evidence that the other dog had marked the area next to it. But when the chair moved, the cats kept going (so to speak). Now one of the cats lives in a kennel during working and sleeping hours.

And then there's my little girl dog.

Every now and then, she doesn't feel well. She goes through days when nothing more than semisolid leaves her. I almost always know about those days now; I didn't in the old place because the dogs spent most nice days outside. If it's not between the hours of 8-ish and 6-ish, she'll go on the patch of sod I have in the yard - and that's the only place she'll go if I don't stop her before she gets to that area. But if I don't watch every time she goes outside, there is another way to tell. During lawn-mowing season, my roommate won't pick up this type of pile with the poop-scooping equipment because it's too messy, and will mow around it. That means I have oddly shaped patches of tall grass in the middle of the grass. Not tough to see that.

If, however, she's having trouble during working hours, she'll break down a child gate or even make a break over the electric shock mat of death ("zappy mat" to me) to get to the carpet (grass) to relieve herself. I was lax, I admit. I didn't team up the zappy mat WITH the gate yesterday (she won't stand on the mat because it shocks her, so she can't break down the gate). And I knew she'd been eating potting soil (or something similar) and grass lately. I should have seen it coming. But I didn't think and I didn't act.

So, yesterday, I managed to get out of work at 5:00. That doesn't happen often. I left the office complete with plans to meet a friend for dinner early. I was going to do some sanding around a doorway later in the evening, but was going to be fortified with sushi first. I opened the door and knew. I was hopeful that it happened on the wood floor, but there was no doubt about the smell. My nose is sensitive and well-trained. It wasn't in the kitchen, and the zappy mat was in place. It wasn't in the dining room.

Oh, but was it ever present by the front door. And everywhere else within about an 6- by 12-foot space near that door. My dog had "ass-ploded" (a term someone else used in a blog recently, but I've known of the term for awhile and feel very confident that this term best describes what happened). Everywhere. I could tell where it started and where it ended. She had even peed a line through the middle. But she circled quite a bit during the ordeal. It seems that she'd been plugged up. There were probably 20 or more piles or drips. It was unbelievable. If the picture isn't clear to you, consider light beige carpet and sunlight streaming through the windows I had to open to keep from choking on the smell.

Strangely, though, I wasn't completely angry. I've been pretty grumpy the last week, thinking distasteful thoughts about all sorts of little tiny things that don't usually bother me, but this didn't piss me off. I couldn't blame the dog, though I wanted to. I couldn't even punish her. I know her habits, which come from her instincts. I know how to keep her out of the room. I saw the signs that something internally unpleasant might be coming soon (the soil and grass). Really, it was my own fault. So, even after spending 3 hours on cleaning up entirely disgusting things and trying to get stains out of my stupid beige carpet, I wasn't mad.

Is that acceptance, or am I just THAT happy not to have to go and deal with sanding and painting that doorway?

Be Fries

I was sixteen, but she was a year behind me. We got to know each other by being on the same OM (Odyssey of the Mind) team, or was it the Madrigal chorus? I'm bad about past particulars sometimes, so I don't remember exactly how we met or what month it was, even. I've always been one to notice the details, believe it or not, but I find that I lose those details first when they don't bear the fruit of importance, or when I don't want to remember them anymore. Anyway, Wendi was her name. She was a full-on redhead, complete with freckles and skin that tanned to a dark pink instead of brown. She was adorable and fun and smart and perky, and her mother was a weasel who pretended to be a sweet, caring nurse when it was in her best interest. Her father was a jovial, beer-drinking man who I think was an engineer. I didn't see all that much of Wendi's father.

I have many Wendi stories because we really were inseperable for a pretty long time. Maybe most of them will come out eventually.

One thing about Wendi that I remember is that we had, between us, the two halves of a heart that together spelled "Best Friends." Spencer Gifts, I think, was where we got them. I had the "Be Fri" side and she had the "St End" - we made the "St" mean saint. Together, we called each other be fries. We did everything together, or at least as closely as possible.

What was odd to me was that I was behind her, sexually, when I was sixteen and she was fifteen. She had already had sex before I met her, with her boyfriend at the time we met. I was still a virgin. I thought her boyfriend, Lee, was a great guy - a gentleman, very respectful of me and my friends and his girlfriend. She once admitted, though, that Lee had threatened to break up with her if she didn't have sex with him, and she had just come into her own with confidence, so he was able to bully her into it. (I seem to remember more threatening behavior, too, but not the specifics.) Anyway, she said she wasn't a virgin proudly - she had a steady boyfriend, so she wasn't called a slut under the rules of the time.

We had been friends for awhile when, once, her parents went out of town and left her at home. Of course, that meant that she would be having a little party out of her parents' bar and whatever alcohol we could all get our underage hands on. She and Lee had broken up and I was just starting to get back together with my first love, Jamie. I was young, but I have always been a passionate person, and Jamie truly was my first love. I had never been able to figure out why he had broken up with me back in our freshman year - he had said we were "getting too serious" but that hadn't made sense to me. Anyway, Jamie and I had met up again at a friend's house that summer and were starting to hang out again. He was going to be at the party as soon as he could sneak out and make it the few blocks to Wendi's house.

The others on the OM team made it over pretty early. Wendi and I had already been drinking when the doorbell rang. The guys (Wendi and I and one other girl, Rachel, were the only girls on the team) had beer that they'd managed to get someone to buy for them. I was impressed because I couldn't have figured out how to get alcohol at that age. I knew people who could, but my parents didn't drink and none of my close friends had fake IDs. There were rumors of a place where basically any fake ID could get you alcohol, but I didn't have the guts to get caught.

I don't think Rachel was there yet when the guys got there, but she was there later. We were all feeling amorous, even in our little tight-knit group. I, of course, was waiting for Jamie. The other girls were talking about which of the guys they'd like to make out with when we took our group bathroom breaks or went to the bar to make more fun drinks. It gradually got to be hours and hours later, and Jamie hadn't shown up. The other girls had started dancing slow dances with some of the guys, and I was thinking I'd been stood up. Eventually, I started dancing with one of a set of twins that was part of the group. After more ire-building alcohol, he kissed me and I kissed him back. Damn it, Jamie deserved it, right? I'd started to love him again and he was standing me up when I was just blocks away from his house. We'd tried to make love recently - I'd always wanted him to be the first - but my body hadn't been quite ready yet. I was sad about that, but angry, too. How dare he! I'd get even with him for breaking my heart a second time by making out with this twin.

Well, that's not exactly what happened next. The twin, in my anger and inebriation, was able to get me into a dark room where we could have a little more privacy. I thought it was for some heavy petting. It turned out that the twin had a plan, though. From what I was told later by his friend, he came to that party knowing that he was going to lose his virginity. He'd stolen a condom from his twin brother's wallet and planned to use it; he didn't care which girl it was. I had no idea I'd won his sex lottery that night by being the one left. We got into the room, and I eventually noticed him trying to pull down my pants. I wasn't ready for that, so I tried to keep it from happening without being overly demonstrative about it. When he tried again, I told him flat-out that I wasn't planning on anything involving the lower half of the body. He told me to relax, that nothing was going to happen that I didn't want. He was lying. Soon, he was on top of me and pushing into me. I was in pain and telling him no. I was fighting to push him away from me, and he just kept saying "Relax." I couldn't stop him, and all I could think of was that I was in Wendi's mother's bed on top of her lace bedspread. When it was over, I was in tears. I told Wendi what had happened, and she came up to help me wash the blood spot off the bedspread. She was angry, like I was.

Then Jamie showed up. He had been held up because his parents had suspected that he was sneaking out, but had gotten there as soon as he could. I was crying, and I told him what had happened. He was kind to me, but left soon after. We never did get back together after that.

What happened next was odd; I guess it happened because of the guilt, because I had made my bed by drinking and getting belligerent and felt the need to lie in it, maybe just because I wouldn't be alone that way. I ended up spending more time with the twin. We made out more and hung out together until they all left. I was mortified all around, because I had gotten drunk, had unintended and unwanted sex, and then spent time, on purpose, with the person who took my virginity from me forcefully. Why do we women do things like that? I was also mortified because it was Easter Sunday that morning after, and I had to sit in the front row of church knowing that I was a complete and total sinner. I had terrible guilt and shame and anger, but most of the anger had been pointed at myself. It was April.

Weeks later, after the initial shock and gossip and girl power talks, and after we had let the twin know that we had found out about his little plan to get laid that night, I still hadn't had a period. Mine had never been every four weeks like the clockwork cycles of other girls, but I was getting worried. And then something terrible happened.

In May, about a month later, I was in a car accident in which I had gotten a concussion, and had gone to the hospital in an ambulance. Because I had hit my head on the roof of the car as it slammed on the ground during a flip, and because I had already had a lower back injury earlier that year, they wanted x-rays of my neck and all the way down my back. When they do x-rays of the abdomens of women in their child-bearing years, doctors and nurses ask if those women are pregnant or think they could be pregnant. Not being one to lie to authority figures other than my parents, I had to tell them that I didn't know whether I was pregnant or not because of the thing with the twin. They had to skip the lower back x-rays, and because of that, they put a note on my x-rays saying why they weren't taken. That's how, when he went to pick up the x-rays for my follow-up appointment with my family doctor, my father found out. I didn't know about his knowing until later, after I had gone to my doctor's appointment alone and he had given me birth control pills, "to reglate my cycles" as I told my mother (it wasn't untrue; it just wasn't the whole truth.)

My father, bless him, did not bring it up. That was left to my mother, who hadn't really liked me since I had become a teenager. She chose a great time for it - we were on our way to an awards assembly, just the two parents and me. It was a rare occasion, and I had just climbed over the seat to sit between the two of them as we got to the end of our driveway, trying to take advantage of my time to be alone with them as their little girl. My mother's statement was very straightforward. "Just because you're on birth control now doesn't mean you can sleep with every boy at Stafford High School, you know."

I honestly didn't know what to say. I was completely devastated. She told me how they had found out, and I didn't get the happy, warm feeling I was hoping for from that night's awards. My father, whom I adored, knew I had done something terribly wrong. He still never said anything about it, but he knew that his little girl was no longer innocent. I never told them it wasn't by choice, because I was sure (and a friend of my mother's concurred) that my mother would blame me for it after I had gotten almost to the point of forgiving myself. And then there was Wendi's mother.

Eventually, Wendi's mother declared me a bad influence on her child. Wendi had started dating Jamie (yeah, it bothered me, but what could I really say?), and had gotten caught sneaking out of his house one night after midnight, and after having sex. Although Wendi had not seen me at Jamie's house, and I had had nothing to do with her being caught or even with her having sex with Jamie, we were forbidden to talk to each other, by her mother. My father had tried to reason with her, but "Mental Custard" (as Wendi and I began to call her mother) wouldn't have it. She would be allowed to see Jamie before me. Unbeknownst to her mother, Wendi had been having sex far longer than I had and was drinking before I was, but I was the bad influence.

Anyway, we went a LONG time before I could be in the same room with Wendi or her mother outside of school, but we were finally allowed to be friends again. Eventually, Wendi and I both began dating other long-term boyfriends who were friends. And eventually, Wendi had another party. With the same people as the first party. And again, I answered the door to find the guys, together. The twin spoke first, because I suddenly had no voice. He said, "Wow, Kim! Deja vu."

I lost it. I tried not to, but it wasn't possible. I had gone through so much crap as a result of this guy that to have him not only in the same place under the same circumstances, but mentioning said circumstances as if it had been just another fun party of the past and we were all buddy-buddy, was too much for me. I let them in, directed them to the bar and the fridge, and went up to commiserate with Wendi. I was completely livid, and I had had a drink, so my inhibitions weren't so strong. I ended up kicking a hole in Wendi's bedroom wall, for which I was truly sorry. I had surprised even myself with my anger. Wendi joined in with the anger, but it wasn't WITH me - it was AGAINST me this time. There would be no way to get the hole fixed and painted with the right color paint before her parents came home the next day. But her anger also went farther than that.

Wendi proceeded to tell me that she was tired of my telling her how I was a victim and that the twin had taken advantage of me. She told me that it had been my own fault for being drunk and not being able to fight him off if I didn't want him. In fact, she doubted that I'd even tried. She then said that I needed to just get over it, because he was her friend, too, and that if I couldn't get over it, she wanted me out of her house. In my strongest moment to that point in life, I turned to Wendi and asked, "Can I get my stuff first?" I then called my boyfriend to come and pick me up. Of course, the boyfriend tried to start a fight with the twin because he had heard what had happened, which didn't make it any better for me. I was flattered because SOMEone was defending my honor, but I knew it was already too late to save the friendship and I knew that the attempted fight would only put me farther into ridicule territory.

I did talk to Wendi a couple of times after that, but it was a couple of years later and we only made smalltalk while I rang up purchases for her and Mental Custard at Sears, where I worked my way through college. I never talked to Wendi as a be fri again, and aside from rumors, have no idea what happened to her.