I was reading the report from the special education services. They had done some tests to determine Bri's needs. Besides being able to say her name and her age they wanted her to be able to say "I am a girl."
This is an actual benchmark that they look for.
I intend to have a discussion with her speech therapist. I'm concerned because my husband and I really aren't teaching her gender. I don't put her in dresses. I've tried a couple of times for special occasions and she seems to have tolerated them but I let her pick out her own clothes. She loves green shirts and rainbow pants. Also her pink socks and blue shoes.
All of her toys are a combination of things. She has a couple of dolls that she usually just tosses out of the way. The only toy she's played with like a baby is her blue bunny. I think she learned tucking a toy into bed from kids at daycare. The toys I focus on are hands-on science, writing, and art supplies.
Because Bri doesn't really talk I have no idea how she's going to identify herself.
When daycare starts teaching gender and the test taker looks for her to identify herself that way I get really nervous. I want to keep Bri's options open. That's why I haven't doused her room in pink and piled her up with dolls and pretty pink tea sets. I'm not trying to shape her, I'm trying to discover her. I'll let her tell me who she is.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Okay, the Dreaded Post
I've been avoiding this for long enough. It sucks to have to get into this with it being a late night but I really need to sit my butt down and do it.
The abusive relationship.
Not that I hadn't been in codependent or psychologically confusing situations before. David did a job on my head while I was with him. I totally lost my sense of identity.
Ally had a hard time being consistent. She loved me. She loved me not. She constantly said things one week and totally said the opposite the next week. Drove me nuts.
I dated a bipolar girl for a few weeks and got jerked around once. After Ally I was sensitive to that kind of thing and cut her loose.
I did hook up with Ally one more time around the millennium. It's relevant.
She had stopped by my room in may of 99 and left an email address. She was leaving school and didn't plan on coming back. I had one more semester that fall before I was done. I took the bait. I contacted her over the summer and we started chatting again. The feelings were still there so I let it progress. Round three.
I went to visit her in Dec and Jan of that year. Spent the millennium on a military base. She introduced me to a guy named Steve. Total neanderthal. I entertained the idea of a relationship with him but it didn't go very far emotionally. He was the type that didn't like to wear a condom. Really? In this day and age? Idiot.
He got pushy and disrespectful toward her and me and was trying to Alpha Ally's husband. They kicked him out. Her husband tried to pull me into a threeway but I laughed it off and avoided it. They had an open marriage. Still do, I think. I heard on the gossipmill that she has two girls, still happily married and doing really well. Started her own editing company. She'd always wanted to do that. I remember her mentioning editing careers repeatedly over the many years I knew her.
Anyways, we got really serious. I even told her I wanted to marry her and we were making plans. I came back and transferred to a new school in her home town even. She eventually came back to stay with her parents for a few months while her hubby was deployed on a six month ocean voyage. We spent more time together and things started to unravel.
Here's where it sucks. She introduced me to Scott. I had sorta been seeing a guy name Karol I had met through a yahoo group. We ended up being just friends for a short time after romantic feelings didn't emerge. He was really interesting and intelligent and perpetually hours late for everything. Drove me nuts.
Scott was really exciting and interesting and I felt an instant connection. Things seemed magickal between us, like we had had lifetimes together. Ally was not pleased. She had mentioned him to me before when we had been at SBU and some of the idolizing he had done of her. I believe it.
I met him when Ally, a current close friend and I went to an apartment where he was. We hung out with him and his girlfriend. Yeah, he had been taken. Dave had been too, unbeknownst to me at the time. Same story. He said they were on the outs. We chatted quite a bit and it "enchanted" him. I didn't do any magic but at that time I tended to have an effect on people around me. I think it was my manifesting abilities coming through as a result of my developing practice. I knew how to "sparkle" when I wanted to and draw others to me.
Not as cute as 37 as I was at 23. hehehe
I met up with him on my own a few times. We spent one night driving all over until dawn when we met up with the others to go to the Ren Faire. We held hands and were manic giggly. We took a lot of road trips.
I was staying with a relative at the time about 30 min from the city and school I went to. Over the summer Scott stayed at that house and I really needed to leave after that. I told him to walk around and keep himself busy while I was at work but he stayed at the house instead of taking a shower and leaving and making himself scarce. My relative came home to this strange guy in his living room and was not happy. Being a responsible adult now, I totally get it. Back then I was still in my kid mindset and so decided to leave instead of taking that event as a huge warning sign. He obviously didn't respect me enough to do a simple thing that I asked him.
I found an apartment in the city and moved in. I bought my first furniture and I really liked the place. It only took a few weeks for me to invite him to stay with me. He was over there all the time anyway.
That's when things changed. Once his stuff got moved in the fun wore off quick. He started sabotaging my practice and the beings I worked with. We got into some nasty fights where I slept on the couch. Our road trips stopped being about spending time together and turned into shopping trips where he wanted me to spend all this money on him. My parents were calling weekly with issues about me over-drafting my account. It's a good thing they weren't in the city within an easy distance. They were 6 hours away. They didn't know he was living there. I think they eventually figured it out. He couldn't keep his damn mouth shut while I was on the phone.
Everything became about me supporting him. He couldn't keep a job, couldn't give me money to help out for multiple reasons. His mother told me I'd regret ever meeting him. I found out that all his mania was part of a mental illness. I was starting to see the downward slide. He started getting aggressive and emotionally violent.
I ignored all the red flags. Sometimes I'd scream at him to get out but I had no leverage. I couldn't physically attack him. I didn't know if they law was on my side or not as far as the lease was concerned and he wouldn't detach himself from me. I'd take it back too. The first year we were together I really thought I could make it work. I had gone from this confident chick who moved to a new city, got an apartment and made a go from scratch with determination and bravery to someone who was afraid to be alone. I didn't believe that I could do it without him, at least socially.
Things got philosophically dark. He started talking about how he believed he was the anti-christ. He read way too much into song lyrics and became obsessed with Marilyn Manson. Now, I really like Manson's music and really believe he's more of a cool, laid back kinda buy beyond the stage persona. His interviews with people show a really intelligent and calm guy. He'd probably have been creeped out. But Scott thought he had some kind of psychic connection and he was getting messages in the music.
I know, this is some crazy shit. I really didn't see a way out at the time. Eventually I started buying into some of it. He was really into Babylon 5. It's a great series and a couple years ago I made myself watch it again from start to finish. I made hubbie watch it too. It's still well written even by more recent standards.
He believed the Shadows were real, he was one of their soldiers and they spoke to him. We started to develop plans for our own commune like situation, our own schools. Recreate society according to our own philosophy.
My journals became a place to write down his ideas and discussions I had had with him. I stopped writing about myself, my feelings, processing my past, my own ideas or spiritual experiences.
Before we left that first apartment I tried to throw him out one more time. I found out he was screwing someone else and lost my shit. He had left his computer on with his e-mail up and I read a note from a girl named Katie about something they had done sexually in her car outside of our apartment, It explained why he brushed his teeth before getting into bed. He also wrote emails to this other girl that he was having sex with. When I called him he was at her house and I screamed at him on the phone to come get his stuff. I was putting it on the porch and locking the door. He didn't have a key.
I should have done it too. I don't remember if I lost my nerve or thought I didn't have a legal right to actually do it. I backed down. Needless to say, the sexual aspect of our relationship ended. We became "friends" and I signed a lease with him on the next place.
That fall I had a horrible migraine and ended up in the hospital. I remember being at the toilet puking so hard I was peeing myself and just crawling back and forth between bed and bathroom. He kept yelling at me that I needed to get up and drive him to his parents. I don't think it was really getting through that I couldn't even walk. He finally went upstairs and asked Magda to drive me to the hospital. She was very sweet. She stayed with us for a few hours but then she had to leave to do classwork. I ended up on an IV for fluids because I was dehydrated and a nausea suppressant. His parents drove us back to the apartment. Magda made me some dinner and then gave me the "abused wife" talk.
I think I started disconnecting and reclaiming my own mind again at that time. I started trying to find dates again. I never really did get passed the second date with any of them. Scott answered the phone a few times and scared the shit out of them. Lost a few that way.
Kelly became my friend through Ally as well and again through Scott. I think she saw through the manipulation of Ally and the crazy of Scott. She's always been able to see me really well both personality and energy. She's really gifted.
I lost Karol as a friend shortly after Scott moved in. Scott introduced me to Amy2 who wanted to date me. That never really took off. A couple months later she flipped out at me and made some comment about how she would have stabbed me if she had her knife on her. She went over to Karol's house and he drove her home. He had a huge crush on her. She was really pretty and shapely. He pretty much dropped me after that. He wouldn't respond to phone calls or emails anymore.
As luck would have it, Scott also introduced me to the one person who helped break me away and undo his influence. One night Scott brought to the apartment a girl named Amy1. We had actually been at the the same college, SBU. She had to drop out after one year due to some severe menacing from her roommate.
The university would not help her. Not surprised. Colleges always do that.
She knew about Ally and me. Apparently we were a major source of gossip on that campus during our tumultuous times. I found that interesting. I remember thinking Ally would have been excited over her status at campus celebrity. We had stopped talking some time during my stay at the first apartment. I sent her a taunting kiss-off letter meant to hurt her while I was being mindless. Scott's idea.
Anyway, we went out that night together. Scott asked if I would be upset if she spent the night. This was after a few weeks earlier he had lost his shit when Kelly had stayed over and slept in my bed. Jealousy. He had also been proposing to me nightly again. Yeah, I was pissed. I don't think Amy understood why I was suddenly angry. At the bar I mentioned to Helene that I was interested in her and she told me she couldn't date someone who was so violent. It was an hour later we needed to leave and he said something to taunt me so I had what I came to call my Courtney Love moment.
I remember a scene on MTV music awards back in the nineties when Madonna was being interviewed on the balcony and all of a sudden a makeup compact came flying passed her face. Courtney was screaming up at her that she loved her and she was awesome. She totally crashed and stole the interview.
Well, I wasn't yelling compliments but I let all of the skeletons out at 2am in the middle of the parking lot screaming at the top of my lungs. Did you tell her you proposed to me last night? Did you tell her. . .?
They took a cab to get away from me. I was driving home alone and suddenly felt this urge to drive into oncoming traffic. Somehow I knew that urge came from him. I felt like he was trying to influence me from afar. I actually laughed out loud and said, "You missed."
I got to the apartment safely. He arrived a bit later and I confronted him about the impulse. He seemed surprised but admitted it. It was around this time he started to change from telling me what to do and told me the Shadows had made me a general and he would be taking orders from me.
A few months later I met up with Amy1 again. This time Kelly asked me to go to a MaryKay party with her.
It actually went well. Amy and I chatted. We stayed outside for over an hour telling her all the delusions that he believed in and how he had told us that he wanted to recruit Amy into the fold. We warned her and even told her what tactics he was using so she could defend herself and see them coming.
Scott came back to the apartment after classes one day and was furious. Amy had told him she knew what he was doing and wanted no part of it. She mentioned the stuff we had told her but didn't tell him we had told her. He really couldn't figure out how she had figured it out.
At one point he said to me that I could kill her now. He had done this one other time at the first apartment. He wanted a friend of his dead, but it needed to look like a drug overdose. He told me to do it. I didn't of course. I may have been drawn into his shadow philosophy at that point but my ethics were strong enough to hold their course even in the face of that.
When he told me this the second time we were in the car. I shrugged and said okay. In my head and I was like, totally not gonna happen. He was shocked. He said to me, a year ago I would have fought him on it but I had changed. I really hadn't. t least not in the way he thought. I just made a decision. I was going to play along and undermined him behind his back. Everything he told me I relayed back to Kelly and Amy1. I armed them and he couldn't get his talons into them. It drove him nuts.
The second apartment was during the first year after 9/11. The second half of that year he went into ROTC. He wanted to use it as a stepping stone to a political career. He was freaked out by the attacks. His uncle worked at the Dept of Defense. He encouraged it. He enrolled into bootcamp and left the first of May.
I finally had gotten rid of him. The girls came over and we did a huge ritual. We spent hours pouring over books then spent over an hour in circle. The ritual dealt mostly with getting rid of the energy links between him and I so he could no longer feed from my energy.
We had determined that he was the worst of energy vampires. He actually hijacked others abilities and fed from them until they were dangerously low. This would explain how I had become so depleted that I became mindless and even lost the ability to see colors at one point. I was completely numb. I think that migraine wasn't just a reaction to a 50 degree temperature and pressure swing. My body may have been purging itself of psychic poison. The only other time that happened to me what in Elmira. After teaching at that school I was psychically poisoned as well.
Anyways. We put a lot of time and effort into cleansing ourselves of those influences.
The following day he called me in a panic. He said he had felt a massive power drain from the city and wanted to know what was going on. I smiled and said "nothing that I know of".
Amy1 and Kelly and I did a few more rituals after that. Part of that was we really enjoyed talking shop with each other. But we continued to cleanse ourselves and even our apartments. We experienced astral plane stalking for a while afterward and had to cleanse and shield almost constantly.
A year later he found me online. He stalked me in a chat room and contacted me asking me questions about my job that could only have come from listening into to posts and chats, lurking. Although it may have been that barista at the mall that knew us both. I hadn't cut her off. She knew where I worked.
He actually showed up one day and walked into where I worked. I was either off that day or on my break and was able to disappear long enough to not get found. I also changed my name online and changed my email to an old one I hadn't use since 98. He didn't know about it. I still have this account and my new name online. It's really become a magical part of who I am. I have a public one and a private one. He hasn't been able to find me on the astral since then as well.
He backed off when one of the members of the group said she was a decorated soldier and was able to locate his base, his commander and give phone numbers. She told me to call and report the harassment.
There was only one incident that brought this all back a few years later. I last had contact from him in 2003 with the online stalking. In 2005 when I had moved to another city about 2 hours from here, hubbie (boyfriend at the time) was spending the night. That morning he told me he had been woken up by a presence in the room. He confronted it and sent it packing. He traced it back to the city I had left. I figured it was Scott. He was still trying to find me. I don't recall having mentioned any of this astral stalking to hubbie so he got a good whiff of it on his own.
Since then there has been only one close call back in 2008 when I was working at a convenience store. He came in the front door. I hid in the back until he was gone. I didn't want him knowing I was back in the city, north of it actually.
After leaving the relationship I went through years of thinking I was tainted or dirty in some way. I had been through something I really didn't want to to talk about. It was embarrassing because at some point of the relationship I believed some of the delusions. I got drawn in. Part of that was the vamping making it easier.
But there was some self-blame to deal with. I really thought that I was ruined in some way. I didn't want anyone or anything pure or clean near me. I stayed away from good people because I didn't want to corrupt them with my presence.
There was also the constant paranoia of bumping into him in the physical or astral. I was obsessed with shields and protection. My third apartment was like the diamonds in the Tower of London. No spirit could get anywhere near me. I experienced a loss of sensitivity to energy. Even now, over a decade later, I still have to work really hard to be in touch with the energy around me. My shields became instinctively thick and difficult.
The joy in my practice, splashing in puddles and letting myself go took a huge dive. That's actually one of the things that drew him to me. I remember pulling over in a rainstorm, a deluge of water, and splashing in the puddles and squealing, completely on a whim in heavy traffic. That's why I say he was "enchanted".
I've only just started to get that back. Bri has been helping tremendously with bringing back my child self.
After Scott, it was Frank, and Andy and a couple others whose names I can't remember. Just dates with those. It took three years of him being out of my life before I felt I could be around good people. Hubbie is definitely the type I would have shunned out of fear of dirtying him. The sense of shame in myself was so intense after that experience. I don't know how I managed to shake it.
It eased gradually over time. I don't remember one specific event that would have shaken it. Maybe Evanescence came out on the radio with their song "Bring me to Life" when I was leaving Scott but pretending to still be enthralled. It made me cry. I felt feelings for the first time in a long time. It wasn't a romantic song for me but one from the Goddess. Crying out for spiritual lift and the strength to do what needed to be done. Cliche as it became from being overplayed, it was an anthem for me at that time.
I have not reread the diaries. I know there are events that I didn't work in. Like the time Amy1 told me she cried when I let her read my diaries about that time with him. She told me she wanted to write a book about what we went through. She said one entry really got to her. It was one that I wrote before work in the car only two months after moving in together with him. I wrote about how I could feel myself dying in a way. I couldn't feel that connection to spirit and the Goddess like I used to. Like bits of myself were dying and falling away.
I'm not going to be one of those people that resents the experiences they have. I won't call any part of my time wasted. It sucks but I'm a tough bitch because of the crap I've been through. When my mother went into the hospital and then died I had such a crazy Springer situation to deal with. I don't know if I would have made it if I hadn't had so much pain in my life. I'd probably be a lot happier and have a whole lot less to process in my brain.
But I can't guarantee that I'd still be this strong or this focused without those experiences. I'm not condoning abuse. Maybe it's just the attitude of taking whatever life throws at you and just doing the best you can with it. At least try to take a lesson from it even if it's only what not to do.
I'm still working on putting the fun back into magic. Working with the dragons that I do usually leads me to being very serious in ritual and intensely focused. Laughter has been sneaking back into it though.
I'll keep working at it.
The abusive relationship.
Not that I hadn't been in codependent or psychologically confusing situations before. David did a job on my head while I was with him. I totally lost my sense of identity.
Ally had a hard time being consistent. She loved me. She loved me not. She constantly said things one week and totally said the opposite the next week. Drove me nuts.
I dated a bipolar girl for a few weeks and got jerked around once. After Ally I was sensitive to that kind of thing and cut her loose.
I did hook up with Ally one more time around the millennium. It's relevant.
She had stopped by my room in may of 99 and left an email address. She was leaving school and didn't plan on coming back. I had one more semester that fall before I was done. I took the bait. I contacted her over the summer and we started chatting again. The feelings were still there so I let it progress. Round three.
I went to visit her in Dec and Jan of that year. Spent the millennium on a military base. She introduced me to a guy named Steve. Total neanderthal. I entertained the idea of a relationship with him but it didn't go very far emotionally. He was the type that didn't like to wear a condom. Really? In this day and age? Idiot.
He got pushy and disrespectful toward her and me and was trying to Alpha Ally's husband. They kicked him out. Her husband tried to pull me into a threeway but I laughed it off and avoided it. They had an open marriage. Still do, I think. I heard on the gossipmill that she has two girls, still happily married and doing really well. Started her own editing company. She'd always wanted to do that. I remember her mentioning editing careers repeatedly over the many years I knew her.
Anyways, we got really serious. I even told her I wanted to marry her and we were making plans. I came back and transferred to a new school in her home town even. She eventually came back to stay with her parents for a few months while her hubby was deployed on a six month ocean voyage. We spent more time together and things started to unravel.
Here's where it sucks. She introduced me to Scott. I had sorta been seeing a guy name Karol I had met through a yahoo group. We ended up being just friends for a short time after romantic feelings didn't emerge. He was really interesting and intelligent and perpetually hours late for everything. Drove me nuts.
Scott was really exciting and interesting and I felt an instant connection. Things seemed magickal between us, like we had had lifetimes together. Ally was not pleased. She had mentioned him to me before when we had been at SBU and some of the idolizing he had done of her. I believe it.
I met him when Ally, a current close friend and I went to an apartment where he was. We hung out with him and his girlfriend. Yeah, he had been taken. Dave had been too, unbeknownst to me at the time. Same story. He said they were on the outs. We chatted quite a bit and it "enchanted" him. I didn't do any magic but at that time I tended to have an effect on people around me. I think it was my manifesting abilities coming through as a result of my developing practice. I knew how to "sparkle" when I wanted to and draw others to me.
Not as cute as 37 as I was at 23. hehehe
I met up with him on my own a few times. We spent one night driving all over until dawn when we met up with the others to go to the Ren Faire. We held hands and were manic giggly. We took a lot of road trips.
I was staying with a relative at the time about 30 min from the city and school I went to. Over the summer Scott stayed at that house and I really needed to leave after that. I told him to walk around and keep himself busy while I was at work but he stayed at the house instead of taking a shower and leaving and making himself scarce. My relative came home to this strange guy in his living room and was not happy. Being a responsible adult now, I totally get it. Back then I was still in my kid mindset and so decided to leave instead of taking that event as a huge warning sign. He obviously didn't respect me enough to do a simple thing that I asked him.
I found an apartment in the city and moved in. I bought my first furniture and I really liked the place. It only took a few weeks for me to invite him to stay with me. He was over there all the time anyway.
That's when things changed. Once his stuff got moved in the fun wore off quick. He started sabotaging my practice and the beings I worked with. We got into some nasty fights where I slept on the couch. Our road trips stopped being about spending time together and turned into shopping trips where he wanted me to spend all this money on him. My parents were calling weekly with issues about me over-drafting my account. It's a good thing they weren't in the city within an easy distance. They were 6 hours away. They didn't know he was living there. I think they eventually figured it out. He couldn't keep his damn mouth shut while I was on the phone.
Everything became about me supporting him. He couldn't keep a job, couldn't give me money to help out for multiple reasons. His mother told me I'd regret ever meeting him. I found out that all his mania was part of a mental illness. I was starting to see the downward slide. He started getting aggressive and emotionally violent.
I ignored all the red flags. Sometimes I'd scream at him to get out but I had no leverage. I couldn't physically attack him. I didn't know if they law was on my side or not as far as the lease was concerned and he wouldn't detach himself from me. I'd take it back too. The first year we were together I really thought I could make it work. I had gone from this confident chick who moved to a new city, got an apartment and made a go from scratch with determination and bravery to someone who was afraid to be alone. I didn't believe that I could do it without him, at least socially.
Things got philosophically dark. He started talking about how he believed he was the anti-christ. He read way too much into song lyrics and became obsessed with Marilyn Manson. Now, I really like Manson's music and really believe he's more of a cool, laid back kinda buy beyond the stage persona. His interviews with people show a really intelligent and calm guy. He'd probably have been creeped out. But Scott thought he had some kind of psychic connection and he was getting messages in the music.
I know, this is some crazy shit. I really didn't see a way out at the time. Eventually I started buying into some of it. He was really into Babylon 5. It's a great series and a couple years ago I made myself watch it again from start to finish. I made hubbie watch it too. It's still well written even by more recent standards.
He believed the Shadows were real, he was one of their soldiers and they spoke to him. We started to develop plans for our own commune like situation, our own schools. Recreate society according to our own philosophy.
My journals became a place to write down his ideas and discussions I had had with him. I stopped writing about myself, my feelings, processing my past, my own ideas or spiritual experiences.
Before we left that first apartment I tried to throw him out one more time. I found out he was screwing someone else and lost my shit. He had left his computer on with his e-mail up and I read a note from a girl named Katie about something they had done sexually in her car outside of our apartment, It explained why he brushed his teeth before getting into bed. He also wrote emails to this other girl that he was having sex with. When I called him he was at her house and I screamed at him on the phone to come get his stuff. I was putting it on the porch and locking the door. He didn't have a key.
I should have done it too. I don't remember if I lost my nerve or thought I didn't have a legal right to actually do it. I backed down. Needless to say, the sexual aspect of our relationship ended. We became "friends" and I signed a lease with him on the next place.
That fall I had a horrible migraine and ended up in the hospital. I remember being at the toilet puking so hard I was peeing myself and just crawling back and forth between bed and bathroom. He kept yelling at me that I needed to get up and drive him to his parents. I don't think it was really getting through that I couldn't even walk. He finally went upstairs and asked Magda to drive me to the hospital. She was very sweet. She stayed with us for a few hours but then she had to leave to do classwork. I ended up on an IV for fluids because I was dehydrated and a nausea suppressant. His parents drove us back to the apartment. Magda made me some dinner and then gave me the "abused wife" talk.
I think I started disconnecting and reclaiming my own mind again at that time. I started trying to find dates again. I never really did get passed the second date with any of them. Scott answered the phone a few times and scared the shit out of them. Lost a few that way.
Kelly became my friend through Ally as well and again through Scott. I think she saw through the manipulation of Ally and the crazy of Scott. She's always been able to see me really well both personality and energy. She's really gifted.
I lost Karol as a friend shortly after Scott moved in. Scott introduced me to Amy2 who wanted to date me. That never really took off. A couple months later she flipped out at me and made some comment about how she would have stabbed me if she had her knife on her. She went over to Karol's house and he drove her home. He had a huge crush on her. She was really pretty and shapely. He pretty much dropped me after that. He wouldn't respond to phone calls or emails anymore.
As luck would have it, Scott also introduced me to the one person who helped break me away and undo his influence. One night Scott brought to the apartment a girl named Amy1. We had actually been at the the same college, SBU. She had to drop out after one year due to some severe menacing from her roommate.
The university would not help her. Not surprised. Colleges always do that.
She knew about Ally and me. Apparently we were a major source of gossip on that campus during our tumultuous times. I found that interesting. I remember thinking Ally would have been excited over her status at campus celebrity. We had stopped talking some time during my stay at the first apartment. I sent her a taunting kiss-off letter meant to hurt her while I was being mindless. Scott's idea.
Anyway, we went out that night together. Scott asked if I would be upset if she spent the night. This was after a few weeks earlier he had lost his shit when Kelly had stayed over and slept in my bed. Jealousy. He had also been proposing to me nightly again. Yeah, I was pissed. I don't think Amy understood why I was suddenly angry. At the bar I mentioned to Helene that I was interested in her and she told me she couldn't date someone who was so violent. It was an hour later we needed to leave and he said something to taunt me so I had what I came to call my Courtney Love moment.
I remember a scene on MTV music awards back in the nineties when Madonna was being interviewed on the balcony and all of a sudden a makeup compact came flying passed her face. Courtney was screaming up at her that she loved her and she was awesome. She totally crashed and stole the interview.
Well, I wasn't yelling compliments but I let all of the skeletons out at 2am in the middle of the parking lot screaming at the top of my lungs. Did you tell her you proposed to me last night? Did you tell her. . .?
They took a cab to get away from me. I was driving home alone and suddenly felt this urge to drive into oncoming traffic. Somehow I knew that urge came from him. I felt like he was trying to influence me from afar. I actually laughed out loud and said, "You missed."
I got to the apartment safely. He arrived a bit later and I confronted him about the impulse. He seemed surprised but admitted it. It was around this time he started to change from telling me what to do and told me the Shadows had made me a general and he would be taking orders from me.
A few months later I met up with Amy1 again. This time Kelly asked me to go to a MaryKay party with her.
It actually went well. Amy and I chatted. We stayed outside for over an hour telling her all the delusions that he believed in and how he had told us that he wanted to recruit Amy into the fold. We warned her and even told her what tactics he was using so she could defend herself and see them coming.
Scott came back to the apartment after classes one day and was furious. Amy had told him she knew what he was doing and wanted no part of it. She mentioned the stuff we had told her but didn't tell him we had told her. He really couldn't figure out how she had figured it out.
At one point he said to me that I could kill her now. He had done this one other time at the first apartment. He wanted a friend of his dead, but it needed to look like a drug overdose. He told me to do it. I didn't of course. I may have been drawn into his shadow philosophy at that point but my ethics were strong enough to hold their course even in the face of that.
When he told me this the second time we were in the car. I shrugged and said okay. In my head and I was like, totally not gonna happen. He was shocked. He said to me, a year ago I would have fought him on it but I had changed. I really hadn't. t least not in the way he thought. I just made a decision. I was going to play along and undermined him behind his back. Everything he told me I relayed back to Kelly and Amy1. I armed them and he couldn't get his talons into them. It drove him nuts.
The second apartment was during the first year after 9/11. The second half of that year he went into ROTC. He wanted to use it as a stepping stone to a political career. He was freaked out by the attacks. His uncle worked at the Dept of Defense. He encouraged it. He enrolled into bootcamp and left the first of May.
I finally had gotten rid of him. The girls came over and we did a huge ritual. We spent hours pouring over books then spent over an hour in circle. The ritual dealt mostly with getting rid of the energy links between him and I so he could no longer feed from my energy.
We had determined that he was the worst of energy vampires. He actually hijacked others abilities and fed from them until they were dangerously low. This would explain how I had become so depleted that I became mindless and even lost the ability to see colors at one point. I was completely numb. I think that migraine wasn't just a reaction to a 50 degree temperature and pressure swing. My body may have been purging itself of psychic poison. The only other time that happened to me what in Elmira. After teaching at that school I was psychically poisoned as well.
Anyways. We put a lot of time and effort into cleansing ourselves of those influences.
The following day he called me in a panic. He said he had felt a massive power drain from the city and wanted to know what was going on. I smiled and said "nothing that I know of".
Amy1 and Kelly and I did a few more rituals after that. Part of that was we really enjoyed talking shop with each other. But we continued to cleanse ourselves and even our apartments. We experienced astral plane stalking for a while afterward and had to cleanse and shield almost constantly.
A year later he found me online. He stalked me in a chat room and contacted me asking me questions about my job that could only have come from listening into to posts and chats, lurking. Although it may have been that barista at the mall that knew us both. I hadn't cut her off. She knew where I worked.
He actually showed up one day and walked into where I worked. I was either off that day or on my break and was able to disappear long enough to not get found. I also changed my name online and changed my email to an old one I hadn't use since 98. He didn't know about it. I still have this account and my new name online. It's really become a magical part of who I am. I have a public one and a private one. He hasn't been able to find me on the astral since then as well.
He backed off when one of the members of the group said she was a decorated soldier and was able to locate his base, his commander and give phone numbers. She told me to call and report the harassment.
There was only one incident that brought this all back a few years later. I last had contact from him in 2003 with the online stalking. In 2005 when I had moved to another city about 2 hours from here, hubbie (boyfriend at the time) was spending the night. That morning he told me he had been woken up by a presence in the room. He confronted it and sent it packing. He traced it back to the city I had left. I figured it was Scott. He was still trying to find me. I don't recall having mentioned any of this astral stalking to hubbie so he got a good whiff of it on his own.
Since then there has been only one close call back in 2008 when I was working at a convenience store. He came in the front door. I hid in the back until he was gone. I didn't want him knowing I was back in the city, north of it actually.
After leaving the relationship I went through years of thinking I was tainted or dirty in some way. I had been through something I really didn't want to to talk about. It was embarrassing because at some point of the relationship I believed some of the delusions. I got drawn in. Part of that was the vamping making it easier.
But there was some self-blame to deal with. I really thought that I was ruined in some way. I didn't want anyone or anything pure or clean near me. I stayed away from good people because I didn't want to corrupt them with my presence.
There was also the constant paranoia of bumping into him in the physical or astral. I was obsessed with shields and protection. My third apartment was like the diamonds in the Tower of London. No spirit could get anywhere near me. I experienced a loss of sensitivity to energy. Even now, over a decade later, I still have to work really hard to be in touch with the energy around me. My shields became instinctively thick and difficult.
The joy in my practice, splashing in puddles and letting myself go took a huge dive. That's actually one of the things that drew him to me. I remember pulling over in a rainstorm, a deluge of water, and splashing in the puddles and squealing, completely on a whim in heavy traffic. That's why I say he was "enchanted".
I've only just started to get that back. Bri has been helping tremendously with bringing back my child self.
After Scott, it was Frank, and Andy and a couple others whose names I can't remember. Just dates with those. It took three years of him being out of my life before I felt I could be around good people. Hubbie is definitely the type I would have shunned out of fear of dirtying him. The sense of shame in myself was so intense after that experience. I don't know how I managed to shake it.
It eased gradually over time. I don't remember one specific event that would have shaken it. Maybe Evanescence came out on the radio with their song "Bring me to Life" when I was leaving Scott but pretending to still be enthralled. It made me cry. I felt feelings for the first time in a long time. It wasn't a romantic song for me but one from the Goddess. Crying out for spiritual lift and the strength to do what needed to be done. Cliche as it became from being overplayed, it was an anthem for me at that time.
I have not reread the diaries. I know there are events that I didn't work in. Like the time Amy1 told me she cried when I let her read my diaries about that time with him. She told me she wanted to write a book about what we went through. She said one entry really got to her. It was one that I wrote before work in the car only two months after moving in together with him. I wrote about how I could feel myself dying in a way. I couldn't feel that connection to spirit and the Goddess like I used to. Like bits of myself were dying and falling away.
I'm not going to be one of those people that resents the experiences they have. I won't call any part of my time wasted. It sucks but I'm a tough bitch because of the crap I've been through. When my mother went into the hospital and then died I had such a crazy Springer situation to deal with. I don't know if I would have made it if I hadn't had so much pain in my life. I'd probably be a lot happier and have a whole lot less to process in my brain.
But I can't guarantee that I'd still be this strong or this focused without those experiences. I'm not condoning abuse. Maybe it's just the attitude of taking whatever life throws at you and just doing the best you can with it. At least try to take a lesson from it even if it's only what not to do.
I'm still working on putting the fun back into magic. Working with the dragons that I do usually leads me to being very serious in ritual and intensely focused. Laughter has been sneaking back into it though.
I'll keep working at it.
Another House bites it
We went to see our second house today. We really liked it and did the usual thing and bid 5K below the asking price. We knew there would be a negotiation back and forth. But the seller went way over what we had bid, 15 K over. Our agent thought things sounded funny and decided to investigate. We put in another bid at the asking price. We liked it enough so we were okay with that. But our agent got back to us and said the seller refused to go any lower than 7K above the asking price. He said it had something to do with paying off the mortgage and there was supposedly another really interested buyer. I don't know if I believe that.
It was a really nice house but we were a bit angsty. It's probably legal to list it lower than you intend to sell hoping to bring in more bids that way, but it feels like a bait and switch. It feels like false advertising. Normally if you want to sell around 130K you list at around 135K or 140K knowing buyers are going to underbid and you have high platform to negotiate from. They just did the opposite. Weird.
This house has been on and off the market repeatedly over the last two years. So hubbie and I sat down with the wish list we created a few weeks ago and realized that this house actually was off on everything we had written down. We looked at the floorplan to see how easy it would be to add another bathroom, to bring it up to what we wanted and it just isn't doable. The shine wore off real fast. It was a very pretty house with 2 acres of land that backed right up to a beautiful rocky creek. But it's not good enough and I'm afraid I would grow to resent it. If the floorplan allowed for easy addition and improvement then it would be more attractive.
We kinda fell for it cause it was move in ready and had really attractive cottage features and a garden already in place. But I can't reconcile the wish list with the angst from negotiation. Plus the owners live down the street about 10 houses and that would be awkward.
We'll keep looking. I'm going to tell our agent to expand our search north to some of the north towns to see if there are any properties in our price range that fit what we are looking for. His primary search is by acreage. That has really helped narrow it down.
It was a really nice house but we were a bit angsty. It's probably legal to list it lower than you intend to sell hoping to bring in more bids that way, but it feels like a bait and switch. It feels like false advertising. Normally if you want to sell around 130K you list at around 135K or 140K knowing buyers are going to underbid and you have high platform to negotiate from. They just did the opposite. Weird.
This house has been on and off the market repeatedly over the last two years. So hubbie and I sat down with the wish list we created a few weeks ago and realized that this house actually was off on everything we had written down. We looked at the floorplan to see how easy it would be to add another bathroom, to bring it up to what we wanted and it just isn't doable. The shine wore off real fast. It was a very pretty house with 2 acres of land that backed right up to a beautiful rocky creek. But it's not good enough and I'm afraid I would grow to resent it. If the floorplan allowed for easy addition and improvement then it would be more attractive.
We kinda fell for it cause it was move in ready and had really attractive cottage features and a garden already in place. But I can't reconcile the wish list with the angst from negotiation. Plus the owners live down the street about 10 houses and that would be awkward.
We'll keep looking. I'm going to tell our agent to expand our search north to some of the north towns to see if there are any properties in our price range that fit what we are looking for. His primary search is by acreage. That has really helped narrow it down.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Listening to Linkin Park
When you were standing in the wake of devastation
When you were waiting on the edge of the unknown
And with the cataclysm raining down
Insides crying, "Save me now!"
You were there, impossibly alone
Do you feel cold and lost in desperation?
You build up hope, but failure’s all you’ve known
Remember all the sadness and frustration
And let it go. Let it go
-Linkin Park "Iridescent"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLYiIBCN9ec&index=11&list=RDdxytyRy-O1k
I was ruminating again this morning about teaching and the years I've put into it. Going over once again my reasons for leaving. Last week I handed in my letter that says I'm not coming back next year and told Dawn to not call me for any more positions. It was too overwhelming, which it has been. Trying to juggle Bri, renovating this house and building up my stained glass inventory has not been managable with "interruptions" to substitute classes.
This year it was mostly babysitting anyway.
I remembered the witch hunt after me at Maritime, being pushed out of Jamestown because the dept chair simply didn't like me, and the two years in Elmira that put me into therapy. I still don't know if that last marking period was a result of the principal wanting to push me out by making it impossible to stay or if he really thought I could pull off some kind of miracle with those crazies. You can't put 12 special ed kids from 8:1:1 classes into a general ed class and think they'll just adjust.
The emotional problems that followed were worse than any I have ever had in my life. I've been depressed and even rageful to the point of self-harm before but never to that level. And not only did that experience bring on suicidal thoughts but resentment over the fact that I was having suicidal thoughts and thus transferring that into homicidal thoughts.
Hence the therapy to survive without warranting a prison sentence.
I've still had residual trauma reactions since then. It took three years of substituting and four years total to really get to a point where I'm okay. I went from an emotional panic attack at just the sight of Elmira letterhead on the envelope in the mail a few months after I left, out of place reactions to students, to a place where I feel much more in control of my actions. I'm not reactive and losing my head in anger and just the word school or driving passed a school building.
Besides there being not jobs for the last 6-7 years, they're laying off again this year, it's not emotionally healthy for me to stay in that environment, even at a good school.
This year there was one student I was ready to nail to the wall. He put his hands on me twice this year. The classroom teacher wrote him up for it the first time in the fall and I wrote him up for it this spring. He's getting physically bigger too so this is going to be a problem into his future. He's in 7th grade now and taller than me. I'm not saying I'm leaving because of him.
I am going to point out that they way he treated me brought many of the old rage and out of control emotion back. I had some emotional flashbacks where the desire to hurt someone popped back into my head. Not a good place to be when my reactiveness kicks in, surrounded by teenagers who's primary goal is to test adults to the breaking point. My point is closer than it used to be.
The passed two weeks without teaching or waiting for calls have actually been relaxing. I feel like I'm gettings things done for a change. I have a schedule that I'm able to mostly keep up with as far as woodworking and soldering is concerned. I'm hopeful about the house we're looking at on Tuesday. It doesn't need any major work done to it. I'm considering a masterbedroom suite addition in the future on the first floor but it's move-in ready and so we can just relax a few years before we make any big changes and be perfectly happy on over two acres of land.
I think two songs really hit me this morning because of the passed five years and how much has changed. Maybe part of the reason why I was able to move passed a lot of the Elmira bullshit had to do with so many deaths, the birth of my child and the loss of my mother in particular. Career shit just wasn't all that important in the face of so much loss and grief.
"Lost in the Echo" was the first song that hit me. I got out of it a need to let the ghosts go. Not holding onto the past and those who have left so you get stuck in one place and become a ghost yourself. A bit of crying with that one.
The second song "Iridescent" speaks to being alone and surrounded by devastation. Being able to stand strong and give your experiences their proper respect. It's not okay to just forget they ever happened. It's a part of you, what makes you stronger, and you need to face and accept those experiences in order to let them go. That's where healing and strength comes from. Not denial or forgetting but accepting and incorporating those things into who you will become.
A lot of Optimus Prime dying.
Since accepting the past and incorporating those lessons is where I'm at right now, it makes sense this kind of thing would strike me hard. I've been needing to be reminded of the purpose of this journey lately. I've been off the calendar for a couple of months
Things are still happening in the background and in my subconscious. I've noticed I'm acting more from a place of solid foundation, of calmness and steadiness that I don't remember having before.
I still get manic occasionally though.
When you were waiting on the edge of the unknown
And with the cataclysm raining down
Insides crying, "Save me now!"
You were there, impossibly alone
Do you feel cold and lost in desperation?
You build up hope, but failure’s all you’ve known
Remember all the sadness and frustration
And let it go. Let it go
-Linkin Park "Iridescent"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLYiIBCN9ec&index=11&list=RDdxytyRy-O1k
I was ruminating again this morning about teaching and the years I've put into it. Going over once again my reasons for leaving. Last week I handed in my letter that says I'm not coming back next year and told Dawn to not call me for any more positions. It was too overwhelming, which it has been. Trying to juggle Bri, renovating this house and building up my stained glass inventory has not been managable with "interruptions" to substitute classes.
This year it was mostly babysitting anyway.
I remembered the witch hunt after me at Maritime, being pushed out of Jamestown because the dept chair simply didn't like me, and the two years in Elmira that put me into therapy. I still don't know if that last marking period was a result of the principal wanting to push me out by making it impossible to stay or if he really thought I could pull off some kind of miracle with those crazies. You can't put 12 special ed kids from 8:1:1 classes into a general ed class and think they'll just adjust.
The emotional problems that followed were worse than any I have ever had in my life. I've been depressed and even rageful to the point of self-harm before but never to that level. And not only did that experience bring on suicidal thoughts but resentment over the fact that I was having suicidal thoughts and thus transferring that into homicidal thoughts.
Hence the therapy to survive without warranting a prison sentence.
I've still had residual trauma reactions since then. It took three years of substituting and four years total to really get to a point where I'm okay. I went from an emotional panic attack at just the sight of Elmira letterhead on the envelope in the mail a few months after I left, out of place reactions to students, to a place where I feel much more in control of my actions. I'm not reactive and losing my head in anger and just the word school or driving passed a school building.
Besides there being not jobs for the last 6-7 years, they're laying off again this year, it's not emotionally healthy for me to stay in that environment, even at a good school.
This year there was one student I was ready to nail to the wall. He put his hands on me twice this year. The classroom teacher wrote him up for it the first time in the fall and I wrote him up for it this spring. He's getting physically bigger too so this is going to be a problem into his future. He's in 7th grade now and taller than me. I'm not saying I'm leaving because of him.
I am going to point out that they way he treated me brought many of the old rage and out of control emotion back. I had some emotional flashbacks where the desire to hurt someone popped back into my head. Not a good place to be when my reactiveness kicks in, surrounded by teenagers who's primary goal is to test adults to the breaking point. My point is closer than it used to be.
The passed two weeks without teaching or waiting for calls have actually been relaxing. I feel like I'm gettings things done for a change. I have a schedule that I'm able to mostly keep up with as far as woodworking and soldering is concerned. I'm hopeful about the house we're looking at on Tuesday. It doesn't need any major work done to it. I'm considering a masterbedroom suite addition in the future on the first floor but it's move-in ready and so we can just relax a few years before we make any big changes and be perfectly happy on over two acres of land.
I think two songs really hit me this morning because of the passed five years and how much has changed. Maybe part of the reason why I was able to move passed a lot of the Elmira bullshit had to do with so many deaths, the birth of my child and the loss of my mother in particular. Career shit just wasn't all that important in the face of so much loss and grief.
"Lost in the Echo" was the first song that hit me. I got out of it a need to let the ghosts go. Not holding onto the past and those who have left so you get stuck in one place and become a ghost yourself. A bit of crying with that one.
The second song "Iridescent" speaks to being alone and surrounded by devastation. Being able to stand strong and give your experiences their proper respect. It's not okay to just forget they ever happened. It's a part of you, what makes you stronger, and you need to face and accept those experiences in order to let them go. That's where healing and strength comes from. Not denial or forgetting but accepting and incorporating those things into who you will become.
A lot of Optimus Prime dying.
Since accepting the past and incorporating those lessons is where I'm at right now, it makes sense this kind of thing would strike me hard. I've been needing to be reminded of the purpose of this journey lately. I've been off the calendar for a couple of months
Things are still happening in the background and in my subconscious. I've noticed I'm acting more from a place of solid foundation, of calmness and steadiness that I don't remember having before.
I still get manic occasionally though.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Finally getting back on track
Totally missed Beltaine. I usually do for some reason except that one time before I got pregnant. Funny how that works. I don't need to be pregnant again so missing Beltaine from here on out might be a good thing.
I've almost finished my second set of elemental glass pieces. The paperwork for the LLC is in the works. Just need approval from the state and the docs sent back to me with my license and all that. AZ Stained Glass is the name I'm going with. Mostly because of the dragon sigil that was my first design that I drafted in my sketch book. It looks like a Z so I wanted to work that in.
I might make it a trademark when I've finished developing it. One of the angles is off so I want to adjust the design before I make another one.
The scanner I ordered came broken. The box was smashed and crushed in both ends. I opened it up anyway to see if it might work against all odds. It completely failed. The scanner light did not come on and the arm was stuck in place and the motor was grinding. Unusable. Pissed I needed to pay shipping to send it back to them to get a replacement. It ups the overall price from 60 to 80. The next one had better come in decent condition. I'll be so pissed if it happens again.
Still need to get to the UPS store. Will have to do that Tuesday as soon as we get out of that meeting. I didn't have time on Friday.
Bri is doing really well with speech. She's started her please and thank yous. She did really well both emotionally and verbally in therapy on Tuesday. It helps with the stress relief.
We looked at a house out in Wales last Tuesday. It was HUD and needed a lot of work. I really would have liked it. Five acres and a huge house with Colonial features. The year was 1832 and it had a hearth that could fit 8 people in it. Gorgeous. Someone bid and got accepted shortly after we viewed it so we missed out. There was a huge foundation issue in the corner of the kitchen that would have been 20K by itself, a septic system overhaul for 10K and a kitchen that was ancient ugly. I would have had to do so much work. The floors and ceilings were completely bowed as well. Improving it would have been doable but the increase in value of the property would have made it unaffordable for us and we would have to sell as soon as the tax value was assessed and taxes due.
The school system was really white and really bare bones as well. No music or fine arts in the school. What the heck?
We found one we are going to look at next week maybe in a closer town. It's a few hundred square feet smaller than the one we have now but it's on over 2 acres in a rural area and it's very attractive and wouldn't need much work at all. Just the kitchen from what I saw in the picks. A bit dated but the living room and dining room looks great. Two of the bedrooms look really nice as well. Just some carpet to rip up.
We'll see.
The woodwork in this house if coming along as well. I've been so busy the last two weeks that nothing has gotten done. I completely stalled. I managed to get back on track Friday after helping Jess with her garden and the other meetings and traveling that I had to do every day. The woodwork in the downstairs bathroom might be done tomorrow during Bri's nap. Then hubbie can put the toilet and sink in. I'll follow with the toilet hutch and curtains. Yay. I can start on the upstairs this coming week and get that demo and wall board up and paint it.
I got a nice blue paint for the upstairs bathroom. I have a new shower curtain as well and will get new floor mats. The ones I got a year ago are getting ratty. They were pretty cheap to begin with.
So things are kinda Eh. It's getting done with a bit of a struggle. If we decide on this house and get it, it will be cheaper and no work needing done. I'll have free time by the end of this summer to devote to stained glass working all day like a real professional. My soldering skills have really taken off. I'm very happy with my more recent pieces.
This house has space in the garage and a full basement. I might be able to find room for a workshop.
When the LLC paperwork comes in I will set up the online store and start moving pieces.
I've almost finished my second set of elemental glass pieces. The paperwork for the LLC is in the works. Just need approval from the state and the docs sent back to me with my license and all that. AZ Stained Glass is the name I'm going with. Mostly because of the dragon sigil that was my first design that I drafted in my sketch book. It looks like a Z so I wanted to work that in.
I might make it a trademark when I've finished developing it. One of the angles is off so I want to adjust the design before I make another one.
The scanner I ordered came broken. The box was smashed and crushed in both ends. I opened it up anyway to see if it might work against all odds. It completely failed. The scanner light did not come on and the arm was stuck in place and the motor was grinding. Unusable. Pissed I needed to pay shipping to send it back to them to get a replacement. It ups the overall price from 60 to 80. The next one had better come in decent condition. I'll be so pissed if it happens again.
Still need to get to the UPS store. Will have to do that Tuesday as soon as we get out of that meeting. I didn't have time on Friday.
Bri is doing really well with speech. She's started her please and thank yous. She did really well both emotionally and verbally in therapy on Tuesday. It helps with the stress relief.
We looked at a house out in Wales last Tuesday. It was HUD and needed a lot of work. I really would have liked it. Five acres and a huge house with Colonial features. The year was 1832 and it had a hearth that could fit 8 people in it. Gorgeous. Someone bid and got accepted shortly after we viewed it so we missed out. There was a huge foundation issue in the corner of the kitchen that would have been 20K by itself, a septic system overhaul for 10K and a kitchen that was ancient ugly. I would have had to do so much work. The floors and ceilings were completely bowed as well. Improving it would have been doable but the increase in value of the property would have made it unaffordable for us and we would have to sell as soon as the tax value was assessed and taxes due.
The school system was really white and really bare bones as well. No music or fine arts in the school. What the heck?
We found one we are going to look at next week maybe in a closer town. It's a few hundred square feet smaller than the one we have now but it's on over 2 acres in a rural area and it's very attractive and wouldn't need much work at all. Just the kitchen from what I saw in the picks. A bit dated but the living room and dining room looks great. Two of the bedrooms look really nice as well. Just some carpet to rip up.
We'll see.
The woodwork in this house if coming along as well. I've been so busy the last two weeks that nothing has gotten done. I completely stalled. I managed to get back on track Friday after helping Jess with her garden and the other meetings and traveling that I had to do every day. The woodwork in the downstairs bathroom might be done tomorrow during Bri's nap. Then hubbie can put the toilet and sink in. I'll follow with the toilet hutch and curtains. Yay. I can start on the upstairs this coming week and get that demo and wall board up and paint it.
I got a nice blue paint for the upstairs bathroom. I have a new shower curtain as well and will get new floor mats. The ones I got a year ago are getting ratty. They were pretty cheap to begin with.
So things are kinda Eh. It's getting done with a bit of a struggle. If we decide on this house and get it, it will be cheaper and no work needing done. I'll have free time by the end of this summer to devote to stained glass working all day like a real professional. My soldering skills have really taken off. I'm very happy with my more recent pieces.
This house has space in the garage and a full basement. I might be able to find room for a workshop.
When the LLC paperwork comes in I will set up the online store and start moving pieces.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Finally Making Decisions (College years)
So on my way to my chiropractic appointment this morning I was thinking about all of the things I'll get done once school is out. I have about four weeks left of potential calls for sub duty. I started getting angry again about the jobs I've had in the past and resentful over the path my career took to this point. So I asked myself, why am I waiting? I'm not happy. There are no potential full time positions in the near future. They're laying off a couple of grade school teachers this year, in special ed of all certification areas. That used to be the hottest ticket to a job in education because of the rapidly increasing demand for spec ed services.
I don't make enough money to justify the inconvenience this is turning out to be. I have a full calendar of stuff to get done this month by the end of it. I'm halfway through the month and I got sick so I'm already a full week behind my planned schedule. I lose a whole day of potential work on the house or my glass because of being at the school. I only get about 80 to 160 a week. I have to take Wed off due to appointments for me, Bri and at the bank. It's not even economically justified.
The inheritance gives me a chance to take a bigger risk than I could have without it. I'd have to go full-time retail or any other job that I could get my hands on in desperation without it. We were struggling before and with the 700 a month in daycare expenses, we'd never be able to do it on one income.
At the same time, this is the leap that I've been preparing for. My midwife said that babies have a tendency to attract what they need so just trust the universe to provide. She was talking about Bri but I think that might apply to other things. I need to be a little bit more trusting and more open to opportunity.
It took me this long to figure out that there's no such thing as wasted time. Every risk I took, even failures, led me a long my path a little further. I learned things. I met people and gained more skills. I almost have too many skills at this point. It's partly why I used to get so caught up in making decisions.
I also realized in reading the book about how to write your own memoir that I read back in January that I'm the type that tends to get caught up in the planning stage and most of the time never actually gets started. I often talk myself out of doing things. "Someone's already doing it. I have nothing new to contribute. I'm not good enough." So I'm consciously and explicitly talking myself passed that point of paralysis that I used to give in to and return to my day job. It was the voice of my mother. She used to question my plans in an indirect way. Her primary concern was getting a job and being able to pay bills, which I respect. One must be able to support herself. Parents want to see their kids settled in their own house and self-supporting. It takes the strain off of them and assures them that when they die their kids will be okay without them around to rescue them. With my bro I could see how this really concerned both of them. They didn't want to see another one of their kids follow that dependent path.
Despite this I have taken more risks than the women of my family that came before me. My mother used to tell me stories of how I would do something, it would get around the family that I had, and she'd be confronted, how could she let me do that? Like the time I went to CA to visit Ally. My grandmother couldn't get over it. Mom said that she said, "She just went. She wanted to go and she just got on a plane and went." like she just couldn't believe it. Mom was laughing at the time. I think, even though to my face she was always risk averse, with others in the family she was proud of my independence. She enjoyed watching the discomfort of the other women in the family who just couldn't understand how I could move to a strange city with no family connections, get an apartment, travel the country, and start from scratch anywhere with anything.
That was back in 2001. The economy doesn't support that kind of thing anymore. I used to be able to get a job as soon as I handed in the application. There were a couple of times at the turn of the millenium when I got hired as soon as I handed in the app. on the spot. You can't do that anymore, not even for part-time retail. There are too many people looking for work and too many apps for the managers to go through. They can be picky and take their time now. And they do.
When I was in college I was afraid to take risks. I had the bravado of a radical feminist. I would get into anyone's face if they tried to tell me not to do something because I might get hurt. When Russ, Ally's bfriend, told me not to go walking on the nature trails by myself behind Francis Hall, I was enraged. He tried to act concerned that I could get attacked and hurt. I yelled at him that I wasn't going to stop living and doing what I enjoyed because some stupid jerk might attack me. I wouldn't stop my life and change my behavior out of fear.
I did anyway. Not the nature trails thing. I still wandered the woods, off the trails and even in the middle of the night. It made me happy and fresh air was great for the complexion. But in my relationships and in my major and classes I was very fear driven.
I had social anxiety although I didn't have a name for it back then. I almost never spoke up in class. I'd try to force myself to because I knew girls were often overlooked in classes and I wanted to break that trend. Feminist thing again. I tried to get myself to act in ways not typically feminine. It was a decision I had made really young. I recognized early that male character traits were the traits of power and success. So I cultivated masculine traits in myself. I became argumentative, took up space when I walked and sat down.
But in my relationships I was paralyzed with fear. I never made the first move. I never spoke first. Despite the strength and intelligence I know I had then. I had a fearlessness and a joy that I know was attractive to a lot of people. Unlike high school, I was just being my joyful self and people seemed to flock to me. It could have been the laughter that was unusually loud and piercing for a girl. I could silence the dining hall with it.
I'm not sure exactly what it was, but attracting romantic attention was not as hard in college.
But when I was in love with someone, I could never get the words out. Taking that risk paralyzed me. I would get rigid, my throat would close up, and the emotion was so strong with the voices arguing in my head. I had to say something because I knew they couldn't read minds and people need to know how you feel about them. If they think you don't care then they move on to someone who's more demonstrative. This saved me from sexual mistakes but the emotional fallout resonated for years. Each time, with Ally, Dave, Jamie, I choked it back.
In hind sight I don't think it would have made much of a difference in those cases. Ally had some issues with women in general. I don't know even now if she ever really loved me or just enjoyed the attention that she got from guys for being with a girl. It might have been more of a performance for her. But maybe in her own way she did love me somehow. She's mentioned me in her writing a couple of times and she doesn't seem to hold any anger toward me.
Dave was only after one thing so the fact that I froze up emotionally and sexually on him saved me from a mistake. It actually helped. I'm grateful for that. Years later, I met a guy, Frank, who looked so much like him it was scary. I went on a couple of dates with him. I closed him out because he was moving way too fast. Obviously he stopped returning my calls. One night I tried to call him and actually had a crazy girl moment. I got hysterical on the phone. I think I may have actually had a flashback to Dave in that moment.
I never spoke to the guy again intentionally. Embarrassed on one had and out of self-awareness on the other. When I got a hold of myself after a good cry, I realized that I might have been trying to relive what I had had with Dave with this new guy. I was taking all of my unresolved stuff about Dave and dumping it on Frank.
Not fair to him and not fair to me.
I did a ritual to release what was left of the pain and love I might still hold. I can honestly say that was the final time I dwelt on Dave. That experience completely exercised the crazy love crap I had had for him.
That relationship was nuts.
Dave and Ally need their own entries. There's too much to cover to get into it in this one post between the two of them.
My relationship with Ally spanned all of my time at SBU and about a year afterward. Dave was in my life during my sophomore year. Jamie came on the scene my junior year. It was my first experience with online dating. Computers were still a new thing 1997-1998. We had just gotten out of pegasus mail and into Windows 95 my sophomore year. We only dated a little over a month.
He was perfect, or so it seemed. Our first date was at his uncle's wedding. He attached himself to me emotionally really fast. I held back as usual. I could have had a really intense relationship with him if I had thrown myself into it. It was just really fast and it made me nervous. He told me he loved me after a week.
We had a few weekends together and then he just dropped off the face of the earth. I didn't hear from him for three weeks. When I finally did get him on the phone he told me he was joining a seminary and becoming a priest. I was pissed. I really thought he was lying. It didn't make sense. Now I look back and I can kinda see the signs.
I really thought at the time he had just found someone else and needed a good story. Now I think I get it.
He was really wrestling with it and this chick he had just met a month ago was not priority. Being a man he didn't know how to talk about it either. Men really don't have a great grasp of emotional language nor do they like to analyze or discuss their pasts with anyone. Sometimes not even themselves. Some of it is simply fear of being gay since sensitivity and talking are seen as girly and thus a man that does it must be gay. Silly boys. So much grief could be avoided by being more explicit with the internal decision making process.
I can't guarantee that I would have been more understanding if he was capable of it. I probably still would have been a bitch toward him but I'd have more answers and maybe would have let the anger go faster.
So those four years of college developed a pattern for me. I didn't open up to people easily. My romantic relationships taught me I was rewarded for not doing so since they all turned out to be dishonest and not trustworthy. Just when I thought I was safe and could exhale, my secrets and vulnerabilities would be used as weapons against me. That's mostly from Dave and Ally.
The female friendships I had were not that different. I really only had one friend in college, Amy. The others were more on the periphery and not really mine but her friends. I got pulled into a major dispute between Amy and Danielle when they started fighting. Amy and I were sharing a dorm room at the time. That was the worst blow up I think I've had.
She was my partner for my radio show and decided after two weeks not to show up anymore. She wouldn't get out of bed. Her boyfriend started staying over and they'd be up late. I was really ticked as a result and our show suffered. I'd done shows by myself before and they'd always been good but my resentment of her bled into the show and so I wasn't as chipper and chatty as I needed to be for a good morning show. I got offered a crap time slot the following semester so I turned it down.
We got into enough yelling matches that she eventually stopped coming back to the dorm. She hid out at her parent's house and even avoided classes. She almost didn't graduate. Things were so intense and sickly between us I managed to get a dorm in Francis again. I had been there since freshman year and only took a dorm with her because we seemed to get along so well. Totally backfired.
There was this one incident when Amy and I were still talking that she and Leah came over to the table in the dining hall to sit with me. I suddenly felt this rush of hot emotion and it felt like someone had reached into my chest and squeezed the blood from my heart. I felt light headed and actually blacked out for a few seconds. I couldn't breathe. I had asked her about it later when we walked back to the dorm. Was Leah pissed at me? and I told her what I had experienced. She said no. She seemed surprised when I asked. I found out later she had been fuming at me for weeks at that point. I guess she'd reached her breaking point with me and I just picked up on the energy.
SBU was a great college and I grew a lot there. My relationships were all failures and I didn't learn much from my mistakes until much later after a few more bad ones when I moved to UB. I think I'm finally starting to put the pieces together. But I left having had some great religious and spiritual revelations and lessons.
I came to really know Wicca, to develop confidence in my abilities with energy, began moving away from trying to live up to others expectations. Thank You Titanic movie.
It was the spring before my junior year I saw that movie and I made the decision to change majors. I had been struggling in a biology major and not doing well, and not being happy. I was so focused on being successful that I was not in touch with what I wanted and what I was good at. I let mom talk me out of teaching English and I went into Journalism instead. More chance of making a living out of it. She was ever practical and I was still impressionable. But I finished that degree and developed the confidence to leave journalism for education and applied to UB. I wouldn't let her talk me out of it that time.
It's been a progression of developing confidence in myself, breaking out of barriers placed on me by my parents fears and skepticism of who they thought I was, and trying to overcome my own fears. The true break came with moving to a new city and dealing with a sabotaging and abusive relationship with Scott.
That's definitely a story for another time. Too much stuff.
So today I'm taking a leap. I'm developing a habit of challenging myself to ask Why Not? Why wait?
I'm moving beyond the planning stage and into actually doing something for a change. I'm not letting myself get paralyzed with doubt and fear. Even trying and failing is better than "what if?"
I don't make enough money to justify the inconvenience this is turning out to be. I have a full calendar of stuff to get done this month by the end of it. I'm halfway through the month and I got sick so I'm already a full week behind my planned schedule. I lose a whole day of potential work on the house or my glass because of being at the school. I only get about 80 to 160 a week. I have to take Wed off due to appointments for me, Bri and at the bank. It's not even economically justified.
The inheritance gives me a chance to take a bigger risk than I could have without it. I'd have to go full-time retail or any other job that I could get my hands on in desperation without it. We were struggling before and with the 700 a month in daycare expenses, we'd never be able to do it on one income.
At the same time, this is the leap that I've been preparing for. My midwife said that babies have a tendency to attract what they need so just trust the universe to provide. She was talking about Bri but I think that might apply to other things. I need to be a little bit more trusting and more open to opportunity.
It took me this long to figure out that there's no such thing as wasted time. Every risk I took, even failures, led me a long my path a little further. I learned things. I met people and gained more skills. I almost have too many skills at this point. It's partly why I used to get so caught up in making decisions.
I also realized in reading the book about how to write your own memoir that I read back in January that I'm the type that tends to get caught up in the planning stage and most of the time never actually gets started. I often talk myself out of doing things. "Someone's already doing it. I have nothing new to contribute. I'm not good enough." So I'm consciously and explicitly talking myself passed that point of paralysis that I used to give in to and return to my day job. It was the voice of my mother. She used to question my plans in an indirect way. Her primary concern was getting a job and being able to pay bills, which I respect. One must be able to support herself. Parents want to see their kids settled in their own house and self-supporting. It takes the strain off of them and assures them that when they die their kids will be okay without them around to rescue them. With my bro I could see how this really concerned both of them. They didn't want to see another one of their kids follow that dependent path.
Despite this I have taken more risks than the women of my family that came before me. My mother used to tell me stories of how I would do something, it would get around the family that I had, and she'd be confronted, how could she let me do that? Like the time I went to CA to visit Ally. My grandmother couldn't get over it. Mom said that she said, "She just went. She wanted to go and she just got on a plane and went." like she just couldn't believe it. Mom was laughing at the time. I think, even though to my face she was always risk averse, with others in the family she was proud of my independence. She enjoyed watching the discomfort of the other women in the family who just couldn't understand how I could move to a strange city with no family connections, get an apartment, travel the country, and start from scratch anywhere with anything.
That was back in 2001. The economy doesn't support that kind of thing anymore. I used to be able to get a job as soon as I handed in the application. There were a couple of times at the turn of the millenium when I got hired as soon as I handed in the app. on the spot. You can't do that anymore, not even for part-time retail. There are too many people looking for work and too many apps for the managers to go through. They can be picky and take their time now. And they do.
When I was in college I was afraid to take risks. I had the bravado of a radical feminist. I would get into anyone's face if they tried to tell me not to do something because I might get hurt. When Russ, Ally's bfriend, told me not to go walking on the nature trails by myself behind Francis Hall, I was enraged. He tried to act concerned that I could get attacked and hurt. I yelled at him that I wasn't going to stop living and doing what I enjoyed because some stupid jerk might attack me. I wouldn't stop my life and change my behavior out of fear.
I did anyway. Not the nature trails thing. I still wandered the woods, off the trails and even in the middle of the night. It made me happy and fresh air was great for the complexion. But in my relationships and in my major and classes I was very fear driven.
I had social anxiety although I didn't have a name for it back then. I almost never spoke up in class. I'd try to force myself to because I knew girls were often overlooked in classes and I wanted to break that trend. Feminist thing again. I tried to get myself to act in ways not typically feminine. It was a decision I had made really young. I recognized early that male character traits were the traits of power and success. So I cultivated masculine traits in myself. I became argumentative, took up space when I walked and sat down.
But in my relationships I was paralyzed with fear. I never made the first move. I never spoke first. Despite the strength and intelligence I know I had then. I had a fearlessness and a joy that I know was attractive to a lot of people. Unlike high school, I was just being my joyful self and people seemed to flock to me. It could have been the laughter that was unusually loud and piercing for a girl. I could silence the dining hall with it.
I'm not sure exactly what it was, but attracting romantic attention was not as hard in college.
But when I was in love with someone, I could never get the words out. Taking that risk paralyzed me. I would get rigid, my throat would close up, and the emotion was so strong with the voices arguing in my head. I had to say something because I knew they couldn't read minds and people need to know how you feel about them. If they think you don't care then they move on to someone who's more demonstrative. This saved me from sexual mistakes but the emotional fallout resonated for years. Each time, with Ally, Dave, Jamie, I choked it back.
In hind sight I don't think it would have made much of a difference in those cases. Ally had some issues with women in general. I don't know even now if she ever really loved me or just enjoyed the attention that she got from guys for being with a girl. It might have been more of a performance for her. But maybe in her own way she did love me somehow. She's mentioned me in her writing a couple of times and she doesn't seem to hold any anger toward me.
Dave was only after one thing so the fact that I froze up emotionally and sexually on him saved me from a mistake. It actually helped. I'm grateful for that. Years later, I met a guy, Frank, who looked so much like him it was scary. I went on a couple of dates with him. I closed him out because he was moving way too fast. Obviously he stopped returning my calls. One night I tried to call him and actually had a crazy girl moment. I got hysterical on the phone. I think I may have actually had a flashback to Dave in that moment.
I never spoke to the guy again intentionally. Embarrassed on one had and out of self-awareness on the other. When I got a hold of myself after a good cry, I realized that I might have been trying to relive what I had had with Dave with this new guy. I was taking all of my unresolved stuff about Dave and dumping it on Frank.
Not fair to him and not fair to me.
I did a ritual to release what was left of the pain and love I might still hold. I can honestly say that was the final time I dwelt on Dave. That experience completely exercised the crazy love crap I had had for him.
That relationship was nuts.
Dave and Ally need their own entries. There's too much to cover to get into it in this one post between the two of them.
My relationship with Ally spanned all of my time at SBU and about a year afterward. Dave was in my life during my sophomore year. Jamie came on the scene my junior year. It was my first experience with online dating. Computers were still a new thing 1997-1998. We had just gotten out of pegasus mail and into Windows 95 my sophomore year. We only dated a little over a month.
He was perfect, or so it seemed. Our first date was at his uncle's wedding. He attached himself to me emotionally really fast. I held back as usual. I could have had a really intense relationship with him if I had thrown myself into it. It was just really fast and it made me nervous. He told me he loved me after a week.
We had a few weekends together and then he just dropped off the face of the earth. I didn't hear from him for three weeks. When I finally did get him on the phone he told me he was joining a seminary and becoming a priest. I was pissed. I really thought he was lying. It didn't make sense. Now I look back and I can kinda see the signs.
I really thought at the time he had just found someone else and needed a good story. Now I think I get it.
He was really wrestling with it and this chick he had just met a month ago was not priority. Being a man he didn't know how to talk about it either. Men really don't have a great grasp of emotional language nor do they like to analyze or discuss their pasts with anyone. Sometimes not even themselves. Some of it is simply fear of being gay since sensitivity and talking are seen as girly and thus a man that does it must be gay. Silly boys. So much grief could be avoided by being more explicit with the internal decision making process.
I can't guarantee that I would have been more understanding if he was capable of it. I probably still would have been a bitch toward him but I'd have more answers and maybe would have let the anger go faster.
So those four years of college developed a pattern for me. I didn't open up to people easily. My romantic relationships taught me I was rewarded for not doing so since they all turned out to be dishonest and not trustworthy. Just when I thought I was safe and could exhale, my secrets and vulnerabilities would be used as weapons against me. That's mostly from Dave and Ally.
The female friendships I had were not that different. I really only had one friend in college, Amy. The others were more on the periphery and not really mine but her friends. I got pulled into a major dispute between Amy and Danielle when they started fighting. Amy and I were sharing a dorm room at the time. That was the worst blow up I think I've had.
She was my partner for my radio show and decided after two weeks not to show up anymore. She wouldn't get out of bed. Her boyfriend started staying over and they'd be up late. I was really ticked as a result and our show suffered. I'd done shows by myself before and they'd always been good but my resentment of her bled into the show and so I wasn't as chipper and chatty as I needed to be for a good morning show. I got offered a crap time slot the following semester so I turned it down.
We got into enough yelling matches that she eventually stopped coming back to the dorm. She hid out at her parent's house and even avoided classes. She almost didn't graduate. Things were so intense and sickly between us I managed to get a dorm in Francis again. I had been there since freshman year and only took a dorm with her because we seemed to get along so well. Totally backfired.
There was this one incident when Amy and I were still talking that she and Leah came over to the table in the dining hall to sit with me. I suddenly felt this rush of hot emotion and it felt like someone had reached into my chest and squeezed the blood from my heart. I felt light headed and actually blacked out for a few seconds. I couldn't breathe. I had asked her about it later when we walked back to the dorm. Was Leah pissed at me? and I told her what I had experienced. She said no. She seemed surprised when I asked. I found out later she had been fuming at me for weeks at that point. I guess she'd reached her breaking point with me and I just picked up on the energy.
SBU was a great college and I grew a lot there. My relationships were all failures and I didn't learn much from my mistakes until much later after a few more bad ones when I moved to UB. I think I'm finally starting to put the pieces together. But I left having had some great religious and spiritual revelations and lessons.
I came to really know Wicca, to develop confidence in my abilities with energy, began moving away from trying to live up to others expectations. Thank You Titanic movie.
It was the spring before my junior year I saw that movie and I made the decision to change majors. I had been struggling in a biology major and not doing well, and not being happy. I was so focused on being successful that I was not in touch with what I wanted and what I was good at. I let mom talk me out of teaching English and I went into Journalism instead. More chance of making a living out of it. She was ever practical and I was still impressionable. But I finished that degree and developed the confidence to leave journalism for education and applied to UB. I wouldn't let her talk me out of it that time.
It's been a progression of developing confidence in myself, breaking out of barriers placed on me by my parents fears and skepticism of who they thought I was, and trying to overcome my own fears. The true break came with moving to a new city and dealing with a sabotaging and abusive relationship with Scott.
That's definitely a story for another time. Too much stuff.
So today I'm taking a leap. I'm developing a habit of challenging myself to ask Why Not? Why wait?
I'm moving beyond the planning stage and into actually doing something for a change. I'm not letting myself get paralyzed with doubt and fear. Even trying and failing is better than "what if?"
Monday, May 5, 2014
Facebook Friends Changes
I've been contemplating losing a few friends on facebook lately. I've noticed that I've become annoyed when certain people post updates on the wall. I just don't want to hear from them. I don't care about their lives at this point and don't want updates, they annoy me and even anger me.
It's not them. It's just that there are people that are no longer an active part of my life. They don't live in the same city and we don't have anything in common. They were connected to Rose and for her sake I've kept in touch with them. But she's dead, like my mother, so the one thing that tied us together is no longer there and there is no longer any reason to stay connected.
I knew last year I needed help because I noticed I was lying to myself about things. I was making it more and more of a habit to pretend things were okay when they were not. Part of this process is to stop lying to myself. I worked really hard when I was younger in my teens and twenties to be honest with myself, my feelings and motivations, for any decisions I made. I put a lot of pride in that. I still made mistakes but often it was when I was deluding myself or trying to make something work that was never going to.
I need to get back to that honesty. I've been doing really well getting rid of habits and things that I was only hanging onto because they were connected to my past. But there are some people I need to shed. I have a limited supply of attention and energy and even in a pic posted on my wall, that's a minute of time and energy lost to something I don't care about or that aggravates me in some way.
I have a three year old, I have family here and all of these doctor's appointments and meetings are taking up my calendar not to mention the business I want to start and the number of hours I should be spending working on my craft to make it market worthy quality. We're still renovating the house and I've budgeted time each week over May to get a significant portion of delayed projects completed so I can move onto other ones that are pressing.
I don't want to offend anyone because I know people get really emotional over getting bounced from a friends' list but I'm at that point in my development this year that I need to consider this. I know I'm going to do it and I have a few "friends" in mind but I need to think of how. I could just do it and to hell with the consequences. I could put up a passive aggressive post warning people I'm going to do it and give them a chance to say they want to stay on my list. I've seen others do this and it seems to work well with them. I may try the second choice first.
The last time I did this I simply dumped a couple people. One got really pissed at me. Her friend saw me at work and gave me a dirty look. But I dumped her because she only called me twice in twelve months and both times it was because she needed me to do something for her. A ride and sewing skills the day before her wedding. I'm more than happy to help out a friend but if the only reason a person calls me is for a utilitarian reason, then that's really not a friendship.
There are other people I'd like to keep because I love their art and they live in the area and we still chat. There's no reason to not keep them.
Just the ones out of the area and we have nothing in common anymore. We don't celebrate together, get together, or even chat on IM. Given my limited amount of time with all I have to do, and the fact that I just can't go out at the drop of a hat, it's not supportable. Local people I'll keep. Artists I'll keep.
I may even keep the couple of people I know from my home town even though I really want to burn every bridge I've got to that place. I hate catching up with former classmates. Old friends not so much, but every time I went back there I was terrified of running into someone and having to answer that stupid question about what kind of job I have and did I keep/achieve the goals I had in high school. No one ever does and it's ridiculous to ask such stupid, invasive questions. It always follows with a why or a silence indicating they're not surprised because they never had any high expectations of you anyway.
I felt like Gross Pointe Blank when I went home. I didn't want to see people and answer questions. I hated the kids I went to high school with and celebrating anniversaries and accomplishments with them just made me grrrrr. I should have told them I was an assassin. My waistline would prove otherwise but it would have shut people up.
But people who were close friends in high school or grade school I'll keep. I like the updates from them. I don't get grrrr about it.
This is something I'll think about some more but I'll probably get around to it soon. I can't spend emotion and energy even to look at pics of people I don't have a connection with anymore. I have a preschooler. I have enough to do as it is.
It's not them. It's just that there are people that are no longer an active part of my life. They don't live in the same city and we don't have anything in common. They were connected to Rose and for her sake I've kept in touch with them. But she's dead, like my mother, so the one thing that tied us together is no longer there and there is no longer any reason to stay connected.
I knew last year I needed help because I noticed I was lying to myself about things. I was making it more and more of a habit to pretend things were okay when they were not. Part of this process is to stop lying to myself. I worked really hard when I was younger in my teens and twenties to be honest with myself, my feelings and motivations, for any decisions I made. I put a lot of pride in that. I still made mistakes but often it was when I was deluding myself or trying to make something work that was never going to.
I need to get back to that honesty. I've been doing really well getting rid of habits and things that I was only hanging onto because they were connected to my past. But there are some people I need to shed. I have a limited supply of attention and energy and even in a pic posted on my wall, that's a minute of time and energy lost to something I don't care about or that aggravates me in some way.
I have a three year old, I have family here and all of these doctor's appointments and meetings are taking up my calendar not to mention the business I want to start and the number of hours I should be spending working on my craft to make it market worthy quality. We're still renovating the house and I've budgeted time each week over May to get a significant portion of delayed projects completed so I can move onto other ones that are pressing.
I don't want to offend anyone because I know people get really emotional over getting bounced from a friends' list but I'm at that point in my development this year that I need to consider this. I know I'm going to do it and I have a few "friends" in mind but I need to think of how. I could just do it and to hell with the consequences. I could put up a passive aggressive post warning people I'm going to do it and give them a chance to say they want to stay on my list. I've seen others do this and it seems to work well with them. I may try the second choice first.
The last time I did this I simply dumped a couple people. One got really pissed at me. Her friend saw me at work and gave me a dirty look. But I dumped her because she only called me twice in twelve months and both times it was because she needed me to do something for her. A ride and sewing skills the day before her wedding. I'm more than happy to help out a friend but if the only reason a person calls me is for a utilitarian reason, then that's really not a friendship.
There are other people I'd like to keep because I love their art and they live in the area and we still chat. There's no reason to not keep them.
Just the ones out of the area and we have nothing in common anymore. We don't celebrate together, get together, or even chat on IM. Given my limited amount of time with all I have to do, and the fact that I just can't go out at the drop of a hat, it's not supportable. Local people I'll keep. Artists I'll keep.
I may even keep the couple of people I know from my home town even though I really want to burn every bridge I've got to that place. I hate catching up with former classmates. Old friends not so much, but every time I went back there I was terrified of running into someone and having to answer that stupid question about what kind of job I have and did I keep/achieve the goals I had in high school. No one ever does and it's ridiculous to ask such stupid, invasive questions. It always follows with a why or a silence indicating they're not surprised because they never had any high expectations of you anyway.
I felt like Gross Pointe Blank when I went home. I didn't want to see people and answer questions. I hated the kids I went to high school with and celebrating anniversaries and accomplishments with them just made me grrrrr. I should have told them I was an assassin. My waistline would prove otherwise but it would have shut people up.
But people who were close friends in high school or grade school I'll keep. I like the updates from them. I don't get grrrr about it.
This is something I'll think about some more but I'll probably get around to it soon. I can't spend emotion and energy even to look at pics of people I don't have a connection with anymore. I have a preschooler. I have enough to do as it is.
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