Bob,
A June and July retrospective, if you will. As my grandmother informed me recently, not knowing what was wrong specifically and me not wanting to talk about specifics with her, the only way to get over something is to talk about it until it heals. Apparently, that's how she and I both work, though I understand that doesn't work for everyone. The problem is, I was actively working to stop remembering dates for certain, memorable things after someone made an innocent comment to me years ago about that being a habit of mine and now don't remember when some of this stuff happened. Some of it I'll only be able to place because of timestamps on various internet/computer related things.
Wow. Just now, gearing up for this post, this song came on (one of the many in my lineup of necessary songs these days) and something just clicked that should have been so damn obvious but really wasn't until right now. I want to tell Him I get part of where, or how, it went wrong on my end. I can't. I'll write it down in my journal, just in case it ever matters.
Anyhow, back to the retrospective.
At some point, May, June, early July at the latest, I don't know when, my mom found out she was able to and thus was going to go on vacation with her boyfriend for the entirety of the month of August. I was thrilled for what it meant for her but also pretty immediately panicked about what it was going to mean for me. I'm now just under nine months before the process of Freedom One can begin and the closer it gets, the more doubtful I am that it will go smoothly or quickly. Afterall, the last attempt, a year ago, dragged into July -with no resolution- and we started in late April. So, even though I'm officially done in a little under 9 months, the process is still closer to a year from being dealt with. Knowing all that, having been through 27 months of it so far, should make one little month easy enough to get through. But my life, so stripped of anything resembling a life, would be stripped down even more to the bare bones of being alive and I could not wrap my head around that.
Wake up, ride my bike to work, work, ride home, spend the entire rest of my day alone. Weekends would be entirely alone. For a month. No one to take me to the movies and be my safety. No one to just be around. No way to go to my class and thus forced to resort to the treadmill for all exercise.
My dad is in town, as are two of my brothers, but they do not have the time and/or resources to help. Unless I moved in with my dad for the month. That was an option, one that I thought long and hard about but ultimately turned down because of what it would mean for my ability to keep in touch with Pwebbers, who were and have been my greatest source of strength these past 27 months. No internet and 90% of my communication with Pwebbers is through IM. It would also fail to address my class, so I'd still be stuck with a treadmill for exercise. Also, Voldemort (ex-step-mother).
We've spent the past few weeks building up a reserve of things I'll need while she's gone. Things like milk, my yogurts can't be helped. I'll need to walk to the store for that and send a quick text to a family member saying "Leaving for store","At store", and "Leaving for home" so that my whereabouts are accounted for at all times. Just in case. After many,
many talks, we've decided it's the lesser evil for me to drive myself to class, since my dad won't be able to step in because he works in the evening for Parks and Rec. It's far enough away that it wouldn't be safe enough to walk back home from and biking on that particular road at night would be equally dangerous. I'm terrified. All it takes is one little mistake and I'm screwed. I've had a lot of time to look forward to that fear. I'm now officially living in it. I have a hard time with sleep in general but especially when I know I'm alone in a house; good practice for Chicago, though, eh?
When did her boyfriend even officially move in? It was months after he was supposed to but great as he is -and he is; he took me out to dinner and a movie two weeks ago to help me at the height of this whole breakdown- that doesn't change my comfort level with him here in this house. My mom's attention has largely gone to him, meaning I can't talk to her the way I could before. I lost time just sitting around watching movies with her because she was with him. Everything started to revolve around him. It was lonely, after he moved in. She's been my biggest in person companion for a long time now. My local friends are by and large entirely non-options now. The last time I hung out with one was within a week, I believe, of the Stanley Cup. I saw one yesterday who gave up on me within a few months of April 2008 and she acted as though she didn't know me. Another, I invited out and she said yes but never showed; that was...nearly a month ago? I don't remember the date, just that I came home and started talking to Him.
June 7th (according to my journal) was the day I said "f*** this" to Brat. As though that means it was the last time I've talked to him. I've gotten a lot of s*** over that whole mess. I just wanted to go back to being his friend and wanting nothing more. That's all I ever wanted and that's why I begged him for the longest time to kill my misplaced hope. All this fuss I've made about not wanting to talk to him, telling him to f*** off, has been so I can more easily separate behavior/thoughts that are habitual holdovers from liking him. It was my hope to be friends again without all the baggage and anger related to a failed, unrequited infatuation.
At work, the numbers all around were showing increases. I first tripled, then doubled my programming. A conservative number for programming puts me in charge of 42% of all the programs that have happened at my branch. The other 58% was split between 5 other people. My attendance shot up 400% one month and then 36% again over that. The number of books simply being looked at in my department, that I caught, shot up by ~200%. The circulation was up by about as much, I think, in my department and likewise for the adult collection (for which I'm also partly responsible for). Computer lab usage put us second only to Main, with wireless third in the district. With a shared population served between us and Main of 119,290 people, the only branches that we have a larger staff than boast populations of 19,730 and 6,813 respectively and their numbers put them last in all areas. Our collection is only second in size to Main and a good 30,000 items larger than the next biggest collection. Six people, doing the work that other locations have 10+ to do, not to mention volunteers; we have one reliable one who puts in about 2 hours a week. The places with larger staffs can claim 36%, 31%, 20%, 5% of the total hours put into the district. Our percentage is statistically insignificant. But did I mention, many many times, Bob, that two of my coworkers are dead weight? That on top of that, while I was banned from taking time off over the summer because I was in charge of not only the children's summer reading program but the adults' as well, my coworkers were taking two weeks here, two weeks there for themselves and I was having to fill in for them on the Info desk, more time on the Circ desk (which meant neglecting my department more), more time doing reports and taking care of the register duties, switching nights when needed, busting my ass to keep us in basic running order? There was a long time there when, because of the nature of our schedules, two of us were essentially running the place. Guess what? We're losing a coworker soon, possibly permanently, and I've been pegged as her replacement for programming and shelving until she either comes back or is replaced. I did her job for the first six months I was at the library and was only able to do it because we were slower then. On top of that, I find out on the 27th what other programs I'll be forced to take on starting in the fall. Add on to that the increase in police interactions we've had...fights (in which people have fled from the police), stolen bikes, car broken into. I've been harrassed by a patron and my supervisor is waiting to call the police the next time it happens because we fear he's going to get physically violent as opposed to just verbally dickish. Don't get me wrong; I love this job and I'm grateful for it but a lot of that is because I love my coworkers as people, if not as coworkers. Until and unless things slow back down to the pace we had (could happen, it's all cyclical) last year and a month of this year, this will continue to be a pretty big stress.
The beginning of July, my nieces were here. Ask me where they are now, Bob. I have no f****** clue, other than in the Phoenix area with their mother, who was getting suspicious of my sister-in-law. Ask me how the custody battle is going. Wait, it's not, because CPS and the courts and everything else are all backed up. I have next to no faith it'll work out anyway. My brother and sister-in-law borrowed so much money from me and my dad, in the four digits between the two of us, they'll likely be seen as equally unfit.
Speaking of money, I'm still a bit panicked about my Chicago fund getting touched. I was basically a grand ahead there and now I'm struggling to stay within $100 under. Thank god I'm good enough with money to plan ahead and already planned/saved for CO.
We found syringes and a spoon from my brother's heroin habit in late June or early July and at first, we brushed it off as old but now we're wondering if it's as old as we thought. Either way, we haven't actually heard from him since my nieces left. It's f****** scary, always wondering if he's actually just staying away and still alive or if maybe he slipped again and overdosed.
August 10th is the birth- and deathday of my brother; I never met him, he was older than me by 4 years, but it's always weird for my parents. I'm not sure who it's harder for, my mom who never met him because she was under at the time or my dad, who was there for the 40 minutes of his life. That, honestly, doesn't weigh too heavily on me...just throwing it out there because it's something I at least think about and have been, with the day coming up.
Sometimes, all this stuff is so easy to deal with, to just bundle up and throw in the back of my head, and carry on and a big reason is because so much of it is old hat, with a new twist. You just get used to it.
But sometimes, it all piles up and I start to feel the weight of it and I can't keep it bundled anymore. That was happening. I got scared, of a lot of things, and I pushed when and where I shouldn't have pushed. It was so stupid. I was so stupid.
Music has been both a blessing and a cursing; so much seems to speak against me. But one of the many portions of songs that have come in and out of my head are lyrics from RENT.
Roger
I've been trying - I'm not lying
No one's perfect. I've got baggage
Mimi
Life's too short, babe, time is flying
I'm looking for baggage that goes with mine
Roger
I should tell you --
Mimi
I've got baggage too
It feels, felt, something, somehow relevant.
It had been four years since anything even close to that happened to me. "Sometimes it happens when you least expect it," I was told. All I could think was, "What have I been saying to you for a while now? 'Where did you come from?'" Instead of saying that, thinking there was no way it was or could be reciprocated, I said maybe it's time I stopped denying the chance of it happening right here. Stupid. I feel like Novinha, trying to protect people from me, thinking I know what's best, and hurting them more in the process.
I hurt so much, over everything. How do people cope with life? I fail so often, I wonder how anyone can think for even a second that I'm strong.
f***. I've said too much.