So cold

I have never been this cold before, inside and out. It's hard to think, it's hard to process a thought. There's no physical heat in the house. We have a woodstove, but without a fan to push the hot air out, it's basically useless. My job is killing me from the inside out. First, it's freezing there, too, but more than that, I just can't take the disrespect from the kids anymore. I. Cannot. Do. It. When I went into teaching, I never once imagined this. This is not what I wanted from my life. My best strength is in content knowledge, and I don't even get to a even a fraction's worth of what I'm supposed to do. Think of it this way: if I'm supposed to teach a chapter, the most I can get to in a day is a sentence. That's how much I can accomplish. I get glared out, eye balls rolling out of their head, dirty disrespectful little mouths and sometimes it even gets physical. I've been kicked and and even had a chair thrown into my bad leg and all of this for what No one ever takes responsibility, and no one ever ONCE says sorry. I'm freezing and sick and in pain through it all, and I just don't know how much more I can take. Then I come home to a home that isn't a home--physically because it's torn apart and emotionally it's also cold. I don't know when I've ever felt so defeated in my life. I'm at one of the lowest points of my life--and I've actually been homeless before. I'm only one step away from that right now because I get treated like crap at work and then I come to this place where my stuff is (home?) where at best I'm ignored (on a good day) and at worst it's just screaming fights. Like right now, I just tried to say something to him and he walked away from me without even looking at me or anything else. I was talking to the back of his head. How much more of this am I supposed to take? I'm just a fallible human being, trying my best to survive, but every single day its about survival. I can't live. Maybe I don't want to anymore. I thought about it, seriously. I have some bennies. I rented a hotel room which was so gratefully deliciously warm. I ran a warm bath (oh god just thinking about it now makes me want to cry). I thought about taking the entire bottle and just sinking down into the heat. I can't stop coughing. I will never be warm. What do I even have left? The cold is consuming me, my muscles ache. I can't take it. I just can't.

Remodeling

The remodeling and tearing out of the wires continues and it could very well lend itself to a giant metaphor of what this relationship is right now--torn apart, debris everywhere, empty rooms. Both of us relegated to our own little spaces, and only talking as neccessary. Walking on pins and needles according to his mood. Careful, don't upset him, there's no where to go. Literaly, the walls are see through right now. His shadow is blown up by the work lamps and it looms over everything, and I can't think of a better way to put things right now. So for perhaps the first time ever I'm grateful for Monday morning. I went early today (there's heat, hooray) and I might stay late except there are my animals there and I need to take care of and preserve them.

Just Driving Around

Cemetery Thoughts

I was driving around today and just recording some of my random thoughts about what I'm going to do. Because I'm just lost. It was a peaceful place to think. 

2 am post

Realizing I’m in an abusive relationship is hard and makes me feel completely a hundred things at once. How could I have been so blind? Why did I make these choices? What’s wrong with me? 

It’s 1:13 am and he just got finished screaming his hatred at me. 

I’m wondering where I’m supposed to go. I can’t be here anymore, but I have animals and no money. 

I can’t stop crying. I want a day without screaming and crying. 

I’m shaking. It’s not even the lack of love, the loneliness, the isolation, the everyday pain. It’s the directed anger, the feelings of being helpless, broke, powerless. The fact that I thought, I prided myself on being a strong and independent woman, how did I end up here? I’ll try and get to a motel this weekend, and try to figure something out. I guess I committed to my job until the end of May but after that I don’t know. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. 

On Loneliness, Pt. 2

He stops short of the entryway, and his shadow falls long over the carpet. "Come out and say how-do," I say jokingly. It was a fun thing that we used to day, and laugh. We don't really sa fun things to laugh anymore. There aren't fun inside jokes. When we talk, it's mostly to the pets. He doesn't, for the record, in case you couldn't guess. In case the tension of wondering was too much. He did look at me in passing, then continued on down the hallway, leaving me in the living room. It wasn't so much a slight as that I wasn't there. there was a time when he cared if he hurt my feelings, or made me cry. It used to bother him and it doesn't anymore. He can keep on going with his day. We are so long past saying thank you for good and simple things like thank you for getting a dinner or keeping the house warm or feeding the pets. It is well beyond time to go. Maybe there are people who can just pack a bag and go, ut it's not just that easy, especially when there's no money. Everything is so strained and cold. I can't do this for another year and a half while I apply to the PhD program I want. So, what's a broke girl to do, live under her mom's kitchen table with her pets? Is that better than an emotionally abusive relationship. I mean the obvious solution is to go, to leave, I know this, anyone can see this even though it hurts so badly, but I don't have a practical solution at the moment. I wish I had better answers. I wish I had a guide.

On the Nature of Uncertainty and Loneliness

I think this might be something. A something. I promised I wouldn't watch or wait, but I'm watching, and waiting I know I am, and this is a truth I know but don't want to accept about myself. I see red tail lights, and white headlights, and because it's dark I can't tell the make or model of the car, and the lights sweep left instead of right and I know they're not mine, not the lights I'm looking for. I have to stop waiting because I know the person behind those lights would never wait for me, and my skin prickles and shrinks at the dirtiness of it all because I just feel used.

A to Z Challenge--X--X Files

X is for X files in this portion of our A-Z Challenge and that means we get X-plore (yes I did, I'm so sorry) Agent Mulder, the cutest and geekiest TV FBI agent in the history of TV FBI. Holy moly. I started watching X-Files for the aliens, I stayed for Mulder, and his convictions. Because I want to believe. That he will appear in my bedroom, wearing nothing but a smile. And I do live in prime UFO territory, so it could happen. Okay, all crushes aside, one of the things I loved about this series, besides the obvious, is that it opened up a world of mythology that hadn't been done in this way before. Since this challenge is about 90's nostalgia remember, this was pretty groundbreaking at the time. Creator Chris Carter was onto something. When you heard that trademark theme whistle at the beginning of the show, it was, I imagine, like the generation before you hearing the Twilight Zone theme. It was a feeling. It was a sense of communion. It sent chills down your back and opened your mind to possibilities. Other shows had tried and had fallen short, and X Files was a pioneer in the realm of urban fantasy and a trailblazer in the genre of dark fantasy. I am saving some of the newer revival stuff for the summer because school and, yes, I am a snob about revivals, but I am willing to give it a chance. I am also really really loving some of the Cold Case Files on Audible, in which Mulder and Scully revive some, you guessed it, cold case files from their previously unsolved plot lines. Definitely worth a listen, and they are in bite-size installments at a only a few hours each. Tre Magnifique. What is also cool, and waiting for me in TBR pile, is the origin stories of our leading detective couple--basically Mulder and Scully as teenagers and I am addicted to YA and also to the author, Kami Garcia, tasked to this teenage reimagining, so I am looking forward to this as a summer read. We have junior Mulder and Scully in graphic novel form, YA novel form, audio form--there's something out there for everyone. Hover the links to check them out, and leave a comment or hit me up on twitter to let me know what you think!

A to Z Blog--Day 26--Z--Zima

So I’ve spent the majority of this blog talking about how I was a teenage girl in the 90’s, so naturally Zima would have to make an appearance. Of course that’s going to make people laugh, but you know, it wasn’t that bad. It was basically seltzer with a slight bit of vodka in it. Not all that different from hard soda or hard iced tea like you can get now. The ones you can get now are slightly better tasting and probably have a higher alcohol content, but I think Zima’s biggest problem was trying to market it as a “beer” which is clearly was not, and it had a reputation right out the gate as being effimiate and girly and if you drank it you were immediately effiminate and girly and that was that. The only thing that made sense about that label was that was that you could drink a six pack of those things and not get buzzed due to the low alcholo content. So, if you did end up getting buzzed or drunk on those things, maybe alcohol was not your game.

A to Z--Day 25--Y--Y2K

Start looking this up on Google and you get meme waterfall of hilarity, mostly of how intensely people were afraid that the world was going to end, and I remember that vividly. People were on tv, telling us we better get right with God, because, for sure, this was it. This was going to be the big one. Computers would fail, phones would go down, TVs would test the emergency broadcast system. Newscasts went over checklists of what to do in case the grid would go on, and how you should stock up on essentials just in case. Then midnight happened on the other side of the world and absolutely nothing happened. Then midnight on our side of the world happened and absolutely nothing remarkable happened except we all got a little older and the 1900’s went away forever and that was a little exciting to be on the brand new side of the new millenium but...no planes fell out of the sky. No computers crashed and we still had electricity and phones and the world kept on turning just like it always did. There was even a theory going around that somehow the nuclear codes were going to somehow reset themselves (I never quite understood how this would happen) and whole world go boom. People really felt like we were going to die, though. I think we all knew someone who knew someone who was absolutely convinced (there’s always that one guy. Or girl) who buys into it.People were terrified. They swept the shelves, they hid in their basement. And lets not forget our dear religious folk. Signs everywhere: The End Is Near. Repent Your Sins, etc. Sightings of Jesus and Mary and Elvis. I couldn’t explain it, but, I was so unconcerned with it all, it just didn’t seem logical to me that the whole world would come to an end because of New Years Eve. You know? I thought we, collective humanity in general, would have some safeguards in place and that the mere passage of time wouldn’t break us. It didn’t.

A to Z Challenge--W--Wonderwall

Wonderwall I love this song, I do. It makes me want to roll down the windows and drive around and sing it on top of my lungs when I get to the chorus. The word "wonderwall" means "the person you constantly find yourself thinking about". This song is simply about the feelings, human beings get when they experience the initial stages of love and infatuation (limerence). It describes the volleying between euphoria and agony that a crush can make you feel. I did some research on this song, I did. My inner music nerd has been combing through my 90’s favorites for these blog posts this month so I’ve been combing through interviews and playlists, and found out some interesting tidbits. For example, from a 1995 interview that asks the question “What exactly is a Wonderwall?” (citation follows): “It’s that vulnerability, evident in his tenderly chosen words and in Liam’s piercing vocals that really make this one such a legendary song. Anybody can say “I love you”; try telling the one who means the most to you, “You’re my wonderwall” instead. It may not make much sense, but it somehow says it all.” https://americansongwriter.com/2015/08/behind-song-oasis-wonderwall/