Personal

Shut up, man. What's it to you if I drabble on and on and on in my own stupid journal type blog or whatever.

Nah, I'm just shitting ya. It's okay.

I just need to talk to myself when I'm high and I do it better when I'm writing. It slows down my thoughts or something.

Ironically, on my career blog it slows my thoughts to a dead stop. Everything does.

I just got off the phone with my mom. She's pretty cool. I think I wrote something about her last night but I didn't read it again today. I rarely make sense when I'm high. I ramble like a pro, though, so I'm really just playing to my strengths.

What? See what I mean? Who can make sense of that?

It seems that I am quite over the self reflection portion of our agreement. I've passed the analyzing to Jeff so I can concentrate on other things. Like analyzing him.

No, not really. Sort of probably.

See what I'm saying? Now pot is just for fun, I guess.

I like that way better.

Out.

Twitter style, bitches!

I love my new process for picking passwords. I used to use some mixture of address and know what went with what based on where I lived when 

Tonight I'm writing my posts text/Twitter style! 140 characters and then I stop. I want to entertain me, not drive a bunch of people crazy. 

Dammit. Forgot what I was going to say. 

(Yeah, this is gonna be fun.) (For no one.) (Except me.) ☺

I still have like 18 characters to go.

I am a Twitter phenom, I'll have you know. I'm not trying to say I'm funny but I sure can write the shit out of a set number of characters.

It's funny. I'm writing these on Twitter to get a character count and almost post every one. That's not funny But it's not not funny either.

I miss playing Twitter. We used to have so much fun. I used to be such a smartass. But I gave that up to be wonderful. Not the best trade.

BTW, if you count each paragraph you will find nearly all of them are only 1-2 characters off 140. Just trying to give you something to do.

I almost never find my Tweets funny the next day. But I almost always find my blog-type posts unbearably dumb and erratic so this is better.

Seeing I'm just talking to me, I can be blatantly honest and forthcoming here. I didn't say I will, I said I can. I might. I probably will.

This is kind of fun.

I love Jeff. Like, it's gross. It's high school crush. It's young woman flirt. It's sitcom laughs and porn star sex. It's old woman respect.

I got stoned the other night when he was home. I don't usually smoke when he's home but he was having some drinks so I had a couple puffs. 

Anyways, I looked at him with my new eyes and I almost fell over. He is exactly what I wanted when I used my old eyes. Foolish. Cute. Weird.

And difficult. I always liked difficult. Difficult men are more real, they don't kiss ass or swarm. They tell you the world as they see it.

My university application has a few essay questions that you have to answer. One of the questions was who has influenced your life the most?

Yeah, totally posted one. Just smoked one, too. Obv. Now I have to figure out how to fix the font. I told you, my life is a constant party.

I hate how much I hate going to work now. I hate not being interested. I hate not trying, not caring, not bothering. I hate not loving work.

Posted anther. Gonna leave this one as is, though.

Teehee. Goodnight.

This is going to be another choppy one

I feel defeated. I don't want to be defeated but I just want to throw my hands into the air. Did I used to be like this? Was I like this before I found this new self?

If there's one thing my parents did, it was to raise us with confidence. Too much confidence in one way, not enough confidence to believe in it. I wonder sometimes. Am I wrong? Do they not see something in me that I know is there? How do I show them? How do I let them see I am wonderful? Why can't I just tell them and they believe me? lol

I know. But someone give me a job, already. I forgot how long this takes. How hard it is to look for a job. Especially when you already have one. I work all day with these people I love and in this job I love and I'm so frustrated. I want more. It's like dating and wanting to love the person you're with but you just can't. It would be easier.

Then I start to think, do they see something I don't see?

Is it bad?

ARE THEY RIGHT??

Why did I start here? In this position. Actually, no, I started in BC working 11 hours a week. Well, hired for 11 hours a week and working 10 hours a day. I loved the whole concept of the retirement industry and how well - how impossibly well - it fit with my work life. To me, it looks like I've been training for this job since I was nine years old.

I started babysitting when I was nine years old. A few years ago I asked my mother what the hECk she was thinking, allowing a nine year old to babysit. She said it was just down the street from where we lived, but it was actually in the next town. The kid was an infant, and a nine year old child was responsible for her life. Ruby is seven. In two years we'll be lucky if we can let Ruby be responsible for her own life. (She's kind of a free spirit.) (And an inspiration, quite frankly.)

My mother said I was really mature so they didn't worry too much. And I completely agree with her. I begged to babysit this child. I would've begged on my hands and knees if it would've helped but what I did instead was show I could handle it. I did my chores, almost always on time. I was responsible and mature.

I knew exactly what to do in the event of an emergency. I'd gone over the procedures in my mind a thousand times. They taught me to change her diaper, how to feed her, how to rock her to sleep. And I sucked up everything they told me and sang it back to them in tune of some lullaby and they believed in me.

I want someone to believe in me again. I want someone to say "I value you" or "you can do this". What I have instead is someone who had decided who I am and nothing I can do will change her mind. I can't argue with her, it will only confirm her belief. I can't get so frustrated that I cry because the last time I did that she took away one of the things I loved most, certainly the only thing that motivated me.

I need to be the teacher's pet. I need to be the best and the most awesomest. I told my mother once when we entered in a bowling tournament with work: you have to be the best or you have to be the worst, no one else gets the same kind of attention. I don't like being the worst so I have to be the best. (At work. Home is very very different.)

Work is math. I go to work, I get paid. I go to work, I will be nice and patient no matter what else is going on in my life (except for dire emergencies, obv). I go to work, I feel nice, then I feel better. I'm professional, I try my hardest. Ergo (*teehee*), I go to work, I feel better. And feeling better makes me try harder.

Part of the reason I went into this line of work is because it makes me slow down. I am forced to pull back, I walk a little slower, I keep pace with whomever I am with. I make them feel good and worthwhile and I make them smile. I relate, I comisserate, I try to help them settle in, I program their remote and restart their computers and compliment them on a new hairdo or a new shirt. I laugh and flirt, I frown and shake my head, I pat on the arm, I tease them and call every single one of them by name as often as I can.

So going to work makes me feel better. But right now it also is ubearably frustrating. I like my boss, she's a good person, she tries sometimes; she's just the worst person I've ever dealt with in a work setting. The. Worst. Her concept of customer service makes my blood boil, and her shit show of employee leadership attempt fails are a thorn in my side. I hate that she is teaching my co-managers these terrible, terrible techniques of dealing with people. I hate how she treats the residents, and the staff. Virtually everyone in that place (I'm talking 115 residents and 53 staff members) has felt or currently feels that she does not like them and/or that she's never even spoken to them.

I've had residents come up to me and ask who she is because they've never seen her before. (The woman sits in her office with the door closed-are you kidding me?) I've had several residents who didn't want to leave compliment cards for the staff because they didn't want to have to hand them to her. When I said I'd take it and put it in her inbox or told them to slip them under her office door when she's not there, they said okay and took the form. And brought it back, too.

I said something to someone one day and she laughed when I said I genuinely meant the nice thing I said. She gestured toward my boss and said she knew I was genuine unlike some people. She says I'm like their parent and I have to go out and put them in line from time to time and they quiet down. (The fact that they do quiet down after is half her problem.)

We had a resident saying he was moving out and made it perfectly clear that it was because of our general manager. She told us about it at a meeting and laughed when she said "and I've never even spoken to the man!" Can you believe that? Not, "oh, I should go introduce myself and see if there's anything I can do to talk him out of leaving." Not even "would someone talk to him and see if there's anything we can do to change his mind?" You know why? Because she can't be wrong.

Okay, I'm off on a damn tangent again. Blood is boiling, what can I say? I was stomping around this morning and he was making what-a-bitch sounds and I said "I don't want to go to work, don't you understand? You feel crappy and say you're going to call in sick, I get frustrated and mad because I want to cry and I can't cry because I have to go to FUCKING WORK MOTHER FUCKER GOD DAMN. Ahem. I think he understood what I was saying, though. I hope.

I'm so unchallenged. I'm so unmotivated. She thinks she must motivate like a mean old nun or something. She's right to a degree, though, I think because I do find it motivating to avoid having her come into my office and try to look all casual and supportive while she tells me something that I did wrong. And it's all my fault. I shouldn't feel bad about it, though. Don't lose your sleep over it, there, Bevie.

The only thing I'm losing sleep over is that I have to go in there again tomorrow. And the next day. And next week. And desperately, desperately I shout a plea out into the world where good juju and karma live and I say not another month. Please, not another year.

I have good ideas. I know how to deal with people. I know how to budget. I know how to juggle the budget. I know how to fill in reports and watch for trending and keep track of the regulations and ensure they're all followed. And I can do it a damn sight better than she. She thinks she such a hero for running around putting out fires all the time but what she's actually doing is strolling around handing out matches. i.e. She causes the fires and thinks she's a hero for putting it out and can't for the life of her even stop for a moment to see if there was any way for her to stop the fire from starting in the first place. Eek!

I can do so much better. At least do so much more than I'm doing right now. I don't mind proving myself. I've proved myself with the company I at now but there is no opportunity to improve myself. I've drained every bit of learning I could out of this experience. I want to stay in retirement. I want to continue to be a GM, and beyond. I'm not waiting 10 years for the industry to kick off and then graciously accepting a manager job after all of my co-managers.

I need to get moving on this now. If I can't find what I want I'm going to have to find what I can get. I don't want to move laterally but I will. No, I won't. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to have the word "assistant" anywhere near my title. When Joe asked me to run his company I told him I would only do it if he gave me complete authority and the front office. I was the starting point for everything and I loved it and I was good at it. I want to be that again. At least, I want to be more. I can work up to everything. I just can't get past where I am with this company. And I'm pretty okay with that and ready to start somewhere new.

The second greatest day of my life

I was in my bedroom when she called my name. My mother was standing at the foot of the stairs. And she was falling apart.

Through her tears she told me that, before going to bed, my dad had told her he didn’t think he would live to my sister’s wedding two months later, that he felt the cancer was winning and the end was near.

We went downstairs and sat on the couch, for the first time in my life (although not nearly the last) I held her as she sobbed; the feelings she’d buried deep inside finally overflowing, out of character for a woman so strong and in control. Dad heard us and came downstairs. He stood at the door of the living room looking small and lost. The woman he loved more than his own life was falling apart, and she had called out to me instead of him. Because, through the years of his illness, the years of them being strong for each other, they had unintentionally grown apart.

He sat on the chair across the room in obvious discomfort. When he finally spoke he said he didn’t realize she cared so much, he thought she’d already let go. She had gotten into the habit of crying out on the patio after he was asleep. She didn’t know that, in trying to be strong, she appeared to be disconnected.

I realized at that moment why I was there. Why I had left my home and my career to move thousands of miles from the west to the east. I was their link, I was there to bring them together again.

Eventually he moved to the sofa and I sat between them. We talked about the end of his life and what it meant. I played the roll of mediator; how do you feel about this, what will happen after that, perhaps we should consider rescheduling, maybe we need to get ready to say goodbye.

The night ended with them holding each other as they cried, and I retreated once again to my bedroom. The walls had come down and they found the words that had been lost in the silence of strength and getting things done.

All of us changed after that. There was more laughter and more tears. He lived to walk my little sister down the aisle. He lived to see his and my mother’s 44th wedding anniversary and his 67th birthday. He lived to be my dad, wondering how Mom would ever learn to buy groceries without him sitting in the parking lot, fuming because she was taking so long. He lived to teach me the right way to mow the lawn and return the recyclables. He lived to say good-bye, to give away his prized possessions, to swear that the next time he had a terminal illness, he would make sure he was gone before the hot weather came.

And there was my mother. Still in control but with a new empathy that had been buried before. There was my mother, smiling, telling him to shut up and take his drugs already. There was him taking those drugs, prolonging a life he was ready to turn from. For her. There was love. Open and honest love. Between us all. Finally.

The greatest day of my life was the day I held his hand for 10 hours or more so I knew that he knew he wasn’t alone, my father turned to me suddenly and the light left his eyes. The second greatest day of my life was the day I brought my parents together again, the day I reminded them that feelings - even feelings that made you cry - are better shown than hidden.

HMV: Her Mother's Voice

It's no secret that I spent a lot of time and effort trying to come to terms with my weight issues over the past decade or so. Perhaps the most important thing I did was stop spending so much time and energy worrying about my weight. A lifetime of yo-yo dieting, frustration and self-abuse had led to a terrible body image. I was tired of avoiding mirrors and basing my worth on the reflection in them. To be honest, I also secretly believed that if I truly overcame my weight issues, I would magically become thin. And yes, that was probably the driving force that led me to getting my brain under control.

My brain? Most people would say I needed to get my eating habits under control but, after nearly 40 years of being on (or rebelling against) a diet, I knew I was spending all of my energy trying to fix a symptom and I needed to go deeper than that to find the cure. So I decided to try the one thing I'd never tried before - I let myself off the hook. It was 'no holds barred', no rules, no self-deprecation, no regrets. For the very first time in my life I didn't berate myself for not exercising, I didn't give myself a lecture for eating food that was unhealthy. I allowed myself to eat what I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted, without regard to the number on the scale. I ate so much junk! Oh, what fun I had!

It should be no shock when I tell you that, six years later, I am the largest I've ever been. What might shock you, though, is that I'm okay with that. Like, more than okay. I giggle into mirrors, I jiggle my rolls, I actually carry this great big belly before me like a trophy. An accomplishment. A prize. I did it, I succeeded. I'm okay. Fatter than ever but also better than ever. I have a strong sense of self-worth, I have a career I love, a home, a car, a family and a man who loves me in exactly the way I always wanted to be loved. I won. I more than won, I conquered. Food is no longer my enemy, exercise is not a dreaded chore. Finally, a bag of chips is no more enticing than a salad, a chocolate bar is a nice snack but no better than my homemade trail mix, a bowl of fresh cherries will trump a bowl of ice cream any day of the week.

Ironically, I still want to lose weight. That doesn't really made sense, does it? It is something I have been struggling to understand myself, believe me. But it has nothing to do with how I feel about myself. I have boxes and boxes of clothes that are too small right now and no financial means to replace them so my wardrobe would be significantly improved if I dropped a size or two. I also get this pain in my chest sometimes and my right hand goes numb a dozen times a day - I'm not sure what is causing these things but it can't possibly be good. Probably most importantly, I want to lose weight because I want to keep up. I want to be active, to spend more time outside, to walk with my friends without having to take a break every 15 minutes, I want to run with my step-daughter, to swim and snorkel when I go to Hawaii in a few months.

Hey, did I mention I'm going to Hawaii in October? (At least once a day, my friend... to anyone who will listen!) My brother very generously invited my mother, sister and I to tag along on his family vacation and we are very excited. My mother called once the arrangements had been made and promptly began talking about her plans to lose some weight before we go. But she couldn't start her diet until after the barbeque she was invited to next week because everyone knows you have to get in all the good stuff you can before you start punishing yourself with eating healthy. And there would still be lots of time - if she started losing weight next week she still had three months so if she lost one to two pounds every week she would definitely get to her goal weight, all she had to do was deprive herself of all the food she enjoys and get used to being hungry all the time and force herself to get on the treadmill in the cold and damp basement every single day and everything would be just fine. Then she asked if I wanted to participate in a little weight loss challenge to give us some motivation? No.  No, thank you very much I do not want to not even one little tiny bit.

When I hung up the phone that day it hit me - her diatribe was exactly the type of thing the voice inside my head used to say, nearly word for word. I would lay out all the timing and terms, I'd list all of the things I needed to give up and remind myself of the torture of daily exercise that I had to suffer through to become the person I wanted to be. And I would always start 'tomorrow'. Unfortunately, though, my youthful brain added in other stuff. I had to do a lot of work to become the person I wanted to be because the person I currently was wasn't good enough. I had to give up the foods I loved because I needed to suffer to learn my lesson. I needed to not be disgusting anymore because no one would ever love me if I was fat. No one could love me if I was fat, not even me.

I walked around in a stupor for a long time after I hung up the phone that day. The voice in my head all those years wasn't mine. The voice in my head was my mother's. Let me be clear that my mother never once said she wouldn't love me if I was fat, what she alluded to is that she wouldn't love herself if she was fat and I took that lesson and applied it to myself. I grew up believing her absolutely because I loved and looked up to my mother in every way. She was great and wise and everything I ever wanted to be as a human being. But she was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.

I've decided to see if the new voice in my head can have a talk to the voice in my mother's head and make her realize that the poison she's been feeding herself is so much worse than high calories and fat. Don't wait until tomorrow when you can start yesterday. In fact, don't think of it as starting at all... just continue. Don't give up and have to and force yourself. Just find a reason that means something to you and let it evolve. There is nothing wrong with being fat, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight. Do or don't. Make the effort or not. It's okay. Just be at peace and stop beating yourself up. I vow that when my voice is in my step-daughter's head, it will be a voice filled with love, confidence and self-worth. A new voice and a whole new idea.

Notes for him

A large part of this has to come down to what I'm looking for, what I expect from him, what I need to live the life I want to live. So I figured I'd jot down some ideas to get me going. 

• I need to feel free. I need to feel as if the things in my life -where I work, where I live, who I live with- are a choice. 
• I require change and spiritual growth. If I'm not growing, I feel like I'm shrinking. 
• I want to move. Physically move. I want to be active and get out. I don't mean I need to train for a marathon but I do need to walk and play and vent my energy. Because if I'm not venting it, I'm covering it with food or trying to force it out with pot or booze. 
• I don't expect him to be infallible, because I don't expect that of myself. 
• I must be acknowledged. I don't need flowers, I don't want poetry and declarations of undying love (although they're nice from time to time). However, I have spent too much of my life feeling like I was invisible or in the way, I will not do that again. 
• My physical appearance has always been indicative of my relationship with myself and the world. When I say I'm getting fat, it's the same as saying I am getting frustrated or I feel disconnected. 
• I need to be able to give of myself openly and freely, without keeping score. The only way I can do that is if I feel we are equal. No one wins but everyone wins. 
• I enjoy taking care of them, but I have no desire to do anything for anyone when I am feeling used or taken for granted.

Where I'm at

I think my biggest problem right now is that I'm not thriving in my environment. I'm more than not thriving, I'm deteriorating. I look worse than I've ever looked - fat, shitty skin, limp hair. I feel defeated and repressed and out of sorts. I'm frustrated, I'm unhappy, I'm tired. I'm depressed. And I'm already on anti-depressants so that's no small feat.

He loves me. I know that. I love him, too. I love the beautiful little gem. I want to live near my sister, I want to be able to see my family. But at what cost? Am I paying for this with my entire being?

Two days ago I said I had enough. I decided to call the whole thing off and move west again. I miss it there. I miss me. Every moment in this town has been an uphill battle and I finally cried fowl. I felt good about it, too.

Then he begged me to stay. He said he wouldn't survive without me. He played on my guilt, he worked me for another chance. He asked for six months, I conceded with one.

One month. To see. To try. To consider. Maybe to accept and adapt.

Two days have passed and he is back to forever. And I'm still struggling to come back from never again. And I don't know what to do.

This is what I said to my sister:
He says he thought I was just making threats before but now that he knows it's real he'll try harder and make it right. How can I not give him that? But at the same time I can't help feeling a little scammed. How many times do you give someone a last chance, you know? But, on the other hand, I'm so tired of leaving all the time. He's making all these promises that things will get better so only time will tell, I guess. It's hard but leaving would be harder. So I'm gonna sit up here on the fence for a little bit until I decide where I want to land.