I have been feeling a feeling lately, Peeps, that has not been immediately recognizable to me.  It’s kind of anger with some hurt tucked around a big slab of sudden realization and disappointment. 

Now, I’m not usually one for the more confusing emotions.  I feel emotions strongly and they usually make themselves loudly known.  I GET ANGRY.  I AM HAPPY.  I AM MISERABLE.  Basically I have historically had the emotional range of a toddler; easily predictable and recognizable, acted upon quickly and often over just as quickly.

In many ways the trait makes me easier to be around.  You never have to worry about me hiding what I’m feeling, or feeling more than I describe, or even feeling one way for long.  An interesting paradox is that while strong emotions give the impression of powerful responses, the truth is that they are highly malleable at the core.  Other people could do this or that and all my “strong” feelings would disappear like smoke tendrils; easily riled, easily placated.

Lately, this new person that I am has been flirting with some of the more nebulous feelings.  I have to be honest and say that they are not comfortable feelings, but perhaps that is because they are being born from a place where I am finally beginning to grasp just how fucked up many of my relationships have been. 

Lots of my friendships and family relationships are healthy and happy, normal relationships.  Several are also extremely fucked up.  I am just realizing, now, how much I am prone to giving people permission to treat me like shit. 

I will be walking down the street, or sitting on the EL like I was this morning, and suddenly a memory or issue will pop, unbidden, into my head.  My first instinct will be took look at it with old eyes and make excuses, but the second I look at it with new eyes, I’m suddenly uncomfortable, angry and hurt.

The idea that I am due to the respect, appreciation and acknowledgement that others have always expected of me, is a new one.  Historically, I make excuses (and each individual has excuses) for the behavior of others.  When I turn it around and ask myself why it is perfectly acceptable for me to do X, Y and Z, but not perfectly reasonable to expect reciprocation, I have no answer.

This is not to say that individuals are now suddenly obligated to do X, Y and Z, but that I am perfectly within my rights to feel hurt that they don’t.  I’m also within my rights to not do X, Y and Z anymore.  Obviously, these other people don’t feel strongly about it anyway.  Why am I bending over backward?

When I make the aforementioned excuses I am continuing to play the martyr.  I’m continuing to get my rocks off on the idea that even if they don’t like or respect me, I’m the better person for being above the pettiness.  What horseshit.  All I am is the whiney self-righteous whipping girl for self-absorbed assholes.

I cannot stop the self-absorbed assholes from doing their thing, but I can recognize that it hurts and stop feeding into it (and feeding into my own stupid neurosis) by letting the responding go. 

So, all this is to say that suddenly I am bitter.  I’m disappointed and angry with myself for actively encouraging these situations, and I’m disappointed and angry in others for jumping at the chance to disrespect me when I offered it.  I’m bitter.

Bitter is not an attractive emotion.  If you’ve been reading lately and kind of like, “Whoa, this is kind of dark and not at all funny and not so happy and…”, you’d be absolutely right.  My emotions used to swing wildly and I used to be a lot of fun, whether happy or angry or miserable.  It was passion and people like being around passion.

Now, all the passion feels siphoned off.  I feel deflated.  I know that my blog, along with my life, is reflecting deflated.  Sorry about that.  It kinda sucketh right now.

I know that some people would say that I’m depressed, and I have to answer that I don’t think I am. I’ve been depressed.  I’ve had the weepies and the massive sensitivity; the draggy feet and inclination to live in bed.  This is not depression, it’s colossal disappointment.  Not because my life in general has been so colossally disappointing, but because I’m just suddenly realizing that some people have really treated me like crap, and I’m recognizing it all at once.

Like when you first get glasses, when you didn’t even know that you couldn’t see, and you suddenly become aware that each tree has thousands of leaves; that they aren’t indiscriminate green blobs to everyone. The trees never change, but that first moment of suddenly seeing thousands of thousands of leaves is overwhelming, and that’s where I am with the emotional realizations.  Just as I’m learning that things that seemed horrible are within my grasp to fix, I’m also realizing that some things and relationships that I’ve always said were good, are not.

Bitter is unattractive, and right now I’m rolling around in fugly.

Bella has written a post about where she is in her life right now.  She feels like she’s floating.  I can relate to that feeling. 

I feel like I have bounced, Peeps.  The initial drop off the meds and major therapy breakthroughs plunked me, hard, back into my own body and my brain and now I’ve bounced back up and am kind of floating in the ether. 

Consolidating my thoughts is difficult at the moment, so I’ll try to break things down into segments. Even writing this is very difficult and I’m going to have to run it through Word because my spelling is atrocious. My brain will not settle quietly on what it’s doing.

School

Astronomy is over, thank you god.  I know I should feel relieved and elated that I survived it.  I think I even managed to squeeze an A out of the experience, and that’s what I was going for, right?  To be honest, all I feel is exhausted.  That class took it out of me.  My only response to that kind of workload is to shut down or run at 150% capacity on the reactor.  I took a day or two in shut down mode and found out fast that the homework would overwhelm me, so it was full-metal Hunt for Red October instead.  

Now that Astronomy is complete, my sights are set on grad school in the fall.  I am, plainly and unashamedly, terrified.  It is the ultimate unknown.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle the work load, which is a ridiculous 17 credit hours a quarter with intense, sciency-type subjects forming the bulk of the classes.  I don’t know that I’ll be able to cope without neglecting my child or my marriage.  I don’t know if I’m smart enough to pull it off.  This astronomy class broke me in two and it was a crap little 101 class. 

This past five weeks has been an exercise in WHAT LIFE IS LIKE WHEN IT SUCKS.  I hope I’m not in for two years of it.  I really do.

Money

Additionally upsetting is my recent acceptance and return of my school loan award statement.  I’m not going to get into specific numbers, but let us just say that if one were to crap one’s pants upon hearing the expense, one would not be alone. Honestly, I have never borrowed, or even had, that much money in my entire life, and boy would it be hysterical if I flunked out of school and wound up having to pay it all back without the degree to bump me up a pay bracket.  Wouldn’t that be funny??

Just thinking about it I start to sweat like Albert Brooks in Broadcast News.

I am quitting my job, we are going to have to get separate insurance, the loans are not going to cover all of my schooling and basically the chances that we will eventually lose the house have just skyrocketed.   I hope we don’t get sick.  I hope we don’t lose the house.  I hope that Wallace doesn’t have to eat mac and cheese with ketchup for two years, no matter how much that would be like kid food Mecca to him.

We are going to be poor.  I do not want to be poor.

The MS Ride

I have been neglectful of this in every way.  By now I should have t-shirts made up, I should have auctions going and be talking of nothing else.  I need my bike tuned, I need to buy biking shoes and a light.  I need to figure out how we’re getting there, where we are staying and how we’re getting home.  I need to find someone to watch Wallace while I’m away for the weekend.

This was all my idea and the thought of getting the fundraising truly underway makes me want to put my head into my arms and cry.  It is such a good cause, I so want to do it, and I’m so exhausted that the idea of what it’s going to take makes me want to close my eyes and crawl into bed.

Weight

As it does, the depression and feelings of being overwhelmed have derailed my workout schedule.  My pain, physical and emotional, has messed badly with my eating.  I feel like a fat failure, which is difficult to accept.   I feel judged by others, people who have no right to judge me, and that only compounds the problem. 

I also wonder if I’m going to be able to manage the MS ride if I’m so out of shape.

Big. Fat. Loser.

Reproduction

I am a few days away from going back on the pill.  I don’t want to, because these past two months things have been alarmingly quiet from the ovarian point of view.  I would like one really good, side-wrenching, “pop” feeling ovulation before I go back to suppressing them.  I want the physical reassurance that my body hasn’t changed that much in four years and that all the worry is for nothing.  Unfortunately, for the first time ever, it doesn’t look like I’m going to get that.

Going back on the pill is a necessity due to the previous money worries I mentioned.  Take that trifecta of disaster; no good insurance, one parent out of work, ridiculous amounts of debt; and add a baby to it?  WHAT A GOOD IDEA NO IT ISN’T.  So I go back on the pill because as much as I crave a second child I also would not like to bring that baby into a world where I’m throwing mac and cheese in the blender before sticking it in the bottle.

However, in addition to being pissy about going back on the pill I’m reading blogs about the various facets of adoption and donor eggs.  Mostly the blogs that are written by people who have been directly affected by it, and how they feel about it.  Blogs of first mothers, or birth mothers, or biological mothers, whatever your preferred lexicon of such things.  Kids who were born with a stranger’s egg or sperm.  Kids who were adopted and how they feel about it.

The prevailing notion is that it’s good for kids, when adopted or inseminated using someone else’s biological material, to have an open and active relationship with their biological relatives.  It’s crushing and damaging not to have access to half or more of your genetic heritage.  This makes perfect sense to me.  Open relationships for all!

However, if we’re being frank, I’m reading these blogs and to be perfectly honest, I don’t want people like this in my life.  It’s not that they are birth mothers, or just the egg donor, it’s that most people in general are fucking crazy.  Most people are jerks.  Just like the greater portion of the population out there would not be interested in having me drop by their house for a nice chat four times a year, I feel the same way about most people.

Now, take some of these people and imagine that you have the most precious thing on earth that was originally theirs.  Not only do they stop by, they do it carrying baggage of loss and a general sense of hostility that life did this to them, and by extension YOU did this to them.  No matter what the little piece of paper says, they had your kid first.  Even amongst the folks trying not to blame the adoptive parents, there seems to be a lot of mud slinging around.

It’s all been quite the four-course-meal for thought, and I’m not even sure what I think of it yet.  Why am I reading it?  Because I want to know.  I don’t want to throw out the phrase “We could always adopt” and not know what that means.  I don’t want to start to find out two years from now.  I want to know and have time to think things over.

A Different Me

I have changed, Peeps. I have fundamentally altered who I am.  This upsets some people.  I can understand why.  They aren’t changing anything and the way we have interacted has always been the way we have interacted.  They know that KP, they like that KP.

There’s just one twist: that KP is not the real KP.  That KP was invented to keep people happy.  She is now dead.  The person that I was last year is dead and gone.  Mostly I hate the way she sniveled and worked to make others so happy.  I hate the way she took on everyone else’s emotions.  I hate the way she deliberately made herself useable so she’d feel useful.

Well, she’s dead.  I’m now this KP.  This KP is not useable and is not interested in feeling your pain or taking on your misery and/or guilt.  She is not interested in justifying your life.  If you need someone to do that, you need a shrink. 

People don’t like that KP as much.  Interestingly, I think that the new KP will survive while the old KP would have wound up killing herself out of sheer misery and blame.  People don’t like me as much, but I’m actually much improved.  Still, it’s not easy losing people.  I’m tired of losing people.

TT

Remains lovely.  Supportive, handsome, rugged, talented.  Exceptional father, husband and general weekend-away companion.  He’s worth his weight in gold.  Just marvelous all around.

Wallace

Awesome in every way.  In every possible way.

The World

The earthquakes in China are upsetting.  The cyclones in Myanmar are devastating.  I know that after Katrina I’ve lost that comforting feeling that here in the US nothing like that could happen to me.  After Katrina I feel more vulnerable and see my child’s face in the faces of the children on the news.  It is not distant.  It is now. 

It is heartbreaking.

To give to the orphans, both pre and post earthquake, go here to the Half the Sky foundation.

In Summary

I am not so much fun right now.  I don’t have anything to say that’s witty or funny or insightful.  I’m frightened and worried and floating and I got in to work this morning a half an hour early because, apparently, I got ready while I was sleepwalking.  I don’t remember getting up this morning and it’s 1:00 pm in the afternoon and I couldn’t tell you, really, what I’ve been doing since 8:00am.

And, you know what? I’m fine with all that.  Today, I check out.  It is what it is.

It’s the last day of something today, Peeps.  What could it be?

Eeeeeeeeeeee!

***

Being cool at the park: “Maamaa.  Don’t hold me!” 

Tearfully, after a long day, to Daddy asking to be cradled: ”I want to be a baaybee!”

“Dad, you need to JUST RELAX”

“I don’t WIKE DAT!”

“Dat would be a nice, good plant”  (nice good plan)

“Dat would be not be a good plant” (not a good plan)

“Mama, awe you fwuastawated?”

“That guy was HUGE!”

To daddy:  “You need to watch yer tone, BUDDY”

“I love you in the whole best world”

****
Photoshop Pictures!

Original Slide Photo

Slide photoshopped one time:

Slide Photshopped twice:

Flower offering original:

Flower offering cropped and Photoshopped:

Too small for this bike original:

Too small photoshopped:

Little man original (photographer, TT)

Little man, photoshopped

Yep!  Still fun!

It is not in my nature to do so, I’m a fairly tightly clenched person, but I promise to do my level best to not own any of the group projects this week.

I turned in my bit, and that’s done.

Mercy, it’s possible that they know that they can slack and I will fix it, but they were submitting similarly horrid pieces of dreck in the beginning, long before they’d have known it.  Anyhow they’ve all be put on alert that I’m GONE GONE GONE baby this weekend.   No turning back now, kids!  If you write crap, crap is going to get submitted.

Of course, my improvement in mood may also have something to do with the 80 point optional final exam that I’m going to complete and turn in, which will offset most of the group project this week.  W00T!

Bring it on.

It will be the first overnighter away from our little one.  Most people are pros at this by now, I know, but we don’t live near our family and TT has an annoying habit of working 24/7 in order to feed our family.  So this is kind of a yay and kind of big deal.

Unfortunately, this is the last week of Astronomy class.  Well, fortunately, because this class must be over soon or I swear to god I will break things, but unfortunately because Items are Due.   Group Items.

Some of my Group is turning in some portions of their Items, and it makes me want to vomit.  The bad writing five weeks ago?  That’s before we all became so tired we want to die.  Now what I’m seeing come in would barely pass muster for a fifth grader, and I’m not kidding.  I’ve been going over bits of it and trying to nudge people in the direction of coherance without just telling them to shut up and sit down and doing their portion outright.

This is making my upper lip sweat, because they are making changes and the changes they are making are very nearly as bad as the first draft.

What then, do I do?

Last week I rewrote all of it.  I have no doubt that many people were irritated with me and angry and insulted, but it was all shocking crap, and I didn’t rewrite the week before and we got Cs.  I also have no doubt that we will get an A.  This week I was hoping I could gently nudge in a friendly manner and suggest and that they might come up with decent submissions on their own.  This is not happening.

However, I’m turning all my stuff in for the projects and getting the Hell out of Dodge for most of the weekend.  This means that my position as doer of it all is on hold, from Saturday morning until after the deadline.  This means that someone else has to do the final edit.  Someone else, one of the folks with half a brain cell, must edit, rewrite and submit.

I have withering expectations.

I’m thinking that the only thing to do is emotionally and mentally prep for two more Cs, or worse, but I hate it.  I absolutely hate it.  I hate not being in meatspace with people and not being able to say, “Hey, this is great, but really you need to change XY and Z”.

This is going to suck.  I know that it is going to suck.  There is nothing I can do about it. 

Instant ulcer!

I want to punch this class in the balls.

It turns out that the risk was totally worth it and the hairdresser may have committed a coup.  I’m more than tempted to go back to him, even though he’s at the same salon as my old hairdresser.

He was quite the character.  A bit of a flamer (in the hair business?  Get OUT!) Liverpudlian who called me “love” a lot, probably to boost his tip.  I live with an Englishman, so you think I’d be immune to these things, but the accent is just as cute now as it was nine years ago, so it pretty much worked.

I sat down and he said, “So what are we doing?”

I said, “Meh.  Graduated bob.”

He said, “With a twist, though, love.”

I said, “Yes, with a twist would be good.”

“What do you want to do with the color?”

“I don’t know.  Do I want highlights or all over color?”

“All over.  With the bob we want it glossy and shiny.”

“Okee dokey”

“How do you feel about the asymetrical?”

“Sure!  Just not all Flock of Seagulls, okay?”

“I used to do their hair, after they lost all their money and were working in clothings stores.  I won’t do that to your hair”

Then, the FoS hairdresser went to work. It was perfunctory.  We didn’t chit-chat much.  He knocked my head with the brush and when he wanted me to tilt he would kind of stab my head in the direction he wanted it to go.  I wound up with hair all down the back of my shirt.

I have never felt more like I was in good hair hands.  He had no time to be gentle or nice, he was an artist at work.

At the end of the day he gave me a gorgeous cut and color.  An asymetrical graduated bob in mahoggany.

I’m sure that it’s haircut 101, but I really like it and I think it looks sharp.  Check it out:

Normal

Back

Side

 80’s Inspired Molly Ringwald Type Version

Last night TT totally didn’t even notice, but complimented me on looking hot.  I think that’s just about the best possible hair result.  It looks totally like me, but hotter.  YAY!

I didn’t go to regular college, I went to acting college.  While it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life it was significantly different than going to school to be a CPA.  On my freshman requirement list was a yoga mat and a box of Crayola crayons.

The thing about actors is that they love to get nekkid.  Actors love to be all body and touchy-feely.  Schools encourage this because, apparently, it’s “honest” or some shit.  To be quite frank, it should have been screamingly clear to me within the first few months that I didn’t belong there at all, but I’ve never been very socially saavy.  Touching may be necessary, but grinding is not “good school” it’s “public mutual masterbation”. 

One day I performed a scene with a classmate of mine.  This time, rather than big floppy shirts and baggy jeans, I dressed up.  I did my hair, I wore a pretty dress and flattering PJs.  My character in the scene was a rather nervous person, so that channeled my anxiety into the character and away from my body.  I’d imagine that, for the first time that year, I actually briefly looked comfortable and pretty in my own skin.  I got supportive feedback from my classmates and actually felt pretty good about the job I’d done.

The next day one of my classmates, let’s call her Mennifer, cornered me in an empty classroom.  She sat down next to me in a chair and let it all pour out.

Essentially, she told me that I had looked wonderful the day before in the scene and that I had a great body and was a beautiful girl.  That if I didn’t stop acting like I was ugly  immediately then that was IT.  A bunch of my classmates had been talking about this and if I didn’t see what they saw and stopped being pathetic and hiding then IT WAS ALL OVER and they just GIVE UP ON ME.

This was not said with a smile, this was not an exaggeration.  It was agressive and mean.  What I found out was, not only had my classmates apparently had a meeting to discuss my personal level of comfort with my body, but that they had come to a decision and if I didn’t shut up and go with it then I was pretty much guaranteed not to fit in.  Ever.

I remember feeling viciously attacked by that because, no matter what the supposed “cure” it was meant to provide, it was a vicious attack and I remember opening my mouth to try and defend myself.  Mennifer’s face twisted into a sneer and she flounced off, secure in her place as Judge of Me.

Of course, years later I know how rediculousness of that entire scene.  I know that all that was showing was Mennifer’s malice and controlling nature.  I know that I wouldn’t have wanted friends in people like that.  As much as fitting in is really nice, if you fit in with a bunch of fucktards, what does that make you?  I also know that I had very good reasons for my problems, and that nobody in the world had the right to question my coping mechanisms or order me to “get over it”.

At the time, though, I was 17 and devistated.  I did go on to become more comfortable with my body.  I slowly grew up, the way that people do, and I completed the program, mutual public masterbation and all.  But I never did fit in.  I was never as casual with my physical self as other people thought I should be.  That came later, when I was in an environment where people were not standing around judging me.

Now, if I found Mennifer, I’d smack her right across her ass face and ask her “How DARE you?  How dare you judge me, you privledged little shit princess?”

Somewhere else out in the wide internets I’ve been talking to a group of people about my past and how I’m feeling about it.  Last night, under a different name, all in the name of “support”, another Mennifer struck again.  She could see my issues and problems so, so clearly.  I was to, immediately, take her approach and change my coping mechanism to fit what she saw was best.

She was ignorant and rude and self-centered and posted a big huge post tearing me apart in the name of “caring”.

This time I didn’t sit and cry and wonder why my method of dealing with things was wrong.  This time I didn’t care if nobody liked me again.  This time I told her that she was rediculous, ignorant, and a pig.  Thank you very much for your concern, but you’re a fucking idiot.  Stop telling me what to do, how to feel, or how to cope. 

I’m done with the Mennifers.  They are asswipes.  Without being me they feel free to tell me how to live my life.  I cannot stop people from judging, but I can decide what I put up with, and I’m done putting up with that shit.

Dear Mennifers, you don’t care about me, you care about being right.  Go judge in your own cave of self-ritiousness and back the fuck away from my face.  Go to hell.

I’m also likely to get an A in this course, despite the group grades we just received.  Dr. Buttmunch had wonderful things to say in my personal response this week for my personal work.  In essence he said I was “awesome” and I got an A PLUS PLUS PLUS PLUS PLUS for my week’s turn-ins.

Would you believe I’m still grumbling?

To be honest, it’s just a matter of control.  I don’t mind working my own ass off, it’s working my ass off and having to combine my work with others who are not bothering to work their asses off.  Or, maybe they are, maybe they just have less ass.

I am so uncomfortable with the idea that, deep down, I’m stupid, that I despise and have a very bad reaction to being glommed in with people who write that way.

At any rate, life will go on.  Most sane people would look at the low A and cheer because all I need is a C to continue onward and upward with my degree, I chew and grumble and get pissy that it’s not the 97 that we all KNOW I DESERVE, THANKYEWVERYMUCH.

Please ignore the wibbling in the corner.  School scares me and I’m still very much secretly afraid that everyone will find out I’m an idiot.

I am also embracing my inner Hermione and am spending the evening tonight essentially rewriting all the answers to the project due at midnight, because these people, they are assless and I ain’t gettin’ no more Cs, y’all.

The guy makes it impossible to answer in less than that.

But it’s done.  It’s done.