This Is Why I Don't...

This is why I don't post about exciting news until after it's an accomplished fact.

For the past two weeks, Squeaky has been over the moon about an old friend of hers and how this girl was "saving her life", how she now "has (her) life together" and all the rest. The source of all this excitement was to happen on Monday, when she and Tim were to board a bus to the southern part of the state, where said friend lives. There, she had been assured, there were jobs, cheap housing, assistance for poor pregnant families, and the rest--a veritable land of milk and honey (or Cheetos and barbeque sauce, if you're Tim and Squeak.) They had been assured that the wait for public housing was negligible--less than a month--and that in the meantime, they could stay at the house of this friend of Squeaky's, who she hadn't seen in a while but who she'd run into on Facebook and reconnected with.

And so for the past two weeks I have been subjected to hours upon hours of "Is Tim going or isn't he?" and "I can't wait to get there" and "Should we take Megabus or Amtrak or should my friend come up and get us, or...?" Hours and hours and hours. And yes, I have been INTENSELY interested in the outcome--not so much the planning, just the point on Monday night when, for the first time since EARLY APRIL, I would come through the front door to a home that belonged--entirely and completely--to ONLY ME. I was looking forward to that. I was looking forward to a large number of things at least partially contingent upon that, as well. (Yes, CR figures in a couple of them. I'm only human, for god's sake.)

Well, as of about noon today, all of them are dust. Squeaky sent me a message on Facebook: "I just got fucked over again. My friend totally backed out on me."

I called her at home and talked to her for about half an hour about this. Apparently, the friend's boyfriend something something her brother, whose girlfriend was crazy and wanted to kill him but is now also staying there with her kids, something something not enough space blah blah sorry. ("So what did you write back?" I asked. "Nothing--I was just totally in shock," she said. I don't normally interfere in other people's friendships, but I would give my right pinkie-finger right about now for that woman's e-mail addy. Even if Squeaky doesn't have the ability to say anything in the face of this situation, please feel free to bet your ENTIRE GLUTEAL REGION on the fact that I would retain no such compunction. Squeaky's life is not the ONLY one that's been fucked with by this decision.)

"I'm not talking to any of these people anymore," says Squeaky tearfully, then goes on to enumerate all the other friends she's going to call to see if she can get housing space from them. "Or we could get an apartment"--the "we" in this case does not include me, as I've already signed my lease for the year and I have no intention of leaving. That ship has sailed--"I only need a co-signer," she says, "since I don't make enough money." Or have a job, or have a man with a job, or have anyone giving you any sort of financial assistance whatsoever... so where this mythical apartment-for-free is coming from is a whole 'nother question.

In the meantime: Squeaky is "depressed". Up until yesterday, Tim had not spoken more than three words to me over the previous ten days; he "just doesn't feel like talking", evidently, and this apparently includes talking to the person who has been giving him free floor space nearly full-time since 2008. Civility is a BITCH, I tell ya. So that's two in the "depressed" column.

Meanwhile, my job has given me a right-proper screwing--wait, let's find a better metaphor, since "a right-proper screwing" would be on the short list of things that might actually IMPROVE my temperament. (There's a CR story that fits in here, but in the interest of "not jinxing it", I'll forbear. However: man, if 10% of what he says is valid, real, anything--if he really means even 10% of what he says, I will have found the biggest turnaround of a human life since I quit heroin in '99. Seriously. I've got so much to tell on this subject, but in some ways I'm reluctant to expose it to skeptics. Not because skepticism will change my opinion of him, or of what he's claiming--only time and experience could do that, and if they do, it will officially mark the end of my belief that people really can change--but because every possible thing anyone could say against him is something I've already said to him directly, or thought to myself--mostly said to him directly, really. The first day he called me after being gone for six years, I promised myself that the days of staying silent and choking on my rage were over. If I had anything to say to him I was going to say it, all guns blazing if necessary. So far, we've talked on and off for a year, and there's not been any time I've broken that promise to myself. It's been his reactions which have startled me--acceptance, apology, a total lack of defensiveness or excuses or ANYTHING. "I did that. I was wrong, and I realize now what the consequences were." That's been the bulk of his reactions....I'm going off track here, but...Yeah.Short form: I am ready to be hurt again, or not to. Neither of these outcomes will upscuttle my life in any serious way; if it goes bad, then it's just a case of the leopard not changing his spots. In fact, it might actually upheave me more if it DOES work out well.)

Anyway, as I was saying: Job. So in the last post I told you about my new, "temporary" location...well, I've finished my first week there, and the verdict is in: please, send help, for I am dying here. The trip to the new place now adds 2 hours of commuting time to my day, each day, and changes my schedule drastically. Where before, I could get up at 9:15 and be at work at 10:00 as scheduled, I now start work at 8:30 and need to get out the door by 7:00 or risk lateness. And I arrive home only half an hour earlier, despite getting off work a full 90 minutes sooner each day. Supposedly, it's just temporary, but--and I don't know if I have ever mentioned this?--I am not a morning person. At. All. Not even a little bit. So getting up at that hour--admittedly not quite the ass-crack of dawn, but definitely beneath dawn's waist somewhere--It's not improving me, is what I'm saying. And then today--admittedly, a day I'd be working anyhow--I had to catch the bus early, and it was really crowded but I was lucky enough to get a seat--but then an old guy sat next to me and like, LEANED on me the whole ride, which wouldn't have been NEARLY as awful if he'd showered or changed his shirt since 1982. So all day long I have been smelling--whether it's real or imagined--Old Man Funk. I have actually been going out of my way to stand away from civilized folk so they can't smell what I smell. I believe I shall BURN this shirt when I get home.

Later:
It's hard to be here and know they're not going anywhere any time soon. I've been reading back over the past couple of years, and I've realized: this is not the first time I've had quite enough of these two, or even just of Tim himself. (He DID, however, manage a conversation when I got home; later translation from Squeaky explained that he really hadn't wanted to move, that he was happy they weren't moving because he knew he'd hate it, and thus his silence for the last...whenever.) I think this friendship is effectively over, once they leave; I really don't want that to be the case, but it really has been one-sided for quite a while now. And then I wonder if I'm really being fair; after all, I -am- the one who has the resources, the education and the easy employability; maybe this is just my role in this friendship, to be the one who's there for Tim when he needs me. But all the same, there's something wrong; I could live with the financial unbalance in our friendship, but lately he's just been a butthead, and the butthead differential can be a killer in ANY friendship. I don't know; time will tell. But in a year or two, when Tim comes back at me with a list of Ways In Which Gladys Failed As A Friend: Squeaky's Pregnancy Edition, I don't think I'll be as willing to accept the blame as I have been in the past.

Happy Things

Okay. Since I am personally now BORED by my own ranty-panty-pissy-pity-party, I shall move on to Many Happier Things. Because--believe it or not?--they're STILL THERE.

But first of all, in fairness, I owe Firefly an apology.

From that last post, one would think that all she does is bitch me out for my bad choices, which could not in a billion years be further from the truth. I mean that. We are the Head Bitches In Charge Of Picking Up Each Other's Pieces, and for me to characterize her the way that last post came off was...just not cool. I think I was going by how hard I would beat HER ass under the same circumstances, and it's always a mistake to ascribe your OWN deficiencies to someone ELSE. So, FF--I'm sorry, monster. That came out WAYYYY worse than I meant for it to do.

Moving right along to happyland:

Item One, Happy Report.
My computer?? Is ALIVE!!! Is HEALTHY!!!!! Totally FAILED to cost me the $300-odd dollars I had braced myself to pay!!!! Cost me only $60--including installation!--to repair my frizzle-frazzled power supply. I seriously almost did the Happy Wiggle-Dance in front of the Firedog guy at Circuit City. But I was afraid it would turn him on, so I forbore.

But for SERIOUS--$60 instead of $300? is CAUSE for the wiggle-dance. I could simply NOT be any more happy about the outcome of that whole debacle.

Item Two, Happy Report:
This neighborhood I've moved into?
Is THA SHIZZ. No kidding. I knew it was all artsy and progressive and stuff, but: there is the Place-Where-I-Live-Now Art Center. And yes, I'm late to the party, and yes, I could have been doing this for MONTHS now, but I wasn't even introduced to the Maroonland Art Center til the beginning of summer. Their summer session? Looked promising, but didn't grab me enough to make me plunk down cash and drag my butt out of work early to get to a class on time.
Their FALL session?
Practically sexual in nature.
So Indecisive-Little-Ol-Me is now faced with the choice of the following--and this is pared down only to the stuff that INTERESTS me at the moment:

Abstract Painting/Drawing--Acrylic Painting--Beginning Drawing--Beginning Painting--Ceramic Tiles--Intro to Printmaking--Knitting--Mosaics--Photography I--Quick Quilting--Silkscreen.

First: NOT COOL. Too many choices makes Gladys go Wocka-Wocka-Wocka.
Second: OMFG SOOOOOOO EFFING COOL! Because what I don't do in the fall? I can do in the spring. And what I don't do in the spring? I can do NEXT fall. Which is so very OMFG as to require smelling-salts.

To say the very very least, I am looking forward to the fall.

Item Three: Happy Report--
No word from CR.
Yes, I know, that's a Happy and a Sad all boiled up together. Don't care. He's...I don't really have words for what he is, just now. "A mommy-fixated infant" comes about as close to the meat of things as I care to go. I'd just so very much forgotten: a) how many things about him I actually LIKED, once; and b)how very, utterly toxic and hateful and soul-draining he could be. So, yeah, I still have feelings for him; but no, that's not something that will ever come to fruition. I've learned--even since just this last time, I've learned--but still I'm pissed at myself for letting it go even THAT far. I feel played, actually. I was lucky to escape as easily as I have, but I still feel ashamed of myself. (And on some level, I'm afraid he may instigate some more chaos, so to speak--waiting for the other shoe to drop, the way it always did in the past. We shall see what happens there.)

I am just TIRED unto the edges of the universe of feeling SORRY. For myself, for others, for mistakes I've made; for who I am and what I believe. I think sometimes--god help me--but if my mom wasn't around? That I'd be able to be ME with much more energy and valor than I've ever yet been able to do, with eleven months' exception. I want to wear long foofy dresses and get a tattoo and piercings and a girlfriend, and wear my hair LONG LONG LONG. And the only reason I DON'T is because of the constant stream of criticism that would ensue. And don't think for a red moment that that means I don't love my mother--I do, very much, and I will miss her when she's gone--but I wish she didn't need for me to be so much a carbon copy of her, or some validation of her choices, or whatever-it-is I am to her. I'm certainly not an individual, or a person, or a separate human being. (The other day she said something about "we never had such technology when -I- was growing up!" As if, at nearly-40, I'm still "growing up". There are some things that I just can't get around, you know? I'll be 39 next birthday and in some ways I still--because my mother does too--see myself as "a kid". How do you go about making a separate, sensible, functioning life for yourself when you still, subconsciously, see yourself as a twelve-year-old?? Debbi and I have talked about that at length, but with no conclusions.)

I am not sad. I am not -very- sad, anyway. My life is a great thing, if I look at it from MY OWN standpoint. If I stop judging by "what should have been" or "what I -should have- done" or "what was expected"--I have had an incredible, colorful, adventurous life. Punctuated by tragedy and the occasional hardship, sure--but what amazing life HASN'T been strewn with wreckage? I'd rather have MORE wreckage, than less--if only I didn't have to EXPLAIN it to anyone. If only I could just say "You know what? Yeah, I did that. It is what it is. It's MINE, is what it is, and unless you're me--which you are TOTALLY not--you're in no position to make value judgements."

If anything? My life would have MORE excitement, not less. I don't know what that says about me, other than: a) I'm alive; and b) at some sad, pathetic core level, I am every bit as subjected to one person's judgements, as CR is to another's. Maybe THAT's why we always got along so well--because in one way or another, each of us was forever being controlled by that shady, behind-the-scenes female puppeteer, each polling our strings and trying, for her own ends, to control us--even if it was done with love, even if it was done with the understanding of "what was best" for each of us. Maybe that's why he and I are, emotionally at least, tangled together, even though each of us recognizes how very, very STUPID that entanglement really is.

I don't know. What I know: I'm happy, really; and there is spaghetti on the stove with my name on it, and everything in my life, when you subtract the STOOPID shit, is really well-and-truly better than it has been in a long, long while.

So...um....yeah. That's it. :)