A Cyclic Poem

I keep staring at the pictures of the last two "relationships" I've had.  Both have profiles on Yahoo and both check in on a daily basis.  One frightens me and the other fascinates me.  I avoid leaving a trail so I don't think either of them know I've been looking.  Although I wasn't so very savvy in the beginning and so I can't be sure.  The fascinating one checked in on me twice, the frightening one never.  But the frightening one would know how to cover his tracks.  Funny how that works.

*****

I'm so damn tired of the drama at work.  I adore Dana, I love her, I haven't had such a close girlfriend in a very long time.  I went to a couple of gay strip clubs with her.  Did I tell you that?  We had fun.  And I fought hard for her when she quit.  She lost her freakin' mind on Monday, decided she's quitting and put in her resignation the next day.  And I couldn't stop her.

That was a month ago.  I fought for her.  I'm nobody, really.  But I know what she does and I know how to ask, and I got her a little more time.  She quit without having another job.  She has two kids.  She lives in an expensive part of town so her kids can go to good schools.  She didn't look for another job the whole time.  We all thought, we being only the two of us I guess, we thought it would never happen.  She was just going to be around forever and things would slowly go back to normal and Satan (our boss and President of the company) would forget she quit because although his pride wouldn't allow him to ask her to stay, and her pride wouldn't let her ask him if she could stay, somehow by ignoring the whole thing it would just go away.

But no.  She's really leaving.  I was sad and upset and depressed and scared and worried and angry.  All the things you are for a friend who's been treated unfairly.  I've talked and cried, cursed and complained...hours and hours of it.  I've done it at home, through texts, at work, via phone and email.  I've done it for a month with her now.  Longer even. 

This must make me evil.  But I want the drama to end.  Her last day is next Friday.  And I'm glad.  Not glad like gleeful glad.  I'm just so very very tired of dealing with the drama every single day.

See, it's all very political.  Everyone at that place tells me everything.  The HR Director looks on my like another grandchild and tells me EVERYTHING.  I know things I really ought not to know and I hate it sometimes!!  So I know things I should have told Dana, if I'm her friend.  But things I have responsibility to my job not to tell her, like if they found out I told her than I'd lose my job.  So I can't tell her things I know and I can't tell people at work things I know, about her.   I can't complain about her, even when I think she's doing the wrong thing, because people in my office are just dying for me to say something bad that they can go running to her with.  She's so volatile, she'd believe anything.  So I have to be very very careful.  ALL.  THE.  TIME.  With everyone.

It's exhausting.

*****

My direct report's nickname is "Chip."  It's hysterical.  Only Dana and I call him Chip, but it's because every single time Dana and I take a break from work and chit chat for a second, Chip appears.  We figure we've both been chipped.  Whenever we're within a certain radius...say eight feet...the master chip in Chip's head goes off and he comes LEAPING around the corner to catch us goofing off.  It also works with emails.  And phone calls.  And once?  I had this dream and Dana had the same dream, we were both taken aboard a spaceship...and I think we had our chips upgraded that night.  Now Chip can tell when we're talking when he's not even in the building!  We wonder what will happen to our chips when she leaves.  She made me a special tin-foil hat in case it implodes or something.

Chip is manic. Like a complete maniac manic.  Worse than me on my worst ebay spending spree manic day.  But today I out manicked him.  It was funny, really.  Usually when he asks me for 497 things all at the same time at 4:45 in the afternoon, I make nice eye contact with him, smile and assure him I'll get it all done.  Today, after they took away all Dana's duties (well, actually they pissed her off and she quit doing most of her job, accept the part that dealt with training me) I had way too much to do and way to little knowledge with which to get it done.  So when Chip walked in today, I was the one with 497 things to ask HIM!!  It was funny as hell, he didn't know what to do.  He floundered for speech and I just went on and on.   And on.  (I can speak very quickly at a high frequency for quite a long time on a single breath when it's necessary.)  He looked confused and left the room as quickly as possible.

Never try to out manic me.

*****

I feel better today, obviously.  Nothing changed.  Nada.  But I just feel better.  I guess depression really is chemical.  When I wrote that last post, I thought I wanted to die.  Things aren't great, but they'll improve at work.  The drama is getting to everyone I guess.  SIX more days!!  Plus, get this!  The one guy at work I was ever interested in?  Yes, she got him.  I don't mind really, because I wouldn't have known what to do with him had I been the one to get him...but STILL!!

*****

Thanks, Margaret and Tonya, for reading and responding yesterday.  I needed so badly for someone to hear me.  I knew there was nothing you could do to change things or fix me, but I needed to be heard.  I'm so grateful to you both.  You will never know how much.

Gut wrenching. Soul tearing.  Pit in the stomach.  Fear.  paralyzing.  Tears that won't stop.  I can't do it, I'm not worth anything.  No, that's not what I'm feeling.  The not worth anything part.  I'm afraid.  I'm constantly constantly constantly afraid.  My friend is quitting at work, and she'll be gone in nine days.  When she leaves they want me to do her job too.  My job, dealing with a manic boss, dealing with the phones, dealing with so many things I can't even begin to go into them here.  I tried to list my job duties a few weeks ago to impress upon the higher ups that I do far more than they think I do.  I gave up after...well, I gave up after a lot.  Today it's so much worse.  Today I finally figured out what they're going to want me to do and I know I can't do it.

So I fell into this pit.  People always use the same words to describe depression.  Isn't it weird?  I try to come up with different ones because I fancy myself something of a writer, and yet all the things I can think to write are all the same things I read in books, see on those silly commercials for meds for chronic depression on TV, and hear from my little doctor man on his "list of things to look out for."

It's been so long, so long I can't even remember it, since this thing we like to call bi-polar has gone the depression route.  I'm totally used to the highs.  Wow, the highs ROCK!!  I may spend $497 million I don't have and make weird sexual advances I have no intentions of following through with and even sometimes think I might make it back into college and finish that degree.  But I'm not used to the depression.  My little doctor man diagnosed me with that type of bi-polar which is supposed to be more above the mid-line and not so much below it.  I guess I'm a bit more below the line than we figured I could get.  My lamictal is supposed to regulate my moods, seems to do a fairly good job.  Sure, I get manic every couple of months, but haven't gone the "let's hole up in a motel room and drink until I puke then drink some more" route.  But this.  I don't like this.  Manic can be fun.

This sucks.

That pit I was talking about.  I'm trying to be funny, sort of.  It's like, I've cried and cried today.  Can't seem to stop.  I couldn't smile, my steps at work were "shuffle shuffle", the weather was beautiful, yet I couldn't summon a smile at the Ruby Throated Hummingbird that kept trying to crash his way through the conference room windows.  (He was fine, just appeared a little embarrassed, especially the second time.)

I keep forgetting to explain about the pit.  See, this would have been easier to write about three hours ago.  My eyes are still swollen, but I spent thirty minutes having a tickle/pillow/quiet contest with Hope (the quiet contests are the funnest, because laughing counts as noise, so of course there enters the tickle/pillow fight portion of the game.)  Then we cuddled for a while.  Then I watched the season premiere of "Heroes."  So that all took some of the doldrums away.  Enough so that it's difficult to harness the feelings that had me sobbing so hard on the way home from work that I had to pull over for thirty minutes to vomit and desperately try to convince myself I wasn't dying from the pain in my chest.

See, I know it's all in my head.  I KNOW it's all in my head.  Things are not so bad.  I won't be thrown out on the streets.  My daughter is and will continue to be safe and well taken care of.  And so will I. 

But I feel like I simply cannot do this.  This living thing.  This going forward thing.  I cannot do it.  I can't get up and go to work.  I can't get up and go outside, I don't want to call anyone, I don't want to see anyone.  I want to take those precious, beautiful, perfect, soul filling moments in the mornings when my perfect child crawls in bed with me after she gets dressed , wraps herself around me in bed, half asleep, and mumbles things about dreams she's had, or talks to me about the boy next door (older, you know) that she thinks she might like.  And she means like, boyfriend like...(he's 13.)  And she has morning breath and so do I and yet we lay face to face arms and legs entwined and talk and laugh and gossip and for those few precious moments everything is perfect and everything makes sense.  And then my mother calls her down to breakfast and everything goes back to the way it was before.  And I'm alone and I don't want to go on.

See, it goes back to all those trite phrases.  I can't stop crying, I can't tell you why.  I think I'm depressed, but isn't it just in my head ? Shouldn't I just be able to tell myself there's nothing to be depressed about and put it away?  But this feeling in my chest and in my head, it hurts so much.  I can't make it stop.  I don't want to run this time.  When I'm manic I want to run.  Now I want to fall in a hole and never ever have to climb out.  Like if I'm down there long enough nothing will matter and I won't have to fight anymore.

I don't want to fight anymore.  I don't want to have to be perfect.  I don't want to cry and worry and feel like I'm going to die of shame every time I'm not perfect.  I'm never perfect and yet all I do is beat myself to death with every mistake I make.  Each mistake throws me deeper into the hole, and creates more and more and I can't do this anymore.  I would prefer to be a bag lady, just fail good and hard.  Be the perfect failure.  This half-assed failure thing I've got going on just isn't doing it for me.  It hurts and hurts.

You know like when you hurt everywhere?  I hurt everywhere.  My brain hurts.  It feels like it's going to explode.  Not a headache, but like it's got so much in there rambling around, scaring me to death that it's going to explode.  Chasm in my soul, pit of despair, dying inside, worthless, helpless...trite enough for you?  I don't know what to do, and I'm afraid of what I will do. 

My big boy Sprite (giant, humongous Maine Coon) just climbed up beside me for his evening petties. He's not going to like them too much tonight.  He puts up with a certain amount of wetness, but when his face fur starts getting drenched he gives up on me.  He'll give me a little time though.  Kids and kitties, what on earth could I do without them today?

More and more Hope tells me see doesn't think I'm as "fun"as her father.  I don't spend each and every weekend we're together doing something extra special and extra fun.  While her father plans activities and time filling times for every moment they're together each weekend.

I'm not a bad mother.  I just feel like I feel other voids in her life. I really AM the fun parent, I'm the one who's always there, I'm the one who talks to her and laughs with her and yes, forces her to do her homework and read before she goes to bed and bribes her with a WI when she finally learns her math facts (a bribe which has so far not worked even though the damn WI is sitting in it's box on top of my closet.)  I was at my friend Dana's house Friday night (Hope was spending the night with a friend) and I took a quiz "Which TV mom are you most like" and I came out as the mom on Gilmore Girls, which shows you just how cool (or lax) a parent I am.

Are my feelings going to keep being hurt because I'm not the fun parent?  He gave me a child support check the other day and she asked what it was.  He answered (as I was struggling for the correct way to put it) that this was money he was supplying toward her college education.  What a lie!!  And yet now she'll think he's being the responsible on and providing for her future, when in fact he's barely providing for her present and it's only because I'm currently ABLE to put that money into a college fund for her that he can make that claim at all.

Makes me mad.  Bitterly mad.  I know it's not supposed to be competition, but I WANT HER TO LOVE ME BEST.

There, I said it.

*****

My neighbor has a job opening for me, he thinks, at his company.  I gave him my resume, he's going to give it to his boss tomorrow and he fully expects me to get a call.

Could God or fate of my renewed good luck blogging karma be coming into play?  Keep your fingers crossed!  I won't say more at this point.  I jinxed the last "perfect job" by counting my new salary before I got the check.  But pray, or blog, throw salt or cut off some bunny feet...whatever it takes!!  More tomorrow!!

*****

Oh, and if you have any taste at all and want to pick up one new/very old excellent TV show to watch, catch Doctor Who on Scifi or BBCAmerica.  I promise you'll be hooked!  David Tennant is ALMOST as hot as Roger Federer!!!!

I broke up with New York guy today.  You remember, the one I've instant messaged NEVER, emailed a grand total of six times (in four weeks) and spoken to on the phone exactly once.  Yes, I did have to break up with him.  I told him I wasn't ready to be someone's last great love and that Hope is the most important thing in my life right now (despite having him tell me repeatedly and loudly during our one conversation that no child should be the center of their parent's life) and so I didn't think it was fair to him to continue this any longer.

Yes, he sent me THREE emails telling (first) how much he liked me, how sorry he was that I didn't want to meet and take the chance that we could have something special (second) he does love his daughter and he takes exception to my implication that he doesn't, and (third) he thinks I'm a bitch and I deserve to be alone forever and he's quite sure I will be.  These are all written within fifteen minutes of each other.

I attract stalkers, don't I?  Creepy creepy.  So I started talking to this other guy, but then I looked more closely at his pictures and noticed suddenly that he didn't have three of his front teeth.  My computer "froze up" at that point and I exited Yahoo Messenger rather quickly.  Then I started talking to a tennis coach in an affluent city near my home.  I thought, "how cool!  I'm in love with Federer and here's a tennis pro waiting just for me!!"  We'll see, I decided I'm not instant messaging people and I'm not giving them my number.  From now on I'm going to be the mysterious lady of cyberspace, existing only in email and digital pictures.

Safer that way.

I thought I was pretty brave getting rid of Bob the NY guy.  Normally I would have dated him for a year, had sex with him and perhaps even moved in with him before letting him know I thought we were getting too serious and I wasn't interested in dating him in the first place. 

Dating sucks.

*****

My friend Dana from work had her job interview today.  I'm quite sure she'll get the job, move on away from this sick little company we're in  and go on to be very happy.  My one shot came and went and I'm going to be left hanging when she leaves.  Does it make me a bad person to secretly hope she doesn't get the job and therefore has to stay and be miserable with me?  I don't really, you know.  But I will miss her desperately. 

They have no idea what would happen to that place if Dana leaves and if I followed right behind.  Yikes...they could replace us, for sure, but it would be a nasty couple of months!!

*****

Okay Margaret, you're forgiven your elf comment since you show VERY fine taste in men in every other respect.  (I'd do George Clooney in a hot heartbeat!)  And to be fair and honest as I know I'm supposed to be, his face does look a bit squashed, especially on the right side, but when he plays...mmmmm....Federer!!

Every morning starts the same now that school is back in session.  My radio goes off at about 6:20 and about five minutes later Hope crawls in bed with me.  Usually I'll hit snooze and we'll both go back to sleep for another ten minutes or so before it goes off again and we know to get up. 

I have Bronchitis.  Again.  So I didn't sleep well last night.  Again.

This morning when my alarm went off I'd been on again off again awake all night anyway, so I just let the radio stay on.  I listened to my normal Top 40 radio guys going on about something mildly amusing and waited for Hope to show up.  She crawled into bed with me and I just left the radio on.  We lay there all snuggly for a bit.

(Out of the blue, like) She asks, "Is that Delilah?"

Um...

I didn't say anything because sometimes she'll say weird things like that in morning when she's really not awake but just sort of talking in her sleep.  But after listening a little while longer she asked (a little more insistently), "Is that Delilah??"

Okay, so that was weird.  The only Delilah I've ever heard of is the lock shearing one from the bible and even most of that knowledge came from a two part episode of  Xena, the Warrior Princess which Hope's (probably) never seen.

I said no, I didn't think so.  Then of course I was like, "Who is Delilah??" 

She says "It's that lady who gives people advice.  You know, people who've been through a divorce or had someone in their family die or get a horrible disease.  Or sometimes if they're in love she'll talk to them too, and she likes to talk to people who are having birthdays."

I was completely lost by this time because I know every TV show she watches, I know every book she reads, I know every single thing in her life that might add influences (accept on the EE front and he's SO damn conservative, he about stroked out when I took her to see Goblet of Fire when she was six, PG-13, you know.)

She got up and I got up.  I was bleary and coughing and LATE.  But when she came up later I asked her, where the hell do you know this Delilah person from?  I didn't put that in quotes you see, because I didn't actually say, "Who the hell.do you know this Delilah person from?"  She would have been VERY offended by that sort of language and I would have gotten a fifteen minute lecture on how the language I use reflects on how I've been raised and my level of intelligence because people with any education and half a brain can think of far better ways to communicate effectively than through foul language...not to mention the fact that I ended that sentence with a preposition!

Lord, aren't you guys glad you don't have to have an actual conversation with me?  I can't even tell a story straight through. 

She finally tells me, "It's the lady on the radio.  The lady you always have me listen to in my room when I go to sleep." 

Ohmagod.  Delilah is the REQUEST LINE lady on our local easy listening channel!!  You know the type, you call in and request a song to be played for your mother/boyfriend/dog because it EXACTLY says word for word what you've always wanted your mother/boyfriend/dog to know.  I had NO idea the show was on, every time I go in there it's playing Wind Beneath My Wings or Let's Get Physical or something by Journey.

I should have known no radio station would play Journey songs back to back to back like that if someone weren't requesting them!!

*****

An Elf, Margaret??  Et tu??

*****

I went to a great deal of trouble, did all the paperwork, paid the money, got myself readmitted to GSU.  It was all great.  Five more classes to go.  Tax, Auditing, Business Law, Speech and the Business cap course.  All done.  Fully degreed and ready to take the accounting industry by storm by this time next year.  Conservatively, by this time next year.  Maybe even just two semesters if I quit work and went back full time (which really isn't an option because *see upcoming post on my VAST ebay inflated credit card bills that will take me six months to pay off*).

But GUESS WHAT, my loving and wonderfully supportive friends who have been with me these last three years urging me to get my ass in gear and get those classes done?  Guess the hell what?  (Yes, Hope...I know I could choose to use different words but sometimes the situation calls for a hearty curse word.)

After.  Five. Years.  All.  Major.  Classes.  Must.  Be.  Retaken.

I took eight, count them, EIGHT accounting classes at Georgia State...while I was pregnant.  While I was pregnant!!  Hope is seven.  I may not have that much vaunted degree, but even I can do that math.  None of those classes count anymore.  I have to retake them all. 

I was so excited.  I was so proud.  I was finally ready to take that last step toward success.  And then...this.   I felt like I'd been hit over the head with a mallet.  Not only is it three times as much TIME, it's also three times as much money.  Now my mom wants me to get all my GSU credits and all my Georgia Tech credits transfered to Kennesaw State and finish out my accounting degree there.  Which is all fine and dandy.

In theory.

I can't seem to get up the energy to do all that.  I used up all my motivation just getting readmitted to GSU.  I'm completely paralyzed again.  I suppose it will another seven years before I decide to get my ass in gear.   

I'm really afraid.  I'll be doing this forever, answering phones, being the office bitch.  Not worth anything to anyone, living off my mother.  I feel pathetic.  I'm almost 40 but I barely have the emotional maturity of my own child! 

She IS awfully mature for her age, everyone says so!!

Mmmmmm....Federer

Winning the U.S. Open...for the FOURTH time.  Darth Federer.  Something about a man in black...

I just don't think anything is hotter than this man!!

Dana says he looks goofy.  What does she know??

I'm afraid to look back and see when my last post was written.  That would just scare me, what with all the frantic catching up I have to do.  I don't know why I decided to start back up again, but I do know I stopped because I was afraid of my stalker.  I still am, I doubt that will ever go away, but since the older I get (and the saggier my boobs get, funny how the correlation works) the more my memory acts up on me.  I realized just recently that I can't remember some of the milestones in Hope's life, some of the ones that JUST happened last month or even last week.  We went on vacation, her first visit to the ocean.  I'm already forgetting what that was like for her, and for me and my mother.  She's lost teeth, had an "appliance" put in her mouth, failed her first spelling test and conquered her reading problems.  She's had her first phone call from a boy (just to talk, consisting of a lot of silence and not much talking and much bewilderment on Hope's end--"what did he want, mommy?"  "I don't know honey, sometimes boys just like to hear themselves talk."  "But he didn't SAY anything!!!")

EE is still not paying child support, or rather, he pays every few months after I threaten legal action.  To tell the truth, legal action doesn't scare him NEARLY so much as those four little words, "Child Support Enforcement Agency."  Funny how quick the thought of the good ol' government docking his pay gets a check for half the amount to me pretty quick!

The summer was HOT.  I worked the whole time.  Yes, I'm still working, and no, I haven't been drinking.  I went to a couple of gay male strip clubs with my friend Dana.  We went to this great club called "Swinging Richards."  Get it??  And boy were things swinging!!  It was fun, nobody tried to pick us up, nobody was drunk and obnoxious, so not only did I not get drunk, I also didn't get laid!!

Speaking of which, it's now been more than a year.  My last sexual partner was my stalker, so really we're looking at closer to two years.  Crazy, isn't it?  I didn't think I cared.  I really didn't.  But last month I started feeling like maybe it was time to start dating again.  I went on  a few websites, met a few guys--online, not in person.  I even spoke to two of them on the phone.  But I'm too afraid to put myself out there again.  I loved Psycho Boy so much (so disastrously and obsessively) and then the stalker liked me too much---I'm afraid there is no middle ground out there.  So I've shut down the two men I started talking to.  Both New York men, the one I liked the best is a computer programmer who is currently jobless and looking to start his own company.  The one I like least (he never let me talk the whole time we were talking!!) is the president of his own company, has an 18 year old daughter and is "looking for the last great love of his life."  Yikes...I'm screwed either way.   So I did what I usually do, and just didn't call either one of them back!

But back to my sex life. 

I've decided I'm desperately in love with Roger Federer (tennis star.)  So he gets all my fantasy time.  Although oddly enough, while I was signing up for my local online dating service, lo and behold, guess whose VERY recent profile I found?  Yep, Psycho Boy.  He's on there, looking pretty much the same.  I know he saw mine.  But hopefully he doesn't know I saw his.  But I'm such a complete moron, he's actually been invading my thoughts again.  COME ON!!  This guy was the worst thing that ever happened to me.  I'm only remembering the obsessive love, not the real thing. 

No, Faith.  You cannot fall in love with someone while you're drugged, drunk and starving in the middle of nowhere in a meth compound. 

I wonder why my thoughts have swung so wildly lately.  That's probably the real reason I'm back here blogging.  I know I've probably lost everyone (except my two best and most long suffering friends, Tonya and Margaret--I love you both) but it seemed the right thing to do, coming back here where I can get these thoughts out.  I haven't really thought about drinking very much, but I have worried about the dating and the fact that I'm afraid to, the Psycho Boy thoughts...like maybe I should get in touch with him?  It'd be dead easy...

DEAD.

Teehee...see, that's why I'm here.  His name is Jon.  Did I ever tell you guys his name?  Is it like in Pretty Woman, where she never kisses on the lips?  If I never say his name and only call him Psycho Boy, does that mean I don't care about him?

I'm not going to do it, you know.  I've known how to get in touch with him for a month now and I haven't.  Although...what would I do if he got in touch with me?  I think I would be smart.  He is simply an obsession, not a love.  I've talked about it before.  What's the difference???

*****

My job...oh boy, that will fill up an entire 'nother post.  I literally have so much to talk about that if I DO talk about it all, I'll still be six months behind on all the current stuff.  I guess I'll have to consolidate.

I'm coming back! TA DA!!

It just took me 20 minutes to figure out my password!!  But I'm going to start again.  REALLY, this time I mean it.  Hope is growing so fast and so many things are happening in her life that it's time I start writing them down again.  And if as a side benefit, I get some sound parenting advice from old friends, so much the better!!!!  Talk to you tomorrow, blog o'mine.