Head vs. Heart

Well, my brother lost custody of his daughter.  It hasn't even been court-ordered yet, but it's basically over.  I'm frustrated on many levels.  It is an internal struggle between my knowledge of abusive situations versus my emotions about my brother and his marriage.  It's very hard for me to talk about this because I feel like people talk down to me every time I try.  I DO feel like she is getting away with a lot of lies.  I also feel like my brother isn't making the right decisions about what the court needs to know about his marriage.  I feel like the court wouldn't care anyway.  Let's break down some of these FEELINGS:

1.  On one hand, on the hand connected to my head, I know that in a domestic violence situation, most of the surrounding family/friends never know about the abuse.  I KNOW that.  I know the laws that are protecting my SIL are in place for a reason, to protect women (people) from abusive situations, and that everything my family thinks she's "getting away with," such as being given emergency government housing, a free lawyer, and "all of her lies just believed without proof" is necessary, and I would want all of those things provided for me if I ever found myself escaping an abusive relationship.  I know that it looks like I am only siding with my brother because he's my brother and that it looks like I am one of those naive, blind, or angry family members.

2.  On this same hand, I KNOW my brother isn't a peach to live with.  He has a quick tongue.  He cusses, he makes inappropriate comments, he yells and calls people stupid.  I know all of that is verbal abuse.  I know he's difficult and a bit self-centered.  I know he has punched walls and went through a period of cutting himself.  I know it was probably awful to live in a house where at any moment he might start yelling.  I know that verbal abuse is just as debilitating as physical abuse.

3.  On this same hand, I KNOW that the court and the officers of the court are treating this case like they would any other divorce, and that they can only take what they see and make decisions from that.  Right now my SIL has a two-bedroom apartment that she has kept clean, where she cooks and has a babysitter and appears to have bettered herself.  My brother lives with his mommy and, at the time the court-appointed lawyer for my niece came to visit him, had all of his belongings shoved into a tiny bedroom because he had to move quickly.  It was a mess and looked trashy.  Many people lived with us, which was pointed out in detail in the court documents, and the house in general was disorganized and cluttered.  We have since moved, but still my brother lives with his mommy and doesn't have a separate bedroom for my niece.  They have separate beds, but share a bedroom when she comes.  At this time, it appears that my SIL will be providing the "better life" for my niece.

4.  On this same hand, I KNOW the things my mother and brother told my niece's lawyer were mistakes, and that they came across sounding vindictive, because instead of talking about the living situation my SIL created while they were married, my brother instead said things like, "She turned lesbian on me," and "She's obsessed with our daughter," and my mother said things like, "She's crazy," and "She's jealous of my relationship with her daughter."  They didn't talk about the frustration of my SIL refusing to get a job for years, or how her children ganged up on my brother and other members of our family to tell him what a failure he was every day, or how my SIL allowed random people to just move in with them all the time because "it's the Christian thing to do."  Nope.  And, when my brother told the lawyer that my SIL's ex-husband could tell her how this same thing happened to him, and how his stepson's girlfriend could testify to the frustration of living in that house with my SIL and her children, the lawyer asked if she needed to speak to those two people and my brother said NO.  NO!  And so it sounds like he made all of those things up because, you know, no, she can't actually go corroborate his story.

5.  BUT on the other hand, the hand that holds my heart, I BELIEVE my brother never hit or sexually abused his wife.  It isn't in him.  Even when we were little, he was all bark and no bite.  We would fight, verbally, and when he felt overwhelmed or when he felt angry he would hide in his room and cry.  Or he would shout about me being stupid, or spoiled, or what have you.  He is an extremely neurotic and sarcastic individual.  He also has asthma, tremors, and acid reflux so bad he once tried to change his oil and ended up vomiting horribly in our kitchen sink (due to having to lie on his back for an extended period).  When we lived in our old apartment he couldn't walk up the stairs without getting winded.  He helped me move my dresser six inches the other day and was winded at the end of that.  He only eats once or twice a day because otherwise, he throws up.  I find it hard to believe he would be capable of holding someone down.

6.  In this same hand, I believe that my SIL DID create frustrating living situations as well.  She hopped from job to job, and at one point refused to get a job because she was worried that my niece would stop loving her if she couldn't be home with her every single possible moment (I'm not kidding, she said that).  She refused to use her child support for her older children on any bills, food, or other necessities.  She said that money was for those children, not for my brother and their child, and so it couldn't be spent on things that benefited them (I'm not kidding, she said that).  She said it was the man's duty to get a job that pays well enough so his wife doesn't have to work, and that if he can't be the sole provider he's a failure (I'm not kidding, she said that).  She allowed people to move in with them, random people, like some dude from their trailer park and his baby.  When we found out he was on a sexual registry, she dismissed it.  Dismissed it.  And, she is a woman who claims that she and her older children were sexual abused.  She said it wasn't Christian of us to judge him (I'm not kidding, she said THAT).  Her children would bring home their friends and make two sandwiches for each person.  She said she couldn't let people go hungry.  She said that if my brother had a better job they would be able to afford feeding anyone without having to worry about feeding themselves.

7.  In this same hand, I believe she has manipulated the justice system.  She sat in our living room a few weeks ago and admitted she just let the woman from the domestic violence shelter write down whatever she wanted to, and that she just signed the paper without reading it.  When we asked her about specific situations she had alleged in the papers, she told us she didn't even know what we were talking about and that she never said any of those things.  Look, I KNOW she may have felt uncomfortable and like she was "behind enemy lines" and what have you, but her children have come to us to tell us she did this exact same thing to their father, and to several other men.  They told us she has filed charges against every man she has ever known.  Furthermore, in the court papers from my niece's lawyer, any specific situation my brother talked about, like the time my SIL "refused to take her daughter to the emergency room" is in quotation marks, is alleged, and is treated like a "he said, she said" situation.  Everything that my SIL says is not in quotation marks, and appears as though it's fact.  Like the time my brother "slammed his daughter's face into a dog cage door," except not in quotations.  That did not happen.  My brother was horrified.  He wants the court to do a taped interview with my niece, where they ask her about things like that, but the court is refusing.  It is frustrating, this feeling like there is nothing my brother could EVER do to prove he was not violent.  It does FEEL like my SIL can just make stuff up and it HAS to be taken as the truth.  And it also FEELS like she knows it.

8.  In this same hand, I believe my brother needed to talk about his own abusive past, and to talk about how he vowed he would never be like his father (we have different fathers).  My SIL talked about her abusive past and my niece's lawyer made a long statement to the court about how much she respects my SIL for wanting to learn from her abusive past and get out from under the cycle of violence.  Which, on the other hand, the one connected to my head, I KNOW abuse is a pattern and women who have been abused find hard to break free from it.  But my brother needed to talk about how it was equally verbally abusive for my SIL and her other children to call him a failure on a daily basis, and for them to tell him they were better off without him, and that they made him feel worthless and, at times, suicidal.  When he did talk about those feelings, the ones where he felt suicidal, the lawyer turned that in to a concern for his stability.  Also, in the court documents, my brother is, and I'm not kidding, NEVER ALLOWED TO MOVE OUT ON HIS OWN.  Because he works third shift, and therefore my niece would be home alone at night.  When my SIL goes to work, she has a nice babysitter named Misty, and this is talked about at length in the court documents as being very responsible and good.  But...why couldn't my brother get a babysitter, or bring my niece to my parents or me or what have you?  It also states in the documents that even though my brother lives with his mother, my niece wouldn't be properly supervised if she went swimming at our apartment's pool because...I don't understand that one.  My brother works third shift, he would be there if she went swimming, she's not swimming at night.  It's just...it just FEELS like there is nothing my brother could do to defend himself.

So, in conclusion, I'm conflicted.  The justice system is in place for a good reason.  Abused women need the upper hand because it is often hard to prove abuse, and so the court is only doing what is necessary and right in the name of abused women.  I feel like a horrible person because I don't believe my SIL.  But the truth is, I don't.  I don't know what to do, and I don't know how to help my brother.  The court is accusing him of being "fun dad" (that is the actual phrase they use several times in the documents, complete with quotations marks).  They say he buys her too many presents when she comes to stay with him.  Well, he buys her things, yeah.  Is he buying her affection?  Maybe.  But he's just nervous that, for any reason, his daughter will get used to his absence and fade out of his life.  It is a real fear.  My SIL has already asked that visitation be reduced from the normal visitation rights to only one day every two weeks and that's it.  She doesn't want him to have her ever in the summer or for any holidays.  Thankfully, the court ignored that.  The lawyer for my niece said she sees no reason why visitation cannot continue as it has.  But...I just don't know what to do about my FEELINGS that my SIL is manipulating the system.  Can we do anything?  Or are we defeated?  Will there be a way to appeal this decision and ask for joint custody someday down the line?  Should I turn the other cheek and ignore my brother's pain because the system has to work this way?  I have been writing this for two and a half hours, since 6:00 in the morning, because I couldn't sleep after reading the lawyer's referendum.  But...are all of these FEELINGS just normal when custody is involved?  How can I help my brother see that?  I've never been on this end...my sisters always got custody, no questions, no fighting, their boyfriends couldn't have cared less about custody.  My brother cares.  His daughter means everything to him.  I don't know what to do.

Hospital Etiquette

Lesson #1 -

It isn't about you.

I went to see my father today.  Yesterday, at about 1:00 p.m., he went to get in his car and felt sick, then realized he could not get back into the house and laid down in the back seat.  A neighbor saw him and came to tell my mom there was something wrong.  He'd had a stroke.

He was transferred to a bigger hospital.  I drove my mom and sister down to see him in the neural critical care unit.  He was somewhat responsive.  He threw up several times.  We asked for a popsicle and that seemed to make him feel better.  He slept and we just kind of talked quietly amongst ourselves and read.

Then, a woman who has only just rekindled a relationship with my mother decided she HAD to come to the hospital.  This is the wife of the brother of my mother's ex-husband.  Yeah.  And when my sister was in the hospital earlier this year, this woman realized she knew my sister, that she remembered her from when my sister was little, and wanted to get back in touch with my family.

Fine.  That's fine.  But now is not the time to try to be the center of attention.  When she called us, we were at the hospital, and when she asked my mother if she could come my mother told her yes.  I was in the background mouthing to my mother to say "no" because my father was not going to want her there right now.  After my mother hung up, she asked my father if it was okay and he said, "As long as she doesn't talk too much."

Enter this woman.  Talking loudly.  Talking about things that we couldn't care less about.  Some girl's wedding.  Some picnic.  Some fight she was having with someone.  LOUDLY.  Her husband sat down in a rolling chair and accidentally went flying, knocking into my father's IV pole.

In the middle of this, my father suddenly said, "I want to be alone."  I knew this would happen.  Then he starting telling the nurse he wanted to sit on the commode, so he could be alone.  The nurse told him he didn't need to sit on the commode because he needed to use the bed pan, but I understood that "the commode" at home would be a place he would escape to where no one would bother him.  So pretty much right after they got there we all had to leave.

Then we got downstairs and I said I was going to go get my car and bring it around because it was on the third floor of the parking garage.  This woman said, "I don't understand why."  I was like, "What part of that is confusing?"  "You can't bring it here."  (At that very moment we were standing near the elevators kind of far from the entrance.)  "By the time I get to the parking garage, get up three flights of stairs, and pay for parking you all will be right there at the entrance and it will be convenient for everyone."  "Well, I just don't understand.  Are you parked in the green garage?  So are we."  "Yes, that's where I'm parked, and I just want to go get the car."  "Well, wait, well, why?"  And at that I just walked away.

BECAUSE I WANT TO AND I'M 34 YEARS OLD.  And because it isn't about you.  And I don't know you.  And because I'm pissed that you upset my father and he asked everyone to leave.

Moral:  Be the help someone needs, not the help YOU want to be.

To Vent Again

Why....would anyone asking for money scream and cuss at the person they're asking help from?

Sometimes people are so frustrating and dealing with them makes me want to crawl into bed and never come back out again.  Tonight, I had three people ask for money in the course of an hour.  One of them asked for five dollars, one asked for ten dollars, and one asked for fifty dollars.

The five dollars, fine.  My mother needed me to pick up her medicine and it was going to cost five dollars.  No big deal and she needs her medicine and since there isn't anyone else willing to help her, fine.

The ten dollars was actually the one I was most upset by.  At first.  It will be the one I'm most bothered by in the long run.  My father needed to put gas in his car.  He needed to do so because he takes EVERYONE ON THE PLANET where they need to go, daily.  He takes people an estimated thirty places every day.  Well, except he doesn't take me anywhere.  I have a car.  I put gas in my own car.  No one else puts gas in my car.  But I have to put gas in the car that takes them everywhere?  I told my father I didn't really have ten dollars but if he really needed it I would give it to him.  But I told him I had just enough money and that I supposed it would be fine.

Then THIS happened:  My sister called to ask for fifty dollars.  Now look, she's disabled with two amputated legs and sometimes she needs help but mostly she takes care of herself.  By herself.  On her own.  So when she needs help, that's fine with me.

The problem:  she did not call me directly.  Instead, she called my mother.  My father overheard the one-sided conversation and asked my mother whether my sister was calling to ask for money.  When my mother wouldn't answer him, he asked more forcefully and more angrily.  So my sister heard him say, "Is she calling to ask for money?" in an angry tone and assumed he was mad because she was asking for money.  So my sister, and my niece who was eavesdropping on my sister's side of the phone, started crying, screaming, and cussing.  This is all before I ever get on the phone.  They also hang up on my mother.

So she calls them back.  I get on the phone.  They are screaming at me, cussing about how they aren't ever going to fucking ask for any fucking help from any fucking person again and we can all just die and such.  I say they need to calm down.  That doesn't turn out so well.  I tell them I will call them back after I talk to my mother for a minute.

THAT doesn't go well, either.  Because when I explain that I think they need to apologize to me because they had no right to scream and cuss at me, my mother goes off on ME.  She says that when you're broke and frustrated sometimes you can't help but get angry.  I say, I still had nothing to do with that.  Then my mother starts yelling at me about how I need to stop trying to explain the world to her and how I need to stop talking to her like she's a child.  I say, "All I want from you is for you to admit I had every right to be angry they were cussing at me."  She REFUSED.  She yelled about how my father shouldn't have said what he said.  I remind her that STILL has nothing to do with me.  They called to ask me for money, cussed at me, and are still going to get their way and won't have to apologize?

I tell my mother how I feel like my feelings don't matter.  They should apologize to me.  She screams her tired old, "Tomorrow I'm going to leave all of you behind and get out of this bullshit."  Now SHE'S the victim.  Because of how I'M treating HER.

I went and got the money.  I got my mother's medicine and got sixty dollars cash so my father could put ten dollars in the gas tank and take the other fifty to my sister.  I came home and, again, asked my mother to admit that I had the right to be angry.  She wouldn't even look at me.  In a voice like a child who has to recite some rule her parents have told her, my mother gritted her teeth and "admitted" it.  I talked to her for a few more minutes and she never once looked at me.  It was so frustrating.

Meanwhile, here's the conversation I had with my father in the car on the way back from getting my mother's medicine:  My father told me he had asked whether my sister was calling for money because since I had told him I didn't have any money earlier he was going to save everyone the hassle and let my sister know I didn't have any money.  This enraged me for several reasons -

a)  I did have the money.  I just didn't want to give it to my father for gas.  Because it isn't fair that I should have to pay for gas for a car I never use.  But now I was forced to admit I told him I didn't have money when I did because I didn't want to give it to him for that reason.

b)  He should have known how it was going to sound if someone overheard him.  But he doesn't care.  He's never wrong, he always has to insert himself in the middle of things, and in case I didn't mention it, he's never wrong.

c)  He didn't have the right to tell anyone whether I had money or not.  He doesn't have the right to make decisions for me.  I know he thought he was protecting me but I should get to tell people what I have or don't have, what I can or can't do, what I will or won't do.  That's MY decision.

d)  Now EVERYONE knows that I have money.  Because when it's a big blowup EVERYONE hears about it.  So the money I tried to save for an emergency is just going to get blown away because now they are all going to crawl out of the woodwork.  And I won't be able to say no because they'll call me selfish and a liar. And while there's a part of me that knows I shouldn't care, I do, and it's hard.

Service

Tonight I went out to dinner with most of my coworkers.  Our boss takes us out to eat every year for Christmas, which we usually do in January because it's less stressful for most of us to schedule a day and gives us extra time to buy a Secret Santa gift.  You know, we work in the customer service field and you would think that would make us more patient when we have service that is good but not perfect.  Let me lay out the situation for you.

We went to the Olive Garden.  It's a Sunday.  We were a group of seven, possibly eight.  We didn't have a reservation, but my boss - at the last minute - phoned ahead about a half an hour and asked if they had a wait.  Of friggin' course they did, it's a Sunday in an area with several malls.  The wait was an hour and twenty minutes.  But, they said, if we gave them a name they would make us the first priority when we got there and as soon as a table big enough for us opened up we'd be the first people they seated.

We arrived at the restaraunt.  Some of my coworkers complained about having to wait.  We waited about ten minutes.  On a busy Sunday evening.  They let us know multiple times how long we'd be waiting, telling us the table they were going to use for us had been given their bill, then telling us the table was being cleaned off, then seating us.  From the time we got there to the time we were seated was no more than about ten minutes.  Meanwhile, people who arrived BEFORE us had to wait longer. 

We sat.  Our waiter told us about the day's wine we could sample.  One of my coworkers, let's call her Janet, made a snarky comment about how she doesn't drink red wine, it's disgusting, she needs something sweeter, she only drinks Zinfadel, etc.  She couldn't just say, no, thank you.  The waiter tried to chat with us as he took our drink order.  He asked us if we were celebrating anything.  No one answered.  I answered and then there were also some mumbled, "Yeah, Christmas."  Then he asked how we all knew each other.  Again, no one answered.  Finally, our boss said we all worked retail.  He took our drink orders and said he'd get those and give us time to look over the menu.  Our boss said she thought we could order now, and he said, oh, okay, but Janet and another girl weren't ready so they got rude with the WAITER about needing more time. 

So, let me just say, Olive Garden was packed.  It was loud, there was a HUGE birthday party going on (there must have been thirty or forty people celebrating).  Waiters were getting into traffic jams trying to take care of multiple tables at once.  It took maybe five minutes for us to get our drinks.  My boss and I ordered special drinks (everyone else just had tea or lemonade) so ours were on a list to be made at the bar - even though they were non-alcoholic they were the kind of drinks that have to be MADE and MIXED:  some kind of special juice and a smoothie.  Janet complained about the fact that my boss and I didn't have our drinks yet.  I said, well, they're special, and the waiter did try to reassure us that they were being made as quickly as possible.  While we were waiting, the waiter brought us our salad and breadsticks.

And here is where the really frustrating part begins.  Two of our coworkers had asked for salad with salad dressing on the side, so the waiter told us he would bring us one salad with dressing and one with it on the side.  My coworkers all agreed to this.  We said, oh, great, that would be great.  So he brings it, just as promised.  Quickly, it is obvious it will not be quite enough for seven people, so we politely ask for an extra salad, right?  No, the snarky fucking comment to the poor waiter, from Janet, is "Did you really think two salads was going to be enough?"  The waiter says he'll bring another salad.  He asks if we want it to have dressing on the side.  We don't.  When he leaves, Janet continues to complain about the amount of salad.  I say, "He's getting us another one.  He's fixing the problem."  She says, yeah, but still, you know?  And I'm like, no.

During this time, also, another waiter brought our special drinks.  Janet says, "I was starting to think we'd be done with our salads before you guys got those drinks."  I say, again, well, they had to be specially made.  At this point, everyone can tell that I'm getting angry.  It's uncomfortable.  But I'm not going to just let her make those comments.  The waiter is doing the best he can.  Another coworker who used to work in a restaurant tries to diffuse the situation (though moments before she was snarking on the poor waiter, too) by saying that it's hard on the waiters because they can only go as fast as the kitchen/bar can go. 

We get our extra salad.  Our boss tries to make a joke that I get first dibbs because I let everyone else take the first salads.  The truth is I didn't want any salad, really, but I took a little just to make everyone happy.  I ate, maybe, two bites.  As we're spooning out our new salad, our dinners come.  Janet, FUCKING JANET, has to make a comment that we aren't even done eating salad.  I don't know what this woman wants. I say that we can eat salads along side our meals.  She says most people want to eat their salads first and then eat their meals.  I say, not the people I know.  She just glares at me. 

We eat in mostly silence.  Oh, but let me add this:  during the entire meal - the ENTIRE meal - every one of my coworkers is playing on her cell phone.  Except me, as I have an ancient flip phone with no texting or internet nor do I have the desire for a phone with either of those capabilities.  They are texting; sometimes they are texting EACH OTHER.  They decide to "friend" each other on Facebook and so there is a mini-marathon of passing phones around so each woman can type her name into everyone else's phone.  Meanwhile, the waiter is trying to ask questions (like taking our orders) but is getting no answers or just annoyed looks because, you know, we're busy.  I was so FUCKING embarrassed.

Let me back up.  As soon as we sat down Janet wanted to know where the dessert menu was.  At this time, chaos is going on because we're all getting situated, asking each other how we're doing, looking at our menus, the waiter is trying to get our drink orders, etc.  Janet just keeps complaining about that dessert menu.

But now, back to the future, we've eaten and it's traditionally time for dessert.  The waiter tells us about the desserts (I admit to being annoyed by no menu).  He tells us the first dessert and Janet interrupts him to say, "Chocolate.  We want chocolate."  I tell him that I, in fact, don't want chocolate but want Tiramisu.  Everyone asks what that is and so he continues on with the desserts and eventually says there is chocolate cake.  CHAOS ENSUES as everyone asks him how big the cake is, how many calories, etc.  What the fuck, it's a dessert!  You know it has a lot of calories, deal!  As he's walking away our teenager says, "Excuse me, but I want some water."  He asks if she wants lemon in it and she GLARES at him and just says, "Whatever, no, um, just no."  I say, he just asked if we wanted refills and you didn't speak up then.  She just stares at me.  He puts in our orders and brings the check. 

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is where I begin to throw a fit.  Because an audible bitchfest begins about how bad the service was.  The drinks were too slow.  There wasn't enough salad.  Our food came too quickly.  Janet didn't like him (he was, by the way, clearly gay and it is known she's uncomfortable with gay men - you know what, men in general).  The girl who used to work in a restaurant begins detailing all the ways she would have been in trouble if she had served like he had served.

I am PISSED.  I start reminding them that the restaurant is busy, they got a party of seven seated within ten minutes, they filled all of our requests, and the waiter tried to be friendly.  The whole time my boss is watching my face and she can see that I'm upset and so she tries to ask if 25% is too much.  Now look:  YES.  I feel 15% - 20% is fine for good service and I think he did the best he could with the situation he had.  My coworkers, especially Janet, get loud about how they would only give 15% for really good service, and according to them, he was not good service.  I reiterate that he did a fine job given the situation and that 15% would be fine. 

Again, meanwhile, and I know this is long but I need to vent, the waiter is boxing up our food, writing what it was and the date on it, boxing up the extra salad, giving us bags for the breadsticks.  He even wrote us a little note on the comment card that recalled every detail we had told him the few times we did actually chat with him.  So, anyway, our boss gives him 20% and we leave.  On our way out he taps me on the shoulder and says that Janet forgot her box, so could I make sure she gets it?  I say sure and thank him for everything.  When I catch up to Janet and tell her she forgot her box, she says, "I didn't want that.  He didn't even ask me if I wanted that.  What the hell?" So I just snatch it out of her hands and walk to the car. 

Our boss paid for everything.  She picked up the whole bill.  I tried to call her to talk to her, but she didn't answer.  I know she knows I'm upset.  I know she's avoiding me.  So I will have to talk to her tomorrow.  I'm going to ask her if she wants me to pay her back for my meal because it will make it easier for me to tell her I'm never going out with them again.  This happens every fucking time.  We've gone out for a few occasions this year and this happens EVERY FUCKING TIME.  And I'm finally done with it.  I'm done being completely embarrassed.  It isn't a mandatory dinner so maybe they'll have more fun next year when they can complain about nonsense without being interrupted.  I know I'll have more fun reading a book or watching TV.

New Year's Resolutions/Confessions

Happy New Year!

The past year has been one where I've been very unhappy.  I don't know if it's been THE most miserable of my life, but it's up there.  This year I learned how I look to creditors (like a wet-behind-the-ears child), I felt like a prisoner (had to give up my car for a few months when we lost our second car), I feared losing people I love (friends and family), and I struggled with money (having to support my sister and her brood when she blew through $10,000 and then again when she up and quit her job and didn't get another one for over a month).  I've been very stressed out.  Normally, I don't talk about my FEELINGS, so I don't really open up to many people.  I've always felt a little like my problems are less than others' problems so I bottle myself up.  This post is going to be about expressing some FEELINGS and making some resolutions.

First, I wanted to run through the six major emotions and give an example of how I've felt each one in the past twelve months.  The six emotions are fear, disgust, sadness, anger, happiness, and surprise.  I've said it before (though somewhere else, I believe), those are some depressing emotions.  The only chance for happiness is, well, happiness, and possibly surprise.  Let's see if I was surprised for the better this year -

1)  Fear:  This year I've been afraid that I'm just a convenience to most people.  I feel this way a lot, in every aspect of my life.  From my house, where I feel like a convenient meal ticket, to my job, where I feel like a convenient filler, to my friendships, where I feel like a convenient backup.  I wonder what's wrong with me?  I fear that people often realize there isn't much to me, that I'm too boring, too shy, too nervous.  I fear that I have to admit they're right.  In the beginning, I meet new people and they want to go out after work or out to dinner on a weekend.  We make plans a few times, we go out.  Eventually I ask them to go out and they're busy.  Then they aren't busy as long as someone else is coming.  Then they make plans with that person right in front of me and don't invite me and that is very painful.  But then I think how I'm not exciting.  My hobbies are reading and video games.  Who the hell would be interested in me?  Sometimes later they ask me after they've been rejected and don't realize I was standing right there and now I know they're only asking me for their own convenience.  I'm probably not even Plan B.

2)  Disgust:  I've felt disgusted with several members of my family.  From my sister mooching from everyone around her to my niece's "I just tell the truth" piss-poor attitude, I've felt disgusted at a lot of the hypocrisy surrounding me on a daily basis.  On Christmas my sister, who got pregnant at seventeen years old, told another niece she was a whore for getting pregnant at twenty-one.  ON CHRISTMAS.  Then, hours later, several members of my family decided to rant and rail about this WHORE in front of a guest, a somewhat stranger, a ninety-year-old invalid who my sister-in-law takes care of and who has no family and came to our house to celebrate Christmas with someone.  I was so embarrassed.  My mother was mortified.  She tried to get them to stop but, you know, sorry, someone has to tell the truth and they're all just telling the truth.  The truth hurts.  It's also ugly.  And often hypocritical.  And disgusting.

3)  Sadness:  It was sad that my middle sister, who is handicapped but pretty much totally independent, was told she might have to make a choice between death and being bedridden for life.  It's been frustrating and sad to see someone punished who is trying, who is taking care of her children, who helps her parents and everyone around her whenever she can.  What force in the universe has decided this?  I know it's just the luck of the draw, just circumstance, but where am I supposed to scream about the unfairness of it all?  I'm somewhat sad that I have nowhere to turn for even cathartic blame.  Luck.  Fucking LUCK.  So far my sister has staved off making this choice. I don't know when her LUCK will run out, though.  It's sad that I know in my heart it will be soon.

4)  Anger:  Anger.  I have felt a lot of anger.  I'm angry at myself, mostly.  I've made my bed.  I've relied on my parents for too long and caused the situation where I have no substantial credit history.  I've allowed myself to get comfortable in a mediocre job.  I've procrastinated.  I've wallowed in so-called "writer's block."  I've secreted myself away and pushed away my friends.  Isn't my sister who lives with me just projecting her internal FEELINGS when she calls people lazy, calls them stupid, calls them WHORES?  My anger with her is anger with myself.  I haven't saved money.  I haven't endeavored for a better job or developed the discipline to turn my talent into something real.  I haven't changed my routine of wake up, work, play on the computer, read, sleep.  Again, who could be interested in me?  Not just socially but financially, career-wise, etc.?  Who am I and what am I doing?  Where am I going, where have I been?  I'll be thirty-four and I can't even FIND my diploma for graduate school.  What the hell have I done with it?

5)  Happiness:  I don't know.  There were little moments.  I was happy when I got my car back after about six months of never being able to use it.  I was happy when I discovered the writer Haruki Murakami.  I was happy when I found a Chocolate Orange in a random place at the grocery store because I've searched up and down for them.  I was happy listening to Gene Wilder read an audiobook.  I was happy when an antibiotic finally cleared up the acne on my face (please let it last).  I'm trying so hard to think of something big.  To think of a moment that carried me through longer than a day or two.  Maybe...maybe happiness is just those little moments?  Maybe I should print that out and tape it above my bed.  Maybe every day I need to sit down and remember the one thing that made me happy that day, even if it's just the hot UPS man calling me "dear."

6)  Surprise:  I was suprised to admit to myself it's okay to be unhappy.  I've spent so much time being upset when my somewhat happier childhood was brushed off as though I was less of a person for feeling happy.  Pain is supposedly what makes us human.  I hated the words, "You don't know how that feels," because it was like my life was not valid because I hadn't experienced this or that.  I still don't cater to that theory.  Everyone, even happy people, are valid.  Their opinions and FEELINGS are valid.  But...I'm a little less happy than I have been in the past.  And that doesn't break my theory.  I don't feel stronger.  I don't necessarily feel weaker, either.  I feel...different.  I feel...focused?  I feel...exposed?  I feel....

So I've made some resolutions.  Some I've made before, like reading and writing schedules.  It WILL happen.  This time (I mean it) I don't have a goal as much as a routine.  I will read one book, then take a day off to reflect on that book, then read another book, etc.  One thing I've learned about myself recently is that I don't like to read books back-to-back.  I like to ruminate.  I like to bounce around ideas and uncover flaws and discover wonders.  I like to return to particularly intriguing passages.  When I was finished reading 1Q84 by Murakami, I tried immediately reading another book and what happened was I hated the newer book because I wanted to return to parts of 1Q84 and think.  I know, it sounds like homework, this routine.  It sounds like all of the pleasure is being taken out of picking up a book and getting lost in it.  But I promise, for me, this is how I can make myself happy.

The next resolution is about money.  I'm going to keep a ledger.  I want to see where my money goes.  I already started an informal one and for the most part my money goes toward the little groceries we need to keep the house running (milk, toilet paper, bread) and I go to the store for those things almost daily.  Last week I bought five gallons of milk.  FIVE GALLONS.  Everyone at my job knows when my parents call me they're going to ask me to pick something up at the grocery store after work.  So my resolution is this:  I will keep two columns - one where I write down the exact amount I've spent and one where I round up to the next dollar.  At the end of the month I will put the difference into a separate account.  Also, any money left out of my paycheck at the end of every two weeks will go into my savings account.  That's a third account, by the way.  I will have two checking accounts and a savings account.  The savings account is for absolute - and I mean life-and-death - emergencies.  The second checking account is for smaller emergencies, though my plan is to try very hard not to touch it either.  These two accounts are secret.  I also have a 401(k) and life insurance.  I WILL start saving money.

My final (big) resolution is to get out and do something.  The local bookstore hosts readings, bands, and other events and I'm going to attend at least one of these events each month.  There is a great wood-fired pizza place right down the street and the bookstore has wi-fi, coffee, and well, books.  Yeah, I'll need some money.  But when I look at how much money I spend getting Subway when I could be making cous-cous and salads that last for several meals and are awesomely fresh-sealed in a jar, I realize that splurging on a $7 pizza and a $10 book once a month isn't what will break my bank.  And now that I have my car back, I can go anywhere I damn-well please for as long as it pleases me.  And I WILL.

I need to do these things to put myself on some sort of track.  These things aren't major life changes but they are what I feel I can do right now.  Do what you can with what you have, right?  Right.

I WILL have a happier new year.

Four More...Kids?

Without asking anyone in our house if it was okay, my sister decided to babysit four kids five days a week.  They are all under the age of ten.  They come sometime before six in the morning and stay until around three in the afternoon.  They are three boys and a girl.  They seem well behaved enough, but we have to feed them and, today, my sister decided to schedule an appointment and, without telling anyone, left the four kids sleeping in our living room.

She has been watching them for three weeks now and has not been paid.  Their mother, my sister's coworker, couldn't afford daycare and needed somewhere to take her children for the summer so my sister, who is on hiatus pending an operation on her foot, offered to watch them for a reduced rate of $25 a day.  Their mother keeps telling my sister that she just doesn't have the money, that the next paycheck will be better and then she will pay her...but of course the amount keeps adding up and how, if her paychecks aren't enough for $125, are they going to be enough for $375?  It's going to create an awkward situation when my sister has to demand the money or refuse to watch the children...and then return to work with this woman with all the bad feelings there will be between them.

And these children use dishes.  Cups and plates and silverware and pots to cook their hotdogs and whatever.  Today, while I was spooning yesterday's Mexican leftovers onto a plate, excited because it's been a loooonnggg time since I've had this particular favored breakfast, my mother asked me if a coffee cup amongst the other dishes was the one I used yesterday.  She told me that I needed to wash that coffee cup because my sister is tired of having to do my dishes (as you know, this is a regular fight).  I went to put it in the dishwasher, but it was full of clean dishes.  Could I have cleaned the dishwasher out?  Sure.  But laying around half-naked doing nothing was my nephew and his girlfriend, neither of whom have a job or do any sort of chore. (My nephew's exact words earlier this year:  "I've never had to do chores and I ain't about to start.") 

I washed my four dishes while being glared at by my nephew's girlfriend because she wanted to get coffee but the coffee pot is next to the sink and I was blocking it.

See, the problem isn't that I am not willing to clean up after myself.  It's the fact that my sister is willing to help everyone but me.  I go to work and I pay part of the bills (she doesn't do either of those things right now) and I dirty all of maybe five dishes.  I know I harp on this a lot but it's such a sore point.  Today, as she was walking out the door to get in a car and have my father drive her to her appointment, she said, "I'm late to my appointment because we have to take 'Stupid' to work."  Who's 'Stupid'?  My niece, and my sister is angry because my niece lost her driver's license for not having insurance.  It is suspended for three years.  Why, you ask, was my father driving my sister to her appointment?  Because a few years ago she lost her license over unpaid tickets. 

By the way, my sister's appointment was at 10:30 and 'Stupid' didn't have to be at work until 11:00.  My father was going to take my sister to her appointment and then swing by to get 'Stupid' and take her to work.  How the hell did 'Stupid' make my sister late in any way?

So right now, my mother is watching the four kids.  My nephew is playing with them but eventually he will lose interest and want to play video games on the internet (which I pay for) or whine about how he wants to watch TV (which I pay for) and he can't because the kids are watching cartoons.  For the record...he will probably want to watch cartoons. 

Living for Me

This weekend, I bought a new refrigerator to go in my bedroom.  It's 3.2 cubic-inches and holds about three times as much food as my previous fridge.  My plan was to feed myself.  I'm quite tired of feeding five lazy people.  I don't mind feeding my parents - they pay almost all of the utilities and the rent and, besides, they fed me.  But every time I go to the grocery store and buy food, it will be eaten within twenty-four hours.  Last weekend my mother bought a pack of twenty Hot Pockets and it was gone by that evening.  I can't afford this any more.  A few weeks ago we came downstairs to breakfast to find my nephew making four subs - two for himself, one for his girlfriend, and one for the kid who slept over the night before.

It's not like we can designate food to people, either.  If my mother buys herself ice cream and tells those people not to eat it because she's treating herself, she better buy a serving she can eat in one sitting because as soon as she goes to bed they are going to eat that ice cream behind her back.  I can't stock up on frozen meals to take to work either because even if I write my name on them in permanent marker they will eat them.  (Or they will microwave them, I will catch them, they will get angry that I'm angry, and they will throw it away saying, "Fine, I won't eat your stupid dinner then.")  Today my father went to get some leftover chilli and when he opened the container someone (read:  my nephew) had decided they didn't want to scoop out a serving into a bowl so they put crackers in the container and then decided they didn't want it anymore, so they just put the lid back on it and walked away.  It was a mushy, disgusting mess and an incredible waste.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I also can't buy food I want to eat because I have to worry about portions that will feed eight people.  I have to buy chicken legs, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, five-pound-packages of hamburger, spaghetti (yuck), white bread, American cheese, tater tots, ground steak patties - this is a weekly list.  We eat those things freaking weekly.  And they must be in constant supply.  I just can't take it.

So tonight, I went to the store and spent way more money than I had intended to fill the new fridge.  But I bought things I want to eat.  I bought bacon-flavored cheese-filled mushrooms, salsa, tortilla chips, gouda cheese, salami, and two kinds of hummus.  I've decided that every paycheck I will buy the ingredients for a recipe, starting with recipes from Martha Stewart's Food Magazine. 

This week's special:  Baked Eggs in Tomatoes.

I will substitute feta cheese for the parmesan, though, because I only like parmesan on pizza, as a substitute for mozzerella (not my favorite).

I'm tired of being so unhappy.  I know they're mad that I've been splurging on myself lately but you know the drill.  Fuck 'em.  They're selfish bastards and they're breeding a selfish bitch in me. 

Ownership

I am so upset right now.  I came home from a crappy day at work to find that my parents, because they couldn't get the internet on my little netbook for a few hours, decided that the problem was the computer needed a complete system restore.  My father - when my mother told him my sister had deleted some games that had been downloaded (without permission), had cleaned and defragmented the hard drive, and nothing had worked - told my mother that he could get the internet back for her.  So, she handed him the machine and he did a system restore. 

He lost everything I had saved on that computer.  He lost files from when I was teaching.  He lost stories I had started.  He lost pictures we had taken of my sister-in-law's mother before she died. 

The worst part?  Remember my post a few weeks back about apologizing?  He's angry at me for getting angry because HE DOES SYSTEM RESTORES ALL THE TIME on his computer and it's fine.  It's how he gets the internet back if it isn't working for a few hours.  EVERY TIME THE INTERNET IS DOWN HE DOES A COMPLETE, BACK-TO-FACTORY-SETTINGS RESTORE. 

He said the computer should have backed up the files automatically.  I said it doesn't do that.  He YELLED at me that he didn't say it did, HE SAID IT SHOULD.  Because his does.  I told him that's because he has Windows 7 and my netbook only has Windows XP.  Did he apologize?  No.  He just kept repeating that he couldn't have known my computer was different than his.  I said he shouldn't have been messing with something that didn't belong to him - especially something that cost as much as that netbook.

I would have been home a few hours later.  Why couldn't they live without the internet for a few hours?  All I needed to do was start the wireless internet service and go to the advanced settings to let Windows reconfigure the wireless signals.  I also pushed my sister for more information on whether she did a defragmentation (which would have taken hours) and she admitted she didn't, because the analysis said she didn't need to.  I said really it had needed it and I had just been planning this morning to do a defragmentation when I got home.  She just shrugged her shoulders. 

This after another day where I was the bad person for getting frustrated when my boss interrupted me at work.  Often, she starts talking to me as soon as I walk in the door.  I can't even put my purse down, or take off my jacket in cold weather.  Today she followed me to the back room and started talking at me about what we were going to do for the day, and I started a sentence and she interrupted me.  I listened to what she said, waited for her to be done talking, waited a beat, started my sentence again, and she interrupted me again.  This time I showed frustration, I think by pursing my lips, and she saw my face and asked if I was mad that she interrupted me.  Instead of answering I just, for a third time, said what I was trying to say and when I was done she just kind of said, "Oh," and walked away and wouldn't talk to me for a while.  I know she's going to say something about how I need to remember our talk about showing patience because interrupting is now a common behavior and I need to understand that I look egotistical when I "can't stand it" that someone has interrupted me.  Except I think it's awfully convenient for her that she gets to excuse her rude behavior and I'm going to be held accountable for feeling frustrated.  She has said that because she doesn't mean to interrupt me, that because she just thinks of something she wants to say and doesn't want to forget it, that that's different than interrupting someone maliciously.  It's not.  Why is her thought that needs to be expressed more important than the other person's thought that needs to be expressed?  That's how she makes me feel - like I'm less important than she is.  The whole day I made a point - a clear point - of not speaking when she was speaking, of looking her straight in the eye and nodding in the appropriate places.  I doubt she'll pick up on the message, though.

So now, when I thought I was going to get home from work a little early and get to relax a little longer, instead I've already been yelled at and I've already spent forty minutes typing this stupid post.  I'll probably end up just crawling into bed.

Random Spewing

A)  My sister no longer has a job.  She injured her foot falling down the basement steps and now needs surgery.  Her workplace will not permit her a leave of absence and will not promise to hold her job for when she returns in, tentatively, two months.  Fine, she can't help any of that.  It isn't her fault she fell down those stairs (I've done it twice).  But it has been a week-and-a-half since she went to work and she has complained about having to do things around the house for those of us who do have jobs.  Right now I work five days a week - all long shifts.  The only other person who has a job is my nephew's girlfriend.  Out of eight people, my parents get retirement checks but don't have to be anywhere, neither of my nephews have school because one is online-schooled and one is twenty-five, and the other girlfriend just graduated from school and for the past year only had to be at school for two hours a day.  And you know what happened today?  My mother told me to make sure I always washed my own dishes because my sister said she wasn't going to wash my dishes.  Fuck her.  She isn't in so much pain she can't do things - she's just fine when she has to go to the tobacco store to get cigarettes rolled or when she goes to spend her $400 support check on junk at Wal-Mart.  I do my own laundry, take care of the phone/cable/internet bill, handle the repairs on the car and put in most of the gas, and buy food that gets eaten within twenty-four hours.  Why can't she wash my, maybe, five dishes I dirty a day?  I usually only eat breakfast and only two or three days a week any other meal, so it's often not even five dishes.  And we have a dishwasher which I normally put my own dishes in.  Why does she get to lay around doing nothing, and her children get to lay around doing nothing, leeching off of my paycheck but refusing to do anything for me?  FUCK.

B)  I'm reading The Beekeeper's Apprentice.  I hope it gets better because I want to slap the narrator, Mary Russell, upside the head.  She's egotistical and pretentious.  I know it's because in the beginning she's a fifteen-year-old girl but that doesn't excuse her tone of voice because a fifteen-year-old girl is not narrating this story.  An adult looking back is narrating.  I'm hoping I'll love the book and her once it becomes more of a mystery, once the Sherlock Holmes inspiration kicks in a little.  But once again, I'm disappointed in a book I've looked forward to for a long time. 

C)  I've made a decision based on this:  now that I have to support said sister above even more than I did before, I won't have very much extra money and so I'm going to have to just rely on random books from the library.  I used to go to the library with all my lists of books and try to find specific books but that's beginning to prove more frustrating because I often end up hating the books I was previously excited by.  So I think I'll try random books again.  I've said before, I think, that I used to pull five random books in a row (well, technically I would pull five random authors in a row) from the shelf and out of those, it would be an even bet that one would be awful, three would be mediocre, and one would be excellent.  That's how I stumbled upon The Descent - a book that is so much more intelligent than that horrible movie supposedly based on it - and The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye.  It's how I found Memoirs of a Geisha before it became a reknowned movie and it's how I read Tom Arnold's autobiography, which is surprisingly funny and interesting.  The thing about it is that if I'm disappointed I won't have wasted money.  It sounds to me like a lot of people are rediscovering the beauty of libraries for various reasons, and this is mine.

Sorry Speeches

Whenever I read a review of an author's lifetime work, it often includes certain themes the author revisits time and again.  Stephen King, in his earlier work, often wrote about childhood innocence and coming of age.  The author I'm reading now, Haruki Murakami, often writes about loneliness.  Jorge Luis Borges focused on the labyrinths of time and memory.  It's funny, because I think it was in King's memoir On Writing where he talks about hating when people ask him if there's a theme to his writing.  That could have been in any number of interviews with various authors I've read over the years, though.  Regardless of whether an author realizes it or not, often there is a moral or consciousness the author returns to, and sometimes it isn't recognizable until long after that author is gone.

I think quite often about what the themes of my writing would be.  I understand the process of writing to be cathartic, and authors are really working through the issues they have with the world at large, or within themselves.  I think one such issue I have is with regret or remorse.

There are often scenes in stories, television shows, and movies where a character, let's name him Bill, hurts the feelings of a second character, who shall be named Sally.  Bill makes Sally cry herself to sleep, perhaps unintentionally.  Sally shoulders the weight of her feelings for a long time, possibly years.  Maybe she only shoulders that weight for twenty seconds, but the point is she shoulders it in a way Bill, at the time, doesn't, because he is most likely unaware or uncaring of how he made Sally feel.  Eventually, Sally feels the need to expunge this weight from her chest and so, in a tearful and emotion-filled speech, she unburdens herself in Bill's face.  Normally, within the context of storytelling, Bill will reach an epiphany about his actions and apologize, sincerely, to Sally.  He will then endeavor to be more careful with Sally's feelings.

I call bullshit. 

I call this, because in my own experience no one apologizes even when the injured person shines light on the past behavior.  I know I can't base all writing on my own experiences, but personally, whenever I'm the audience for said scene, it just makes me angry and frustrated.  I've never received an apology when I've told someone how he or she made me feel.  It doesn't matter the situation. 

Usually, the other person will instead justify why they performed said behavior.  It can never be his fault.  Someone else's feelings can never be his responsibility.  It has become such a sore point in my life that I actually fear confronting someone who has hurt me because I know it will end in more pain for me.  There was a reason said behavior was necessary, and no matter how prepared I am to combat any response, the other person is ready with more justification, or just ends the conversation by walking away, brushing me off, or calling me names.  In most instances, instead of confronting the person, I retreat into my bedroom and cry in a ball, mentally enacting the scene from above with that person as Bill and myself as Sally, because the only apology I'll ever receieve is an imaginary one.

Professors in college asked me, time and again, why I had written the stories I had written.  Most young authors give a flippant response, or a response that is so intense and pretentious it's almost laughable, because life for them is still a ball of chaos and confusion.  I had no idea who I was or what I needed when I was twenty.  I still don't completely understrand my own life.  Whenever I get a rejection letter from a magazine I often get a hand-written note telling me it's well-written but that something is missing.  I'm slowly concluding that something is purpose.

There are other themes I revisit.  Imagination, longing, and identity are all tangled up with this idea of regret and remorse.  They all seem to go hand-in-hand.  I went through a writer's block for a very long time, so long I'm just now recovering from it, because for years I struggled with my identity as a writer, mainly because I was struggling with identity in general.  Even now, I regret allowing any other person to try to define me, but that's what happened and why I became blocked.  I imagined up a pseudonym, to the point of almost allowing that personality to take over my own personality.  I'm leaving that imaginary person behind now and examining what it means to be myself. 

I suppose that when I wait for an apology when someone hurts me, really I'm just waiting for that other person to define me.  I also suppose I'm waiting to give a definition to that person.  I want that person to justify my identity in the same way he or she is justifying his or her own identity by denying the behavior was wrong.  The right thing for me to do would be to confront that person, but once I've confronted her, let her own subsequent behavior be what it will be without expectation.  But to paraphrase Dumbledore, what is right is seldom what is easy.

I'm sure I will write scenes where Bill apologizes to Sally.  I think maybe those scenes are written as some kind of guidance toward what is right.  But real people often choose what is easy.  But since my writing is, after all, fiction, and in fiction characters don't have to be realistic, I suppose I can try to define a behavior, I suppose I'm really the one defining these fictional people.  As a catharsis for defining myself.

Hate

I spend a lot of time wondering what I represent to my nephew that has caused him to hate me so much.

I wonder if he sees me as someone successful, even if I myself don't feel the same, because the adults in his life are uneducated, lazy, and wasteful. Some of the adults in his life never received a high school diploma or GED. Most of them live in filth, often with tiers of empty pop cans, stained floors, and uninvited guests. None of them have anything of value because all of their money is spent in cigarettes, beer, and drugs. They jump around from job to job. His father is never home. His mother is never happy.

And here's me. I went off to school, which he (like his mother) mistakenly believes my parents paid for. I earned a higher education than he even knows exists. I'm messy, but I rearrange and clean my room regularly, mainly because it's tiny and I desperately seek the perfect combination for some kind of feng shui. I have a fantastic computer (hexacore), beautiful clothing, a car I paid for despite the fact it's in my father's name, and a small refrigerator bursting with healthy food. I've been at my albeit crappy job for more than six years. My father is retired and likes it that way. My mother can be made happy with a strawberry sundae.

I think it's because I was a kid when he was born, and he finds it hard to think of me as an adult. I think his mother whispers in his ear that I am not a grown-up because I live with my parents and so I supposedly don't have any bills. I think whispering must be the only way to communicate, because no one hears it when I shout that she isn't a grown-up either if that's the definition as she lives here, too, with her parents. He doesn't understand that the phone he uses, the cable he watches, the net he surfs wouldn't be there if we hadn't had my name to put them in or me to make the payments on time every month. He wouldn't have a car to get around town, or to take his girlfriend to school, or to pick up his friends for a sleepover only to return them hours later after a childish fight. He wouldn't have had the freakin' awesome tacos we made tonight, because while his mother paid for the hamburger, I bought the shells, the cheese, the seasoning, the taco sauce, and some refried beans - which were yummy.

He hates me because I refuse to do the dishes on most nights, and so his mother is forced to do them, which isn't fair either because he, his girlfriend, his brother, and his brother's girlfriend, all of whom live here, won't do the dishes because that's not their job, and they've never had to do chores and they're not about to start, and I'm a bitch because when I won't help, his mother gets angry and yells at him and his girlfriend and that's my fault because if I would just do the dishes all the anger would go away.

He hates me because after an eight hour day I just want to relax, read a book, watch a TV show, listen to music. But he wants to pretend to be a drummer in the shower, and I'm a bitch because he can beat on the wall of the shower (the wall of my bedroom) all he wants. Besides, that's just how he gets his pubic hair off the razor.

He hates me because I'm one of two people who have ever taken him down when he has physically threatened someone. I'm sorry that it resorted to violence, but he's not going to tell me how he's going to kick my head in and just walk away. I won't be afraid of him. I stand up to him, and while I know it just makes his antics escalate I can't imagine living with myself if I did nothing, ever, when he intimidates, threatens, or insults me.

He hates me because when he asks me for help with his homework, I teach him how to do it and expect him to learn. When I walk past the basement as his mother helps him, I can hear her read him a passage, read it again, reword it to give him the answer to the question, ask him if he's listening, tell him to put down the game controller, tell him to listen, repeat the reworded passage, give the answer, tell him good job, force him to write the answer down so it's in his handwriting. Then I try to pretend to be excited when his report card has A's on it.

He hates me because I've told him "no" since he was a baby, and I'm the only one. I told him, "No, you can't go outside and play until three o'clock," and though he screamed for four hours I didn't cave. I told him, "No, you can't leave the living room until you clean up the mess you made," then blocked the entrances until he cleaned up the mess. I told him, "No, you can't steal from my underwear drawer and give it to your girlfriend," then put a padlock on my bedroom door that I lock every single day whenever I leave the house and occasionally when I take a shower.

He hates me because last year I began planning to leave. He hates me because when I said I was going to get my own apartment, I actually went to viewings, filled out applications, tried to get co-signers. Tried to get out. He hates me because I had an interview last year that could have taken me to a beautiful city with a wonderful salary. He hates that he sees the opportunities I have. He hates that his mother wasted the money that could have gotten them out of the basement. He hates that I pay all of my bills on time. He hates that his father never pays child support.

A lot of the hatred stopped until that time last year, now that I think about it. When I began talking about my own apartment, a better job, a new city, he began writing messages to me on the mirror. About how much of a bitch I am.

I think he hates me because, unlike his mother, I haven't had to give up yet.

New Info

Well, at least I'm learning now about credit.

I just did some research and my credit score from the three major agencies isn't even important, really. They aren't my FICO score, so they don't matter. And so most likely, my FICO score really is that low, one hundred points lower and so I'm going to die here.

I guess I really will have to find a crappy apartment in an unsafe place (the only one I can afford I've seen anywhere, including craigslist, is on the street most people in this town would say you never, ever, ever want to live on). I guess I'll have to take my chances of being mugged and/or worse every night, just to get some kind of rental/credit history.

But that won't even help my credit. So my best bet is to continue paying the bills I have, continue shaving off the debt I've accrued, and try again soon. I just wonder why the dealership man said my credit was fine when, actually, after researching the score my bank sent me, it's actually really, really bad.

And now my tacos are ruined. I am so pissed.

Credit Scores

Yesterday, I paid to get my credit score from TransUnion. The other two are Equifax and Experian. Not too long ago, Equifax sent me a credit report and score and so I know what they say my score is. When I tell my friends, family, and coworkers those scores, they say they're not too bad (either not much lower or even higher than most of their scores).

Last week, I applied for a loan through my bank. They denied me, saying the three factors are credit score, work history, and credit history. I assumed they denied me because of my credit history, because while I've worked hard to make it better than it once was it's still not stellar. A few credit cards I paid off are still on there (and will be for a few more years) and my school loans still reflect that until about two-and-a-half years ago I was deferring them. Okay, I can live with that. I will continue to work on my credit until I reflect two years of payments and trust - a requirement the loan officer said I would need.

But then. Today I received a letter from my bank saying they wanted me to know my credit score. And it was a hundred points lower than the one I paid for yesterday. That's not ten points. That's not twenty points. A hundred points. It says on the back of the letter that if I want to dispute any claims on this report, I need to call the agency that reported it. According to the letter, it was TransUnion, the agency I bought my score from yesterday. I am pissed.

I will call them. I'm off on Friday so I can wake up, have my coffee and eggs, get my blood going, get a shower, sit down, and call them. I will ask them why my bank received a credit score one hundred points lower than the one I paid for. If they tell me the one the bank received is the accurate one, I will ask them for my money back. And then I will cry, because the one I received, the one I paid for, reflects everything I've been trying to accomplish in the past few years. The other one, the one one hundred points lower, is actually worse than the score I got a few years ago, before I even started paying off all these debts.

It's obvious that the car company and the rental office must have received the lower score. It's the only reasoning behind my inability to get anything, anywhere. If that lower score is my real score, I might as well consign myself to being stuck here, again, for eternity.

Eternity

I'm going to be stuck here for eternity.

Today I went to apply for my first car loan. I expected them to say I had bad credit or that I needed more money down. Had they said either one of those things I would have sucked it up and continued to work on my credit and continued to save money.

But that's not what they said. They said the same thing all the apartment rental places said. They are words I've come to dread as much as, "You're over-qualified," or "You need more experience." They said, "You need a co-signer."

I don't know what to do. No one in my family has good enough credit. I know they don't, I've tried to use them as co-signers before. The car dealership told me I actually have fairly decent credit and that they could get me a nice loan, but because I have no history of any major financial loans (student loans don't count) they can't finance me alone.

The people in my family with good credit won't take a chance on the "losers" of the family. My parents are the only ones out of all 22 of their siblings who don't own a home. My parents can never make it to family reunions becaue they can't afford the trip. My brother and sisters and I don't have careers, we have jobs. We're black sheep.

I had one window of opportunity. My parents have filed for bankruptcy after bankruptcy ever since I was a child. My only chance was when I left for graduate school, when my parents each qualified for a car loan and paid off each car. If I had only known then that was the one moment I had a chance, I would have done something. Have I ever talked about the three most useless words in the English language? Could, woulda, shoulda.

My parents keep saying that they'll go to one of those "buy here, pay here" places and get a car. I keep telling them that won't help me, because that won't be a major loan for them and so five years down the road they still won't be able to co-sign for me. It won't get me into position to get out of here.

In January, my sister got $5000 from her income taxes (just in federal), $800 in child support, $2000 from her online school to buy a computer, and $900 in paychecks. That's $8700. She bought dinner three times. She put gas in the car every few days. She gave the standard $400 a month she has agreed to for living with my parents. And that's it. No way in Hell that equals $8700. And yet she was angry when my mother asked her to give me some money to put down on a car, seeing as what ran my good car into the ground was her brood needing to go everywhere under the ever-loving sun. She reluctantly handed over the money ($400), claiming it to be the last she had. For four years, my parents have waited for tax season every year because my sister says she's going to move out this time, she's not going to waste her money, she's going to get her driver's license and a car and an apartment and $8700 was by God enough for that and she still didn't. Just like last year. Just like next year.

I don't know how to get out of this. My only option, really, is to get either a second job or a better job and start saving money. I'm afraid of even that, because when someone gets $8700 and doesn't even pay one bill, doesn't offer extra help in any way, and so still my parents are struggling to pay the electric bill and turn to me to come up with it on the day of the disconnect notice, I don't know how to say no. Everyone tells me to just say no, but how can I? I live here and it would be my electric being turned off, too. If the water is turned off, how will I shower for work? If there's no insurance on the car what would happen if I got pulled over for my headlight being out, like last year? It isn't as easy as it sounds to just pretend I shouldn't have responsibility.

Last year, when I had the money and the means to get out of here, I applied for a few apartments. Everyone needed a co-signer and no one was good enough. I don't know how to climb out of this hole. It seems like the dirt just gives way and I fall back in, covered with that dirt.

My Big Fat Opinion Piece

Which will all be about opinions on the internet. So, there's a part of me that hates the internet because I think it has bred a generation of people who think their opinions are completely entitled. Now, it's fine to have an opinion. It's even fine to express said opinion. If said opinion is expressed thusly:

"I like this show."
"I don't like this show."

...all is well and good. There can even be a bit of exposition on why or why not the show is liked by said individual. Even if the exposition turns into a rant about the qualities of the show it's okay. My problem lies with attacking someone else's opinion by calling him names or insinuating something about his intelligence because his opinion differs. I see this all the time. I experienced it myself two years ago.

I hate The Colbert Report. I can't watch it. I've never been able to watch anything Stephen Colbert has appeared on because I just can't stand him or his humor. It's something about his delivery. He rarely smiles. He was on Whose Line Is It Anyway once and I can't watch that episode because he just seems too serious throughout. I understand he's trying to stay "in character" and that a lot of improvisers find it unprofessional to even smile while "in character" but Whose Line has never been established as a serious show. I also hated him on The Daily Show because he would often do the segments I absolutely despised. Namely, he would do the mock interviews with real people who it seemed didn't know they were being mocked, and it was actually infuriating to me to watch it dawn on them that they were the butt of a national joke. The few times I've seen The Colbert Report I just can't seem to laugh even though I understand what Colbert is doing is actually mocking the very thing his "character" is supposedly supporting. I understand it's basically a mock show. I just don't like Stephen Colbert and, by proxy, don't like his show.

One day I was talking to a co-worker and he expressed his opinion on loving The Colbert Report. When I expressed the opposite opinion, the first words out of his mouth were, "Well, you obviously don't understand what he's doing." I was enraged. I mean, I've rarely been so insulted. I'm not an idiot. And my co-worker knew I wasn't an idiot. But his first inclination upon hearing an opinion opposite his own was to degrade me and make me feel inferior to his own knowledge. No. Just no.

I see this everywhere on the internet. I was just watching a British program called The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2006, and there was a celebrity appearing on it who many people find annoying. Many people expressed this opinion in the comments. And instead of just posting their own comments saying, "Well I like him because..." a lot of responders had to attack the first people by "explaining" what it is those first people aren't "getting." No, I get it. The celebrity is "in character" as a smarmy know-it-all who can't relax and wants to win and can't take it when the game doesn't play by the rules. It's a freaking TV show - there's no prize (except a cheesy trophy), no money goes to charity, no advantage next year or "reigning champion" titles. It's just a game that's supposed to be fun and make fun of the news from the year gone by. And maybe some people find his "character" funny. I don't. I'm allowed to express that and so are the thousands of other people who feel the same way.

One of the comments was about how much this certain poster loves this celebrity, and people who don't should keep it to themselves. Well, no. When people go overboard and get violent, vitriolic, or nasty about something (particularly something as stupid as a celebrity on a game show) that's one thing. If someone were to come on and say, "I hope that guy dies in a fire because he's a fucking retard," that bothers me. That's not an opinion, that's just offensive. But nothing is universal. There is no celebrity, book, piece of art, issue, or human right that anyone can agree on. Not even the death penalty or gender equality. Do I feel there are issues I can't believe people don't agree on? Of course. Do I want to call them morons when they spout hate speech or racial slurs or other offenses? You betcha. Do I want to go off on a rant like this one when they feel themselves superior to others because they "get" the issue and others "don't"? Fuck ya. And, well, I do, to an extent. As seen here.

But what I try not to do is call them names whilst in an actual debate with them. Just now, in the comments on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2006, I made a comment asking people to just say "I like him" or "I don't like him" and move the fuck on. There were two other celebrities who are quite polarizing, who were actually not taking the game seriously AT ALL, and there are plenty of people who were annoyed by that. And that's fine. In the end those two (who I liked) were straining everyone's patience a bit. It's fine to not like something. It's not fine to force other's into that same opinion.

Wearing down someone's feelings in effect does force them into adopting the opposite opinion. We've all grown tired of an argument to the point we just concede to end the argument altogether. Look, I know this seems trivial, because it's a TV show and who cares? It's not a real issue. Except, for this generation their manners are being learned in this capacity, and since our abilites to deal with greater issues stem from how we handle smaller social issues as we age, my fear is the future of society is going to be even worse than it is now because the latest generation can't hold a civil debate or compromise to someone else's ideas. I never knew it was a talent to agree to disagree. Some might call it indifference, but I call it necessity. I think it's why we can't come to an agreement on how to handle certain situations.

Let's talk, incredibly briefly, about gay rights. I'm totally for complete rights for homosexuals. However, I'd be willing to compromise on the issue of gay marriage by saying that if each state would legalize gay marriage (recognizing it as equal to heterosexual marriage in the eyes of the law) it could also be mandated that individual churches would have jurisdiction over whether they would allow gay marriage ceremonies to be held on their premises. There are plenty of churches that have begun to accept homosexuals. If a church declares that within its culture homosexual marriage isn't accepted, so be it. Those churches and their parishioners can continue to practice their religion as they choose fit. Just keep it out of the government and out of my chosen culture/religion. There are, of course, many other issues surrounding gay marriage, but I said "briefly."

The reason I can compromise is because I'm indifferent to others opinions or practices as long as it doesn't hurt me or another human being. It may seem like I've leapt from something stupid to something serious but, well, yeah. And I can because I've learned how to debate from the social situations I've been put in previously. I used to play with a little girl who wanted her way, all the time, and if she didn't get it she didn't want to play anymore. Well, after a while, no one wanted to play with her and she was lonely and she learned to take turns. But it took a long time and several experiences of her friends going home or telling her they didn't want to come over at all before she came to her revelation of compromising. On the internet, where a good deal of kids spend their lives interacting these days, everyone is anonymous or easily replaced. If a kid can't compromise she just clicks off that tab or changes her screenname or moves to a different chat room. She doesn't have to compromise. She doesn't have to learn.

This worries me.

On the Art of Suggestion

When I was going through workshops for writing, the most common mistake fellow writers would make during their critiques was to offer no solutions to augment the criticisms they gave. They would vaguely say, "I didn't like the part where the boy died" or "I got confused when you started writing in fragments on page ten." That's nice, and while it helps the author to some extent because he knows he has something to fix (possibly), he may not be able to see why he needs to fix it because he doesn't understand why it was unpleasant or confusing. Generally, fragments are confusing because they are unfinished thoughts, but maybe there were effective fragments and uneffective fragments and being pointed in the general direction of the effective ones would help. Telling him to cut his entire tenth page or to change his ending so the boy doesn't die isn't enough either. What if the boy dying isn't really the problem but some misconception about the events leading to his death? What if the reviewer just can't handle death scenes or just would have liked a different ending and is pouting about not getting what she wanted? What if the author does change that ending and the story suffers because the death wasn't really the problem at all?

I think about this when I read people's critiques of various projects. Take for instance Dan Savage's "The Trevor Project," a series of articles and videos directed at kids who are questioning or declaring their sexuality. Many of the videos in particular are celebrities talking about their own experiences with bullying or violence and how they felt like the pain would never end. The message is that while the world seems too cruel a place for any kind of happiness to be conceivable, there is hope and these people are glad they made it through the pain because their lives are better and they hope in turn to make the world better for kids who are experiencing the same as they did.

Now, look, I understand the common argument against this project. The argument is that the message shouldn't be directed toward the LGBTQ or generally bullied community, but instead the message needs to be directed toward the bullies and those who allow them to continue acts of hateful violence. Too true. But...I think that's very idealized. I would love to see every single school, office, city, state, and country adopt policies completely protecting the rights of every person to live their lives as peacefully and happily as they can imagine. I truly believe in the idea of protecting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But I also understand that this cannot happen overnight and it can only happen in small steps. That's why I don't understand why anyone would call a project like "The Trevor Project" a failure or critique it for what it's trying to do. One major outcry I hear is that kids don't care about the future because they live in the present and only the present. First of all - NOT true. Kids dream. They imagine their lives ten years down the road. They imagine their weddings and their children and their careers. True - a lot of kids in violent are otherwise harmful situations can't always think about the future because it seems so far away and unreachable, but that does NOT equate to only living in the present. In fact, they are in the very essence of that idea thinking of the future - albeit thinking of it as something they're unsure will ever come. But they dream about it coming, nonetheless. Even the smallest hint of how the future can be better can give their dreams a reality they had never dreamed of before.

Secondly, I hear the message isn't good enough. How can telling them it gets better make their current pain go away? It doesn't. I and the dissenters say the same thing though in different contexts. They say it doesn't go away in a condemnation of slapping a Band-Aid over a ten-inch cut. The kids are still in pain, they are still being bullied, they must still face intolerance every day with nothing but some silly message about how someday they'll wake up and it's all better. Well, yeah. It doesn't go away but that's not the point of the message. The point is to reach out in any way possible to help in any way possible. My question is, how can reaching out possibly be wrong?

Thirdly, I hear it's patronizing and demeaning to the intelligence of these kids. I think that is a slap in the face to the thousands, no, millions of kids who have posted comments about how much hearing someone else share their pain has helped them. I just read a comment about how an adult who had suffered through bullying in her youth would have given ANYTHING to have felt some shred of normality, to have felt like she was not alone. That's what I hear from so many kids I know, these kids who believe their feelings or desires or dreams are wrong because they don't know anyone else who thinks like they do. You know what "The Trevor Project" gives them? Knowledge. Knowledge that other people do think as they think. Others dream as they dream.

All of that said, what I want out of the critics is a solution if they don't think "The Trevor Project" is good enough. I want them to build upon this project - because ultimately a project is something that will be worked on, hypothesized, theorized, rearranged, carried over, torn down, rebuilt, rinse, repeat. Many famous authors say that a story is never finished, not even if it's been published for a hundred years. Make a video pleading for zero-tolerance as a government mandate in all schools. Write an article about how to approach the parents of a bully to get to the root of the problem. Start a campaign to force authority figures (such as principals) to complete some kind of psychology training to prepare them for the violent mentality of those who cannot accept differences. "I'm just talking, folks, ya get it? I'm talking. I'm talking. Talking. You talk to people, you find out about them. Maybe you reveal a little bit about yourself in the process. But the main thing is you get to know them, you go inside their head. You find out what their dreams are, what their hopes are...." (Believe it or not, that quote is from the first episode of Night Court.)

The other day I desperately pulled a teenager I know aside to talk to her in the only five-minute time I knew I had to be alone with her. Her world is turning upside-down right now. You know what I said to her? I told her to talk to me. That's it. I asked her how she was doing. I told her she could tell me anything that was bothering her, worrying her. And she did. She knew we didn't have much time. At first she was reluctant. One reason is another friend of ours made the comment that this girl shouldn't have anything to be depressed about because what do teenagers have to be depressed about? She said that to the teenager. I was horrified. She has everything and nothing and everything to be depressed about. The teenager told me how much she hates high school because the other kids are just assholes who go around making everyone around them miserable. I told her how I felt the same way and how much better college had been for me. In other words, I told her it gets better. I will never, ever forget her smile. I told her she will have so many more options for friends and situations in college. I told her how I thought I would know the people from my high school forever...and how I didn't even recognize a personal bully when I saw her ten years down the road. She had faded from my life like a pressed flower. I asked the teenager if she was getting therapy. She is. She's really stressed out by her mom right now, too. The other day, her mom came and told me and the other friend that the teenager is manipulating people and not to be sucked into her lies. But you know what? Even if that's true, what if it's not? I've never known this child to manipulate me. What if her mother is the reason she's crying out for help? You know what's going to happen when she goes away to college? She'll get away from her mother. And maybe it will get better.

So I watch the videos on "The Trevor Project" where these kids talk into a computer screen and feel like they're talking to someone, anyone. And while they receive messages that are unkind, they also receive an outpouring of support they never dreamed possible. In any way possible. Let's take this idea and build upon it. Let's shape it into something less confusing. I don't like that the boy died. But I do know how we can begin to fix it.