It just takes some time, Little girl, you're in the middle of the ride.

Everything, everything will be alright,
Everything, everything will be just fine.

I’ve been feeling very much like a bug in a world of feet – this wonderful place is simply full of spiked heels that would like nothing more than to smush the hell out of me.

In the life and times of Katherine M. Katsikas, good news is almost always immediately followed by bad news.

Shall we begin at the beginning? Drum roll, please?

For the past three or so weeks, money and good will have been falling into my lap. Every time I went to Wednesday Night at Amoskaeg, I was yelling BINGO for a generous payday. My winnings in scratch tickets reached within the 90$ range.

A couple cavities made themselves known and as if magically, I was presented with a gift to the Dentist for not only a cleaning, but for the whole SHABANG. With serious issues with my wisdom teeth and little holes every which way, this could set my family back thousands of dollars.

PLEASE PASS GO, PLEASE COLLECT 200 DOLLARS.
Gladly, kind sir! I think I’ll save up my colorful dollars for Boardwalk & Park Place. I’ve got the funny feeling I’ll land on it soon enough.

Just when I seemed to be having a streak of good luck and the general feeling of fear had subsided, I got that all too familiar bitch-slap back to reality.

COMMUNITY CHEST.
This'll be great! I'm positive I'll win the Beauty Contest!

GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL. DO NOT PASS GO. DO NOT COLLECT 200 DOLLARS.
Oh. No. Just when I thought I might win this game.

So, you want the bad news, do ya? Remember that Temp thing I've been stuck in for the past year? Well, they let me go of my current job in the same way that Enrollment let me go.

The agency loves to say "your assignment is ending", which is the equivalent of telling a child that a man "retired" when what they were really saying was that he died. It's a simpler way of doing the You're Fired thing.

It's an event that is without all of the red tape and explanations, just a simple phone call or email and that pesky fucker is out of their hair forever.

Big companies just love temps because of this exact reason.
If someone doesn't fit in the puzzle just right, they can simply
end the assignment and that is that.

Bravo, Katie, you screwed up again? You ready for round 3? How about Customer Service, or do you think you've finally reached K.O.?

....and suddenly I feel like Milton.... they're telling me to be patient and wait for the cake, but I pass it and pass it and finally there isn't any left for me.... my stapler has constantly turned up missing... they've moved my desk about six times a week, soon I'll be killing rodents in the basement.... that whiny jerk in the cubicle beside me has been asking me to turn off my radio but screw him, why should I bend over backward for a man that's depression has been driven by his own complacency ?.... the audience laughs at me when I vehemently say that I'm going to burn down the damn building... but soon they're going to see.... soon they're gonna see......

A long way from that fool’s mistake…

And on I go, yet again, with my vocational question mark. Ready, set, go.

I’ve officially applied to one of the open positions in General Customer Service. Whether I end up as a full time badge-sporting employee in Medicare or downstairs is of no consequence to me, the point is to drop the label of Temp.

I’m in the midst of hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.

It’s as if there is a thunderous rain cloud hanging over me each time I apply for a position in this godforsaken place, and because of that cloud I can see the sun but I can never get to it.

After having attempted at 5 or so positions in just under a years time here, I’m beginning to think that there is no sun at all. I work in an insurance company and I don’t have insurance, nor access to any of the things so readily available to 90 % of the people in this building.

If I go downstairs, I’ll have sampled almost every floor in the building and if the same story follows me there then I can only deduct that the fault must be my own.

The vibe that I’ve been getting is that I’m good enough to keep around because for the most part, my work ethic is decent. I don’t call in and if I’m late, it’s only by a few minutes. My saving grace in Medicare, I tend to believe, has got to be that I’m good on the phones. I sit within easy listening range of the BIG BOSS and I’ve never heard a criticism, however she has flocked to the cubicles of others nearby.

The big question at hand is what do I want?

I’m not going to figure out where I belong in this building until I can work out the ultimate question. I’m pretty sure of the basics of what I want but I’m not as sure on the specifics. This is my current brainstorm:

The basics: security, health insurance, steady/reliable money, tolerable work, benefits such as PTO & 401k, support for other interests and maybe a kid ***in the future (should it happen purposefully or accidentally).

The particulars: an occasional feeling of accomplishment, use of my brain attached to my big mouth, a sense of inclusion, ability to buy nice things, going to the doctor without worrying if they’re trying to jip services because they know they’re going to have to send a lawyer after me in years to come to get their money… etc…

I feel like I could receive all of these things if I was working in my department on a permanent basis. In fact, I’ve been feeling a little guilty about having applied in another department at all, considering my status of current. But, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed sit around, feeling insulted, waiting for them to invite me to their class? How can I go through the painful bitch-slap of rejection AGAIN without first looking for a place that doesn’t make it ten times harder on me than anyone else?

The answer is that I’ve got to try to get in, even if it means leaving a place I’m starting to make significant progress in. I’ve still been getting the same bad news vibes from the BIG BOSS, so I’m not placing all of my chips on her- no way, no how.

Not what you’re sure to be Or what you’ve become.

Updates, then?
How was my Xmas, you ask?

It was very laid-back and un-religious, and for that I am very thankful. I didn’t have to vehemently kiss inhuman looking Greek icons or try to calm my mother out of a hissy fit.

I spent a portion of my weekend helping my grandmother shift around items in her overstocked home, which is what the venture usually amounts to. She calls the event cleaning but I call it moving dusty purposeless stuff from one room to another. The only objects that met the trash bin were the most useless of the useless; wrinkled, blank sheets of paper, never read magazines, dollar store trinkets and the like.

We did a little bit of shopping and as a result I discovered three pictures for my depressingly bare apartment from an antiques warehouse in Stratham. The first two wall hangings are the back & front cover of sheet music. The packet was only seven dollars, and I resisted buying it until I noticed that the front cover stated that it was a “Fox Two Step”. Of course, at that point, I had to buy it. To explain to my listeners of lesser taste, “Two Step” is a Dave Matthews song and while it isn’t my favorite, it is on my list of intense likes.

The back cover is of an odd sort but a likable one maybe as a result of its queerness. It is sheet music for an “Operetta with that Oriental sound you hear everywhere” encompassed by the title of The Egyptian or something like that. There is a black & white sketch of a girl, who looks neither of Oriental or Egyptian decent, in fact she seems of the classical Grecian variety. The whole thing is altogether confusing but esthetically pleasing, especially with the frame that I dug up from my grandmother’s porch.

My third picture is the most expensive and the smallest. It came with a grassy green frame that is obviously a match for the background, but antithetical to the “Girl in a Blue Dress” theme. I wasn’t in love with it, but chose it out of my identification with it.

My grandmother tested my slight artistic knowledge and I was able to say immediately that the replica painting was a Renoir. I have seen in detail about a dozen or so actual Renoir’s at the Boston Museum of Fine Art in my most frequented ‘Eastern European Impressionists’ room. Renoir was placed with other popularized artists that you’d likely see plastered across your art teacher’s walls; Monet, Bazille, Degas, Cezanne, etc. I wasn’t reaching for the stars when I identified him, but it would be hard for me to forget the wide sloppy-ish and intensely colorful strokes of a Renoir.

The rest of my weekend consisted of a whole lot of reading, a little bit of writing, some discussion and a whole lot of procrastinating.

I think that’s the total synopsis of my holiday weekend…. in retrospect…. it wasn’t as long as I’d hoped… Well, at least the next two weeks will be shorter than usual…

I fall so hard inside the idea of you.

I find myself thinking about Tim. He doesn’t cross my mind every day or even in any particular span of time. The thought of him swells in and out of my brain in the seconds before I fall into sleep, while I’m in the pause of waiting for a phone call or occasionally in the middle of a conversation.

I’ll see a man drive by while I’m waiting for a bus and he has particularly full cheeks, or he’s sporting a Red Sox cap, or the light catches his face in just a way that I think... maybe ... just maybe it could be him…. and my heart skips a miniature beat. I know it’s never Tim that is actually there and I’m tired of the inconstant trip back to reality. Even if it was him in that car, what would it matter? If I passed him in the street, would he stop for more than a second or so to say hello?

I felt both incredibly brave and torrentially stupid for the way I acted around him in the time that I became aware of my feelings. I knew that as long as I stayed silent my heart would break quietly but without the more intense pain of rejection. Every day that went by I thought that if he didn’t say anything to me about it that it wasn’t meant to be . He had the question of security with the only real job he’d known, a failing relationship of seemingly epic proportions and two young children he adored and saw too little of; a lovesick girl was the least of his problems.

I’ve had crushes before. In fact, I could be crowned the “Crush Queen”. Everywhere I’ve worked or become social, I’ve found some cute guy to ogle if only for the fun of it. Tim was different, Tim was an intensity that seemed to grow every day that I was around him, and not of the usual crush variety.

He wasn’t gorgeous in the classic sense of my taste, but really just an average Joe. He was a little on the chubby side and in his early thirties (older than I'm used to). He had beautiful subtleties - A SMILE I'D KILL A HOBO TO SEE ONE MORE TIME- LIGHT BLUE EYES, LIKE THE SKY - I'M SUCH A DORK BUT I COULD WRITE POETRY ABOUT THEM - DORKY POETRY - THE WAY HE POKED FUN AT ME THAT WASN'T AT ALL INSULTING - HIS SILLY LAUGH - HOW HE LAUGHS WITH LITTLE PROVOCATION - THE SOUND OF HIS VOICE -

Before I formally met him, I sat on the other side of a sort of wall and could hear him chit-chat. He was particularly obsessed with a movie about the Crusades, and I remember thinking what a dork . After a week or so, I was ushered into the seat next to him by my manager to make room for others, and I thought he’d have to be the world’s greatest guy for me to have a crush on him.

Boy, did I eat my words. I should have known to not think something like that, because a similar thing crossed my mind when I first met Ben *who was a real doofy mess in High School*.

Tim is the world’s greatest guy in my book, and should be to any woman not lobotomized. He has his dork-ish tendencies, and the intense insecurities, but if he was given half a chance at real happiness he would be untouchable. He was in a bad place in his life and I would have given anything to take that hurt away from him, a hurt that seemed tattooed across his face when he alluded to certain events. When our department split up and dispersed, it hit me like an uppercut to the gut. I would have burned the building to a cinder without a single regret, I hated that warehouse so much, but I would have stayed there until the day I died just to listen to him talk. God, I miss him. I miss him so much I have to fight myself from finding a way to see him, a way into *the Warehouse* or just the neighborhood.

I’m not sure what this entry is all about, except to give me an outlet for this painful nostalgia that haunts me every once in awhile. I'd figured that being removed from the situation would erase the whole thing from my head, as time is supposed to heal all wounds. How can that be true when I’m sitting here contemplating him? Even after most of my Ben crap has dissipated and he's merely a far away obsession, somewhere deep inside I’m still stuck on Yoda.

I have done wrong, but what I did I thought needed to be done, I swear.

Trust me, the dish I'm speaking of is one you do not want to eat.

I've been thinking about CHICKEN CARBONARA and wondering why she's gotten under my skin so much that I find myself debating the issue in my head and coming to a deadlock.

It isn't because I thoroughly enjoyed her company, I didn't. Don't get me wrong, she's an alright person. The things we did were mostly mundane and sometimes outright boring, but I never found myself needing to escape with all limbs intact.

My insides aren't melting because of the whopping seven dollars I owe her, even if she's been treating it like seventy dollars. If it bothered me that much, I'd just give it to her instead of holding it out for principles sake (not to mention my own pride mixed with a final attempt to piss her off).

Even though the morning rides helped me save money and precious time getting to work, I've found that the bus has been coming according to the schedule. In the end, a measly ten dollars a week is worth my personal freedom.

Why is the whole situation bugging me? Part of me believes it's because I see her and JASMELLY BITCH glaring at me all day long, but I know that isn't it either.

It's because when CHICKEN CARBONARA told me all of the things that she'd come to the conclusion were bad about me, I sat silently and agreed. I allowed her to steamroll me without any sort of argument to the latter. For what, her friendship? Her friendship had no value to me. I'm the most defensive person out there and I practically said nothing in my own defense.

She was demanding that I change my personality for the sake of keeping her company and she knew damn well I wasn't going to do that. She stood securely and told me all of the things that annoyed her about me as if she was my mother and I owed it to her to listen. She gave me rides, little things here and there, but I didn't owe her much more than a thank you for it. I never asked her for any of the little things she offered and maybe it isn't justification for not giving back as much as she gave, but it didn't give her the right to become my executioner.

I didn't kill her dog, I didn't steal her wallet and I didn't clot her toilet full of shit. Maybe I was inconsiderate and I admit as such, but I've been treated like the most disrespectful person in the course of history. This is all for things like saying that she was an "unreliable ride", words that were taken way out of context.

CHICKEN CARBONARA was intolerably angry for me smoking cigarettes that she'd offered day in and day out after I told her I wasn't buying my own for reasons I made clear.

When she originally reamed me out, she'd actually said in the exact words that I never had anything nice to say EVER and that statement was overdramatic. If you talk to me and only listen to the negative words, it's going to seem like all I ever say are bad things. I said nice things when I was around her on a decent basis to try and ease her insecurities, but I also didn't hold back most of my negative thoughts. It isn't 50/50 with me, probably more like 70/30, but certainly not close to 100%. I'm no suzy cupcake, I'm Katie and I intend to stay that way.

I could discuss with this journal all of things that bugged me about her but it would only suit to ease my aggravation and I've voiced some of it previously. I could send her a nasty email or note but I know she'd look at it as 'getting her back' with of course the chance she could pass it on to my boss or something.
Normally I can be pretty vengeful, but I'd like to think I've grown out of that kind of thing. My maturity isn't what it should be but as always, I'm a work in progress. This could be an exercise in how far I've come since sinking to the level of my old roommate, but I know that would mean paying the bitch back her seven bucks.

SEVEN WHOLE DOLLARS, right? It has more to do with a sort of admitting my own guilt and giving in to her. It's my final act of bowing down and after having done so much of it in this situation, I can't bare the thought of it again. In a way I'm guilty, but really of minor infractions and not disguising my personality. Maybe it's the last infraction I'll allow and leave it at that because she's going to act like I tore open her life and spit acid in it whether or not I give her the money. It's just like my job, it doesn't matter if I'm ten minutes late or an hour late, they're going to treat me the same way. So why not take my time? Why come in at all, if I've already burned down that bridge?

"Katie, you're too negative."

This phrase is always more than likely a tissue papered judgment of the attitude that I seem to present to the world. It is passed out so nonchalantly, as if it wasn’t a judgment at all but merely a helpful hint from the kind who apparently thinks that I could change my whole perspective with a gentle shift of positive energy.

It’s intrusive and an attack on my character. Why should I say words that I do not mean and act in a way that I do not feel? I wouldn’t tell someone annoyingly positive to glimpse into reality once in awhile, so why should it be acceptable to tell me how I should act? My reaction to a person whose personality clashes with my own is to not beg for them to come around.

I have a new rule. When the moment occurs that a ‘friend’ utters the above mentioned phrase or alludes to it, I will remove myself from the conversation. I will walk away without a single word and end my relationship with them. Just because they feel that I rarely look at the bright side, or at least rarely voice it when I do, doesn’t give them the right to become my uninvited Dr. Phil.

I’ve found, in retrospect, that the ones more likely to point out my glass-is-half-empty view are the ones that have more than enough of their own flaws glaring on the surface. If I can’t walk away without saying anything, I will point out every annoying thing that my ‘friend’ portrays and then make my exit.

Here’s an example of a ‘friend’ I’d love to have unleashed on.

“Katie, you’re too negative-”

“You really think so? As long as we’re pointing out this, let’s discuss you’re slightly sick need to force your dog to follow you into the bathroom.

Let’s correct the way that you are overdramatic about some things that you should really just let go, like the whole Darby thing, as she was more than likely your friend out of convenience than anything and this is a reasonable answer for why she could care less about you now that you don’t work with her.

Let us reflect on how much you pretend to be everyone’s pal because you’re so desperate for a friend, but make fun of them behind their back, when you have no room to be putting anyone down.

Do you know you portray yourself as more capable than anyone, and that probably will cost you the ability to move forward in this job?

You've portrayed yourself as someone that doesn't want negativity in her life, but the truth is, you just want someone who is going to pat you on the back and fill the lonely void that encompasses your sad little life. I’m sorry I can’t do that for you.”

From here on out, if you can’t take the edges of my personality and want me to hide who I am, then I have no room in your life and you have no room in mine.

Not *Necessarily* My Inner Aspirations, But A List I Can Highlight.

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb (In my mouth... mmmm)
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run (Yeah, I don't do baseball)
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had/Have amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched whales Oddly, (this was my childhood aspiration <3 But, yes, I've done this for real.)
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your cds
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day (Try every Sunday)
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites (Does my great grandmothers house or 'Strawberry Bank' count??)
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight (Thankfully, not on my to-do list)
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch (Jr. High Home Ec Babycakes)
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice (Not even sure what it is, must Wikipedia)
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the snake river
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert” (Oh, that's gotta be at the top of my list to get done. As long as it isn't a Medicare expert...)
83. Gotten flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark (I don't want to know that Shark is in the same room with me, dead or alive)
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone (My house growing up??)
92. Buried one/both of your parents (father)
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in a Rocky Horror Picture Show
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour (3 *Dave Matthews* Shows on one tour, it's not completely 'following' but close enough)
98. Passed out cold
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over (Technically, I did this when I was 11 years old. I had the choice to stay in Exeter.)
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds (Well, closer to 80, so I can't really highlight this one)
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane (Gawd no)
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth (Uh-Uh)
112. Won money on a TV game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears ((Tounge))
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol (Pistol)
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse (Nearly killed me)
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet (Sorta, he was in my room)
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours (I've slept for 48 hours in the course of 48 hours. I'm like a cat, baby.)
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents ((Listen, enough with the travel stuff. I'm deathly afraid of airplanes))
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi (Double ewwww)
128. Had your picture in the newspaper (Falling on my arse so much it practically made headlines)
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about (Usually something political)
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach (Thank god that's a no)
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read “The Iliad”
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read (Well, that's all the books I've selected in the past 3 years, considering I never did any of the reading...)
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions (more like skipped all of school, literally alongside my sourpatch friend, remember splitting BLT's at the mall?)
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language (Again with the sourpatch... her mom... yelling at me in Spanish.... we communicated well that we didn't understand eachother)
139. Been elected to public office (This really is a goal for me)
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

I'll become what you became to me.

4.28.2006
12:38 pm

I've been sitting near the pond, allowing my thoughts to flow through my head, and I realized some things.

I'm still angry with him and I may always be.
I may always see him as two sides of the same coin.

The side my mind wanders to initially is the one that loves him unconditionally. I love how he made me laugh, how he had a greater perception than most, how he seemed to care about whether or not I cared. I love the way he knew me, even if it was the me he eventually created.

There is the side that I hate. He's so stuck in his mental problems that he can't spend a moment in his life being happy. I hate that he punishes himself for the horrible things that he has done, but doesn't prevent them from occurring again. I hate that he asked more of me than I had to give, but refused to help me.

He broke me down. Everything I said was idiotic, nothing I did was ever good enough. He was punishing me for the way I treated him when I was 16 years old. He continually beat it into my mind that I wasn't capable of standing on my own, and I became a person that couldn't stand on my own. Once I reached that point, he left me.

I built my life from the ground up. I failed and failed and failed, but I became someone that didn't need him.

I don't need him. He can still spark anger in me, but I can walk away without tears or regrets.
I can call him an asshole and walk away.
In that respect, I've grown, and I couldn't be happier.

I'll keep you my dirty little secret....

I have decided to post some of my old LiveJournal entries here, so that I have more of a sense of unity between the blogs.

I feel like there are so few & far between entries here that this page doesn't have a good sense of what I've been through since I started writing these things.

The LJ has more detail & emotion than any of my blogs here.

So in between my current bloggings, you'll catch old ones. I'll spacifically date them to make them obvious.

The picture kept will remind me.

I’ve been thinking about my relationship with my mother, and more specifically her relationship with me. I’d like to review the issue in an unemotional way so that I can better understand how to go forward with my life. I believe my relationship with her has been an element holding me back from success.

When I was a young child under her care, my feelings toward her ranged from anger, confusion, idealization, and fear. I couldn’t understand what it was that made her so disconnected and annoyed with me. I desperately wanted my mother to pay attention to me and treat me as an equal, even at the most tender age.

Physical abuse was ever present throughout my childhood, and sometimes daily, but the bruises from beatings (etc.) disappeared and they were just as heartily dealt out to my brother. It was the constant rejection and absolute affection for my brother that resonates in my adult mind more than anything.


It was once revealed to me that when I was a fetus, I kicked my mother to the point of her near insanity.


I envision her in the gentle naivety of a twenty year old girl. Janet’s expectations of a warm baby to love her and to be loved have been washed away. She is alone with a man seventeen years her senior; he’s desperately fallen for her and completely inept. She thinks she’s going to marry him, not because she loves him, but because she believes he could love her enough for the both of them.

She is alone in the world and she’s ill with pregnancy; in utter discomfort and her dreams of what pregnancy should be have been crushed. She hates that baby before it has ever entered the world, and this hatred turns to disgust when the little girl is colicky and reliant on her. She finally feels the wholeness of her mistake, that marriage and pregnancy is not the ultimate answer for a sense of well-being, even if the man she chose was a soft father figure. The little girl, that messy, tireless, screeching little girl is the physical reality of her mistakes.

She becomes pregnant with another child, and alas her second chance begins. None of the horrors of the previous pregnancy occur, the birth is quiet and the child looks up at her with glee. He does not cry or kick as much and there is an ease to him, there is a warmth that she had looked for in the first child. At that moment she feels that maybe she can love, maybe she has the ability to love.



This is my interpretation of the dynamic that spun my childhood. As I grew older and began to look more like a reflection of my mother, I believe her disgust with me also grew. She was a child having a child, and she’s yet to have completed her adolescence at the old age of 43. How does an immature person differentiate between what she feels and what truly exists? She can’t. There is no difference to her.

I don’t pretend to relate with her, but I think I can understand her actions and how they’ve affected me. Maybe if I can see her as someone blindly reacting to the world that was invading her, as someone mentally ill, then I can feel less like the reject.

I may continue with this entry as it isn’t completely finished…

Have a Mr. Cranky Xmas !

Since the commercialism & insanity that is the Xmas season seems to be the conversational topic of the week for me (online & in life), I have decided to re-post my favorite critic/comedian's rant.

Keep in mind that my personal view isn't quite so extremist, but I definitely admire & identify with his harsh words.

<3

I don't celebrate Christmas.

I don't celebrate any holidays in December. None. Zero. Zip.

As far as I'm concerned, Christmas is like a cancer. I'm not religious and I don't participate. I don't buy presents for anyone and don't get any and I like it that way. I used to celebrate Christmas in a kind of loose way, by seeing a movie and eating Chinese food with my family, but then somehow all you normal Christmas-celebrating jerks figured that one out and clogged all the theaters and restaurants Christmas Eve.
I once worked at a retail store where Christmas decorations went up around the first of October. I'm totally serious - the first of fucking October. Not long after that, they started piping Christmas music over the store speaker system and we were treated to every rendition of "Come All Ye Faithful" that had ever been written in the history of mankind, all five of them, over and over again, for three months.
By the time December 25th rolled around, I was ready to tear the soul right out of any present-happy child that came within eyesight.
Even though I don't celebrate Christmas and no semi-smart person who knows me should ever think to wish me a "Merry Christmas," I still get more "Merry Christmas" wishes, "Merry Christmas" cards, and "Merry Christmas" phone calls than I should reasonably tolerate. Usually, I just smile like I'm trying to cover up an ulcer and say "thanks" in a way that implies I might kill that person if they don't get out of my office right away. I'm invited to the Christmas party and to participate in the Secret Santa and somehow my name is always drawn for a free gift. I don't know if there's any nice way to say "I don't want a free frigging gift," but I haven't found it. After all, I have to work with these people. I either give the gift to someone else or it ends up in the trash. Look, I know somebody probably spent hours carving the snowman out of Styrofoam, but just what the fuck am I supposed to do with it?
I hate everything about Christmas, everything having anything to do with it, and all the trouble that comes along with it. I guess the holiday used to be religious in some way, but now it's just an excuse for people to buy stuff and clog up the parking lots in December at any store where I might happen to really need something at the spur-of-the-moment. It's gotten so bad that I've started to build a bomb shelter where I can store food and other necessities so that I can just avoid shopping in either November or December because I just end up waiting everywhere five times as long as I should.
People like to claim that it's a day to celebrate love and giving but that's become the biggest bullshit claim of all time. Christmas is about consuming and nothing more. Kids aren't taught about love and giving. They're taught about a big, fat, overweight lard-ass whose sole purpose in life is to give them crap they don't need. They flock to the malls and sit on this guy's lap and ask him for stuff. Most of the time, Santa is really some unemployed alcoholic who otherwise spends his time barfing in the park or trying to touch women he doesn't know. The most uttered phrase by kids during Christmas next to "I want…" is "Something in Santa's lap poked me."
When I wake up on Christmas morning, I no longer even think of it as a different day, other than the fact I don't have to work. I just consider it a day off. But then I turn on the television and I get treated to the worst programming America has ever seen all year. There's one parade after another and "It's a Wonderful Life" is playing on every two-bit cable channel - and not just one time, but over and over again all day. So then I go out and drive around hoping to find something to do. You know, maybe I might need a gallon of milk or something that day or some gauze to stop the razor cuts across my wrists from bleeding. Naturally, nothing is open and I'm screwed. If I want some solace, I have a couple of choices: go to a park or go join the huge group of Christmas sheep that have gathered around the city and county building to ogle at the "holiday" lights and the manger scene.
How completely ignorant does somebody have to be to realize that lights and a manger scene on city property is a direct violation of the separation of church and state? In a city near me, the mayor suggested that they remove a "Merry Christmas" sign from a city building and replace it with a "Happy Holidays" sign and his office nearly burned down from the short in the phone lines after he got 10,000 calls in about five minutes talking about how his children would be skinned alive if he didn't immediately change his mind. What is it about this simple separation that people don't get? It amazes me that these people haven't stopped to consider for one second that not everyone on the face of the earth celebrates their stupid holiday.
If you want your fucking manger and your fucking Christmas light, put them in front of your fucking church where they fucking belong.

Merry fucking Christmas.

And so it is the shorter story; no love, no glory, no hero in her scars.

Jesus, it's been a long time since I posted on this website. I mostly stick to the Myspace & Livejournal for my ramblings now.

It's odd to see where I was in my life with those angsty words.

Where am I now, in early December of 2006?

I'm employed as a Customer Service Rep. at Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield ((Medicare)). I finally got back on the phones, a type of job that I had missed most direly. I don’t know where
I stand in the light of this company, but I know that I am good at what I do. I can only put in everything that I have and try to advance myself where any advancement exists.

I have the cutest possible apartment imaginable to me, and I’m slowly working it into something that is entirely my own. It is affordable with the most important utilities included. It’s not in the greatest area in the city, but I haven’t been bothered by any of the ‘zones’ wonderful residents. My building is quiet and even though one of the biggest crimes in Manchester occurred blocks from me, there doesn’t seem to be any immediate danger at any point in time. I’ve lived in Manchester practically my whole life, I feel I can handle myself.

I’m single, and have found at least contentment with it. Wwes drops by once or twice every few weeks and I fulfill that instinctual need for affection. He leaves, and I am single and free to the world once again. It can be a lonely thing sometimes, but mostly, I take it for what it is. Wwes and I will never have a healthy, blame-free relationship, but we retain a nearly unbreakable bond. Until I find a man worth completely leaving him for, in mind and body, I’ll continue on with the way we’ve been going.

My cousin Ashley is going to attend the Tech here in the fall, and if all goes as planned she will be moving in with me come summer. The quarters will be pretty tight, but as long as we can find common ground we’ll be fine and I could definitely use the company.

The hope I have is that living with me will be good for her. I’m going to try and help remedy the increasingly Tiffany/Jen-ish ways of her young life and get her to take a little break from the heartbreak of speed-dating (and relying on the hearts of irresponsible boys). I know I can’t change the way she reacts in the company of men, but maybe I can help her a little bit. I know she’s desperately searching for guidance and self-control.

My life is simple but complicated. I want to do more and I want to be more, but I am okay with the direction I’m going in. I’d really like to get back to the art thing, and maybe writing; creativity is an important element for me. It’s definitely been worse, and I can’t think of many points in my life that have been truly ‘better’.