The road ahead

As the year is ending and the next is beginning, I find myself looking around at my current situation and taking stock of where I need to go from here. Admittedly, there are a few other catalysts to this reassessment beyond just the new year, but it's definitely an appropriate time for me to be figuring out where I need to go from here.

I have been helping out the ex-husband with the kids, since his mother fell a few weeks ago and injured her back badly enough that she isn't supposed to be doing a lot of the housework. During the time that I've been over there taking care of things, he informed me that his new girlfriend, who he started dating back in October, is now his fiancee. While I can't say that this is all that surprising, it did bring my attention to the fact that in the past three years, I have not had a single date. Not even one offer. The closest thing I've had to an offer is the few times when he was between girlfriends and would suggest that at least we knew where one another had been, so an occasional booty call was not a bad thing.

Second, my son had a pretty bad meltdown today. This is, again, not all that surprising. He's been a huge helper to his grandmother, and on his absolutely BEST behavior since before Christmas. It was only a matter of time before it got to be too much for him. But, once the aggressiveness part of his meltdown passed, he wrapped his arms around me, curled up in my lap, and bawled his eyes out about how he wanted me to get a house where he could come live with me. Honestly, it broke my heart. There's still been no sign of any job on the horizon, and without some sort of income to at least afford electricity and internet, there's no chance of moving out.

Finally, the most recent incident. I came home from spending the day with the kids, and laid down on the couch...which doubles as my bed. Almost immediately, I was sound asleep. Around 11, I woke up to the sound of the tv turned up, and my aunt talking on the phone. She was sitting in the chair next to the couch, arguing (as usual) with her boyfriend. I lay quietly for a few moments, hoping that she would realize it's practically the middle of the night and that she was being rather rude, as she had her own bedroom she could go to if she wanted to get into a screaming match with him again. While I lay there, trying to avoid waking up fully, I heard her tell him "they're asleep, and we're going to wake them up arguing like this". So, at least she was aware of what she was doing when, a few minutes later, the arguing did in fact progress on to the predicted screaming match. So, I got up, without saying anything about it, and got myself a drink. Her arguing with him then woke up my mother, who threatened to unplug the phone. This offended my aunt, who snarled "you will not touch my damned phone" at her. Fifteen minutes later, she finally convinced him to hang up. Then, she proceeded to watch another two episodes of Clean House, ignoring the fact that I'd laid back down and put my pillow over my head to attempt to block out the sound and light. Finally, I gave up. I was now thoroughly awake, and not likely to be able to get back to sleep any time soon. I sat up, grumbling "screw it" to myself. She then heaved herself to her feet, and announced, in a thoroughly offended tone "I'm going to bed!"

I would like to be able to say that last incident was unusual, and only happened because I'm currently on vacation between semesters. But I'd be lying if I said that. The truth is, this is a fairly common occurrence in this house. During the semester, I come home from classes if I don't have the kids, curl up on the couch/my bed, balance my laptop on my legs, attempt to juggle my textbooks in a similar fashion, and try and get my homework done while everyone insists that they just MUST watch reruns of whatever is currently on until one of their shows comes on. It doesn't have to even be something they like, it just has to be on. If I suggest I need the kitchen table to do my work, they grumble and grouse about clearing the pile of junk off of it, and will remind me that (even though they had no intention to clean the table until I said I needed it) that I had to get my stuff out of THEIR way by dinnertime, which they'd have happily ate in the living room if I hadn't said anything. If it's a project that I have to leave out for more than one day, such as a painting or large drawing, it's not unusual to come home from school to find dirty dishes piled on top of it. If I attempt to stay up late in order to have peace and quiet to do my homework, they take that as an indication that there's no reason to turn the tv off, as I'm still awake anyway. If I give up and try to go to bed, they expect me to try and sleep with the lights on and the tv going, because I should accept it as part of the deal if I sleep in the living room.

Overall, I find myself in a no-win situation as long as I stay here. If I keep my mouth shut and don't complain, then I have no place to do my work and no time or place for a good night's sleep. Due to exhaustion, I find myself unable to think straight, unable to concentrate on my work when I do find a place to work on it. My grades plummet. I see myself as a failure for being unable to do well. If I complain, then everyone goes into hysterics, shrieking about how everything is all their fault, that they just make everyone else miserable, and that they should just kill themselves and make everyone happy. Or, alternatively, they just go into the other room and bitch loudly to one another what a selfish, uppity bitch I am for thinking I deserve anything more than this. In the rare instance I am able to talk to my mother about the situation without her going into hysterics, her response is "you need to go see a counselor about how you feel". Great. So helpful. Except, I have seen a counselor about how I feel. Their response was to tell me that it's perfectly understandable to feel the way I do in my situation. Surrounded by such negativity and disregard for my efforts, it only makes sense that I would feel as if I was alone in my efforts to improve, or even that I wasn't deserving of anything better. Their suggestion was that I needed to get myself into a more healthy environment so that I could remove myself from this cycle of guilt.

Still, this leaves me with the questions of how. What steps can I take now to move me toward that eventual goal of having a home where I don't have to feel guilty for taking care of my own needs? Somewhere that I can bring my children to? It all keeps coming back to money. I have none. Every job I've applied for has had one of two responses. Either they just plain don't respond at all, or they inform me that they have no use for someone with my lack of availability. I've even tried getting a work/study job at the school. No luck there either. I've tried getting financial help, but am really only eligible for food stamps. I might be able to get help through the housing authority, but in order to do that, I have to order a copy of my birth certificate from New York, and then somehow prove that I have no income. On the brighter side, I'm a full-time student, so if I could manage to assemble all the paperwork they needed, they'd give me priority in considering my application.

Mostly, though, I'm just at a loss. I'm struggling to continue seeing myself as worthy of the meager things I'm attempting to gain for myself: an education, a decent job, a healthy home environment. I feel that those who are supposed to be my emotional support in this are instead grabbing hold of me and dragging me back a step for every two I take forward. Some days it even seems more like dragging me back two for every one I take forward. I'm tired, most days I want to just give up, but I continue to trudge on, hoping that one day I'll see a bit of light at the other end of the tunnel.

aren't we done yet?

I usually love Christmas. All the movies...well, not so much the movies, most of them are very sappy and cheesy. The pretty decorations, the food, the music. Normally, it lifts the spirits as long as I'm able to stay out of the stores. Not this year. For some reason, I wasn't able to get as into it as I used to. I think a lot of it had to do with that I knew that I'd have a couple hours Christmas eve to spend with the kids, then it would be all over.

As far as that goes, we had a nice evening with my family, though it was fairly obvious that Gavin's meds were wearing off, and he was starting to get hyper. We also got to meet my cousins girlfriend. She seems really nice. Other than that, it was about what I expected.

I did get a few nice gifts. A necklace from each of the kids that they bought from Santa's Shop at school, two jars of Manic Panic haircolor which not only colored my hair a lovely purpleish wine color but also dyed half my body and the shower bright fuschia, a gas card, a McDonalds gift card, about fifty bucks worth of movie bucks, and a gallon of antifreeze.

I spent Christmas day itself trying to scrub the hair dye off my skin so I wouldn't look like a sunburned smurf, and bleaching the shower to get the fuchsia residue out of it.

Oops

Okay, so I've been horribly neglecting my blog. After my son's birthday, things got real busy with classes, so I didn't have much time to think about writing anything that didn't have to do with video games. On the bright side, I did manage a C in videogame theory and design, which I'd been terrified that I'd flunk. So that's a bright spot, as is the A I got in advanced photoshop. The rest of my classes weren't quite so spectacular, but at least I passed everything. I also have some new pictures to post as soon as I finish getting them fixed up.

Now that fall semester is over, I've got a month off before spring semester starts. This one, I've got two classes involving getting my hands dirty, which always seems to be a bright spot in the day. I'm taking drawing II and intro to ceramics.

Still no luck on finding a job, which is starting to worry me. I found out just before thanksgiving that the ex and his new girlfriend (the one he started dating just before distructoboy's birthday) are now planning to buy a house together, and are currently actively looking at places. I'd really like to be able to get into an apartment before they get a house together, but it's not looking like I'm going to make that goal.