Moving On

Only a month has passed since my last post, and so much has happened! What a December. Happy New Year!

Things ended, mid-December between me and the guy I'd been seeing since October. It was mutual - we realized that our chemistry was friend-chemistry, not relationship-chemistry. Starting over sucks, but the glass-half-full outlook is that if someone could be SO perfect for me on paper, and the only thing lacking was chemistry, there's a guy out there who was absolutely tailor-made for me. And besides that, he and I are still friends, and it's only minimally awkward, which is awesome.

And of course, in case I hadn't had my daily dose of rejection that evening, I called The One to finally get an answer out of him. I had told him I loved him back in February, and then ignored the subject altogether to avoid the risk of hurting our friendship. But we're pretty much invincible now, closer than we ever have been, so I figured, now or never. And my hunch was correct -- I got the "I love you, but not in THAT way" line, although he did say that he had given it a lot of thought, which was actually comforting. But our friendship is exactly the same, without the giant elephant in the room.

Christmas was a comedy of errors. 2 days before I left for Michigan, our boss (who had originally decreed that we had to be back in the office on Mon 12/26, meaning I had to leave my family at noon on Christmas Day to fly back home) relented and gave us the day off. With such short notice, of course, the small airline that I was flying to and from MI was completely sold out on Monday AND Tuesday morning, so I was discussing options with my mother, when my father - who was staying in Charlotte near my mother (or with her? not sure) said he would pay for a whole new ticket. I started sobbing, crying ugly tears at work.

So, I made it to the family reunion, only to contract a 24-hour flu bug from one of my baby cousins, and then promptly turned around and gave it to 34 out of the 38 people at the reunion. Yay! Puking at Christmas! But the important thing is that I was there. Got back to NYC on Tuesday morning and hopped in a cab, luggage and all, straight to work, and proceeded to have the most ridiculous week of my life. Pre-New-Years-Eve: what a nightmare. Remind me to have a new job by the time holiday-time rolls around this year.

I'm exhausted, and really, REALLY ready for a better 2012. More coming soon(ish) about the awkwardness of seeing my father again...

Spackle, Shellack, and Glitter

I re-watched the Sex & The City movie for the hundredth time this weekend - saw it was playing on cable and decided it was time to dust it off and pop it in. I'd never actually cried at that movie before this most recent viewing, but when Big jilts her and she attacks him with her flowers... I totally shed a few tears.

Since then I've been thinking really hard about the meaning of family. One of my coworkers has a family that is similarly dysfunctional to mine (or, dysfunctional to my one-year-ago family, not the current state of my family, which is even more dysfunctional) and I'm often the sounding board/de facto therapist for her. So many people I knew growing up had really great families and best-friendy relationships with their moms and they just kind of seemed like Norman Rockwell paintings. Mine was way more Picasso than Rockwell, and at some point I was okay with that. I realize now that it was probably a defense mechanism, but I was glad that my family had some cracks and chips and stains, because it made life more interesting, less cookie-cutter.

Now, though, all I want is a calm, safe, semi-boring life. The guy (Holy Grail, or HG) from Sunday's post reminds me a lot of this guy E, who I had a thing for during my last few months before I moved: very sweet, very safe (the major difference being that HG drinks, and E doesn't - biiiiiiig difference, huh?). It sounds disparaging and lazy, doesn't it? Maybe I'm searching for stability because my life is so unstable right now, or maybe it runs deeper than that and I have more daddy issues than I think I do (great, just what every guy wants to hear!). When I moved up here, I triumphantly put E behind me and resolved never to be "boring" ever again and to live boldly and all that. This resolution did not under any circumstances take into account the turmoil I was going through with my family and job uncertainty.

Now, okay, I've taken some risks since moving here. I did hook up with Almost-Neck-Tattoo Guy, which was fun but now I'm not so sure how proud of myself I am for it. Mostly that's because deep down, I do want a relationship, not just a fling, and I don't want to do anything that would screw up my chances of finding that relationship. HG would be a great partner, I think, but now he's acting all weird around me, which is so annoying. Of course, I have no idea how to have the "so, we hooked up, now what?" conversation, so guess who's SOL?

In an attempt to wrap this up I'm going to circle back around to the beginning of the post and the idea of family. My family lets me down an awful lot, and I let myself down an awful lot, and apparently I am way more of a fuddy-duddy than I make myself out to be. I talk a big game, but I'd rather curl up and watch Real Housewives marathons most nights than go out drinking. But my friends are my life and my family, and I have basically jettisoned the Picasso and am building a Monet around myself: several tiny dots that all add up to a beautiful life.

Monsoon

So, like I mentioned yesterday, I had a really great post in the works. But then everything sort of came crashing down around me (yeah, I know, again) and I just couldn't concentrate or do anything at all except leave work early and get shitfaced.
Note to self: You are not as young as you used to be. Weekday drinking is not a good idea anymore.

I got in early yesterday, determined to squeeze a couple extra hours into my timesheet and save up for my New Year's trip to Disney World. I was immensely productive for about an hour and a half, until an email came sailing into my inbox that informed us that my division of The Company would be moving out of The Company altogether and into its sister company, effective immediately. Now, nowhere in the press release did it say that Sister Company was actually a sister company, so I spent the rest of the day in a panic because I did not want to leave The Company (or my hot boss). Today's pre-productivity Googling calmed my fears a little bit, and I may not actually have to move out of the office I'm in right now. No one actually knows what's going on* right now, and this of course makes me feel like my job security/future at The Company is circling the drain... but for now I'm okay.

Now, bad things never hit just one at a time. 

A couple hours later, I was checking my personal email accounts when I saw that The Artist Formerly Known As Dad had emailed me. Since The Incident, his few emails have been forwards with no personal message. But, as usual, my heart stuttered to a stop. I opened up the email and it was actually a full-page letter containing an almost-but-no-cigar apology. (I'm uploading it at the bottom of this post.) Several days late, several dollars short. So I forwarded it to my mom, and texted her to call me as soon as she'd read it.

Keep in mind, please, the adage "Good things come in threes." This is true, but very bad things also come in threes.

Mom called me, and was somewhat pleased with the letter - mostly, I imagine, because it was the closest thing that we've gotten so far in the way of an apology - but then proceeded to tell me that MY BROTHER IS IN JAIL FOR HIS SECOND DUI. I mean, say whaaaaaa? So, technically now he's out of jail - his girlfriend's parents bailed him out when Mom wouldn't - but STILL. And he got fired from the movie theater job he's had for 18ish months because they caught him taking a $20 out of the till. Naturally, he has a "good explanation" for that, but come on. So my mom is devastated and pissed over this, and is laying the guilt on me pretty thick, begging me to move back home... Ugh. (As if, though - I'm here to stay.)

So after all that, I knew that the day was over at 3:30. I wasn't going to get any more work done. So I left, went to St. Patrick's Cathedral and cried for a while in front of St. Jude, then headed home by way of the liquor store, wine shop, and grocery store. Drank a tumbler of bourbon, a bottle of champagne, and made both spaghetti & meatballs (first time!) and my famous pumpkin cheesecake (has a weird flavor?) ... So the evening was okaaaaaay, I suppose, because I wasn't thinking about all the shit going on in my life.

I'm so tired of life being hard. I see so many people who have beautiful, charmed lives, clearly blessed by God and in possession of very few major worries. Then there's our family. And yeah, my life is great and beautiful in comparison to a lot of people and I know I have a lot to be thankful for. But then awful shit happens, generally all at once, and I start to wonder what I'm doing to warrant such violent moodswings.

So that's what's going on in my life. I hope you're all having better weeks than me.


*This is no way to run a business, in my opinion. If you're going to issue a press release to the general public, make sure you have all the answers before you release that statement, so your panicked employees don't start freaking the fuck out because you haven't finalized all the details yet. I mean, HELLO??




LetterToAllison-JonathanReSeparation-Oct2010

Welcome to Hell

Well, I really can't put it off anymore... I need to blog. It's not like blogging is such a hard thing to do... but lately all I've wanted to do is watch TV/Netflix/whatever. And my guilty pleasure app on facebook just added a new feature, too, so lots of time has been wasted. To be fair (and add another excuse), my mother's visit set me back, DVR-wise, nearly a week... I didn't get to watch the Emmys until this past Friday!... so now that I'm finally on top of things (and bored SILLY at work), here you go. The juicy entry you've all (all two of you) been waiting for. It's gonna be LONG.

So, maybe I had unrealistic expectations of my mother's visit. We'd been getting along SO well on the phone since my father turned into a total dick-sucking asswipe, but our in-person visits have ALWAYS been rocky. The first mistake was probably letting her stay for 5 full nights (4.5 days, ish)... the second mistake (which gets me "Um, DUHHHH" looks every time I mention it) was letting her sleep IN MY BED WITH ME. It's not like I could've made her sleep on the couch, though - that would only make her crankier. So we dove in head-first.

The first night she was in town was fine. She got in late, around 9:00, and we grabbed a really late dinner. Which means that between the 1am bedtime, the bank account-inspired insomnia I've had lately, and the early wake-up call for the job I had Friday morning, I had very little sleep. I also woke up a few times. I am NOT used to having someone sleep in my bed with me. It's happened twice in the last 2 or 3 years. Blerg. How does one get used to that?? But I woke up, all but injected myself with caffeine, and (having written down explicit instructions on how she could go visit the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island on her own) left my mother alone for the day. Big Fat Mistake #3. About halfway through the day, I called her to make sure she had made it to the SoL/EI alright. She had been nervous. She picked up the phone and immediately I knew something was wrong. She had spent the entire day in bed, which was something that I was fairly used to after she got really depressed when I was in high school. She wouldn't tell me why over the phone, but I figured it was something about my father. So, I left work and walked home (gorgeous day, ran into THE OFFICE CRUSH (!!!!!!!) on the way there), figuring I'd listen to her cry for a little bit then get on with our evening.

I walk in and she doesn't want to talk about whatever's going on, and she's ordering me around and telling me about the plans that she made and that we are going to enjoy. This is still fairly typical, so I move around a bit and start getting ready, until she starts picking fights. This is less typical. I swallow it for a bit and then finally, after the 3rd time she's thrown a fit, I tell her to cancel the goddamn reservations because she was going to tell me what the hell was the matter. Turns out... SHE FOUND MY DIARY. You know, the diary that I keep because there are certain things that I will not blog about? You know, like sex? So my mom found my sex diary, and read the first page, and concluded that I was a giant whore and had slept with 12-20 guys (which was the range she gave me). Seriously? There were two names on that first page, neither of which I had slept with at the time that said first page was written. But that was enough to send her into a tailspin, moaning about how she didn't want to live anymore (!!) because her husband left her and her son is a screwup and her daughter ISN'T A VIRGIN OMG. So we had to have the sex talk, AGAIN, and she finally seemed to calm down enough, so we got a late dinner and moved on with our lives.

The NEXT day (Saturday) was somewhat uneventful. We ran around doing stuff, typical touristy stuff, bickering as usual. Once again we had a big ol' fight right before the dinner reservations (you know, the ones that we transferred from the night before) so I just sent her by herself while I stayed at home and watched TV. I hate jazz anyway, I don't know why she thought a jazz show would be a good idea. She got back craving cheesecake, so we found this awesome place nearby... BUT when she was looking at the menu and asking me what I was going to eat, I said that I wasn't super hungry and had already had dessert, and was looking for something small. She then went down the list and suggested that I order everything on the menu that SHE wanted (she knows I hate tiramisu)... so I said "Mom, if you want something other than cheesecake too, then just order two desserts!" But she kept hissing/harping, so I got more specific: "Seriously! Why do I have to order everything that YOU want???" Then she screams at me, "BECAUSE I'M PAYING FOR IT!!!!!" in the middle of a full-to-capacity restaurant. Classy bitch, she is. A (cute! gay?) guy came up to us a few minutes later and tried to tell her that she was being a grade-A bitch, while I panicked and flailed trying to get him to go away before he made things worse. I'm sure I looked like a classic domestic-abuse victim.

SUNDAY was even worse, starting out. We went to church just fine, but then, on the HALF-MILE WALK to the brunch place, she started whining and griping about how faaaaar awaaaaaay it was and how I had been walking waaaay toooooo faaaaaast aaaaaalllllll weekennnnnnnnd. So finally, after she "asked" me to slow down, I got a little passive-aggressive and started walking grandma-shuffle-slow. She blew a gasket and started screaming at me (in the middle of the sidewalk. where people were eating their brunches al fresco.) about how I had "THE DEVIL IN [ME]!!!!!" etc etc, ad nauseam. We storm off in separate directions, and a couple hours (and a phonecall/vent session to my brother) later we call each other on the phone (she upstairs in my room, I downstairs on the front stoop) and manage to talk it out to where we can make the rest of her visit a little bit easier. I.E., she'll tell me when she's getting tired or frustrated instead of bottling it all up and exploding.

The rest of the weekend is actually pretty non-descript. We saw Next To Normal on Broadway, which was AMAZING, and did more sight-seeing on Monday, and I took her to the train station on Tuesday morning.

But seriously! What the hell? Welcome to life with my mother.

So now I'm picking up the pieces and trying to get my life back on track to make some money. I've come to the conclusion that as soon as my next day of not-working comes up (I'm still temping at an office, and I've got some creative ways to maybe extend it) I will be getting a waitressing job. I really, really wanted to avoid getting a second job until I had a stable first job, but I can't afford to do that anymore. So here we go.

wtf.

Despite the fact that I have the icon right in the middle of my Chrome quick-launch bookmark bar (which is not well-described at all, I know, sorry), I still manage to forget about this thing. I've figured out how to do scheduled posts, so maybe one night when I'm not getting hammered on a rooftop (last night) or running ALL OVER MIDTOWN ALL DAY LONG looking for a vuvuzela or a cute pair of black flats or a cute purple top to match the boots I bought a few weeks ago (tonight), I'll sit down and hack a few out for the future. Kind of like making & freezing 5 casseroles the week you leave for a business trip so your husband won't feed the kids pizza and cheerios every night. Except no kids or husband, just you poor starving fans of the blog. Who never leave comments.


Anyway. Not much has reeeeeeally happened, except I have a wicked crush on this guy at work, but he's dating a girl that a few people in the office know or are roommates with, so I can't get all homewrecker. Not that I would. But maybe it would be REALLY bad if I did. But he's really cute and I totally smile when I see him, which is nice because I'm chronically undercaffeinated and he seems to help. Not that I'm convinced he knows my name yet, but whatever.

Um. No, that's pretty much it. I went to Baltimore this past weekend (where wonderful pictures like this one were taken) and was just NOT ready to



AND HOLY CRAP I JUST WENT TO FACEBOOK TO GANK A PICTURE AND MY GRANDMOTHER IS ENGAGED. THAT IS ALL.



leave the city yet... It's really starting to feel like home and I adore it.
Picture in question:

Hole In My Heart

Losing my dad to the cliche "Another Woman" really infuriates me. On the other hand, one tiny little corner of my heart just wants him back, wants him to come back to me and re-open the chain of communication. When he told me he was with this new woman, I felt exactly the way I felt when I found out that The Ex was sleeping with some new girl less than two weeks after our 3.5-year, we-were-each-other's-first-everything relationship ended. It completely destroyed me, and I was SO angry. I never thought I'd have to experience those emotions again, much less from my own father, who I have always adored. He wasn't just cheating on his wife.

When I went home to comfort my mom after the news broke, my dad walked into the foyer as I was holding our dog and made some cute remark about the dog. I completely ignored him - I had no desire to speak to him. He had bombed my heart, basically, and I was still in pieces. I made no eye contact the entire time, I didn't speak one word to him... I mean, I was furious and heartbroken.

Now, when I was dating The Ex and we would have our fights, he had to learn to come after me even after I stormed off. Women WANT to be followed in that scenario. For all his faults, The Ex DID learn THAT. But when we broke up, he didn't seem to care that I wasn't speaking to him. I had stormed off, and for the first time he didn't follow me. But upon reflection, I'll give him a very small, partial pass - we weren't together anymore. A good FRIEND would/should have followed, so he lost my friendship, but I get it.

It's been over 3 weeks since we all found out about my father's new girlfriend/wife/whatever. He hasn't ONCE tried to contact me. He's not following me after I stormed off. I've lost my father.

The reality of it all

Sidebar before we get started: I am not fully awake yet. Yes, I realize it's 2:30 in the afternoon, but sometimes being unemployed means that you can blow off showering until after you're done watching reruns of The Nanny and blogging about your feelings. I promise I'll shower right after this. End sidebar.

Hokay, so. A week or ish ago, I blogged about my parents' marriage. Never been great, should've split up a long time ago, blah blah blah. But this past weekend, during my mandatory (why is it still mandatory? don't ask me) hour-long phone home, I called her earlier than usual and she was broken down in hysterics. Not that that hasn't happened before, but it's been a couple months, so I was concerned. My mother likes to be either very vague or very explicit when she's talking about her sufferings and tribulations, and this week the dial was spun to very vague. However, I did manage to figure out that there were decisions to be made, they involved my father, and they were very very VERY hard to make.

So I went from "oh about 65% sure my parents are getting divorced, no biggie, been that way for a while" to "HOLY CRAP this is 96% sure happening." Still not broken up about it really, and maybe I shouldn't be blogging about it, but hopefully this is the blog my mother WON'T find. (Making the last one private REALLY sucked.) But this is going to be really complicated. I had to break it to my brother, who wasn't all that surprised, but then again neither was I. We've both seen it coming, and more than once hoped it would've happened sooner. But holidays are going to be really complicated, and without Dad around, she's going to need to talk to and depend on us a LOT more.

She's always been fragile, I guess, and knowing what I finally think might be the "full story" (although there are so many skeletons buried in my family's closet that I may never know for sure; someone's always lying to someone else around here) I can't say I blame her. But I'm not ready for her to put even MORE of her eggs in my basket. I'm full to overflowing already, and the eggs have been rotten for a long time.

Here, have some music for your time.

I'm fire and you're the ocean

Now that my sober brain has conceived and entertained the thought, it will be very important henceforth to make sure I do not EVER get drunk enough to email my dad and ask him if they are getting a divorce or if my mother's vague ramblings of "When Jonathan moves out I will be making BIG MAJOR CHANGES in my life and maybe I have to be selfish and think for myself" just means she's going to go be a crazy missionary in Africa or something. No judgment, of course, because they should've gotten divorced a long time ago (coming from someone who very firmly believes that divorce is "wrong"), but I would just like to know so I will have some time to contemplate the idea of having parents who are divorced before it actually happens.

Maybe the key here is to never get that-drunk alone. Because I'm pretty sure my friends are solid enough that they would be able to talk me out of it, or at least put me to bed and sit on my computer until they're sure I'm not going to wake up still drunk.


To-Do list for this week:
--Find out which days I'm supposed to cook for telethon people at Newman
--Clean my room OMG
--actually make the stupid playlist for the fic I've been beta-ing. (Yes, beta and fic. Never thought you'd hear THOSE words outside of LiveJournal, huh?)
--start workout regimen.  Friend's Wedding, feat. high-school-bf-who-cheated-on-me will be there too (98% sure) and I would like to look fabulous because HELLO. Also I need a date for that. A really hot date.

I blame Obama, personally.

My mother makes me so angry sometimes that I can't breathe. We just got off the phone from a very tumultous conversation... she asks for a couple minutes occasionally during the week (in addition to our mandatory 1-hour Sunday evening talk), but this week all she wanted to talk about was Obama and "gays in the military." This was, of course, triggered by the State of the Union this week, which she should know better than to watch because it always turns her into Mr Hyde. Not that she's ever Dr Jekyll...

I think she would've been happier if she were born in 1780, when African-Americans were slaves and gays "didn't exist" and certainly weren't allowed to publicly FEEL THINGS FOR PEOPLE.

I was watching Celebrity Rehab when she called, and I realized something about myself... maybe part of the reason that I've never used anything worse than alcohol (which by the way, maybe I need to rein that in a bit too) is because my mother is my trigger and I would be a full-blown addict.

(No, seriously, it's been an hour since I hung up on her and I'm still mad. I don't even know what to do right now.)