2006-09-30 - 7:45 p.m.
different colors, made of tears

I find myself in a situation in which, were a friend to come to me in similar straits, I would tell them to cut their losses and get the hell out.

Sadder to me than the situation itself is the fact that I lack the motivation, self-love, and self-caring skills to just do that.

My partner will be in school until May, with 3 weeks off at Christmas. He will be spending most of that time doing something called "coding," an activity which renders him unfit to be around. And yet if I move closer to the city where my job is, so I don't have a 3 hour daily car commute, he will consider this breaking up with him.

It is probably grossly unfair to judge anyone based on their behavior at a highly stressful time. It may also be unfair to, quote, dump someone at a such a time.

This is how my brain works: I'm not motivated by, "I can't stand my daily home life to be this horrible," I'm motivated by, "I don't think I want to raise a child with this person." As if the latter is in the picture with anyone at this point.

I was talking to a dear friend yesterday and actually uttered something I've never been able to say to myself: that maybe he isn't The One. (Not that there is necessarily any such thing, but this is how I've thought of him for the last several years, so bear with me.)

However, I am just stubborn enough to stick it out, only to prove that it wasn't an entirely dumb move to come down here, to uproot my life and come back to a place that I hate on a number of levels, in order to live with him. At his mother's house. Which should be the topic for its own exquisitely bitchy little entry.

--

I am back on Strattera and am not sure I like it at all. If I don't eat something right when I take it I feel like I'm going to barf or pass out.

I should be happy to even have insurance, but my co-pay for "nonpreferred" drugs is $50, and I get two denominations of this stuff.

The worst thing is I am incredibly irritable, and there is almost nothing non-irritating about my situation at home. I've started crying in the morning before going to work. I cry on the way home because I don't want to be there, either. I took a sick day last week because I felt entitled to, being so miserable, and being here made me feel worse.

I hate not knowing whether I feel lousy because my life is lousy or because something is off with my brain chemistry or my hormones. I'm on the shot. I really like being on the shot, but I can't rule out that it might be affecting my mood.

--

Partner's little sister has very clearly married "up," money-wise, and it's starting to freak me out, the equally stark clarity of the fact that if I marry into this family I will be marrying way down. I feel like a terrible person for even saying that but it is absolutely true. It'd be one thing if I liked his family but they drive me batshit insane. When they say "Christian" they explicitly don't mean Catholic. They throw around words like "spiritual warfare" as if I'm supposed to know what they're talking about. These are not stupid people and yet they talk about demons like they actually exist. I don't mean demons like I'm Not Pretty or I'm Too Fat, I mean actual honest-to-God demons. Like (I'm guessing, since my religious instruction largely consisted of messages about sharing and being nice to others) the kind with horns. This is a daily part of their lives. You would not believe the books these people read.

And I LIVE here because when I was in law school and stupid, I thought it made sense and I had no idea how unlike me these people were. To a certain extent these horrors include Partner (i.e., Oh My God, they actually ENJOY Kentucky Fried Chicken) but to a greater extent they don't (Oh My God, they have all the Left Behind books).

I wonder how these differences will actually play out. This evening in the shower I was contemplating, if I had a kid in this arrangement, whether to baptize it. I mean this in the sense that my brother and I were baptized little baby Catholics. This could actually be a deal-breaker with Partner's family, which makes it suddenly very appealing.

And this contemplation--whether to baptize my as-yet hypothetical offspring--is unquestionably fucked up. But again, that's how my mind works, or how it works now, anyway.

woogie - woo