Premeditated Misconduct

I am currently enjoying the the feeling of my brain trying to forcefully escape through my eyes. I'm tired, sleepy, hungry, and I have two hours to go until my three hour long class.

I was scheduled to work this week forty hours-- yep, full time-- including working Thursday (which I requested off so that I had one guaranteed homework day), plus had a two-page paper to write and about four hundred pages of reading to do. I talked to my boss about Thursday, and all she was giving me was a "well, we'll have to work something out."
I worked from one until 8 yesterday, and that means I needed Tom to pick me up, as the bus doesn't run after 7. I also found out that Sheri left me a note asking if I could come in at 8:30 today instead of 10 like I was scheduled. Now, I already knew Tom was going to be late, but he ended up running later than he expected and didn't show up until ten after nine. So, I was sitting outside, freezing cold, thinking about all my homework, and knowing that I had to be back at work in twelve hours for roughly forty-five minutes.
I yelled at Tom in the car, and when we got home it was pretty quiet until I got out of the shower and threw myself on my couch and Tom tried to explain why he was late.
And I started fucking crying.
No, not frustrated crying, not I'm upset stuff, but real barking, gasping sobs. And I start in on Tom. About how the garbage needs to be taken out and he won't goddamm do it, and that he works so much less than me and he's only taking one more class that me (and yes, I know that one class means driving up to Ashland and everything that goes along with teaching), and how tired I am, and how I don't feel that it's fair that he sleeps in half-way through my work day and plays solitaire on the computer all night when I'm doing reading for class, and so on and so forth.

I don't think that got us anywhere.

First, he declared that he understood that "it's just the depression speaking," which would have pissed me off more if I hadn't been sobbing uncontrollably at that point. Second, he just kind of shrugged it off saying that he worked all during college, only ever failed one class, and that I just sat around and played then and that now he's decided to take it easy on himself and I've decided to go into overdrive. (This resulted in me shrieking at him that I don't want to have to push so hard, but I don't see any other way to make ends meet, and that I wanted a better job.)

I dunno, I'm still frustrated. I'm pretty sure this is a whopper of a tension headache, and as soon as I disengage myself from the internet I'm hunting down some water and pills.

God, this fuckin' sucks.

Tommorrow, I have off. Tomorrow, I am GETTING SHIT DONE.
Tomorrow, I am taking back the twenty-three library books I have out, hitting up Nicolet Ave for Jenny (I have a few things to send up with Tom, too... not sure it they are anything you want in particular, but I figure you can figure out something to do with 'em), maybe getting a badly needed haircut, doing all my reading for Thursday's class.


I feel terrible. Doesn't it ever stop?

I went home yesterday and proceeded to write until I couldn't think of anything else to say. Here's the results.

( Ranting, raving, and foaming at the mouth )

( She works hard for the money... )

( Blurb )

( On the beast within )


And yeah, I feel better today and the weather is gorgeous, I get paid tomorrow and we can go grocery shopping, and for now, once more, the world seems an ok place. My demons have be appeased by the offering of words and tears, and have quietly retreated. That's good enough for now, although I am already thinking about how to shut them up for good.
Right. I'm off to go online rat shopping.

Heartsick. Homesick.

I hate this. I almost think now that I should have stayed in the Cities, slept in, played solitaire, watched the same damn movies over and over, and sulked about not getting to go up to Ashland...instead of actually coming here.

It's not that I didn't have a good time. It's exactly the opposite.

I stand outside and listen to the wind in the maple leaves, feeling the cool air, admiring the orangey gold early evening light, and I feel violently ill at the idea of getting in the car and going back to the apartment. If I were a little kid, I'd kick and scream and flat-out refuse... I feel like someone's squeezing my throat, or like there's a wad of dry terry cloth crammed into my vocal chords.

I don't want to go.
I don't want to go.

I want to swim in the lake and roll around on the newly laid sod of the Mall, get a tan, go out drinking with Daysha.

I walked back from the Deep Water last night and wandered up to campus, reassuring myself that this is still my place, my territory, that it hasn't forgotten me yet. I canvassed the whole place, feeling like an old dog pissing in the corners to reaffirm his claim on something. God, it's so weird, disappointing to know that I will not be there this fall.

I don't know why I feel this way. Tom has already begun forgetting things about Ashland and Northland, already within a year. I feel like there will never be a time when I don't crave being here... never will I be able to leave without feeling like my heart is breaking.

This is my place. My family's here. Love is here. Mother Superior is here. This is where I learned who I was/am and how to love and lose and laugh and cry.

Angela's moving out of her house, and I wandered through it thinking about how much fun we had there-- her and me and Jenny-- with our Sunday dinners and anime and goofing off and sake and cool cakes.

I always want what's gone, what I can't have.

It makes me want to cry, but I don't want to freak other people out. That's probably a bad sign, but then, so is feeling claustrophobic about going "home" to my stuff and my couch and my job.

Damn.
Goddammit.

Wow, I actually have time to write a real entry and a working keyboard. All that praying is starting to pay off.


So frustrated.
So fucking frustrated.

I'm tired of this crap. I'm tired of being jobless and spending my days laying around reading books I've already read and watching movies I've already seen and playing solitaire on Tom's computer. I'm tired of searching through the newspapers, hating the grit of newsprint and the smudges of ink on my fingers, circling ads for jobs I'll never get. I'm tired of "applicants must have 3 or more years experience in marketing, communications, or related field."

I'm bored and I want to get out and do stuff, but I can't. I would have something to do if I had a job, but I don't. I canceled two interviews last week because I was so sure of getting the job with Caribou, and now it's been a week and I'm still unemployed.

I want to have something to do. I want to have some reason to get off the couch in the morning. I want to interact, maybe make a friend or two, meet people. I want money so that the budget won't be so tight and so that I can buy a cup of coffee if I want to, or a new pair of headphones, or donate to the Green Party.

And it's so damned easy for me to be irrationally, angrily envious of Tom when he speaks so blithely of the future-- his future and what he wants to do with it.
I don't know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I survive day to day. I breathe, I blink, I eat, I sleep. Instinctive animal rhythms of life that sustain my existence... but there's nothing more. I don't have any goals to strive toward achieving. I have no hopes, no dreams, no desires, no ambitions.
God, I can't even write or draw, though I have plenty of free time in which to do so. All of my projects lie languishing, and I just stare at them, fiddle with the keyboard, and go back to playing solitaire.

How can I hope to attract people-- potential employers, friends, possible mates-- if I lack that divine creative spark, the spiritus of vitality? How beautiful can one possibly be without a future, filled with only avoidance of reality, fear, and despair?

I have only a few ideas of what I don't want to do: I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a high-school graduate dead-end job pushing food in disposable paper packaging across the counter with one hand while the other dances across the keys of the cash register.

I am loss as to where to even begin. I have little money, no local bank account, poor credit, no car, no license, not enough job experience, not enough resume and interview experience. I have my goddamn resume on a disk and I can't get it off; the only way that it appears that I can get the experience I need is through unpaid internship or volunteer work-- and that still leaves me needing a job that pays.

*smashes head into something hard*

Why is this so fucking hard?


So, lacking anything else better to do, I followed Tom's suggestion and went to Pride on Saturday.
(Yeah, as in GAY Pride... it's the third largest Pride festival in the nation, apparently.)

It was neat; I'm glad that I went, though I did spend most of the day thinking, "Oh wow! I bet Daysha would love that!" Or, "Heh, I wish Angela could have seen that... she'd have had something nice to say." Or, "Oh, I wish I could buy that for Annie!" It's kind of like being haunted.

(That reminds me though: Annie, you should come down here for Pagan Pride on September 11th!)

I was just about to leave when I ran into Alicia and Lindsey, Sara Lee and Connie.
I glomped poor Alicia...I don't think she was expecting quite that enthusiastic of a greeting...and spent about another two hours hanging out with them. Yeah, I felt like a bit of a fifth wheel, being the only individual in a group of two couples, but I didn't care, it was just so good to be with people.
I found out that Channy lives down here too, and that she occasionally does drag at the Gay 90's. Maybe I'll stop in there some night and see if she's preforming.

...

I don't know. I mean, it's hard to explain when I run into people-- like Alicia-- why I'm so desperately happy to see them. Yeah, I guess that I am lonely. I'm also bored. I am also stressed. My joblessness, which can be summed up with, "And I still don't have a job!", is grating on me-- the pressure to get one, the tight budget, the overwhelming sense that I'm fucking up and being a leech and that I'm letting Tom down and all I do is sit around and read and listen to music and why aren't I trying HARDER WHY DON'T I GODDAMN HAVE A JOB YET WHAT ARE YOU SOME KIND OF WELFARE LOSER!?
*pants*
Thinking about it makes me feel a little psychotic. I'm contemplating more and more of scheduling an appointment with Tom's shrink, who charges on a sliding scale according to income...not that it would do me any good; I can't afford the drugs he'd probably prescribe.

Yeah, Jess's screws aren't as in as tight as they could be.

It's problematic, but at least I'm aware of it. That's half the fight right there. Maybe it's time to start using what little I have left of my St. John's Wort tincture again, or talk to Deborah-- a very nice friend of Tom's-- who I believe is an herbalist.

It's not that bad-- not as bad as it sounds. I'm just frustrated and upset and tired of having to scratch for everything. A lot of this will go away once I start working-- are you listening, God?-- and don't have to deal with these feelings of inadequacy. I just need something to do with my time and distract me, and then I'll be OK.

God, I don't want to end it on this kind of note. I don't want anyone worrying about me. I just needed to vent a bit, purge the abcess. It looks ugly now, but it's not as bad as it appears.

Right.