This is the New Life, I Guess June 19, 2008

I talked to my mom on the phone last night.  It was the talk after the Really Bad, Fighting Talk we had the other night about car insurance.  The fight basically went like this:

Mom: “I told you to do this a long time ago.  You’re irresponsible and now I have to pay for your mistakes.” [I had mistakenly asked her if she would call her mechanic to see if I could get my car inspected when I came home.  Apparently this is a hardship not to be borne.]
Me: “I understand that I screwed up.  Can we concentrate on what to do now instead of digging up the faults of my past?  I’m tired of hearing about everything that I did wrong two months ago.”
Mom: “Stop condemning me.  I’m right, you’re wrong, and I’m tired of dealing with your screw ups.”
Me: “Well I don’t like being reminded about everything that I do wrong all the time.” [She loves to slip in little jab-pokes at me like "we need to do x, like responsible adults should have done" or, "like you should have done a long time ago" or, "now I have to deal with something that you messed up," etc, etc.]
Mom: “Well, it’s true, and I don’t care how you feel because I’m right.”

By the end of the conversation, I needed to be reminded of reasons why I am not Inherently Bad Person and everything that my counselor and I had worked through last fall.  Sheesh.  It was stressful.  I had to turn out all the lights and smoke and stare at the ceiling from my prone position on the floor.

So, yesterday, I went to AAA to work out all this stuff and find out what I needed to do, like a responsible adult would do.  It was so much easier than my mom made it sound.  My mother is the queen of blowing things out of proportion, and then crying “woe is me!  My life is so HARD!”

So I called her and told her that I didn’t really need to come home to take care of all the car stuff; she could just mail me the title and be done with it.  That way, I could save gas money because I really can’t afford to drive home at this time.  Her response:  “Well, I’ll have to call AAA to make sure that is actually true.  And you never cared about how much gas was going to cost before [you ungrateful idiot].”  Her tone said it all.

While I was at work, she called me back and left a message on my phone: “I called AAA and found out that what you said is [astonishingly] true.  Let me know if you’re actually going to come home because that will change my plans for the whole weekend [once again you are screwing up my life with your procrastination].”

So I called her back and told her that I would really like to come home [at this point, I don't know why] but I really can’t afford the gas to get home, what with all the taxes I will be paying soon to get the car transferred to my name, not to mention, paying for car insurance.  If she would be willing to help me with gas, I would like to come home.  She said she couldn’t spare the money.  She would mail the title to me shortly.  She, of course, didn’t forget to put some blame on me for the whole situation.  When I would tell her what I had learned at AAA, she would parrot it back to me “Well, of course, x and x are true,” with a tone that said I knew that all along, you stupid girl.  Well, then why didn’t she tell me before?

I even went so far as to apologize for upsetting her the night before.  She replied in an icy-cold tone, “I forgive you.”  And then she said nothing more.  Maybe I had hurt her pride and her precious schedule, but she had hurt ME.  But all that doesn’t matter because it is my fault.  She was merely reminding me of that, so she is not culpable if I feel hurt.

We went through a similar situation about a year ago, and I refused to talk to her for several months the last time.  She finally called me one night and begged me to talk to her.  I told her she better shape up and stop the venom, or I just won’t come home or talk to her.  I asked her to be kind.  She agreed.  But the same thing is happening again, and once again, she is making it to be all my fault.  I am responsible for her anger because I cause it.  That is her mantra.  I have been trying to get through to her since I was in the seventh grade, the night we fought and I called someone to talk to because my own mother refused to talk to me, and she unplugged the phone cord in the middle of my tearful catharsis of talking to someone with a human exterior.  I knew then that she would cleave me to her side, but I had to be clean and a good daughter in order for her to accept me.  Since then, I have used tears, silence, shouting, swear words, and once I even grabbed her arm as she was leaving me in order to make her listen to me.  I have tried.  But we can only be nice to each other when I am shiny and clean.  I know this is true because she reminds me of my halcyon year of five when I was a cute, agreeable kindergartener.  I think she would keep me that age if she could.  I went to the crapper when I turned 16 according to her–she also reminds me of this from time to time.  And she doesn’t understand why that would be hurtful.  No wonder I have a hard time standing up for myself.  My own mother rejects me when I do.  I had to go through months of counseling in order to realize that I was actually doing something right when I stood up for myself.

I would like to contrast this with my best friend’s mother, who is so willing to help me when I mess up or don’t know what to do that I can’t understand it.  I feel guilty every time I ask her.  In my world, mothers are supposed to make everyone very aware of how much they are suffering.  Yesterday morning I called her to ask her a few questions about state law and cars and such.  She gladly answered them and even offered some advice I didn’t ask for.  I understand that I am not her daughter, and therefore, she might be nicer to me, but knowing this woman and her huge heart, I doubt that she treats my best friend any differently.

I honestly don’t know who my mother is.  Even in our times of congeniality, it still feels like a big sham and that something is waiting to rear its ugly head when I screw up.  Oh, but my mother does everything in her power to make my life easier and to help me, right?  So shouldn’t I just be grateful and keep my mouth shut?

Meanwhile, when I think about everything that I have to pay for and all the difficulties with my mother.  Quite frankly, I feel like Moses at the Red Sea with the Egyptians closing in.  Either I part the waters, or I get killed.

Oh, Mother. June 17, 2008

I love my mom.  I really do.  We’ve been getting along better than usual lately, and I like talking to her and getting advice on certain things from her.  But there are just some things that we don’t do well together.  Mainly, talk about what we believe.  My mom has serious issues with most of the things that I hold dear: the church I choose to go to, the things I choose to study, the food that I eat, and of course, the politicians that I vote for.  I don’t really care about the politics so much, but the other stuff makes everything a lot harder.  Most of the time, if she doesn’t get it, she’ll say she doesn’t comprehend my choices, she worries about tme, and sometimes she’ll even borderline-ridicule me.  It’s pretty annoying. 

Last night I was talking to my mom on the phone, and she mentioned that there’s a picnic we could go to when I’m home at the place where she works.  She said there was going to be barbeque chicken, and I asked her if they would have anything else. 
Mom: “Oh yeah, you don’t eat meat.  That’s just so RIDICULOUS.  I don’t understand.”
She basically threw a little hissy fit about me being a vegetarian.  Why does she care so much?  I’m not a hippie, I bathe daily, and I don’t wear birkenstocks.  I just choose not to eat meat.  Apparently this is a problem.  So I told her some reasons why and then she was just kind of quiet.  So then I wrote a big thing on facebook about why I’m a vegetarian, and this offended her. 
Mom: “I just can’t even talk to you about anything without you going into a tirade about it.”

All I have to say to that is, well, you do into tirades when I tell you what I believe, and you don’t understand, and so I feel like I need to make you understand.  How do you think it makes me feel when you attack my person for what I believe?  I don’t attack you for your beliefs.

Alas.  Sometimes I think the only way my mom and I can get along is if I conceal who I really am from her.  And it’s not even that bad.  I go to church for crying out loud, I don’t do drugs, I’m not pregnant, and the beliefs I have are a result of reflection and self-improvement.  What’s so bad about that?

My Life Takes a Turn for the Better June 10, 2008

Finally, finally, something good has happened.  I got a new job at the library of Evangelical Institution.  One of my friends who works there told me about a job opening and personally recommended me.  I went in this morning to fill out an application and to have an interview.  They asked me how much I knew about libraries and such, and I told them I was an English major, which lit up my interviewer’s face and pretty much guaranteed me the job, apparently.  Tonight, when I got home after 9 hours of truck at Corporate Crap, I had good news when I opened my email and found that I had been hired.  Although the job pays 20 cents less per hour than my current job at Corporate Crap, it has a fixed schedule, which means that I can keep the job at CC as a side job.  I’ll still be making more because I have a guaranteed 40 hours per week.  Plus I don’t have to work on Sundays and I get every other weekend off.  The other perfect thing is that the job is temporary, and it ends right before I move.  I can call the restaurant I was interviewing at and tell them that there’s no longer a need for the 2nd interview they had scheduled me for.  It was rather funny when I interviewed there, because the interviewer asked me what area of English I was interested in:

Me: “Modern British literature.”
Interviewer: “Oh, literature.  British?  Seems rather dull.”
Me: ”I find it to be really interesting.”

So having the job at the library is perfecto.  Plus, it seems that I’ll get to read most of the day anyway, since the library is pretty dead this time of year.

Finally, something good happens.

Sometimes Other People Write my Feelings Better Than Me June 9, 2008

“But under this torpor there was a fierce battle of emotions, such as Maggie in all her life if struggle had never known or foreboded; it seemed to her as if all the worst evil in her had lain in ambush till now, and had suddenly started up full-armed, with hideous, overpowering strength!  There were moments in which a cruel selfishness seemed to be getting possession of her; why should not Lucy–why should not Philip suffer?  She had had to suffer through many years of her life; and who had renounced anything for her?  And when something like that fullness of existence–love, wealth, ease, refinement, all that her nature craved–was brought within her reach, why was she to forego it, that another might have it–another, who perhaps needed it less?  But amidst all this passionate tumult there were the old voices making themselves heard with rising power, till, from time to time, the tumult seemed quelled.  Was that existence which tempted her the full existence she dreamed?  Where, then, would be all the memories of early striving–all the deep pity for another’s pain, which had been nurtured in her through years of affection and hardship–all the divine presentiment of something higher than mere personal enjoyment, which had made the sacredness of life?”

From George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss

We Are Nowhere, And It’s Now June 5, 2008

Ok, so I’m more human than I was yesterday.  I actually secured an interview today, and I have promise of another one.  So we’ll see how that goes.  I also put in an app with a temp agency.  Then I went and read at Panera for a while, and to my surprise, I got through a ton of The Mill on the Floss.  I was starting to lose hope for that book.  But it’s looking up, especially as Maggie Tulliver’s life gets more and more conflicted.  I hear she drowns herself, which makes me kinda depressed, but it also makes me want to finish the book.  Then i went and did something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.  I drove up into the mountains and sat on a bridge and didn’t think too much.  I just kinda sat there and took some pictures and enjoyed the peace.  It was so wonderful and quiet, and the light was perfect: it was right after the sun set behind the mountains.  And besides, it was 25 miles both ways, which gave me some quiet driving time.  Nothing will chill me out faster than driving a car with some good music playing.  So that’s what I did.  I guess I spent more money than I should have today.  It’s just so sad that one of my favorite pasttimes happens to cost an arm and a leg per gallon.  I wish gas could go back to $1.35 per gallon, like it was when I started driving.

Tomorrow I have to work at Corporate Crap, and I’m really not looking forward to it, even though I know I need to work so I can pay my bills.  I figure that if I get a job anywhere else, I’m going to say goodbye without any two weeks notice.  They screwed me over so many times that I don’t feel like going through the trouble of keeping them happy when I have something better.  But who knows.  Maybe I won’t get anything better. 

When You’re Money’s Gone, and You’re Drunk as Hell June 4, 2008

Corporate Crap continues to schedule me for only 16 hours a week.  This is bad for multiple reasons.  One is that I can’t pay my bills as it is, so if they cut my hours, I’ll be even more screwed.  Two is that the $700 that I owe Evangelical Institution is legit.  And I owe it by June 30th.  They tell me that they won’t set up a payment plan because the deadline for setting one up was April 20.  I tell them that I didn’t know that I owed anyone that much until the beginning of May.  I might have to put all of it on a credit card.  All I have to say is this: fuckers.  Subsequently I have done two things: I have looked for another job and I have put myself in the mindset that I can’t spend money on anything other than absolute necessities.  I immediately broke that rule by buying 8 episodes of The Tudors on Amazon Unbox which I spent last night and today watching.  If I shouldn’t spend money on gas, and I can’t really go anywhere without spending money, I’ll just stay home and spend money.  Makes sense, right?  I was ultra-lazy today because I got up at 2pm because I was up til 4 am last night watching The Tudors.  I should’ve just read a damn book.  I tried that also today, but I just fell asleep.  I also took a bath, which is something I haven’t done in a while.  The damn tub was really annoying becuase the stopper doesn’t work very well.  It kept leaking and I kept having to fill it up.  I could go out and buy a stopper, but that involves MONEY.  Water is free.  Anyway, the bath was relaxing.

Having super-bad money issues like this and being faced with 16-hour work weeks is way too much to deal with.  It makes me shut down and do things like watch The Tudors all day long.  I can think about someone else’s drama instead of my own.  The most troubling thing is that I shut down when things like this happen instead of taking initiative and going out and doing something about it.  Granted, I did go job hunting, but you’d think that something of this type of urgency would inspire some action appropriate to the level of urgency.  But that doesn’t happen with me, and I hate myself for it.