Caterwauling

The elevator doors unexpectedly opened on the fourth floor yesterday as I was heading out.

A girl with a huge dog and a big smile said she’d catch the next elevator — she was still waiting for her boyfriend.

I burst into tears just before the doors fully closed.

Damn hormones.

I thought about how it would feel to say that. To know there was someone I could count on … someone waiting for me and looking forward to seeing me. To take for granted the most-basic thing on the entire planet. I bet she’s one of those girls who’s never gone a day without a man in her life.

I can’t understand why my life is so different from everyone else’s. Why I can’t just have a normal boyfriend and a normal job and a normal existence.

Look, I know normal is boring. But I was built for extraordinary and I haven’t gotten that yet, so maybe I need to aspire to something a little more attainable in the meantime.

For the “Scandal” watchers among us, you probably appreciated Olivia Pope’s missive at the end of this week’s episode:

“You have nothing. You have a pile of secrets and lies, and you’re calling it love. And in the meantime you’re letting your whole life pass you by while they raise children and celebrate anniversaries and grow old together. You’re frozen in time. You’re holding your breath. You’re a statue waiting for something that’s never going to happen. Living for stolen moments in hotel hallways and coat closets and you keep telling yourself they all add up to something real because in your mind they have to but they don’t. They won’t. They never will. Because stolen moments aren’t a life. So you have nothing. You have no one. End it now.”

I put it on Facebook because there’s a particular character in my life who needs to see it. Maybe a few, really, but one in particular who has made themselves at home on the periphery.

But the more I read it (to the point of memorizing it), the more I see my Buddha-statue self in it.

A terrible character from Mom’s past apparently now lives one county north of us. (The post wasn’t for him.) Their 14-karat fuckup of a relationship is the very reason I am so damaged when it comes to the opposite sex.

So these days, I find myself with a small but significant cast of characters that, if you combined them into one supreme individual, I’d have mostly everything I wanted.

But reality being what it is, I have the single guys whose hearts are either elsewhere or guarded, the not-so-single guys whose hearts spend a little time over here but their assets are elsewhere, and basically not a one doing anything to sweep me off my feet and keep me all to himself.

I want it all. I deserve to have it all. I just wonder if, because I don’t actually BELIEVE in having it all, that’s why I don’t and probably won’t until I change my outlook.

I just saw my mom attract one asshole after another all my life, and the one who lives nearby now was the only one who appeared when she was taking care of her sickly parents. Now that she’s thrust the very role she ab(w)hored onto ME, now I can’t meet a guy worth a good god damn who is happy to have a live-in mother around. (But so many of them have kids — which, ugh — but at least kids graduate and move out at some point.)

But I made a friend recently who not only lives with his long-term love, but her father lives with them too. Now THAT is a man.

So I have recently acquired the hope that there is a good guy out there who WILL take on my parent, too.

I wonder how different life would be, were my grandfather still around. Today would have been his 87th birthday. My plan was always to send money to mom and him so they could live so much better than the miserable, meager existence that he always portrayed as more-fabulous than it was.

It’s funny. Everyone always tells you to have faith in God. And I do. And when it comes to problems, to give them up to God and go about your life.

But having a sickly mother on my hands for six and a half years, I’ve given her up to God and tried to get about the business of paying the rent and hoping He’d come through with her. I mean, God turned His back on us with my grandfather’s shoddy medical care. Perhaps He might help mom out to make up for it?

This family has been doomed, it seems, to a pattern that just won’t break. I refuse to succumb to it. But it’s hard to do anything about it when you spend your days and nights chained (sometimes willingly) to what pays (most of) the bills instead of trying to figure out how to break the chains of sickness, illness and living at the poverty level for the only person left in your life and the only one who really DOES give a damn about you, no matter what.

Are you there, God? I’m not sure what — or WHO — else I have left to give up for Lent and I don’t know what difference it would make. But whatever it is, I’d do it in a second if that meant we’d finally see Your work in our lives.

I drove to work feeling good today. We were off on Monday, but I came in anyway and put in my first-ever eight-hour workday. It’s amazing what you can get done on your own.

Before my 8 a.m. arrival today, I’d put in 42 hours already. Not that I’m looking for a pat or even an acknowledgment, but it’s more like a small congratulations to myself for busting my ass to keep things as on-track as I possibly can. Even if it always seems like I’m behind, I know I’m producing higher-level work at a higher frequency than most.

Anyway, while I was driving, I had a flashback to an interview I had back in 2011. I was desperate for a job and nervous as hell as I waited for my interviewers. (I didn’t get the job.)

I remember watching all the employees come and go, not just from that company but from others that inhabited that building. I was so jealous that they had jobs. And so irritated at how many of them looked absolutely angry or defeated or just plain dead behind the eyes.

I would have traded my life for any of theirs that day, just to know a paycheck would be arriving.

My day started off well enough today — thank God I stayed late last night to prepare for another super-busy Friday. But alas the specter of MORE WORK, and more work that doesn’t fall into my area of expertise, gave me that tired feeling that I saw on all those employees’ faces at that other building.

Alas, at a moment like this, I whip out my gratitude journal and simply thank God that the next paycheck is coming on schedule. And my mood will have been significantly improved by then. And that, unlike those others I saw impersonating zombies at the other building, I can find my grace.

I’m glad that no matter how trying some situations or days may be, I’m still a thousand times better off than I was then. I was a sad, desperate girl who completely flubbed the interview because my confidence had only been tied to compensation in the past.

No job, no worth — self or otherwise.

Even though right now I’m having a small moment of weakness (retrograde seems to be starting a day early — just because I got everything prepared last night doesn’t mean it’s coming together easily today) to deal with, I’m still in an overall position of strength. And I really do thank God for that every single day of my life.

My God is bigger than all of this.

I just need someone to promise me that mom and I are going to be OK.

God, I have to hand You all my fear — and there’s a truckload behind what I’m giving you with my hands. I trust that You will hand back strength and confidence and ability and a doorknob that turns easily and opens me up to the things I really deserve.

Pray for me, please. And I’m already returning the favor.

I’ve decided to stop telling people about my days. Because when I look back on them as I’m driving home during the 8 or 9 p.m. hour each night, I think, “God, they can’t all be this bad, can they?” And then they just manage to get worse.

Oh, yeah, fuck today, by the way.

I was sort of joking (but not really) with superiors and subordinates that the answer to every question is now, “Ask Goddess” or “Goddess will do it.” And I do, or will die trying.

I managed to find two seconds this weekend to write to a hot guy on the personals site. No response. Kill me.

Oh, and I really miss someone. I had a dream about said someone. I don’t think there’s a future there but I’d take a tomorrow or two or 10. God, please for the love of You give me something to hold on to that’s not just a glass of wine.

“And all around your island
There’s a barricade
It keeps out the danger
It holds in the pain

Sometimes you’re happy
Sometimes you cry
Half of me is ocean
Half of me is sky

But you got a heart so big
It could crush this town
And I can’t hold out forever
Even walls fall down

And some things are over
Some things go on
And part of me you carry
Part of me is gone.”

— Tom Petty, “Walls (Circus)”

Big day out

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn

This photo may not mean much to a random observer. But to me, it’s everything.

This past week was horrible. I couldn’t smile for the life of me. I was exhausted and frustrated and disappointed and did I mention exhausted?

I was learning a new job, parting with some of my favorite responsibilities, mentoring and being mentored, being left in the dust and trying not to leave anyone in the dust, and just plain trying not to make eye contact because everyone knows my heart is affixed prominently to my sleeve.

“Don’t ask me if I’m fine, and I don’t have to lie to you and pretend” was my motto.

Then Thursday afternoon hit. And a series of text messages … and stuff taking place around the ranch … pushed me from not happy to miserable.

I know I have to slap on a smile and eventually it will come. I know that the job I had is gone, and though I really liked it, the new gig will get so much better once I figure out what the hell I’m doing and why it has to be done this way for now.

I also know that my brain was atrophying and that now there isn’t even the REMOTEST possibility of that happening because it’s GO-GO-GO time, all the time now.

And my decision — and, from what I understand, I was the only one among the ranks offered the opportunity to decide my fate — will pan out. It has to.

The sad news was that after I, say, hopped from the Titanic onto what I’m hoping is the Carpathia and not the Concordia, my best friend on the boat was handed a lifejacket and bid farewell.

I had lots of anger to deal with, for my friend and for a bunch of others. And for myself, being all too familiar with the strategy to start bailing out water by the bucketful before, say, plugging the holes.

Alas, fast-forward to Saturday, which I actually spent with said best friend and, well, I found my smile again.

The photo means more to me than I will ever be able to explain on these pages, for reasons I can’t explain but that stretch from Jupiter, Fla,, all the way to the city where the brick from that lighthouse originated, Philadelphia.

But the long and the short of it is, I went from hovering between fearing that last week would kill me and that it actually WOULDN’T and that would be even worse, to realizing that:

A) I don’t have to work for the Crackhead Brothers or the Boob Twins. And that nothing, NOTHING will ever be as bad as either of those places.

B) Jobs will come and go. But more than resume-builders, they are relationship-builders. Everyone who is important to me now, came to me through one of these adventures. And even though our time together at these places is finite, if there’s one thing they do right is put great people in a room together and we are smart enough to keep up the friendships forever.

So, I don’t know what else to say to convey what’s happening in my life right now without getting Dooced yet again. 😉 But where the lines between beginnings and endings were blurred by tears and coffee and Grey Goose, I see what … and, more importantly, WHO … is important.

The rest is simply a pile of details I’ll either forget or put into that book I’ve spent 10 years writing in my head.

It’s funny how, when I decide to be OK, I really become OK.

Health notwithstanding, of course. Damn cold is back and raging worse than it was before. It was a nice week and a half without it!

As I said on FaceyPages, I’m climbing off the cross, giving this particular burden back to God for the last time and looking forward to all the new things I’ve freed up my time to do that don’t involve worrying or fretting or being pissed off, sad, homicidal or otherwise out-of-sorts.

Speaking of getting out of my head, I was supposed to animal-sit this weekend but it turned into an invitation to go on a road trip instead. Long list of unfinished work aside, I said hell yeah. Look out, world!

My ass looks 8 pounds smaller. That’s because I’ve finally pulled my head out of it.

I really think I’m going to be OK this time.

*big smiles*

Starting today I plan to hide the metaphorical razor blades and start living, loving and hoping again.

Joel Osteen said something profound, that God already heard you loud and clear the first time you prayed for something. No need to beg. He doesn’t react to begging. Just keep praising him for making your wishes come true, and that’s when they will.

Even though I’m a little older than the entitlement generation that wants/gets everything now now NOW, I have to admit that my patience is the only thin thing about me.

I’ve begged God for five-plus years to get my mother healthy and on her own. I’ve begged for financial stability and the love of a good man. I’ve begged for happiness and peace and a plane ticket to Paris. And I continue to wonder, well, “When? What do I have to do to be heard in a universe of 7 billion that are praying for similar and, let’s face it, probably more-important things?”

Osteen’s solution is to pray it once, and thank God for bringing it to pass, whenever it will be brought to pass. And you know what? I’ve tried everything else. I’m going to try it his way on this one and see what happens.

I look back fondly on my 20s, on the time I spent alone and scraping together my last few bucks to do whatever I wanted to do. Friends didn’t want to show up for anything I wanted to do? Fuck ’em. I tried not to miss out on too much.

Now here I am in my 30s, and it’s mostly the same song and dance. It’s pretty bad when the most-stressful years of my life were the best years. And if these are the traditional best years, please tell me they’re not going to get so much worse that I WILL be looking back at this time with any degree of wistfulness!

I figure this is my last chance to make absolute miracles happen. To really figure out what I want to be when I grow up … to become the woman that no man in his right mind would resist … to be so in love with life that it can’t HELP but love me back and shower me with all the blessings I desire and a bajillion that I didn’t even think to ask for.

I hate being ordinary. I hate how willingly I’ve accepted it. I hate how enslaved I feel to situations that are absolutely fucking hopeless. I hate continually battling for my joy, and for the anchors tied to my ankles that keep pulling me under to the point that I cannot fathom continuing to tread water, let alone swimming away.

Some people let hate or fear or frustration motivate them. It doesn’t work like that for me. I have to be happy to want to do and be more. Happy isn’t a destination, though, I’ve learned. It’s the gas in the car — broken-down as said vehicle may be — that gets you the fuck out of Pity Party Town.

My home situation hasn’t been what’s broken me, although it’s certainly driven me over the edge and I’m sitting in the sealed-up car at the bottom of the ocean, living on borrowed time. It’s love, of all things, that tore me apart … that I could be treated so horribly when all I did was try to love someone who just doesn’t want to be loved by anyone but a horrid piece of shit who, if he’d just fucking examine the damn situation, doesn’t give a fuck about him … this fucking wrecked my entire world.

The thing that I thought would finally save me, was what smashed the window on the sealed-up car at the bottom of the ocean and caused me to drown on impact.

And here I am, dragged upon shore and looking around at what’s left, and not being overly excited about still having to deal with it.

“See me jump through hoops for you
You stand there watching me performing
What exactly do you do?
Have you ever thought it’s you that’s boring?
Who the hell are you?

I am extraordinary, if you’d ever get to know me
I am extraordinary, I am just your ordinary
Average everyday sane psycho
Supergoddess.”

— Liz Phair, “Extraordinary”

I stopped dreaming in that car. I forgot about setting goals. I quit envisioning the life I once believed I was meant to have. I see the anchors affixed to my ankles and I don’t know how anyone expects me to get up and walk away from all of this when it will keep FOLLOWING ME.

I realize that nobody else is going to change and I am sick of always having to be the one to change, to do better, to dream bigger, to carry more of a load with every step I take.

But I think today I decided that, well, it’s OK. This is it. If I don’t do something so over-the-top spectacular — and soon — to rescue my mind and heart and body and soul, then I can buy the hats and horns for the pity party.

But in the meantime, I have one last miracle in me … the last drop of oil that can last for 40 days if I just thank God for that to happen … and damn it, as soon as I figure out what it is, I’m going to come out of this stronger, better and anything BUT ordinary.

Just because someone special turned out to be just as ordinary as everyone else, doesn’t mean I have to follow his lead.

Move over, world. Imma show you how a real comeback is done. …

I worked my first 40-hour week this week. Being on death’s door will do that to you.

I’d wish for this superbug to go away, but shit, it’s like having a vacation, only having the strength for 40 hours of work! (And nearly 10 hours of commuting, natch.)

I was on my way home from the converted alligator farm today (no joke — we’re in the middle of a swamp. Maybe since the job I loved most was Ye Olde Workplace Establishment, this should be Ye Olde Alligator Ranch?), lost in thought as usual.

I was trying to remember which politician said recently that you should get as much education as you can afford. I’m assuming since it was a pretty asinine statement that it was Mitt Romney.

But anyway, it got me to thinking about all the colleges I got accepted to. Sarah Lawrence was my top choice. And I was in … if I could afford it. And I couldn’t.

We won’t even talk about the letter from Princeton, which of course was my dream school but I really wanted Sarah Lawrence because Hillary Clinton had gone there.

Anyway, I am a big believer thanks to my history professor Ed Meena that college is college — it’s just the ticket to the audition. The name embossed on the diploma doesn’t matter just as long as you made the most of your time wherever you went.

But … I always think back to how hard I worked in school. How many extracurricular activities I was in. How many extra books and intellectual pursuits filled my free time in hopes of getting a full scholarship to an Ivy League (or close) school.

And it seems like it started a theme in my life of, “Oooh, SO CLOSE.”

I had no problem gaining admission to the best schools. I just didn’t have a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of.

Family contribution? Not so much. My family did sacrifice to get me bedding for my new room. And a word processor for typing research papers. And the occasional $40 for treating myself to Mountain Dew and cigarettes during those all-night cram sessions.

And I am who I am today thanks to all of it.

But I got to thinking about a lot of things in my life. And how I don’t even give 100% anymore because, well let’s face it, my 60% is better than most people’s 100%. And besides, I get the same return no matter what I put out.

I got to thinking about the boy, since I ran into him again yesterday. I was actually on my way out of the coffee shop and ran smack into him on his way in.

He looked good. Not a sad old man this time. Like, so good that I spent a lot of time wondering just how different life could be, if only.

And that’s another, “Oooh, SO CLOSE” for me. I was the best version of myself. I said all the right things and did all the right things and basically *I* fell in love with me, since he wasn’t so good about holding up his end of that bargain. 😉

He had sent me a song not too long ago that I am still puzzling over. And what I read into it is, “Yeah, I was almost there with you but something is stopping me and I don’t expect you to understand.”

I don’t know — you tell me.

Anyway, I don’t judge my self-worth over a college I couldn’t attend or a man I couldn’t tame. I’m just sick and feeling self-piteously and waah it’s my party and I will whine like a bitch if I want to!

I guess what’s sparking all of this is the bimonthly notification from my bank that my checking account is near negative territory.

After I pay the rent and the IRS and the student loan and the car insurance and car repairs and the gallons of gas … after I’ve worked my widdle bushy tail off … after I’ve downsized to having cable in one room and I have to watch the fucking housewives of whatever city or say yes to the fucking bridal dress even though your ass ain’t within sight of a wedding of your own you near-40-year-old and here comes honey boo boo child (OK, I DO love me some Alana. *hides face*) … and how I can’t scrape enough together for a new car and the car I LOVED got sold three days before I went back to try ONE MORE TIME to strike a deal … and damn it will I EVER get a laptop? If I don’t buy the iPhone 5 maybe I can do it, yes? … I feel like I need SOMETHING to make me happy.

My happy place this month was spending $70 in Total Wine. Whee! That was pretty awesome. And I had a coupon, which totally was free money and thus a pack of Dogfish Head Punkin Ale. Because, I miss Dogfish Head and I love me some wine.

Not that I can DRINK with this rabid case of typhoid I’m harboring. But, you know, whatever.

Anyway, this pity party is almost over. I guess I’m just sick of commuting, working, worrying, stressing the fuck out over shit that REALLY doesn’t matter one bit in this world, not wanting to come home at night and being resentful that weekends are for babysitting and not for friends because WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY and oh wait I have to admit I’m isolating right now anyway, I guess. So whatever.

Anyway, I notice that other than this last relationship-type-thing, I don’t give my best anymore. I don’t want to. I don’t get what I want, anyway, so why even try? I’ll get “close enough” and who the hell wants that?

Of course, I suppose I’d rather have “close enough” for trying my best than “whatever else” for only giving a close-enough level of effort.

I often think that when I get sick, it’s God’s way of slowing me down and forcing me to take a good hard look at my life. He knows I’m “happy enough” with “close enough.” I think He wants me to say, hey, I have all this fire and passion and innovation in me. Why the fuck am I living below my potential and, therefore, below my MEANS?

Hmm.

A-ha!

*lightbulb flickers on above my widdle head*

As I drove home from work tonight, I composed my “Farewell” letter that I wanted to post here. To thank you for reading Caterwauling for the decade-plus it’s been around. For reading my beloved Maddie’s page for as long as she was in our lives. For being a part of, and not just an innocent bystander along, my life’s journey.

I wanted to tell you that things are different now … I’M different now. I’ve lost a lot of my snark along the way. I rarely say anything salacious anymore. Hell, I can’t tell you the last time I had an, ahem, overnight relationship. Seriously, I’m not the girl you met here, however many years ago when you first landed on this page.

And yet, as I sit here looking at the tangled web of code that some hacker left … I am suddenly ready to pay my friends who unfucked-up this page the last time it got hacked, to unfuck it up again.

I got scared that someone very important to me found this page. I mean, I don’t plan to hide anything from my past. But it’s too soon for him to know SO MUCH of it. Sure I’ve kept a lot offline, but I’ve never been shy about sharing everything in my heart and mind — even if I wasn’t so proud of it.

A part of me wants to use this space to chronicle my life now — and the emotions I can assure you I’ve never felt, along with a WHOLE NEW WORLD of fears and, yes, joys that I never knew existed. Maybe someday. But I know that the happy-happy-joy-joy of today is as fragile as the eggs now being left by nesting sea turtles along carefully preserved areas of our Florida beaches. And I don’t want this blog to ruin yet another job, relationship or anything else that means — or could come to mean — the world to me.

I do miss hearing from all of you. Hit me up on Facebook — that’s where I spend my free time. And I’m thinking of starting a new blog — a professional one — at one of the other domains I own. It’s time I wrote that book that everyone’s asking me about. It’s also time to study for an exam that I don’t need to take but would behoove me to prepare for, to help me in my life’s work. It’s also time to think about a master’s degree or some other certificate program that will get me excited about my career again and, maybe, back to making that great salary I gave up in favor of sanity preservation, not so long ago.

Whatever I end up doing, I’ve got to do SOMETHING. I’ve been tightly guarding my heart, my thoughts, my “everything that makes me, me” for far too long. Yes, I’ve changed a lot — I’ve grown up, finally — but I’ve got a long way to go toward having my shit together. But what I did or didn’t do with my past is of no consequence anymore.

I’ve become the person I’m meant to be. And it’s time to love and honor her. How best to do that, I have no idea. But you’ll know it as soon as I do!

So, OK, I’ve been a WEE bit busy of late. And lo and behold, apparently this silly page got hacked again. Is it a sign to finally give up after 10-plus years of blogging here?

I need to blather here, so bear with me. Not that anybody should still be reading. But still. It’s my diary and I want to have this memory. 🙂

I could ramble about the car. Like, it catching FIRE on 95-North and again on 95-South as I came home. I could bitch about the idiot mechanics keeping it an extra few days to unfuckup their work, only to break something else in the process AND try to sell me new tires. But alas, they fixed it … aaaand the engine light came on the first day I had my car back.

(O HAI crack in the emissions system! *headdesk*)

I could ramble about work. Which is perfectly lovely right now. I’m in a research phase and it’s boring as all get-out. I’m hoping things get a lil’ busier. Which, God likes to grant THAT wish, so I’m not worried.

I could also say that I got dumped on Valentine’s Day … but in kind of a good way. I dumped a guy many years ago on Valentine’s Day and I haven’t had a good one since then. So I’m hoping that getting dumped — by my final freelance client — on Valentine’s Day is exactly what I needed.

Lord knows I am enjoying the extra relaxing and TV-watching I’m doing. 🙂 And they paid me right away, unlike VaJayJay, VaGina and TwunTina, so hallelujah.

Anyway, I’m also getting up and to work earlier so that I can enjoy the silence before the boys come in for the day. So when I collapse at night, I still feel like I’ve earned the mental vacation every evening.

But what I really want to ramble about? Is that I just had the BEST. FIRST. DATE. EVER. I’m keepin’ the good stuff to myself, of course. But … wow.

I’m making no predictions. No summaries. No wish lists. No ANYTHING that would jinx this.

But I will say this. All these vehicular adventures that are taking years off of my life and could possibly even kill me? (See — Fire: Electrical, at high speeds during a 40-mile-each-way-commute.) Hunh-uh. No way.

Life is just getting good. I plan to stick around for it. For a LONG time.