Sister Mary Jane

I had to sit through a four-hour wretchedly dry government meeting last night for my job.  I asked the Mr. to 1.) make dinner, 2.) put the garbage on the curb, 3.) Get the clothes in the dryer and bring them upstairs. Guess how many things were done when I came home to at quarter to eleven?

None.  Shocking, isn’t it?  

He asked me to wash a frying pan so he could make dinner after I got home, and I kind of snapped.  We fought.  He said I was being a bitch.  I said he didn’t appreciate me.  

I’m so sick of getting stuck with every household chore.  I make dinner almost every night.  I run every errand.  I scoop the cat box.  I do all the dishes.  I take out trash.  I grocery shop.  I wipe that little edge of dust that accumulates on the baseboards of the bathroom.  

I asked him nicely to help me out earlier this week.  He knows I have a particularly heavy week.  But no help is forthcoming.  I don’t feel like my husband sees me.  It hurts.

I tried to tell him that but he was furious that I criticized him.  Mister doesn’t take criticism well, at all, no matter how couched in niceness it is.  

I cried.  Then I apologized so it would be over.  I don’t think he ever saw my point of view.

Marriage is so hard.  It often feels like there is no solution.  I feel caught between pretending everything is all right, when it isn’t, or airing my grievances, and enduring the pain of the Mister’s wrath.  Both suck.  

This weekend I went to a barbecue at a friends house.  While we were sitting out on the deck, my friend’s three-year-old daughter brought a sandwich bag out of the house and started filling it with fresh leaves. Someone said, just like daddy, and we all laughed.  

Until she put a toy ladle in it and announced that it was her pipe.  Everyone was silent.  My friend who is a stay-at-home dad turned red and took the bag away from her.

He said, “I don’t know where she got that.  I don’t even smoke out of pipe.”

His wife glared at him and said, “Yes you do.”

We left shortly after that.

I always tell myself that if I have kids I won’t smoke pot anymore.  It’s easy to say, but I wonder if I would really be able to do it.  Fortunately (and unfortunately) I doubt I’ll ever have to make that choice.  I sort of wish I did.

I went to a meeting today without any underwear on under my pants.  They were all dirty.  I got my bra out of the hamper.  Okay, I lied.  I picked it up off the floor.

My house is a fucking wreck.  I seem to have lost the will to clean.  

When you keep snuggling up to me while we sleep.  Even though it bugs the crap out of me.

I made it to day 4, but then I stumbled.  This is how it usually goes.  I’m embarrassed that I can’t even make it a week.  I make it a few days and then I always seem to find a reason to succumb.  

I start out thinking I will just do it one time.  Then two times.  And so on.  

My excuse this time?  Mr. got food poisoning and was throwing up for three hours straight.  I felt helpless. He was seriously pissed off at the world.  I knew it wasn’t about me, but his anger still felt so wounding.  

I smoked during the day, breaking my previous rule of not smoking until Mr. gets home from work.

Technically, he’s not at work though. Unless it’s his new job to projectile vomit for hours on end.

This is my third day not smoking pot.  While I realize this is no big deal for others, it is for me.

This is about the time when I start feeling like I have an itch, but don’t know where to scratch.  Like I’m suddenly dwarfed by this big empty space in my life.

I don’t even know how to explain it, except to say that I don’t know what to do with myself without it.  It throws my rhythm off.  I feel unmotivated.  I feel unmotivated when I’m smoking pot too, but this is a less comfortable version.

Uncomfortable.  That’s part of the problem.  I almost feel like I could handle it if I was puking my guts out and dealing with the shakes.  But with pot addiction, withdrawal is so subtle.  It makes it easy to ignore, to push my viewpoint to the other side of the blackboard.

Which I would gladly do except my lungs are really fucked up.  They hurt every day.  After only three days of not smoking, they feel a little better.  My sinuses don’t hurt.  I can breathe through my nose.  Is it enough to keep me sober?

I feel really alone.  Those people I smoke with aren’t interested in me quitting.  They love me, but they have a whole system of rationalization for their usage in their heads .  Even the Mr.  I can’t disagree with their reasons either.  I think pot helped me through some tough times, was a life saver.  Maybe it’s doing that for them too.  It just isn’t working for me anymore.  They are also the ones who tell me that you can’t get addicted to marijuana.  Umm, okay.

Then there are a whole slew of friends and family that don’t even know I smoke at all.  My mother would probably equate smoking pot with slamming heroin and freak out.  I’d get fired if my employer knew.  

I feel myself leaning toward it.  We have some here, and I could spark up right now.  I can feel the rationalizations bubbling in my head.  I’ll just do it this once.  I’ll just do it once a week.  I can’t stop.  I don’t know how much longer I can last.  The longest I went without smoking was 8 months once about 5 years ago.  It was kind of awful and I gained 60 lbs.  

I don’t know what to do.

Dina says: Why don’t guys realize you have to be a Ken to get a Barbie?

All your nicknames for me.  The Mrs.  Baby.  Stacks.  Dear.  Little Lady.  My One.  Weedy Gonzales.  Hot-a-naughty-miss.  Naughty.  Pretty.  Poke-a-hot-ass.  My Lady.  M’lady.  My Liege.  Liegey.        

I just met with my old boss to get her help on a project I’m working on.  What I was hoping was that she would be willing to talk to some of her business contacts about sponsoring the program.  What I got was her criticizing my ideas and drawing big slashes through all the information pieces I created and saying things like, “This really needs work.”  

She kept taking the pen right out of my hand.  So I was sitting there trying to memorize what she was saying while I rummaged through my bag for another pen.  This happened twice.

I left her office with a ache in my gut.  Now I’m home smoking pot and wishing she were dead.  Okay, maybe not dead.  Maybe a size 14 (which I would love to be myself.)  In addition to being insufferable, she is one of the only 45-year-old women I know who is a size fucking zero.  Once, I went to lunch with her and she ordered a cup of broth.  A CUP OF BROTH.

She claims Senator Orrin Hatch once groped her.  She claims a lot of people once groped her. Anyone who doesn’t, she claims is a homosexual.

She was one of those bosses who goes through assistants like Kleenex.  I pride myself on being able to work with difficult people, and I was able to work with her mostly by ignoring her abrasiveness.   She liked me, but God help you if you got on her bad side.

I was so terrified to tell her I was quitting that I lied and told her I was moving to another state.  After I’d already left the job, I told her the move fell through.  

I attended the meeting with another colleague.  As we were leaving, he said, “God, she’s a bitch.”

Yeah.