Sister Mary Jane

I got up early and did yoga.  You may not recognize this as the miracle it is, but let me tell you, it’s pretty out of the ordinary.

I’ve been sorting through old files and I have found the most awful and interesting pieces of who I was and in many ways still am.  Here are a few of the things I found:  

• Divorce papers from a few years ago which I never filed
• Really terrible poetry from high school
• Paycheck stub from one of my first jobs where I made $3.35 an hour
• Melodramatic suicide note to my parents
• Copy of a letter to my congressman about the Iraq war
• Letter asking an old friend for forgiveness
• A letter from my ex-husband while we were going through our divorce
• Apron from when I was a waitress at Dennys
• AA literature
• Letter I wrote to my neighbor after we hadn’t been getting along
• List of children’s books I want to read
• Letter I wrote my husband during a fight
• And a to buy list that included mah jong game and hookah pipe (I never got either)

Mr. got fired today.  Sigh.

He called to tell me from the airport in NYC where he had been getting some special training.  He and his co-worker skipped the last day of training, and the teacher emailed them to ask why, and cc:d their boss. But that isn’t why he got fired.  He got fired for sending a reply to the teacher where he said, thanks for telling my boss, narc bitch.  

His boss told him on the phone which I thought showed incredible lack of balls.

Unfortunately, the Mr. has had a problem keeping a job since I met him.  Because of the completely neglected way he was raised, he has trouble with boundaries and self-discipline.  

This is a kid who never, ever had a bedtime, or had to go to school if he didn’t feel like it.  He made his own food.  He did his own laundry.  His mom pulled him out in 8th grade to “home school” him, which basically meant he babysat the little ones so she could go do her own thing. So he learned on his own.  He read books, and taught himself all about math, physics, history, computers.

He never went to high school or college, but his IQ was tested in junior high at 155.  When I met him he was a little street punk who worked at Pizza Hut, but I helped him parlay his talents into real jobs.

Unfortunately, most were short-lived.

In between those jobs, he started his own business and did a lot of freelance work.  He had some success, but not enough.  

This last job was with a well-known advertising agency, and it seemed like the job of a lifetime.  It paid great, no late checks, and they offered amazing benefits including profit sharing.  I just can’t believe he fucked it up AGAIN.  This one lasted only 2 months.

We are so fucked.  Our financial situation was already seriously compromised from him being unemployed for the first four months of this year.  We owe the IRS a small fortune for underestimating our freelance taxes for a couple of years.  We got a slew of medical bills after one of the aforementioned deadbeat employers did not pay our insurance premium.  Every time it looks like we might get our heads above water, like we might finally be able to buy a house, he loses his job.  

Trey says he is afraid of success. I don’t know what to think.  

I’m surprisingly unemotional actually.  This has happened so many times in the last 8 years, I just don’t freak out about it anymore.  I also don’t get involved in looking for a new job – that’s his problem.  I may have held his hand early on in our marriage, but he stopped needing my help a long time ago.

That’s part of what’s frustrating.  He has grown so much in this area.  But I can’t pay the rent with progress, only accomplishment.  

So I’m sitting here waiting to go pick him up in a few hours, trying desperately to prepare.  How should I act?  What I want to do is give a big goddamn lecture. I want to explain in excruciating detail why he is a complete fucking moron for letting this happen.  But I know it won’t help.  He was all swagger on the phone, but I could tell he was upset.  

So, my Mr., I am going to play the part of the supportive spouse as best I can. I’m going to push away my anger and frustration and focus on moving forward.  I’m going to hold my tongue about what you should have done differently.  I’m going to offer comfort and understanding.  You stupid fucking ass.

The Mr. and I were not getting along.  After a week of sniping at each other, it got nasty one morning before the Mr. left for work. 

When I get home, you and your attitude had better be gone, he said, slamming the door behind him. 

I write Trey an email telling her that he was supposedly divorcing me, and joking about how I would enjoy the space.  This is what she sends me.

Every divorced woman I know works like a ragged dog to pay taxes and eat and they are MISERABLE. Lonely, sad, and bitter and their lives would be vastly different with money.  Dating is gruesome for them too.

I no longer think “love” is more important than money. Money is a perfectly wonderful reason to stay married. Pooling resources. It’s the whole damn reason marriage exists. It’s the reason people stay married even when the kids move out. Pooled resources. 

Mr.’s better than that even if he ignores you or is selfish sometimes. I wouldn’t worry so much probably if you were thinner and healthy. There I said it, I don’t want to think of you alone all the time and sad all the time and feeling worthless and unloved. It can only be worse out there for women of your age, with your weight issues.

Women with my weight issues?  What the fuck!  Why is this person my best friend? 

And how does she call herself a feminist?

After all these years, I don’t know if this is a healthy friendship.  We’ve had many “breaks” in our relationship.  The last one a few years ago when she got strung out on prescription medication and was acting like an ass.  She went to rehab and we made up. 

The biggest break was after she fucked my ex-husband.  While I was in the next room.

The truth is if this were someone else, I’d be saying – are you insane? Of course this is not a healthy friendship!  I don’t know why I keep hanging on.  

The Mr. loathes Trey.  He says, she just uses you to feel superior about herself.  Once, on the phone, he called her a “stupid junkie whore and hung up on her.”  After her last visit, he said he would rather get divorced than spend another minute with her and her husband.   He says she reminds him of his mother. It’s not about him though.

It is hard to let go of an old friend who knows the real you though.

I feel like a raging psycho after sis-in-law sent me this very nice email.  

Hey Sis-

I just got my computer back and set up.  I wanted to thank you for a kickass baby shower.  It was really cool to hangout with everyone again.  It meant alot to me that you threw me one.  Everyone had lots of fun.  Hopefully in a year or two we will be living in SLC.  I love you.  I look forward to hanging out again soon.

Love,                                                                                                                                          

Sis-in law

I am bitter and depressed today.

I want to write something, but I know it will come out badly.  I’ll sound like a complainer and a blamer of the worst possible sort.  I’m well aware I should look on the bright side of things.  I know the week I feel battered by is nothing compared to what others are going through all over the world today.  

BUT

I can’t help it.  I hate everyone today. I have an emotional hangover. The Mr. was such an asshole to me last week.  I was throwing a baby shower for his sister, and I had all this work due.  To top it off, I fucked up my back, and it hurts to do everything.  

My sister-in-law did not even thank me for the shower.  

The Mr. says I’m just too praise-greedy, and he’s probably right.  I fully admit it.  I wanted to be thanked.  More like, I WANT TO BE THANKED.  Profusely.  

Thank you for the special invitation you personally designed and had printed.  Thank you for ordering those custom printed M&Ms for the party.  Thank you for buying that special premium chocolate cake from a fancy bakery.  Thank you for buying $60 in liquor and $150 in food  just to make this day extra wonderful for me.  Thank you for all the fresh flowers you put in the room.  Thank you for getting all those supplies to handpaint onesies that I will cherish for years to come.  Thank you for making the effort to hire a mehndi artist to come paint temporary tattoos on everyone.  Thank you for arranging babysitting so my friends could all come.  Thank you for the shower, I loved it, it was amazing, transcendent, life-changing, epic, incredible, fabulous, second only to the creation itself, so pleasurable the mountains shook and angels wept.  

Hell yes, I wanted to hear that.

Or just, “thank you.”

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.  

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.  

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.