On getting flowers.

After the huge argument from the other night, I got flowers the next day.

This is a rarity.  The card read, “I’m sorry you don’t feel appreciated; you are.”  (Something like that.)

What was funny (funny? Ironic?  Who knows) was that the flowers he selected were all white.  They  had lilies in them (typically the death flower, right?)  with small splashes of purple in them.  I admit it.  When the woman at the door handed me the arrangement, I thought: Who died?  Is this is memory of someone?  

Maybe it’s in memory of my marriage?  Ha ha.  No, really, it’s not that bad.

Okay, it’s kinda bad, but it’s not as bad as it used to be.  Mostly.

#ResoundingEndorsement

The reality, which I can share here, is that there is no way we are moving.  There is no way that my  husband’s career will go where he thinks it will.  He is going to stay at the Shit Company, with a Shit Title, doing a Shit Job, surrounded by Shit People who say racial slurs like they are ordering lunch and who really aren’t going anywhere.

And, because he is always the result of who he is around, he will turn into that too.  He will apply his ridiculous, so-often-misplaced optimism and figure that he can overcome this.  The truth is he can’t.

That’s going to have to be okay.  I can’t control his career.  I have to block out what I hear from him; his complaints and “dreams” and just recognize, we are where we are.  We survived three months (almost four) of unemployment and he got a job locally.  That’s an accomplishment.  Maybe it will turn into something more.  Maybe his boss will leave.  Who knows.

I thought that, in some ways, this would be some kind of turning point for us.  Our budget was pushed to the max at his last job; I dreamed of him making more money and things settling down.  Student loan repayment is like death.  It kills us.  Maybe we would sell our house, move somewhere else.  Make a new start.  That won’t happen.

That won’t happen.  He’s making just about the same money he was making before.  Nothing has changed except that he was once working for a global fortune 500 company and now he isn’t.  There’s no room for advancement where he is.  He’s not positioned himself in a market that is growing or important in his industry.  He’s going to accept mediocrity and I have to accept that.  It’s a paycheck.  I could never make his kind of money even if I went to work today.

So there’s that.

I began my PhD coursework this week.  My first week with four classes.  It’s awful.  I can scarcely imagine actually completing this semester.  I feel like a fool.  I HAVE NO BUSINESS DOING THIS.  I am completely out of my league.  It’s been a long time since I looked at coursework and thought: What the fresh fuck am I reading?  What IS this shit?  But that’s where I am now.

We’re also in March.  March is the month of my babies.  This diary contained their story, as it unfolded.  Those stories are erased, because when OD went down, I deleted them.  But ten years ago, I became a mother to two premature twin boys.  My babies.  They died, because babies born at 21 weeks do that.  They died; and their “day” is coming in two weeks.  They were born and died on the same day.  It is their birthday but it is also their death day.  And so I never know what to call it.  I just refer to it as their “day”.

The day before THAT day is the day I appear in court and hopefully watch as my sibling is convicted for attacking me and tearing my ACL.

I’m also scheduled to go back to work.  One of my former jobs – a job I had before my ACL was torn by my sibling – has been begging me to come back. It’s been months.  I had hoped they would go away.  I am no longer in a position to work.  I’m really not.  My knee is not right and never will be.  I’m involved in this PhD shit.  My husband is gone from 7 AM to 6 PM and my kids are not in a position to watch themselves while I go to work.  I had really hoped this job would move the fuck on, but they haven’t.  So tomorrow, I will go and visit them and see what I can do.

I really should just fucking quit. I should have done that a long time ago.  I need to focus on what I need to focus on, and mostly it has to be focused on me.