Hide it under your mattress?

Weird advice from the POC of the Creative Writing dept when I tried to find out what my 27 y/o English degree was worth. It wasn’t really advice so much as a little crack in the facade of a stranger. Before we were done she had outlined a full year of indentured servitude and navel-gazing before I could ask “Mother may I…?” 71 credits of undergrad classes times $223.55. That’s $15,872.05 before I could ask to be let into the “exclusive” club. It’s not the first person I talked to and that “advisor” did an even worse job of selling me on the benefits of the institution. Told me I have to take the GRE (I DON’T) sent me off to the grad office (I should). Before I could even sign up for a 1 credit class to buy me some time to think about it while legitimizing my pooking around the hallowed halls while I think about The Hubbin and the Oracle and my Patron Saint of all things smart are yelling “that’s u buncha boollsheet just got put in your application and make them tell you why you’re not good enough.” I love the cheering section but I need time to think this through.

You can fight really hard to get yourself into something that’s a bad fit. I’m not trying to talk myself out of anything but into the right thing. These big boys with their whacking hammers crashing through the barriers make so much noise I can’t think.

What do I really need?

For starters, I need real live humans to interact with. I need humans whose eyes don’t glaze over when I speak about things that matter to me. I need humans who don’t set things up and leave me sitting in my van on the corner by the coffee shop because they “forgot”. I need people who don’t pee on the floor or beg me to feed them or try to guilt me into doing their laundry. Some of these people have a very important place in my life but I am bored sh*tless with why the dishwasher hasn’t been emptied or why somebody (two somebodies actually) haven’t put in job applications in a seller’s market pr whether or not the cat(s) got fed. I’m tired of getting to the end of an exhausting day and when I say I’m going to bed someone actually asks, “how can you be tired? What have you done all day?”

Last night as I’m heading to bed, after explaining where I’d been until 9 pm, a glorious first night in the company of real live humans at a location far away from the pillow fort, Hubbin says “Did you ever get dressed today?”

Love his bones but it’s like we live in alternate universes. I don’t want to complain about this, I need to change it. He’ll still be one of the smartest boys I know, young son Wu being the other, but the Neurodiverse beings will be what they are. I need outside input.

Erda called me again yesterday and I didn’t answer. Same drill. Nothing changes. I know I’m being a coward but I’m too tired to play a game I can’t win. The “nice” game sucks. This is not my normal behavior. Maybe I don’t have normal behavior anymore.

A couple of weeks ago Hope and I went up to North Idaho and stared at the river. She said she had fun. I hope she did. I was so physically racked up from this last year of hiding I could barely eat or walk. Did I want to go home? She asked. No, I desperately needed to be on the patio watching the eagles fish and counting the cars on the trains heading up to Canada. She said she had a nice time. She wants to go again. I hope that is true on both counts. I couldn’t talk her into joining me up in the mountains where I usually stay. If the place doesn’t have marble countertops and a restaurant downstairs she sort of thinks I’m asking her to roll up in burlap sacks in a cave somewhere and poo in a hole. I don’t do those things up there but she seems to think I’m going to make her go somewhere awful. That’s fine, I adore her and don’t want her to be miserable. I’m going to go listen to the trains next month while she’s getting eye surgery. Possibly having MS isn’t bad enough she has a retinal tear in one eye and some other bad stuff happening to her eyes. There’s time and a place for everything and everyone as long as they tell me truthfully what they want and don’t stand me up on plans.

We all have shots. Life is starting again. When I put this into OD I’m being kind of a whiny baby but there is so much I just can’t say to the rest of the world. It’s best for everyone if I don’t but you have to let things go somewhere or you carry them to places they don’t need to be. My new midlife not eatings weird sleepings and pain level a steady 6 (which I try not to talk about because everyone seems to think exercise and smoking pot would fix me)

https://images.app.goo.gl/KH8L6PpdPeetvQFb8

Just gets old, tedious, makes me not quite myself.