LongLocks HairSticks Boutique

  Welcome, Guest. Please Login
 
  HomeHelpSearchLogin  
 

LongLocks Boutique
Home
Hair Jewelry Catalog
How to Use Hair Sticks
Susan's Closet
LongLocks Collectors Club
Index of Hair Care Articles
Testimonials
Free Newsletter


L'Etoile Perdue by William Bouguereau







Pages: 1 2 3 4 ... 8
Send Topic Print
Texian's Travels (Read 110835 times)
texian.traveler
Sapphire
***
Offline


LongLocks Rocks!

Posts: 182
Gender: female
Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #15 - Aug 7th, 2007 at 9:47am
 
On a different note...

AAAAAAAARRRRGH!

That was me after opening my envelope from the Department of Human Services. 

I never thought this would be me, but my husband and I are going on public assistance.  We left all our income in Egypt, and as school teachers, that meant going from May 1 to September 15 without any income at all.

Yes, we could have gotten jobs at Wal-Mart or somewhere.  But since I was trying for an administrative job, which didn't work out, I spent every day filling out applications in every little podunk district in the state (there are a lot of them in Texas) in the hopes that ONE of them would be desperate enough to make me an administrator.  Didn't work, but I have moved in teaching from elementary to secondary.

My mother's heart attack in the middle of June didn't help either.

Anyway, we are looking at rebuilding everything.  Furniture, appliances, cars, it all was sold to live overseas and now has to be rebought.  So we are getting some help from the state to do it.  Or we would.

Except they denied our claim.  Reason?

"You failed to come in for finger imaging."

When we turned in all the documents they wanted, we said, "They wanted us to get finger imaging."  And the clerk says, "Oh, you can do that on your next visit."

AAAAAAAARRRRGH!

Among other things, I'm going to the Department of Human Services today.
Back to top
 

[url=http://www.TickerFactory.com/weight-loss/wS1UoA5/]&&...
 
IP Logged
 
Angel Spun
Ex Member


Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #16 - Aug 7th, 2007 at 10:44am
 
Oy oy, Tex.
Life is just dumping all over you at the moment, isn't it? God knows I'm no stranger to that. Don't worry about venting here...we all do it from time to time. If you try to hold it in, it can augment anxiety.

Things will look up soon. *hugs* It can't rain all the time.
Back to top
 
 
IP Logged
 
Curlgirl64
Stardust
******
Offline


Practice Yoga,give and
receive Reiki

Posts: 2974
Brooklyn,N.Y.
Gender: female
Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #17 - Aug 7th, 2007 at 12:56pm
 
And these "Services" wonder why people go hysterical and ballistic on them?! Huh Shocked Roll Eyes  I swear either God or some other upper being holds me back!!!!!
Back to top
 

Curlgirl64
Head Board Moderator
LongLocks HairSticks Boutique
http://www.longlocks.com
...
WWW Curlgirl64  
IP Logged
 
joeydog 1992
Ex Member


Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #18 - Aug 13th, 2007 at 6:34pm
 
Tex, so sorry you are having such a tough time.  It never rains, it pours.  Do be very cliche, it is darkest before the dawn.  I hope you have a bright dawn very soon!!!

JD
Back to top
 
 
IP Logged
 
texian.traveler
Sapphire
***
Offline


LongLocks Rocks!

Posts: 182
Gender: female
Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #19 - Sep 10th, 2007 at 7:08am
 
We went to Dallas this weekend to get some more stuff out of my dad's house.  It seemed tacky to do that and not see him, especially since his snitchy neighbor will call and tell him I was there.

So my husband went to the house while I went to the facility.  I took him out for ice cream.  I swear, the man gets more frail every time I see him.  Anyway, when we get back to his room I ask him if there is anything he needs or I can do for him.

He leans forward with blue sparks in his eyes and says, "Get... me... out of this place!  I'm SERIOUS."

I leaned forward with brown sparks in mine and said, "Give...me...power...of attorney.  And I'M serious!"

I told him if he would do that it would tell me that he accepted he was aging, he accepted he couldn't live by himself anymore, he accepted his days of driving were over, and he accepted that God wasn't going to give him a do-over, and that when he did I would work like a dog to get him some place less restrictive.

He said, "I will NEVER accept that."

And I said, "I will NEVER help you get out of here."

And I felt strong, strong as steel, like a blade clashing against his.

Don't think I won though.  There was just a cessation of hostilities after that.
Back to top
 

[url=http://www.TickerFactory.com/weight-loss/wS1UoA5/]&&...
 
IP Logged
 
Curlgirl64
Stardust
******
Offline


Practice Yoga,give and
receive Reiki

Posts: 2974
Brooklyn,N.Y.
Gender: female
Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #20 - Sep 10th, 2007 at 7:36am
 
Parents can be so stubborn!  I know it must be fustrating for you,heartbreaking at times,too.  I wish all the luck,patience and fortitude with your dad.  Hang in!!
Back to top
 

Curlgirl64
Head Board Moderator
LongLocks HairSticks Boutique
http://www.longlocks.com
...
WWW Curlgirl64  
IP Logged
 
Angel Spun
Ex Member


Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #21 - Sep 10th, 2007 at 4:56pm
 
Gawd, I don't even know what to say about your father, Tex. I know that dealing with aging/delusional parents can be rough.  Sad  You have my sympathies.
Back to top
 
 
IP Logged
 
texian.traveler
Sapphire
***
Offline


LongLocks Rocks!

Posts: 182
Gender: female
Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #22 - Sep 16th, 2007 at 4:17am
 
Someone said in an earlier post that I needed to "examine the role I play in getting myself into these situations" or something like that.  They are right.  And I know what I did.  

I married the wrong man.

Seriously.

I married a man I knew was an abused child.  Not sexually, I wouldn't have married him.  Not even really physically, although he has told me of one episode.  But emotionally?  Oh boy.  But I married him because he was smart and loving and was willing to admit when he was wrong and even attempt to change.

I wanted to save him.  I even said the words, "I am going to marry you and take you away from all this."  What I didn't realize was how deep the damage from the abuse goes.

My mother married exactly the same type of man.  You know, the one she divorced because she was convinced she would commit suicide if she stayed with him and who is sitting in a nursing home waiting for God to wave his magic wand.

And one thing she said to me this summer when I told her this was the year my husband and I decided to stay together or not was that she wanted to save my daughter from making our mistake.

And after what happened today I told her the one I want to save is my son.  He cannot learn to deal with the world in the way his father does.

What happened today was this.  

I called my mother's cousin's son to ask for our cats back.  He has been keeping them for the last three months after his mother got tired of it.  He said I can't have them back.  He said I haven't called and asked about them for three months and he considers them abandoned.  

He said since I offered to pay him for their food and the vet bills he wanted $3,400.00, which is what a cat hotel would have cost.

Now I admit he has a point about the phone calls.  I could have called.  There are several reasons I didn't but the truth is that I could have.  So I do understand his point of view, that I can't leave them with someone else for three months and then call up and say, "I want them now."  But what I told him was true.  I saw no point in getting my children and myself stirred up about something we couldn't have.  It was easier to just focus on doing what we needed to do to get them.

There were also one or two other things going on this summer, as you guys know.

So I told him my point was he never called me.  If he felt the cats were "dumped" on him, he should have called and let me know.  If I was going to pay for a cat hotel, I would have found one closer to me where I could visit.  I hated the fact that they were lving in my cousin's bathroom, but I didn't know what else to do.  And I thought that, cost aside, my cousin's bathroom was preferable to a cat hotel, where they would be locked in a cage.  So I was glad when her son took them.

I never anticipated not finding jobs until August.  I thought we would be in a district and settled by June.  If we had ever known where we were going to be, we would have gone ahead and gotten a place to live there and gotten our cats earlier.  No one called and said having the cats was a problem so we thought it wasn't.

So anyway, we went to Conroe today to get stuff out of our storage facility.  It's about a three hour drive.  I called him when we left, asking about when we could get the cats.  I had called him earlier in the week, but didn't get a reply.  So about an hour into the trip he calls and leaves a message that we can't have them.

My husband spends the next two hours fuming, saying over and over he wants his effing cats.  He pounds the steering wheel so hard I'm afraid he's going to break it.  After awhile, the constant outpouring of anger starts to feel like being dipped in acid, over and over.  It's been like this for about five years now, but it's gotten REALLY bad the last two.  And he's not really angry at me, but I'm there so I get all this venting.  Kind of like you guys.

So we get to the storage facility and he spend FIFTEEN minutes calling the son over and over.  I'm trying to reason with him, trying to get him to realize that this isn't going to help, that all it will do is make the guy mad.  But my husband thinks that people will do what he wants because he's angry.  He attempts to use the anger to scare them or force them.  It has cost him, and us, again and again, but he doesn't realize it.

This is the behavior I don't want my son to learn.
   

   
Back to top
 

[url=http://www.TickerFactory.com/weight-loss/wS1UoA5/]&&...
 
IP Logged
 
texian.traveler
Sapphire
***
Offline


LongLocks Rocks!

Posts: 182
Gender: female
Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #23 - Sep 16th, 2007 at 4:18am
 
So we load up the car and head for home.  He's still calling the son every 15 - 20 minutes or so, venting all the while.  Finally the son calls and I talk to him.  Now my husband recognizes that I am the more reasonable of the two of us, so he lets me talk to him.  But another truly annoying habit he has developed is listening to my end of the conversation but still venting his anger at every reply I make so that I've got two conversations going and I can't understand the person I am talking to.

So the son tells me his side.  He is not inclined to listen to my side at all; he's too pissed.  So we agree to talk on Monday.  

And off my husband goes again, venting his acid at me (the children are in the car) until he says, "I will poison the cats first."  That did it.  I said, "If I really believed that, if I thought for one minute that you weren't just talking out of anger, I would say let me out of this car."  And he says he isn't.  And I said, "Let me out."  I just can't take anymore.  I have now been listening to this fairly constant stream of anger for five hours and I can't do it anymore.  And I was serious.

The only time I faced my father down as a child is when he kicked the dog.  And for me, even the willingness to SAY you will kill an innocent animal rather than let someone else have it is intolerable.  It's a non-negotiable, an absolute.  I knew he didn't love animals, but that...?  I would NEVER married a man who would do that, or even SAY he would do that.  Maybe that wasn't the man I married, but it is the man he has become and I don't want that man.

And I realize that I can't save the situation.  I can't save him.  The only thing I can save is my children, and maybe me.  Anyway, I have a serious panic attack as I realize this, which freaks out my children.  And even while it was going on, I am realizing how wrong it is to let them witness this, and I am trying to stop, but I just want out of the car and away from him, and I think that if I just stop he won't stop the car and it's harder to stop than I realized when I said let me out and...  

So he stops the car and I get out and start walking.  And he is honking the horn and my daughter has followed me and I'm crying and she's crying and my son is crying and it's just so WRONG that they are being put through this but I don't know what to do because I just can't get over what he said.

So I go back and we talk a bit, and he reminds me of how difficult I am to live with, which is quite true, I tend to be a bit of a drama queen and I did have a psychiatrist say I had "bipolar tendencies."  But I tell him that I am going to call my mother to come get me, because I just can't ride back with him.

So then he gets mad because he said that when HE wanted to walk away I convinced him to stay, but then I decide that I want to walk away, which made his deciding to stay meaningless.  So he says that we will drive back to Waco and then he will leave.  The children didn't hear that part.

So as we drive he at least stops venting, which is good, although he still says something about every 30 minutes or so.  And as we drive everyone calms down and he is still here at the house.

He really had nowhere to go except back to his mother's, and I was going to have to drive him there because we only have one car.

We didn't have health insurance until September 1, and we couldn't use it until we got our cards, which we did September 10.  I didn't call the counseling center the day I got them.  I should have.  I am calling Monday.

And I realize something else. In a book I read once, a character said of the man she married, "He makes me better."  And I realize that this man does not make me better.  I am not a better person because of him.  I think I am worse.  If I am neurotic and moody and difficult, maybe it's because I have spent twenty years walking on eggshells, trying to navigate the mire of his anger.

My mother told me she divorced my father because she saw me and my brother making our own lives and she was tied to "an increasingly disfunctional man."  That is my situation.  When life goes bad, he retreats.  He sits on the corner of the couch with his computer on his lap and he doesn't interact with anyone.  If he doesn't have to go to work he doesn't even bathe.

This used to happen at Christmas.  Then it became all holidays.  Then it became any time he had to interact with my family or his.  Then it became any time things went wrong at work.  He now DOESN'T function more than he does.  I get about three months in the fall, August to October.  November means Thanksgiving so that sends him down and he will stay down, with small bobbles upward, until about February.  He'll be up again if work is going well, but for the last two years his job has gone sour and he has gone down again until we left it.  Of course this year we had all the other unpleasantness so I have only had an interactive husband for maybe a month, after we got our jobs.  

Oddly enough, or maybe not, he'll be better for awhile.  He says he's tired of my having meltdowns, but honestlly he doesn't LISTEN to anything else.  I tried five hours of being quietly reasonable.  Should I just have said, "Shut the f up?"

Back to top
 

[url=http://www.TickerFactory.com/weight-loss/wS1UoA5/]&&...
 
IP Logged
 
texian.traveler
Sapphire
***
Offline


LongLocks Rocks!

Posts: 182
Gender: female
Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #24 - Sep 16th, 2007 at 4:19am
 

Anyway, if you are in a relationship with an abused person, GET OUT.  Unless maybe they are in counseling.  You can't help them.  You are not strong enough to save them.  No matter how strong you are, and I am pretty darn strong, YOU CAN'T DO IT.  You will be destroyed trying.

You think they aren't that bad, that in a real and loving relationship, surrounded by normalacy, they will heal.  They won't.  They can't.  Because YOU can't heal them.  Only they can, and I don't believe they can do it by themselves.  At first it isn't that bad, but as the years go by the damage is revealed as surely as the weight of walls and roof reveal cracks in a foundation.  Which is essentially what they have.

The abuse of the early years leaves them without the sense of "I'm okay", which enables them to take setbacks in stride.  Or at least, that is my analysis of the abused person I am with.   

I truly am at a loss.  Financially, we have to stay together.  But I want him gone.  At this point, my children are better off without him, both because of the behavior he models and because of who I am with him.

I feel like such a failure.  My mother never had a meltdown like this in front of us, although she became severly depressed and even suicidal.  But I DIDN'T KNOW IT, until later.  I am a horrible parent for giving in and letting go like that.   

And I have abused you guys enough.
Back to top
 

[url=http://www.TickerFactory.com/weight-loss/wS1UoA5/]&&...
 
IP Logged
 
Jerry
Diamond
*****
Offline


LongLocks Rocks!

Posts: 662
Montana
Gender: male
Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #25 - Sep 16th, 2007 at 10:04am
 
I am very sorry you have all of these problems and I hope they will evetually get solved one way or another.

Jerry
Back to top
 
WWW  
IP Logged
 
Curlgirl64
Stardust
******
Offline


Practice Yoga,give and
receive Reiki

Posts: 2974
Brooklyn,N.Y.
Gender: female
Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #26 - Sep 16th, 2007 at 1:09pm
 
I don't think you are a failure,infact,I think you are so strong for all the realization,concern for you,your kids and the situation in general.  I think you are very strong!  I do hope all works out for the best for everyone concerned.  I wish you much peace and serenity in this time,especially.
Back to top
 

Curlgirl64
Head Board Moderator
LongLocks HairSticks Boutique
http://www.longlocks.com
...
WWW Curlgirl64  
IP Logged
 
texian.traveler
Sapphire
***
Offline


LongLocks Rocks!

Posts: 182
Gender: female
Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #27 - Sep 16th, 2007 at 2:18pm
 
On a positive note, jojoba oil rocks!  Although my hair still has dryness and tends to snarl at the ends, it is much softer and it does it less.  Woo, hoo!  It now is a few inches above elbow-length, which is annoying, actually.  I feel the ends poking into my skin when I close my elbow and because they are so dry they hurt!  Not a lot, but it isn't the delicate butterfly brush of silken strands, but more like the delicate caress of a wire pet groomer!  Not cool!
Back to top
 

[url=http://www.TickerFactory.com/weight-loss/wS1UoA5/]&&...
 
IP Logged
 
Angel Spun
Ex Member


Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #28 - Sep 16th, 2007 at 2:46pm
 
Man, Tex, this has been a rough year for you. *hugs*

A lot of the behaviours that you mentioned about your husband hit rather close to home for me. A few years ago, I was married to a guy who exhibited a lot of those same behaviours - especially the drama and the out-of-control anger. Your husband sounds like the kind of guy who would lash out at you at random, in public, regardless of who's around. I've been there...and I can tell you from experience that this is not the kind of person you want to stay with forever. That kind of disrespect should not be tolerated.
   You are absolutely right to think that your children shouldn't have to be exposed to all of that. And also that your husband is not setting a good example for them. If you feel that counselling will "save" him and/or the marriage, then seek it out...but in my opinion, it won't help and probably won't be worth it in the long run.

You're also right about love making you a better person. If your husband is bringing out the worst in you rather than the best, and moreover, if it's affecting your children, then you're better off without him. I'm not an advocate or a fan of divorce, having been through one myself, but the welfare of your kids comes before anything (not to mention your own safety and sanity!). Think about that.

One thing that I absolutely 100% disagree with, however, is that an abused person is not capable of overcoming and transcending whatever has happened to them. Honey, if that was true, we'd all be in deep you-know-what because everyone goes through some type of abuse at some point in their life. The difference is this: some people can handle it. They learn from the experience and grow and move on. Some people can't - those are the people that you want to stay away from.
   You are right in thinking that you can't "save" them. That's not to say that it hasn't happened in some cases - where one person can drop into another person's life and completely turn it around for the better. It certainly does happen. But the majority of the time, it's up to the individual to "save" themselves. The ability has to come from within.
   You may be sensitive to your husband's needs, but you are not responsible for his past. It's his own fault if he's incapable of dealing with his past and letting it go - you shouldn't have to walk on eggshells. Live your life as you normally would. If he can't handle it, that's his problem.

I really wish that I had some kind of blindingly inspirational words for you. But inspiration will find you on its own and words will attach themselves to it. The more truth you come to realize, the more comfort you'll have. Look to God. That's really all I can say.

Good luck, sister.
Back to top
 
 
IP Logged
 
texian.traveler
Sapphire
***
Offline


LongLocks Rocks!

Posts: 182
Gender: female
Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #29 - Sep 16th, 2007 at 3:31pm
 
I do agree with you.  I thought that was what I said.  It certainly was what I meant to say.  The desire to overcome and get better MUST come from within that person.  Perhaps there are some who can do it by themselves.  You may be right.  But I know that this man cannot. 

Thanks, Angel, and all the others who have been so supportive.  I am sorry to be venting and dumping on the innocent.  I just am so overwhelmed, and I don't really have any friends of my own, all of ours are "shared" if that makes sense, and I can't ask them to choose sides, which is what I feel sharing all of this stuff with them would do.

Both my husband and I felt in our marriage that our problems were our own and neither of us would go "running to Mommy" with them.  After all, we can forgive things that our parents cannot.  But my husband has chosen not to have a relationship with my mother anymore, so I really don't think I can make things there any worse, and besides, if I didn't have her I would have NO ONE.

She is telling me we have to seperate.  She actually doesn't sleep well at night, knowing how much stress I am under and how close I am to breaking apart.

Back to top
 

[url=http://www.TickerFactory.com/weight-loss/wS1UoA5/]&&...
 
IP Logged
 
Pages: 1 2 3 4 ... 8
Send Topic Print