Well, I thought I was done traveling, but maybe not.  You know, guys, I never thought I would start a journal here.  I have about three other blogs.  One was for my overseas teaching experiences.  Since I am no longer teaching overseas, that one is defunct.  And I can't post this stuff anyway because my family reads that one, and I don't want my family to read this.  One is for the teachers at my former school.  That one isn't active because I haven't told them about it yet.  I am waiting to see what happens with the lawsuits.  And the other is my very private thoughts that I don't tell anyone.  I may turn them into a book one day.  A nice, anonymous book. 

Anyway, I am just so stressed that I have to tell someone.  I called one of my very best friends, and she commiserated with me, but she is traveling to her son's graduation from the Navy, so I can't bother her right now.  And she is dealing with her boyfriend's cancer anyway.  I can't talk to my husband because he is in this...stuff...with me.

But I am not sure how much more I can take.  No, on second thought, that is a stupid comment.  The truth is that unless I decide to kill myself I can take a lot more and will.  But I can sure tell you that the summer of 2007 is not one of my banner years. 

Oh, yeah, these are supposed to be hair journals.  Well, my hair isn't doing so good now, either.  It seems very dry and there is a lot of breakage.  I have been conditioning every day but...I also put a pair of scissors in the car and I do s&d on long trips and when I am waiting for my deliveries at Sonic.  (For those of you not located in the southern US, Sonic is a drive-in burger joint where the waitresses still wear roller skates.  They have the BEST crushed ice, and a coke just tastes better when it's in a Sonic cup!)

Anyway, I just feel like I have to tell someone, some nice anonymous someones, just what hell my life has been.  I mentioned on another post that I had to leave Egypt.  I did not finish the school year, but left six weeks before.  I left because of my husband.  It is such a long story, and I'm not sure how to put it.

The people at the school are very unethical.  When we first came, they bought our children's plane tickets so we could be sure of all traveling together.  We were to pay them back when our house sold, which it didn't do until March.  They were supposed to deduct the cost of their health insurance, but instead they lumped it in with the tickets.  We owed them $5,400.00.  In October, a teacher quit, and my husband offered to do his job for two weeks while they looked for a replacement.  The school assigned him the duties permanently in an attempt to save the salary.  My husband informed them that if they wanted him to do two jobs they would pay HIM the other salary.  He taught those classes for three months, but never got any extra income.  If he had, it would have been about $5,400.00. 

There were lots of politics and power plays and garbage like that going on at the school.  He got caught in some of them, and when we returned from spring break in April he had a letter on his desk reassigning most of his duties to his assistant, who until he was hired was in charge of the computers at the school.  That letter was followed by another reducing the length of his contract and his salary, and that was followed by more sabotage of the computer system he was left in charge of.  So we left.

Now I had been trying for five years beforehand to be an administrator.  But my problem was I had no TAKS experience.  (TAKS is the standardized state test here in Texas.)  It was one of the reasons we started teaching overseas.  I had signed a contract to be the elementary principal next year, but I kept hearing rumors that they were looking for a principal.  That was one of the ways I knew that if we didn't leave my husband would be fired.

When we returned, my stepfather did not treat us like we were people who had been through a horrible experience and left all their dreams in the desert.  He treated us like we were a bunch of spongers who were only too glad of an excuse to start sucking them dry once again.  The first day we were here, he told my husband that being here was a problem and our job was to get out as fast as possible.

For background, our first overseas jobs were in Saudi Arabia.  We had a lot of visa trouble and ending up not leaving until mid-October, eight weeks into the 2004 - 2005 school year.  We stayed with my mother and her husband during that time because we had gotten rid of all our furniture and were trying to rent our house.  It was supposed to be two weeks.  It ended up being two months.  We sold one car before we left, but the other didn't sell for months.  My mother had to take care of the sale for us.

We left those jobs and took ones in Egypt.  The pay was much less and we couldn't afford to keep our house.  My mother had to handle that sale too.  Apparently my stepfather really resented that.

Anyway, the school threatened us with felony theft, since we left without paying the money we owed them.  We replied they owed us an equal amount.  Actually, more, since they withheld his last paycheck.  They said if we didn't pay them we would be hit with punitive damages. interest, lawyer's fees, and whatnot in addition to the criminal charges.  We asked if they wanted their website back. 

See, the school made my husband put the charges for hosting the school website on his personal credit card.

I realize he is saying that he wants a divorce.  I tell him that I think this is not something we should be discussing right now.  But I have realized something.

For over twenty years I have been trying to keep peace between my stepfather and my husband.  I have told my husband more than once that I didn't want my mother to have to chose between her husband and her daughter.  But I know now that the person who didn't want to have to choose is me.  But that option of "non-choice" has been taken away.  I have to choose now.  And there really is no choice.  I made a vow before God nineteen years ago that I would leave my mother and father and cleave unto him, and that is what I have to do. 

But I don't have to be happy about it.

Thanks for listening.

Oh my.    You have had some major challenges thrown in front of you.  I hope that just putting it all down in writing has helped you see your situation more clearly and can help you develop a plan that will give you, your kids and your husband some peace. 

So where was I?  Oh yeah, denying reality.  So after she left he stayed in the house, even though he really couldn't afford the payments alone.  It was very important to him that EVERYTHING be as it was, so she could come back to exactly the same life she left.  Which idea gets crazier the more I think about it.  

He quit his job, withdrew his retirement, and spent it on get-rich-quick schemes.  When those didn't pan out, he REALLY couldn't afford the house, so he got behind on the payments and got an eviction notice.  He went through all sorts of machinations, including bankruptcy, to keep the house.  But without income, he just lost it again.  The sheriff was coming to evict him on a Tuesday.  My brother showed up with some friends to move him out to his mother's house, which he inherited free and clear, on a Saturday.  My dad refused to go.  He believed God would miraculously bring my mother back, and that God would supernaturally prevent him from losing the house.

He has been living in my grandmother's house for the last 20 years.

The times he has told me he was supernaturally prevented from succeeding, supernaturally prevented from looking for a job, the times he has told me that God was going to miraculously restore everything...well, let's say if I had a dime for each one I would not be going on public assistance now.

People who successfully ignore reality for over 25 years get REALLY good at it.  

During those 25 years he neglected his health, including the diabetes he refused to treat.  As a result, our interaction today was taking him to the retinal specialist, who injected his eye with medicine to stop the bleeding.  But whenever I asked him to go to the eye doctor, offered to drive him, offered to pay for it, he said no.  God was going to restore his sight.

When we were there, he couldn't read the E.  The big one.  At the top of the chart.  Yet he sat there in that examining room and told me that he was going to go back and live in his house.  Ah, the house.  I will get to the house.

He didn't brush his teeth during those 25 years, with the result they are rotting brown stumps in his mouth.  It is even difficult to be in a car with him, as the stench of the rot kind of wafts into the front seat from the back.  We haven't dealt with those yet, although I did get a statement of care from the dentist.  $8,700.00.  But God was going to restore those too.

When he was going through really lean periods, I sent him groceries, since I lived over 300 miles away at the time.  The next time I visited, I got them back.

Now, the house.  There was an article in Reader's Digest this past year about collectors.  How they fill their houses with stuff.  To the point they have to sleep in their yards.  Well, he wasn't THAT bad.  His bed was clear.  But imagine a 2100 sqf house filled with garbage.  Not rotting banana peels, but broken chairs.  Crutches.  Lawn mowers.  Vacuum cleaners.  Books.  Clothes.  Coffee cups.  Magazines.  Imagine stacks of this stuff six feet high, with little paths running in between.  It took two hours yesterday to clear the entry way so we could fully open the door.    

I spent years worrying, if I couldn't get him on the phone, that he was dead in that house and no one knew.  I agonized over him driving his motorcycle, asking myself how I would feel if he killed someone, or worse, caused someone to kill him, leaving them with the guilt and possible criminal charges?  

Finally, last year, I got a reprieve.  He stopped at a convenience store because he didn't feel well, and the clerk called EMS.  The hospital said he had the beginnings of dementia and refused to release him to anything but a facility.  They also took away his license.

I found a facility near where my brother works.  He improved SO MUCH, that we decided to try him at home with a home health nurse.  Stupid, with the house the way it was, but he really was a LOT better.  But the nurse said he couldn't stay, and when I walked into the kitchen and found a burner on full blast and nothing on it, I agreed.  I found one by his house, hoping to move him into assisted living at a later date.  He is on Medicaid, so things are complicated by the utter lack of finances on both our parts.  (Part of my teaching in the Middle East was to try and get some money to take care of him.  Boy, did that one backfire big time!)  He kept trying to walk home.   So while I was in Egypt my brother moved him to a facility much farther away.  His friends can't visit easily, but the prospect of walking home is daunting, even to him!  Plus, he is in the locked ward.

He doesn't want to be there.  I don't want him there.  But he still has this idea that he is going home.  He told me this today.  I have asked him to give me power-of-attorney to sell the house.  If he would, I would work to get him someplace less restrictive, because that would tell me he has accepted his reality and is willing to deal with it.  No dice.

When he entered the facility, Medicaid placed a lien upon his house.  They get to recover their costs before he can make a profit on its sale or I can inherit.  Well, the house isn't worth that much.  The year he has spent in the facility so far has pretty much eaten any profit on the house.  But in the meantime, it is sitting empty, a liability to all in the neighborhood.  

Okay, there is still more, but I promised my son I would stop at 10:30 and watch a movie.  To be continued. 

As I sit here,all I can think and say is OMG!  I feel as if,maybe it is the way you write,that I am right there seeing all of this!  I totally feel for ya!  Trying to deal with Medicaid or Medicare can only be short of screaming at the top of your lungs in sheer fustration!  They're there though with their "hands" out to either be paid or expect to be payed(?) for whatever they think they should be payed for. Also with your father's "unique" thought of God will provide or take care of this mess,is so much like the thought that I have of my father,he'd throw his kids or anyone for that matter a weighted life preserver if you were drowning!  I wish you all the best with dealing with all the garbage nonsense that alot of these burocratic agencies throw at you.  Also your father.  He sounds like a very talented man that has a gift for dealing with reality.  I don't mean that in any way sarcastic or malitious(spelling?)

You are welcome. Thank you on the correction.  It's alittle tough to think that early in the morning and spell words not often used!!
Please think on that book.  I truly believe it not only would be good "therapy",but you write with such openess,it is refreshing!  I did alot of creative writing in highschool and further on in my adult life.  It truly is a privledge to expand on the ability to read,write and share with others.  Just my opinion .

Thanks, BB.  You have no idea what seeing the words, "He is mentally ill", just matter-of-factly down there in black and white (or was it black and purple?) did for me.  You are right.  I cannot argue or fight with him.  He isn't capable of rational actions, and the fact that he looks and sounds reasonable so much of the time doesn't mean he is.

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

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!!

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.
   

   

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.

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.

As an update, I have my kitties!  The therapist we saw told my husband to let me deal with my cousin.  I told him the whole story, and said I would talk to my kids about whether they even wanted the cats anymore.

We all agreed that the joy of having them back was kind of gone, so I told him he could keep them.  But he told me that he thought we needed them as a rallying point.  So I met him in Hillsboro, which is about halfway between our houses, and got them.

The kids were overjoyed!  We agreed that we all feel...completed, somehow. 

Of course my husband says "He talked to his lawyer, and found out he was wrong."  Actually I had talked to a lawyer, and the situation was more iffy than I had thought.  But of course, the ... person...I married has to be a victim, and his victimizer must be evil.  So it can't possibly be that this was a good man with a false impression who had mercy.  Oh no.  And it CERTAINLY can't be that I was right, and listening to other people's side and then telling them yours is better than threats and force and bluster.  No, it has to be that he was right and what he did worked and my cousin just needed time to realize it. 

Just like my stepfather can't be a weak man who let his fear and dislike of my husband get away from him.  Now I am not justifying what he did; it was uncalled for and wrong, even if it had taken place only in front of my husband.  But as a partial explanation, pretty much all of my family dislikes my husband because of how he treats me and the children. 

My stepfather believed he lets me shoulder far too much, and he spent a month watching how I was the one who put the kids in school and talked with them and looked for work and functioned while my husband stayed in the bedroom on his computer.  Now partially my husband stayed in the bedroom because my stepfather dislikes him and the feeling is mutual.  But he was NOT looking for work in there.  He did not seriously look for a job until late July.  He did not complete even one application until mid-June.  (We returned April 31st.)  As soon as he did, he got a job and as soon as he got a job I got a job.  So I think my stepfather's accusation was motivated, in part, by the fact that I rely on my mother, because I cannot rely on the man I married. 

But my husband believes he is evil and the source of all his problems now.  We unloaded the last of our storage facility this weekend, and everytime we found something broken it was "A. did that."  Our difficulty with my cousin?  A.'s fault.   I finally said, "A. is not Satan!  He doesn't have that kind of power."  My husband said, "Satan has no power."  I said, "He has the power you give him."   

But enough of that.  I have to get ready for work.  I might type more later.  In the meantime, rejoice with me.  I have my cats back!

I understand why my husband thinks I am unstable.  Yesterday we went to the therapist.  He spoke with my husband first, and spent very little time with me.  He told me we both, but especially my husband, have been through so much it is like we are suffering from post-traumatic-stress disorder.  I had never thought about that.

So he asks me how its going and I said awful.  My husband doesn't talk to me.  He said he didn't need to talk right now.  I said, "No, not even good morning!"  I can always tell when my husband is upset by the way he breathes, and he breathes like that ALL THE TIME. 

So the therapist told me that in the environment where my husband grew up, anger was punished, so he learned to repress it.  But you can only repress anger so long before it explodes.  He said I am the opposite.  True.  My emotions are OUT THERE.  When I have them, they are very strong.  But then they go away.  So I can be furiously angry one minute, and happy the next.  My son is the same way.  My husband thinks we both are bipolar.

Anyway, the therapist said that my husband uses my emotions as a catharsis, a way of releasing his own.  But sometimes my emotions are too much, and right now they are too much. 

I told him the only place I felt normal was work.  He asked how was work.  I said, "Oh God."

I found out yesterday that I am in one of the toughest schools in the state, and you guys know Texas ain't small!  We have the highest rate of teen pregnancy for a middle school (6TH - 8TH), and the highest rate of children with incarcerated parents.  When I said this, both the therapist and I began laughing.  I mean, you have to laugh sometimes.

To top it off, I am department head and one of my team has been gone over two weeks straight!  Someone said she is dealing with some major issues.  Honey, if she has been dealing with more issues than me those are some major issues!  My butt's been at work.

Anyway, yesterday was HORRIBLE!  The kids were awful, and I gave my first two referrals.  I battled tears all day.  I knew I was in no emotional shape to go to a faculty meeting, where we were going to discuss our issues, because we've got downtown looking at us HARD. 

Sure enough, there was drama there.  One of the faculty members got up and said she'd had enough, she was resigning, and walked out.  She is married to our principal's boss, and felt that she was being blamed for our current scrutiny.  She wasn't, but I can see where she felt it.

That did it.  I started to cry right there in the meeting.  Got it under control pretty quickly, and no one said anything, but I went up to my room and SOBBED.  And the thing that upset me the most was that I couldn't share with my husband, or get any comfort, because he can't handle my emotions right now. 

But of course he calls me while I am in the middle of all this.  I could have not answered the phone, but he had open house last night and was at school until 8:30 p.m. and he had told me in the morning that he wanted to leave early.  So I figure if I don't answer he'll be mad because I was ignoring him and God knows I don't want that.  But I won't answer again because when I talked to him I became HYSTERICAL, because no matter what I did it was the wrong thing.  Share and I am burdening him with emotions he can't handle.  Not share and I am holding out and not committed. 

Next time I'll call my mommy.

AAAARGH!

I was typing in the dark, accidentally hit escape, and lost EVERYTHING!  

GRRRRRR!

What I get for typing in the dark, I suppose.

Well, in a nutshell, I was telling you guys that I have had better days since the last one.  The children have been lovely.  I think they knew if they weren't, SOMEBODY was leaving.

The faculty member who stormed out of the meeting is in fact gone.

They moved one special ed teacher to cover her class, and another to cover the 7th grade Reading teacher, now on her third week of absence.

I heard yesterday she has checked herself back into the hospital.  

Naturally there has been a lot of resentment toward this woman, although not so much now that we know she is hospitalizing herself.  Back when we knew NOTHING, except that she was choosing not to show up, there was quite a bit.

But I said this to my team.

When someone has a medical condition, whatever it is, there is the expectation of privacy if they don't choose to share.  And whether they do or not, the administration has privacy constraints.  In addition, the person has civil rights.  You cannot fire someone simply because they are sick.  So what seems as silence and inaction on the part of the administration may not actually be silence and inaction.  I told them that downtown was aware of the situation, and that everything that COULD be done was being done.  

But of course the teachers' issue is that we are now five weeks into the school year and these students have only had true instruction for six days.  I told them I knew that sometimes all the choices are bad.  But if the district gets it wrong, and gets hit with a lawsuit, there will be a lot more children harmed than just our seventh grade.  

My mother, a former superintendent, says these situations are THE MOST difficult to deal with.  And you can see how they would be.  On the one hand, you want to support your employee, and you certainly DON'T want to punish or cause suffering for a condition they cannot help.  On the other hand, when they are not there, children suffer, and you cannot leave the kids in limbo.  I don't envy our principal.  I really don't.  

I'll tell you about the part that got deleted, which involved a 14 year old gang member repeating the sixth grade for the third time who impregnated his 13 year old seventh grade girlfriend, another time.

Well, since you asked...

My husband and I had a disagreement after our last session.  The therapist had said I would get my time, but I didn't.  So I was upset.  Which of course upset my husband because it was just another example of my selfishness.  In our sessions, I talk and he doesn't.  When the therapist asks, "How do you feel about that?" he just waves his hand and says he doesn't know what to say.

Anyway, the therapist's take on things is that I am too emotional.  I overwhelm my husband.  I have also been selfish, and taken advantage of his giving nature.  I am sure all of that is true.  But since I didn't get my time, I haven't had a chance to talk about the unreasonable demands, the temper tantrums, the way he can sit in his chair without interacting with anyone for hours or even days. 

Like my daughter's viola lessons.  The orchestra director at my husband's school teaches viola.  He gave my husband his card.  My husband gave it to me.  I cannot find what I did with it.  Will my husband get another one, or contact the man in any way?  No.  I asked if he could get another card.  No, he never sees him.  I asked if he could e-mail him.  He doesn't know his name.  Now of course, the only thing the man would have to do is ask someone, maybe the secretary, "Who is the orchestra director?"  No.  I lost the card, therefore our daughter not having lessons is my fault, and the more time that goes on without her having them the more guilty I am.

Or this weekend.  The kids and I went to stay with my mother because my stepfather was out of town.  We had to arrive after he had gone to sleep, and my husband wanted us to leave before he returned the next evening.  I said that the kids really don't interact with him much in the evening, since they watch tv in their bedroom then, and suggested he come get us at 8:00 Sunday morning while my mom and A. were at church.  Frankly, I wanted to spend a full day, and not have to leave after spending only a few hours or stay up all night because we spent more than a few hours.  My husband agreed. 

Now this was a test on my part.  My husband is NOT a morning person, and he would have had to get up at 6:00 a.m. to get there by 8.  I figured if he was really committed to this, "My children will not be in the same room with this man until they are 18" stuff, he'd be there at 8:00.  He wasn't.  And I told my mother, and my children, that I am not going to ask anyone to hide in a bedroom or garbage like that.  We were going to behave normally.  And we did, until it was time to go. 

The procedure is that my husband calls when he is almost to the driveway, and he turns the car around so that he isn't facing the house and can't inadvertently see anyone, and my mother and her husband stay in the house while we walk outside and put our stuff in the trunk.

And according to the therapist, I am the selfish and unreasonable one.      

    I haven't posted in a while, and since I have some very important work I'm trying to avoid, I'll post now.  I've been thinking I needed to update things anyway.

The Therapist.

    We started splitting the time, 30 min. each.  That let me get things off my chest, but we were making no progress in the relationship.  So we went to 15 min. each, 30 min. together.  The therapist said it was like each of us knew we had to change, but was saying "you first."  Finally the therapist said something that convinced me I had to be the one to shut up, so I did.

    And we were off, into the realm of what has been bothering my husband all these years.  And I am listening, and realizing that what I am being told is that all these years I haven't been enough, and I'm still not, and I am going to have to give up even more of myself to become what he needs me to be.  And the therapist is saying "we're making progress" and my husband feels like "we're making progress" and the only thing that has really changed is I am taking it in silence rather than protesting like I did before.

   But I am figuring this is what I have to do for awhile, and that maybe when my husband feels listened to he will actually start listening to me.  

    BUT THEN...

The New Realization.

    My mother called to tell us about a job possibility.  That was January 9.  She had gotten a call from someone looking for a Director of Technology, and she told them about my husband.  Now this was right during the time of final exams and grades and whatnot, but I am figuring with as badly as my husband hates where he is, he will do whatever he needs to do to get out, including take a day off from work to work on his resume.

Wrong.

    He doesn't send the guy an e-mail, give him a call, or any sort of contact until January 15, one week later.  Now I knew that part of the slow down was that he was having trouble finding time to update his resume and letter of interest.  So I said, on Friday the 11th, that the job posted on the website wasn't the same as my mother had told us about, and that maybe he could send an e-mail asking about the discrepancy.  I figured that could show interest and initiative while giving him time to update the other stuff.  He didn't do it.

    By the time he DID send an e-mail with his resume, one week later, I was furious.  And I realized something.

    For years I have told myself that he was fragile, that the abuse of his childhood made him reluctant to face life.  I realized a long time ago that this might be a lie I tell myself to cover the fact that he is simply LAZY.  But I had a new realization.  It doesn't matter.

    It doesn't matter whether he can't or whether he won't.  WHY he doesn't isn't as important as the fact that he doesn't.  

    I want a man who if he says he will go get resume paper while I am driving the four hours to make it to the job fair next morning so we don't have to stay up until ungodly hours printing resumes after I arrive, actually does.  Who repairs the washer within weeks of its breaking down, not months.  I want someone I can count on.  And I'm not talking about mindreading, or realizing that the dishes in the sink don't wash themselves.  I am talking about a clearly realized, clearly verbalized need (and not necessarily by me) to which he commits and then doesn't carry through.  

    About 90% of the time.  

    Actually, since we've been attending therapy, it's probably down to 60%.  But for how long?

The New Realization, continued.

    Anyway, I realize that even if he changes in the most important ways he won't change in all of them, and that this is one where he probably won't.  So I quit scheduling appointments.

    He figures this out and schedules a solo appointment.  The therapist tells him that if he sees him solo, we can't come for marriage counseling anymore.  I'm like, okay.  So my husband schedules a solo appointment for me when he confirms his.

The New Therapist.

    I thought about not keeping it, but then I thought, hey, I've got a few issues, so why not?  So I saw her yesterday.  And I told her this.

    My family takes the position that I have been emotionally abused and they are done watching.  They no longer want my husband in their lives.

    I looked up emotional abuse and many of the behaviors don't fit.  My husband has never tried to control me through money or sex, he doesn't put me down in public or private, and he has been supportive of all my plans and dreams.  He moved to Houston when I wanted to go, changed districts when I asked him to, and quit a dream job so we could go overseas.  

    But...he blames me for killing his career and ruining his life.  He blames me for where we live now, claiming it was never where he wanted to be, though he didn't tell me so at the time.  He blames me getting upset about not contacting the man about the job.  He says he knew all along they were going to decide not to create the position, which we found out about three weeks after he sent the e-mail.  I said, "But you've been talking like the job was real."  He said, "I was trying to psych myself up."  And I said, "So you're blaming me for RE-acting as if the job was real, when you ACTED as if the job was real?"

    But this is the kind of thing he does, and not just big stuff either.  He twists everything so it is my fault.  And my family says, no more.  And so do I.

In the meantime, I will have to give up my "family of origin" as the therapist put it.  He says I don't have to, but you can't refuse to see all of them, say hurtful things about them when they're mentioned, and expect that my relationship with them will stay close and warm.

Yes, he has some legitimate areas of criticism, but the truth is he is hostile to all families, including his own.  We can't watch movies about relationships; he can't tolerate them.  I got him to see "Good Will Hunting" and gripped his arm the whole time after I realized it was about an abused mathematician because I thought he would walk out.  And he nearly did. 

As the first therapist said, hostility causes you to look for slights and hurts where none may be intended.  This is what he did with my family.  In spades.  And of course he found them. 

My family says I have spent years excusing him.  He says they have spent years accusing him.  My therapist says my situation is intolerable.  "You can't walk out on 20 years of marriage.  You can't give up your family of origin.  None of this is fair to you." 

Amen, lady.

(((((hugs))))  You gave it yout best shot.  No one deserves the crap you've been though.  After 20 years he's not going to change.  Leave him, do yourself the favor.

I didn't find the Emotional Blackmail book, but I did find another one.  I still want to find the EB book, because I think it will help me understand and combat it.  When my husband tried "discussing our relationship" I was able to view his comments through that lens.  It helped a lot, even with my limited and imperfect knowledge.  

But I LOVE the book I got.  It is called "Too Good to Leave/Too Bad to Stay" and it is about relationship ambivalence, which is also exactly what I have been going through.  It takes the view that you must either "stay in your relationship, recommitting to it free of doubt, free of holding back, free at last to pour your love and energy into the relationship and get back everything there is to get from it" or "leave your relationship, finally liberating yourself from it, free of confusion, free of pain, free at last to get on with a new and better life."  The worst thing, according to the book, is to stay in the relationship but not be fully committed and always thinking about leaving.  

It has 35 questions you are to ask yourself.  I won't go through all 35, just the first four, and I'll kind of paraphrase.

#1.     When things were at their best, were they really good?  The implication here is that if the relationship wasn't all that good to begin with, you can't hope for much improvement.  My answer was yes, they were really good.

#2.     Has there been more than one incident of physical abuse or agression?  Interestingly, it says that many couples have one incident of grabbing, striking, or other physical aggression.  Either the man is horrified and never does it again, or the woman makes it clear that if it happens again she is gone.  In my case, both were true, and my answer was no.  

#3.     Have you already made a concrete committment to leave?  The book distinguishes fantasizing (checking out apartments on the internet) from action (actually renting one.)  Again, no, not concrete.

#4.      If God said it was okay to leave, would you feel tremendously relieved and have a strong sense that finally you could end your relationship?    

The analogy the book uses here is of the mother chimpanzee who cannot put down her dead baby.  I found that idea very freeing.  This baby is dead!  I don't have to worry about why it isn't growing, why it isn't responding to treatment, why nothing seems to work.  It's dead!  The stuff that happened this summer was an explosion of putrescence from a rotting corpse.  You don't revive dead babies.  You bury them.

And then of course, you figure out why the baby died and what your share was in killing it.  

Oddly enough, before I got the book, a close friend said that the only way she saw of my husband and I functioning was to forget the past.  She said we both needed to just draw a line and say "We aren't rehashing the past and we aren't using it against one another anymore."  We should draw a line in the sand and say "Here is where we begin, and anything that came before this is off-limits."  She didn't think my husband was someone who could do that.  I said I wasn't sure I was someone who could do that.  

But it kind of relates to the dead baby analogy.  It would be burying one baby and creating another one together.  That I might could do.  Maybe.  I don't know.  If his therapy worked and he was a different man...

There were other questions, and some made it clear to me how dead the baby is.  

#12    Do you feel willing to give your partner more than you're giving already, and are you williing to do this the way things are between you now, without any expectation of being paid back?  Uh, no.

#13    Do both you and your partner want to touch each other and look forward to touching each other and make efforts to touch each other?    I remember this summer learning how to sleep on the very edge of the bed (you can bend your leg and hang one knee over without too much problem) so I wouldn't have to touch him, wearing earplugs so I wouldn't have to hear him, and with a pillow positioned so I couldn't see him or smell his breath.  When we got our own place, we got seperate beds in the same room.  He moved to the living room a few months ago.  

In the section on forgiveness, the question (not a numbered guideline) was asked, "Was your crime really so objectively terrible that anyone would have difficulty forgiving and forgetting (which is what he is saying) or are you just an ordinary fallible human being who screwed up only to discover that your partner has some sick need to hold on to grievances (what I am saying.)  My crime?  Having the objective, while he and my stepfather were screaming at one another, of getting them to stop.  My first thought was not that my stepfather was wrong, not that my husband needed defending, not even that my children didn't need to witness the scene.  My thought was that my mother had just had a heart attack and this couldn't be good for her.  So instead of yelling myself, telling my stepfather off, and leaving the house I tried to get them to knock it off.  Then instead of going to my husband I went back to the woman who had had a quadruple bypass less than a week before, who was one day out of the hospital, and tried to calm her down.  

To me, an ordinary crime of human fallability.  I see where it sent the message he wasn't important, especially when I talked to my stepfather later and STILL didn't tell him he couldn't say such things.  That crime I will admit to.  I have apologized for it, but not for the other.  I take the position that it was not wrong to think of the sick woman lying in the bed rather than the healthy man causing the scene, and I won't say I'm sorry for trying to stop it rather than participating.  Apology without change is meaningless, and given the same set of circumstances I would act in the same way. 

He takes the position that my mother wasn't dying and I knew it so the excuse that I was worried about her and what the two of them screaming at one another would do to her won't wash.  What is REALLY true is that nothing and no one is as important to me as she is, not even my own children, and I am willing to sacrifice anything and everything to her, when the person I SHOULD have committed to was him and what I should have done was defend and support him.  He cannot forgive me for my betrayal, when I turned my back on him and my children and walked away to go to her.

I knew, when I stayed and took care of her instead of driving back with him, that I was ending our relationship.  I knew what he wanted me to do.  I couldn't do it.  I wouldn't do it.  I had hoped and prayed he was big enough to understand why.  Apparently he isn't.

There is some history that supports this belief that she is more important than he is.  I won't go into it here, but suffice to say that I saw him as a damaged man and I didn't trust his judgment and I wasn't discreet enough.  I didn't hide the times I asked her advice, and he has resented it for years.  He tells me I won't do anything he recommends unless she agrees with him.  Not quite true, but close.  I can see where that sent a message of unimportance and irrelevance.  I do understand that I also had a share in killing our relationship. 

But now I have a horrible fear.  What if the relationship isn't dead for him?

I am sane.  I have to cling to that.  I read on the internet about crazy making, about verbal abuse, emotional blackmail, borderline personality disorder, and so much of it speaks to me!  I am sane.  I am not crazy.  He tells me I'm selfish.  He tells me I'm a bad parent.  He tells me I'm incapable of emotional committment.  He tells me ...Oh!  The things he tells me.  So much that you have to wonder what kind of saint, or martyr, he had to be to put up with me.  But he doesn't tell me all the time.  Oh no.  And he makes it sound so reasonable, so possible.  He admits he has problems.  But haven't I contributed to them? he says.  

But larded in among the oh, so reasonableness is pure BS.  I'm the one who tried to seperate him from his family?  I'm the one who's insisted on his maintaining a relationship.  I know that.  I remember that.  I cling to that memory as proof that for some reason he needs me to be evil.  I guess if I am evil he is good?  A victim?  A martyr?  But as he threw it up to me how I have downgraded him and his family and rejected them all, I clung to those memories.  Here's the most recent.

When his neice was expecting her baby I wasn't invited to the shower.  I knew it was a payback for boycotting her wedding, and I accepted it.  He was furious; he said because in slighting me they slighted our daughter.  He refused to acknowledge the baby's birth, and swore he would never acknowledge it existed.  I had to insist we visit, and bring a gift when we did so.  He has a relationship with his sister now because I did that.  So the stuff about my rejecting and seperating...?  I have yet to refuse to visit his mother.  He quit visiting mine more than eight years ago.

He lies to me.  He tells me he wants things, but when they don't work out tells me he never wanted them, he was just catering to my selfishness.  I am not crazy.  He lies.  He lies, and he restructures the past, and he makes things so I am the one at fault, and he says things he doesn't even mean just because he's angry and he knows they'll hurt.  He lies, and then blames me for not loving him enough to see past them, because clearly if I loved him ENOUGH then I would realize he was giving me what I wanted and would know telling me it's what he wants too is a lie which I can't see because I don't love him enough but any person capable of committment would...

So I have to cling to the idea that if some of it is BS, all of it is BS.  But it is hard.  Especially on a day like today, when everything goes wrong.  The problem is I don't know who I am anymore.  Am I the horrible, screaming person I was today, or was that because of the almost intolerable stress I live under?  Who am I when I'm not walking a tightrope through eggshells?  How much of me is real, and how much his creation?  I can't remember who I used to be, and to say the bad parts of me are because of him is too easy.  When he is gone, will I still be unstable?  

As I remember my childhood, and think about my behaviors then, I am ashamed to admit that the explosive temper has been with me my entire life.  I leash it, but at times like this, when I am under constant stress, it gets away from me.  So clearly I have to gain some anger management.  But oddly enough, my anger is not a problem he complains about.  Either it isn't that big of a problem, or my having the same problem he does gives him permission to have it.  That's probably it.

But I will say it again, because I need to hear it.  I am sane.  When I can read a checklist of the behaviors of emotional blackmail, or verbal abuse, or crazy making, or borderline personality disorder, and go..."That's it!  That's my life!", then I am not the crazy one.  And when he tells me that even after getting therapy while being seperated this summer he doesn't see us getting back together, I can think "Thank goodness."

I asked him what he wanted me to do.  He said that we had talked about doing something for our daughter's birthday.  Okay, we had.  In just those vague of terms, doing something for her birthday.  Nothing about what.  Nothing about when.  My mother said if it was going to be a problem we could cancel, because my daughter probably wouldn't have a good time.  I told her it was too late.  I had already committed the crime by not putting him first.  She said, "You're seperating.  Why should you consider him first?"  My thoughts exactly.

He's been very clear he's leaving at the end of the school year.  I don't know what I am supposed to do.  Beg him not to go?  Say I'll change?  He keeps saying that I want to be the victim, the only one who suffered in the relationship.  If the relationship is ending, why does that matter?  We can each trot off with whatever lies we need to tell ourselves, and we'll only have a problem if we try to have another relationship.  I am so confused.  He talks about saving the marriage in one breath, and tells me he's leaving in the other.

He told me to quit sending him mixed signals.  I told him tonight that every time I feel myself softening, every time I think we might have a chance, I harden my heart and steel myself from letting him know, because I know that a day like today is coming.  And it always does.

I am not crazy.  I am not crazy.  I am not crazy.  

I am capable.  I am wonderful.  I am valuable.  

I am not evil.  I am human.  I am fallible.  

I am not perfect.  I am forgiven.  

And I am not crazy.

I'm not.


 

I know I should rename this Tex's endless whining, but seriously, so much yucky stuff is happening that if I don't put it somewhere I will EXPLODE!  

I took the job at my current school because I really liked the principal and wanted to work with him.  Now, I have to admit the guy DEFINITELY lacks some skills as a principal, a fact that became more and more obvious as the year went on.  However, he was also SET UP to fail.  There was outright sabotage, some by his staff, more by the central office staff.  

I have been trying to get out of the classroom and into administration since 2002.  In 2003 two jobs came open on my then current campus.  I was not hired for either, and had to watch one administrator bumble around when I UNQUESTIONABLY had greater skills.  I stuck it out one more year and then went overseas.

December 2006 the secondary principal of that school was demoted, and I had good reason to expect I would be placed in the position.  No dice.

February 2007 the elementary principal resigned for the next school year and I was slated to replace her.

April 2007 we had to leave the school and the country.  Bye, bye principalship.

October 2007 the principal of my school tells me an AP might be leaving and he wants me to replace her.

December 2007 she is demoted and they choose not to fill her position.

February 2008 my principal tells me he is getting an instructional specialist position the next year and he wants it to be me.

Today my principal is fired.

I am so angry for so many reasons.

Not the least of which is that, again, I have to watch a position that I virtually held in my hands...vanish.

Why does my life remind me of potato chips?

Seriously.

As I ranted and raged at God, I kept thinking of potato chips.  Is it because they are so easily crushed, and that is how I feel?  

I don't know.

Finally an entry that isn't whining!  

I am having trouble sleeping because I am just so high from the news I got today.  Our TAKS results came in.  For you non-teaching non-Texans, that's what we call our state standardized accountability test.  My guys scored 90%!  One of the highest scores in the history of the school!  90% puts you in the top category.  If all subjects do that you are called exemplary and you get to put a banner on your school.  There is also funding that goes to exemplary schools that doesn't to others.

Now my schoool will not be exemplary, nor recognized.  The 6th grade Math scores were at 46%, and you have to get 50% to be even acceptable.  But you get to average the scores between the grade levels.  Like in my department, 8th grade scored 84% and I scored 90%, so the fact that the 7th scored 67% (acceptable is 70% in Reading) doesn't matter.  However we had a LOT of upset in 7th grade, and basically the students got only a half year of instruction.  I told the teacher that 67% in half a year wasn't bad at all.

Anyway, the math scores of the other grade levels weren't that high.  8th grade is a Student Success Initiative grade, which means if the student doesn't pass TAKS s/he doesn't advance to the next grade level.  Because the test is so important, they get two tries.  Our 8th grade got 44% on their first try.  We don't have the results of the retake yet.  I don't remember 7th grades results, but they weren't high enough that we KNOW they will compensate for the other two.

Now you teaching Texans will be saying, okay, that's good but nothing really to get high about.  Here's what makes this victory so very sweet.

My campus is 99% minority, 95% economically disadvantaged, with one of the highest rates of students with incarcerated parents and teen pregnancy in the state.  In addition, you always have some grades that are rougher than others.  I have been told by more than one teacher at that school that it doesn't GET rougher than this year's sixth grade.  And I got THOSE KIDS to pass the TAKS at 90%.

I tried to become an administrator before I went overseas.  When I figured out no one was going to make a music teacher, which I was at the time, an administrator because music isn't a TAKS subject I got an additional endorsement and tried to become a Reading teacher.  I had MULTIPLE interviews where I was told, "You're a music teacher.  What do you know about teaching kids how to read?"  Apparently, A HECK OF A LOT!    

This also was sweet.  The 6th grade writing teacher is in her second year of teaching.  She told me that the way she and I taught this year was COMPLETELY different from the way she and Ms. Davis taught last year.  She said last year they drilled and drilled and drilled and everything was TAKS strategies from the word go.  And she said, with a note of wonder in her voice, "This year, we just taught."  Again, non-teaching non-Texans won't understand, but you have a significant number of teachers tell you they can't do fun, interesting lessons because they have to focus on TAKS.  Hah!

I am vindicated on SOOOO many levels!

And though it is petty and small of me, I am glad because of this too.  I applied for an assistant principal job at my school.  Ms. Davis was hired instead of me.  I understood why.  She was a known element who achieved an 88% pass rate last year.  I was an unknown.  But it rankled because I was fully certified and Ms. Davis was not, and according to state law the certified candidate gets hired over the non.  So the district broke the law to hire her.  I could have fought it, but that's the kind of battle you lose even if you win.  

Unfortunately Ms. Davis, in addition to being a very capable teacher, was also bi-polar, and like many bi-polars she did not take her medication consistently.  As one teacher put it, "You never know who is going to show up for work, the nice Ms. Davis or the mean Ms. Davis."  She was demoted mid-year and the district chose not to replace her.  So I AT LEAST wanted to equal her.  And I did!

Now the scores may drop, because there is some adjusting that needs to be done.  There is something called a "snapshot" day.  Whatever students are on your campus on snapshot day get credited to you.  Students who aren't don't.  For example I had a student who arrived literally THE DAY BEFORE THE TEST.  She passed, but unquestionably that was not due to anything I did.  So she will be taken out of my 90%.  Other students who were there and have gone to other schools, like the three girls who were smart as whips but couldn't keep their hands out of teachers' purses so they are now in alternative school, will be credited to me.  But if any of them failed TAKS, it was from spite.

So now, when I go for job interviews, I have the proof of what I did.  But of course they are going to want to know how I did it, so I can show everyone else.  I am trying to think about that.  I haven't come up with any hard and fast conclusions except for this.  Honest to God, it was beleiving they could do it, and telling them so.  

How, how, HOW did I manage to wash my son's cell phone...AGAIN?!

Grrrrr!  I spent 45 min. on a post, then when I went to post it lost my internet connection and the post!  Oh well, I guess it wasn't meant to be read. 

I was helping my unconscious mind process.  It gave me such a weird dream, and when I couldn't go back to sleep I figured it was asking for help.  Typing helped me process, a bit.  The only conclusion I have come to is that I have to talk to my husband about his intentions this summer. 

And that my subconscious wants me to leave him.

texian.traveler wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2008 at 5:55am:



I hate when that happens

Jerry

I arranged to attend a PBS convention this summer, and I am also attending the TCWSE convention.  I found out I was going to the PBS one the week before school was out, and TCWSE maybe a month before that.  I thought I was having surgery before both, but had enough trouble scheduling it that I wasn't able to get it till after, which really is a good thing because I don't have to mess with crutches while there.  

Meanwhile T and I haven't talked about what he is doing over the summer in months.  And I realize that I haven't made any arrangements for a family member to be there after my surgery, which is assuming he will be there, and that is not fair since we had decided he was leaving.  (As an aside, I wish I could break this habit of switching to present tense when I'm typing these things.  Okay, present tense it is.  I hope.)

So the last week of school I ask T whether he is going to be there.  I mean, I didn't want to ask him to be there, because that is using him and sending mixed messages.  On the other hand, asking him NOT to be there is rejection and I didn't want that.  Plus if my children want to be there then he kind of has to be.  So I simply asked if he was.  He told me he would think about it.

This is a common occurence.  When I am trying to finalize something that he doesn't want to deal with, he asks for "think time."  Think time then extends a substantial period, in this case two weeks, and then when I ask again several variations occur.  One, I get criticized for pressuring him.  Two, I get criticized for asking him at the last minute.  (That's what happened this time, even though my surgery was 20 days in the future.)  Three, I get criticized for not having the patience to wait for his answer, which is then given with a bad grace.  Four, I get told he is still thinking.  (See One.)  The extended period of uncertainty is also my punishment, because he knows I am the "get it settled and done" type.

So I ask my mother if she can do it, since I haven't gotten an answer from him.  She talks to my cousin, and together they decide that since she is bringing me some furniture (I don't have a couch) my cousin will come take me to the surgery and take care of me the first few days while getting my house together, then my mother will come for the next few days.  But the question is what are my children going to do?  So I call T and ask if the children want to be there, because it seems to me that the first couple of days I am going to be out of it and there won't be much for them to do besides watch me sleep.  And T lets me have it. 

First he points out that he can't ask the children that question without telling them we are separating.  Okay, I can see that.  I'm out of town until next Wednesday, and we agreed that telling them while at his mother's was not fair to her, so T. was going to bring the kids down the two days I am back in town, and we were going to tell them then.  Oh I forgot the part where I got criticized for making plans like attending the conventions and not asking T what his plans were and whether having the children with him was convenient.  I do see his point, but I am still confused.  His plans consist of job hunting, which I didn't know because he has made it very clear that I am not involved in his future plans and so do not need to know them.

Job hunting is done during the day, and the children are more than capable of taking care of themselves during the day.  They had to when their school got out a week before ours did.  So unless his job hunt plans involve an overnight stay, what is the problem?  And if his job hunt plans do involve an overnight stay, what is he doing looking for a job so far from his family?  I admit to making some assumptions.  He knows we are going to stay in Waco.  I made the assumption that he was looking for work within a reasonable driving distance.  I understand wanting to be ASKED, and I admit to making the assumption that he was going to sit on his rear end the entire summer and not begin looking for a job until August, like he did in 1999 when he quit his job and like he did last year.  If having the children with him wasn't convenient, they could stay with my mother or his.  And as my mother poinlted out, my plans wouldn't have changed even if I had known his.  I didn't point that out to him, but he knows it anyway.

So my question about the children turns into this long diatribe about how he is always an afterthought.  I have never loved him.  He has never come first.  I am using him and I have always used him.  He has been unhappy since the third year of our marriage and he stayed with me only because he had promised to put me through graduate school, but he figured once I had achieved my goal of becoming an opera singer we would go our separate ways. 

Now back when we were dating, I participated in an opera.  Rehearsals were on Thursdays, which were our "date night."  And T told me I was going to have to choose betweent the opera and him.  Okay, he didn't exactly say that.  He started making noises in that direction, and I told him to be VERY SURE he wanted to say that to me, because I might not make the choice he wanted.  And he realized he was being unfair, and he didn't ask it.  I told him that performing was part of who I was, and I wouldn't give it up.

There is a book called "Kingdomality."  It places people into personality types; white knights, black knights, bishops, explorers, etc.  I am a benevolent ruler.  And one thing I remember about that personality type is this.  We prefer CHAOS to stagnation.  I'm not sure what type T is.  But as an example, I was desperately unhappy in my job and I saw no way out.  So I sacrificed EVERYTHING to change it.  I sold my house, my car, moved my family overseas (sacrificing relationships) and ultimately sacrificed my marriage, although honestly this was coming.  Moving overseas just made it come faster, and maybe changed the character a little bit.

T told me several things last night.  Most of them were true.  He said I looked to a job for happiness, that I have always sought happiness in what I did rather than in relationships.  That is true.  He told me that this job I might get, that I have spent eight years trying for, won't make me happy.  I am sure he is right.  He said that he would have fought for me, defended me against any attack.  That is true.  He said I couldn't do the same for him, that to this day I have not told my stepfather he was wrong about T, that T isn't the most worthless man he's met.  It doesn't help, of course, that my stepfather's son, M, is a drug-user who has stolen from his family and molested his daughter, so by saying that my stepfather was placing T below him.  

I told T that I had realized I needed to do that, not for him but for me.  I understand it was a serious lapse on my part, and I cannot expect to have a relationship with any man if I am not willing to defend him.  (I didn't tell T that last part.)  I have asked myself if it had been someone else, someone that I loved, someone who had not failed me over and over, would I have defended him?  And to my shame, I think the answer is no.  So clearly this is something I need to explore.  Maybe T is right.  Maybe I am not capable of love.

I know I find T's definition of love scary.  He says that when you love someone nothing and no one is more important to you.  You will do anything to protect them, anything to defend them.  Their happiness is more important than your own, and worth any sacrifice.  That is what he wants from me.

I don't want that.  I want a companion.  I want someone who enriches my life and makes it better.  I want to know that I enrich their life.  I want to feel that someone can say, "Hey, you're being a jerk right now" and know that they say it for my own good.  I want someone to say, "I would have never known this or felt this without you" and know they mean it.    

I bet T is a white knight.  White knights go charging off, slaying the dragon, getting banged up in the process, and then they come back and don't understand why the villagers don't show more gratitude, and they're bitter they don't get a reward.  Black knights, on the other hand, negotiate clearly and up front what the dragon slaying fee will be, and THEN they go out and slay it.  No bitterness, no recriminations, on to the next village.  Maybe I want a black knight.  I know I don't want a white one.  Especially one that thinks if he faces a dragon for me I should do the same for him and that if I don't I don't love him.  

Anyway, so my question about do the children want to come to my surgery or not turned into two hours of everything that is wrong in our relationship and what I am going to have to do to get him back.  He told me that he would be there for me if I wanted him there, but that I had to say I wanted him there because him being there would be comforting.  Well of course it would, still, but he has also berated me for sending him mixed messages.  If I tell him to be there, without being ready or willing to do all the rest (I devote my life to you, nothing is more important to me than you, I will tell my stepfather off and if that means that I have no relationship with anyone else in my family so be it, because nothing and no one is more important to me than you) I am sending a mixed message.  And I am using him.  But if I tell him not to be there, then I have said unequivocally I reject you, you have no part in my life, you have no more meaning to me.  

All I want is to go our separate ways and still be friends.  Or at least civil.  He tells me that is impossible.  He says that while I will INTEND to be supportive, and not drag him down, I will say little things and gradually over time the children will come to reject him.  He says I won't mean to do it but it will happen.  Probably because he saw that happen with my father.  My mother never said anything.  But his insanity became more obvious when she wasn't there to mitigate it.  And gradually my relationship with him deteriorated into the non-existence we have now.

Anyway, I realized that it wasn't possible for both of us to have careers.  That he needed SO MUCH support to succeed, it would take everything I had.  That he couldn't worry about children, or the house, or anything.  I can have a career by myself, but for him to succeed would take two of us.  And I couldn't do it.  I couldn't devote myself to him; I couldn't sacrifice my dreams for his.

And that is his definition of love.  

And I made the mistake of telling him that I realized both of us couldn't have careers, and that I wasn't willing for it to be him.  So now I am the selfish one willing to sacrifice anything for her career.  Which probably has more truth to it than it should.  But how could I tell him the reason was I saw him as deficient?  Better for him to think me a selfish, grasping b.... than to understand I think him incapable.    

So, what do I do now?

My goal of a civil "I don't recriminate you; you don't recriminate me; we both work together for the sake of the children" separation clearly is not achievable at this point.  I don't know what he hopes to achieve by what he is doing.  Does the "let me convince you how evil, scheming, selfish, and manipulative you are" have a purpose?  Is it to shame me into staying?  Is it to goad me into rejecting him so thoroughly whatever he does afterward is justified?  Is it just to release his pain?

What do I do when every practical conversation about "what are we going to do?" becomes a conversation about a)how I have failed him and b) how I am failing him now and at the end of it I still don't know what we are doing.  Is it going to be like this for the next seven years, until my son is 18?  Of course, at 13 children get to choose who they live with.  Maybe his dad will have gotten enough therapy to be a reasonable being at that point.  God help my son if he hasn't.

We told the children today.  They cried, of course.  And of course, it took about an hour of T yelling at me, telling me how unreasonable I am, telling me why things are unacceptable, reiterating how selfish I am, before we got to what we were going to DO, which was how we were going to tell them.

And something very telling happened.  He always objects to the fact that I make plans and then give him options.  He feels I should consult him at the beginning.  So I said, "Okay, list our options."  He said, "Well, what is going to happen with this?"  I said, "That is still basing what you are going to do off what I am going to do, which is what you are objecting to.  Pretend I have no plans.  Pretend I've never said anything.  What do you see our options as?"  And there was this silence.

He doesn't know what he wants.  He only knows how to object to what I want.  So he tried again, saying something like he couldn't make a plan without more information from me.  And I refused point-blank to give him any.  I had given him my input, and all I got was how it was wrong and I should have never made those kind of plans without him.  So I wanted to know what he thought we should do about how to tell the children without any input from me.  And in the end, he refused to do it.

I told him today I wanted to work on two things in therapy.  One, how do I have a practical conversation with him without getting an autopsy of our relationship?  Two, why didn't I defend him this summer and why have I still not?  I strongly suspect the reasons have less to do with how I felt about HIM and more to do with being a people-pleaser who can't stand to have people mad at her. 

The children tell me they'd rather live with their daddy.  I told them we would decide that when their daddy had a job, and we saw where it was and what kind it was.  I know I was focused on school a lot last year, and the children spent more time with him than me.  I understand I won't be able to do that this year.  Mom tells me that I have lived with irrationality so long, I don't even recognize it when I see it.  I am not worried about him harming the children.  I am worried that if they live with him, irrationality will become the norm.  Case in point, Six Flags. 

I had my foot surgery on the 23rd.  My mom came to stay for the first two days, then my cousin came.  I went back home to Fredericksburg with her because there was no one to take care of me here.  She brought me back on the 29th.  T met me here in Waco with the kids.  My cousin was still here, and T was FURIOUS.  I got all these long text messages about how selfish I was, how unimportant he was to me, etc.  Apparently I didn't remember that he had requested my cousin NOT be there when he arrived.  He asked me, when he was about 10 min. away, if she was still there and I said yes.  Apparently that was my reminder of his request she NOT be there. 

My point was, okay, even if I'm selfish and I don't remember your requests because you're not important to me, you can still do something like call me when you see her truck in the drive and remind me she isn't supposed to be there or send me text message or do SOMETHING besides throw a temper tantrum.

Anway, on Wed. the 25th, two days after my surgery, I got a call that my dad had been admitted to the hospital because his dementia has progressed to the point where he doesn't eat or drink.  He was there over a week.  They sent him home today and I am enrolling him in Hospice.  Once I've done that, I'll call my brother and see if he can get me up to Dallas to say good-bye. 

The hospital originally was calling T, because when we put Dad in the facility we were living with T's mom before going to Egypt.  So he knows about all this.  And once again, he is letting me have it.  I could have prevented this.  I could have done something.  I could have done something about his house.  T looked up all this stuff for me so I could do something and I didn't.  If he procrastinates about jobs, I procrastinate about my dad.  I am teaching my children how to treat their father, which is to ignore him.

And I think my brother is right.  This isn't about love.  It's about control.  How, if he has even an iota of love left for me as he says he does, can he lay that kind of guilt trip on me when my father is dying?  But I didn't do what he wanted, which was get him involved because I can't make it without him, so I got blasted.  Every time something like this happens, it just confirms how right I was to say "enough." 

I started the seperation thinking it could be just that, a seperation.  Not anymore.

Of course T found a way to blame me for bringing the kids to the funeral.  His position was that leaving them out was so potentially damaging, he had to stop me from hurting them in that way.  I called and told him he was wrong to override me like that, that even if it was the wrong decision to make, it was MY decision.  It was his position that it was his father-in-law and it was not just my decision.  Also that the decision was so wrong it was his duty to override it.  

T's position also is that the things he said to me when my father was dying were justified because a) we were estranged and b) it was so contemptible of me not to visit him when he was hospitalized.  He said he just asked himself how I could do that, not visit my dad when he was dying in the hospital.  The despicableness of that act justified him saying those terrible things to me.  And I told him that if he could have seen me after my surgery, he would not be asking that question.  They wouldn't let me get out of bed for three days unless I was using the bathroom.  I couldn't have my foot below my heart for three weeks.  It has only been one week that I could have my foot below my waist without it swelling like a balloon.  I did contemplate going to the hospital, but just didn't see how I could manage it when I couldn't handle crutching to the kitchen to help my neice microwave a hotdog.

When I called him about overriding me at the funeral, he got the vilest he has yet.  He told me he never believed in me.  He told me the reason why my mother, who is quite a big deal in education here in Texas, hasn't helped me get a job as an administrator before is because she doesn't believe in me either.  He told me I was going to crash and burn in my new position as an instructional specialist because I don't have what it takes, and he never thought I did.

I'm waiting to see how he justifies that one.

I had determined that I was not going to mention visiting T unless the kids did.  When we got back from our beach vacation, my son asked "When are we going to see Daddy again?"  So I told him to call him and ask.  And T said he didn't know.

What?

Even if you are looking for jobs out of state, just make the decision to see your kids for Pete's sake.  So I told my son that it wasn't that Daddy didn't want to see him.  I said that Daddy was just so focused on finding a job he couldn't focus on anything else.  My son hasn't mentioned it again, or told me he is hurt.  I hope he isn't.

I went to personnel today.  I told the director how Ms. L had treated me and that we didn't need to be together.  She basically said that if Ms. L said I was deficient then I was. 

Never mind that Ms. L is disliked by most of her faculty.  Never mind that half of them left campus because of her.  Never mind that she mistreated and lied to me. 
Never mind that I have twelve years of outstanding evaluations and recommendations. 
Never mind that the year before, when there wasn't a potential replacement on campus, Ms. L herself gave me an acceptable evaluation.
Ms. L said I was deficient, therefore I am.
And the horrible thing is, she did exactly the same thing to my ex.
He had fifteen years of outstanding evaluations.  One year with her and he hasn't been able to work in the two years since.
My mom says I have to find a way to get her on my side.  I'm not sure I wouldn't rather never make it than think I had to have her help.

My kitty has no teeth.  I haven't seen her yet, but that is what the vet tells me. 

I took her in because her teeth had moved and were protruding out.  You could feel them when you scratched under her jaw.

The vet said she had significant decay and needed a cleaning.  I wasn't surprised.  The smell told me that.  The only surprise came when the vet said it could be a sign of feline leukemia.  (It wasn't, thank goodness.)  So I took her in for the cleaning today. 

I got a call around 9:45 and the vet said there was so much damage she might only have one or two teeth when she came home.  She said that in Siamese, it is unusual but not unknown for the body to reject its own teeth.  Mish is only four, which is really young to have so much tooth loss, so she is one of those whose body does this.

I got a call later around 12:00 and the vet could save none of her teeth.  She will be completely toothless.  I asked if there was anything I could have done and the vet said no.

So one of the questions I have is, do I have to pay for the cleaning or just the extractions?  Since every tooth went in the trash, am I going to be charged for the fact that it was clean when it went in? 

Another question is, how is this cat going to eat?

And the last question is, do cats' lips fall in when they have no teeth, the same way people's do?

I realized that in all that earlier nattering I never said the words. 

I hate Ms. L. 

I really do hate her.

I haven't felt hate since the seventh grade.  I seriously thought that the emotion wouldn't occur again, because everyone's emotions are more intense at that time, and the hate I felt then was the most poisonous, destructive emotion I have ever felt.  I thought I had learned.  I thought I was older, wiser. 

What I feel now isn't as intense as I did then.  It doesn't bother me that she walks the earth, or breathes the same air I do.  But if I could be guaranteed she would fail, be absolutely certain she would not achieve her goals, have her dreams taken from her and shattered, have her current life destroyed, but only at a cost to me, only at the cost of my own, never achieve myself...I just might agree. 

When the harm of another is more important to you than a benefit to yourself, that's hate, and I just now realized it.

*%#&

I found out Ms. L is still at it.  We had a new band director this year.  She forced the old one to retire rather than continue dealing with her.  I had noticed she was having many of the same difficulties with the new one, and I had wondered if she realized that the problem was not the person but the type. 

Anyway, I am helping out on the first day of school and I walk into the band hall.  There is Mr. F, who is (was) the choir director, and he tells me he is the band director now.  So I ask someone what happened to the old one.

I knew there were going to be fireworks between him and Ms. L eventually, but I didn't expect a Fourth-of-July kind of display.  Apparently they had a show down which resulted in him receiving a citation and the issuance of a restraining order.  He resigned in lieu of suspension.

This is the second teacher she has had this kind of experience with.  When, oh when, will the district figure out it isn't the teachers?

Another one bites the dust...

I found out earlier this week that we lost a second teacher.  This one made it the first week of school, but then quit because he said he couldn't stand the disorganization and chaos.  I have never seen anything quite like the start of this year.  I have students coming and going in my classes; Monday was basically the first day of school all over again because I had a completely different schedule and almost all of my students changed periods if not teachers. 

They are going to have to either take away a conference period or assign a second person to the dyslexia program to serve all the students.  Not sure which they will go for.

I care only because I am not thrilled about being the dyslexia person for no extra pay and getting one less conference than everyone else.  Although in actuality few people will get the second conference.  Most will have to sub the extra period on days when we don't have enough, which are most days.  So only having one conference will protect me from that.

I just want out of here so badly.

I remember when I was in C, and I was trying to be an administrator, and I wasn't having any luck, and I am teaching my class, and all of a sudden the knowledge that I was NOT doing what I was supposed to do sweeps over me in a great wave, so strongly that my mind goes totally and completely blank, just as if it were sand wiped clean by the ocean.  I mean, for one second I didn't even know where I WAS, I was so disoriented by the power of that emotion.  And that was BEFORE I had been an instructional specialist and summer school administrator. 

That was over five years ago, and I can still remember the power of that experience.  I don't want to go through it again. 

I look every day, several times a day.

And I wait.

And I pray.

And I wonder if I can combine several low income jobs to replace the one I have.  For truly I would rather be a custodian several times a day than to wait for Ms. L to attack me again. 

Or to watch as she destroys others.

Two down.

How many more to go?

I don't give a flying &*^# what Ms. L wants or needs.  God, if I could destroy her without destroying me I would do it.  If I could get another job that paid equal to this I would do it, even if it meant never teaching or working in education again. 

I look at my reflection and my inner dissatisfaction is all over my face.  And I believe that I am really this sunny happy person but then I think of when this has happened to me before and how bitter and angry I was and I am not sure which me is real.

And I can't blame T's influence because he is gone.  And I can't blame the behaviors learned under T because I can choose not to use them.

But God, how I understand. 

How I understand his desire to harm her, even at a cost to himself.  I understand the people who bring weapons to their workplace and blow everything up before killing themselves. 

They see themselves as both avengers and protectors.  They are avenging themselves on those who destroyed their dreams, and protecting those whose dreams have yet to be destroyed. They are angry.  Deeply, bitterly angry.  Angry at a future from which they see no escape.   

You know how I escaped last time?  I moved to Saudi Arabia.  The knowledge that I was going to a job fair in February got me through November to then.  The knowledge I was leaving got me through the rest of the year.  Up until then was a very black time.  Very black.  I survived, but I honestly believe that if I hadn't gotten the idea of going overseas I wouldn't have. 

What do I have now? 

My daughter said something last night.  She said that when I do theater home seems like home and not just a place I go when I am not working.  And I realized that home hasn't been home for a long time.  Home is where I am when I am not someplace else.  And I don't know what would make it home.

I thought my kids coming back from the summer would do it.  But it didn't. 

Not having to choose between buying school supplies and food might help.  $800 a month.  Between T not having a job and not paying child support and the money I lost going back to the classroom, that is the difference in income this year.  That is where some of the pressure comes from.

But honestly, not all of it.  I just want to do what I do best.  And teaching ain't it.

Lies, lies, lies.  The lies I tell.

I'm fine.

I'm doing good.

I'm just upset about...(something I am upset about but not the real thing.)

Lies.

What would we do without them?

Hate.

I have so much hate.

I have worked all weekend grading papers and realizing that I have taught my students nothing.

And all I feel is hate.

Toward myself for failing them.  Toward myself for not being able to do anything else.  Toward life for keeping me where I am doing what I am doing. 

Hate.

My constant companion.

Texian, I am very worried about your postings.  Having suffered from depression myself and remembering how I felt, I wonder if you are in a deep depression.  Please find someone to help you, as I did.  It is only an imbalance in brain chemicals, and the proper medication will help you feel much better about your self and your life.

Please let me know that you are seeking help.

Thank you guys for being concerned.  I knew better than to read the posts at work, but thank God I wore my crying mascara.  I usually do, just to be on the safe side.

I know I am depressed.  I have been on medication once, when all the world was going to hell (divorce, father dying, foot surgery...all in the same month) but the last time I tried that medication it made me throw up.

And I don't want medication to be the answer.   Because medication means acceptance.

I refuse to accept.

I refuse to accept that I deserve the things that happen to me.  The world seems to be telling me that I don't have value or ability.  When a school that everyone says "Are you sure you want to work THERE?" won't hire you, you must really be trash.  I will not accept that, nor will I medicate myself into acceptance.

I am beautiful, talented, and truly gifted at administration. 

I don't deserve having the job I want and that I am truly good at within my grasp three times, each time having it snatched away.

I don't deserve having to wait six years for something that I have turned my life upside-down to get.  For which I have sacrified money and time and relationships.

I don't deserve having to choose between buying batteries for the smoke alarm and buying food. 

I am the one nobody hires.  After six years it has become my identity. 

I don't deserve it.

And I will not accept it.

I got a call out of the blue for a job I applied for a month ago.  I had given up on it. 

I thought this might be it.

I thought the interview I went on last week was prep for this one.  (It was.)  I thought that I would learn from all the mistakes I made then and not make them.  (I did.)

I thought that the reason I didn't get the other job was because this one, that I wanted more, was waiting for me.

I went to the interview and it was great.  One of the best I've ever had.  I asked them what the ideal qualities for the job would be and they said all the answers to their questions were the right ones.  (Not quite what I asked but okay.)  I even wrote thank-you notes out in the car and took them in after.

They haven't called to check my references.

And when I called today and asked their timeline they said they had a week's worth of paperwork to do.

You don't have to do paperwork to offer the job.  You have to do paperwork to hire.

This is like being tortured.  The jobs appear and I apply and I get called and I think "I'm out of here!" and then I don't get them.  It so resembles when I was pregnant with my son.

I would sleep for an hour and a half.  I would get up and go to the bathroom and then the contractions would start.  I would endure four - six hours of excruciating pain until they stopped.  I would then sleep for another hour and a half and then my daughter would be ready to start her day.

I went nuts.  If I had been a man, the experience would have been called instead of the discomfort of late pregnancy.  The worst part of the experience was each night thinking that this was the end, that I would deliver and it would all stop.  But night after night it never did.

It took all my energy to hide how crazy I was from my daughter and family.  I wasn't successful in hiding it from my husband, and I didn't really try.  I trusted him.  When we divorced, he betrayed that trust by telling me the kids weren't safe with me (13 years later) because of the way I acted during that experience.

This is like that.  Each interview I think it will be over, that my problems will be solved, and each time they never are.  Unlike a pregnancy, however, this doesn't have an end in sight.  Even though I felt like I was in hell and that the pain and torture would never end and I had been pregnant forever and would be pregnant forever, part of me knew that eventually I would deliver the baby. 

But this?  This could go on until the day I die.

I understand they need a man for the job.  If they had a man apply, even if he wasn't as good, they should have hired him.

When you are dealing with a school full of troubled boys and girls you do not need an all-female administrative team.  Especially when the students are older.

I don't know if that's why I didn't get it.  I don't actually know, officially, that I didn't.  But the tone of the principal's voice wasn't right for someone who got it.

I am so tired of trying and failing.  I am so tired of teaching, which I don't want to do.  I am so tired of not being able to afford a movie, or a dinner out, or treats for my students.

I want to be able to look in my refrigerator and know that I can eat what I want and there will be enough money to replace the food that is there.

I don't want to wonder if I print a paper if I am trading food for the ink.

But most of all, I want to be the best I what I do.  And I will never be the best as long as my heart is longing for something else.

Okay, that was a pile of incoherent crap, but the truth is there among the poop.

Speaking of which, I went to a party last night and someone put dye in the cake icing which has resulted in deep green feces, and let me tell you that if that one don't freak ya out and all I can say it I hope the *%^@ stuff comes out of my underwear...

To state things more coherently...
I feel like our daughter has been failed by her father, who has spent the last two years without employment or the ability to truly support her.  (As of this moment, the man owes me over $8,300.)  I just muddled along the last two years but this year I really, really wanted to get a promotion so I could buy her a car.  I will not do anything that relies on his contribution because he is so unreliable, so I tried to get a job that would be equal to his contribution but only relied on me.  In essence, I tried to be both mother and father in a financial sense.  Failure not only meant I could not provide the luxury of a vehicle, but that I could also not provide the basics of food, clothing, and shelter at the level I had been, since my demotion resulted in a loss of $300 per month and his lack of employment meant I also did not get his contribution of $530 a month.  (We have been divorced for sixteen months, and I have gotten child support for eight.  I have never gotten the health insurance though.)

I have watched my daughter choose between having a social life and having a relationship with her dad.  I thought a car would ease that choice.  I thought it would be a necessary step toward independence.  By not getting the job, I feel I have failed her.  She remains trapped, and so do I.

I wrote this down on a paper, but I really need to get rid of the paper since it will be too dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands.




Teachers don't trust each other to implement changes.

Teachers don't trust the district to support them.

Teachers don't trust the principal to support them.  (Ie:  what I teach now I will continue to teach.  If I am deficient I will be supported, not disciplined or removed.)

More and more, the adversarial relationship between teachers and administration becomes evident.

Do your job.  How many times have I heard "Just do your job."  Here is my answer.

Do your job?  Yes, with these conditions.  Do your job without support or direction, with the understanding that improvement is solely your responsibility and only deficiencies will be recognized.

Okay, now I can throw that paper away.