the asylum

Yeah, yeah

2003-12-18T15:34:00.000-08:00

I'm wayyyy behind in posting. I know, I know.

My only lame excuse is that I haven't had internet access at work for a while. And there just hasn't been a whole lot to write about, because things have been going pretty well, overall.

Well, I've got internet again from work now, and yes -- I'm pregnant! So I'll be posting more, really. Something to talk about, anyway.

We haven't been trying to get pregnant... in fact, the opposite, although I admit we've not been trying not to all *that* hard. I've been using NFP, and kinda half-assed. Never did get around to buying a basal thermometer, so just going by CM & dates. Which would be pretty damned safe, except that my perfectly regular cycle wasn't regular this time.

Doh.

See, we had sex on Nov. 29th (our one-year anniversary), which was the last safe day... or about 5-6 days before I would expect to ovulate. Two days later I had all the signs of ovulation. I didn't think much of it, in terms of possible pregnancy. I was just like, "Oh, I ovulated early, that's weird."

I started getting depressed as hell a week or so ago. Well, I figured it was just another bout of depression, restarted my Prozac, and then started getting nauseous. I assumed that was the Prozac, since it can cause nausea, although it never did for me before.

And Steve, as he writes below, brought out the jar of garlic. I almost vomited on him, and I kept smelling it for a good half hour after he closed up the jar and I got away from it. He insisted I was pregnant, I swore I was not... you know how that goes. "My period isn't even due for a week!"

Then a couple of days ago, he made himself an omelet. Cooked it in real butter... I don't like real butter, but that's beside the point. The smell of the heated butter again almost made me throw up. "It's the Prozac!" I said.

I felt pretty silly, really.

Last night, he asked me to get ready to go to the store while he was at work, so we could leave as soon as he got home. But he had to stay late due to a really long call, and by the time he got home it was too late to go if we wanted any time together that night. So we were just going to stay in, but for once, I was like "Hey, I want to go somewhere, I'm already dressed."

We decided to go out to eat. Normally this is a big mess, because it takes a long time for us to figure out where we're going to go, unless there's a lot of money available. But when we're looking at $20-30, it's hard to pick out a place... probably mostly because I'm not a real big fan of cheap dining.

This time it took maybe three minutes. "Nothing greasy," I told him. "I can't eat greasy food, I'll barf. It's the Prozac!"

We decided to go to Golden Corral, which is a local buffet restaurant. The food's okay, but most importantly, it's about $7.00 for all you can eat of about 75 selections. Including steak.

So we went there, figuring I could find some food that wouldn't make me sick. I passed by the steak, the spaghetti, the pizza, the rotisserie and fried chicken, the fish... I wound up eating lima beans, peas, and macaroni & cheese. Didn't touch the dessert.

Now, usually when I go to Golden Corral, I eat a tremendous amount. I'm kind of a show-off when it comes to buffets, I guess. Six plates is the norm.

This time, I had about half a cup of peas, half a cup of lima beans, maybe a cup of macaroni and cheese. And that's it. Probably a whopping 500 calories, and I was about to throw up again.

On the drive home, I made some kind of joke about being pregnant. I can't recall exactly what transpired, but I do know that Steve asked if I'd mind taking a pregnancy test. So we went to HEB and picked one up.

Sure enough, it came up as a faint positive. And my period is due today... that was yesterday. I retested today, and the line is darker. Looks like I'm carrying Steve's pasty white baby again...

I think we're both pretty happy about this. I know I am, and he says he is. I'm worried about another miscarriage (I've had two), but... all-day sickness is generally a sign of a healthy pregnancy, and I'm sure as hell sick. I was sick like this with my daughter, as well, but not with the two I lost.

So, yeah... I'm knocked up. Woo!

The Garlic Test

2003-12-17T21:19:00.000-08:00

Those who've read the earliest posts may recall that Kataine was pregnant earlier in our relationship. Mostly, it went as I'd learned to expect from TV shows or whatever. You go to the doctor. You don't drink. Mother gets a big belly. No smoking. Cravings for pickles and ice cream at midnight. Morning sickness. And one thing I didn't expect.

Food aversions.

She couldn't eat garlic. Or fish. Period. In fact, even the smell made her nauseous to the point of vomiting. And I had a loaf of garlic bread. Like, whole cloves of garlic bread. I ate the last third of it in one sitting, because it was going stale. I couldn't talk with my face pointed her for three days, at least.

Fast forward to today. Every time she's feeling nauseous, I whip out the jar of garlic we keep in the fridge. Garlic test! Make sure you're not pregnant! She sniffs. Nah. Then, about a week ago. I open up that jar. Her nose gets within half a foot. And then she's yelling and getting away from that jar as fast as she can. "You're pregnant!" I declare.

"No I'm not, I couldn't be."

She's been feeling nauseous recently. We thought it was just Prozac. But it didn't make her nauseous before, when she was pregnant. Even taking the weekly dose, about 90mg all at once (normal dose is 20-60mg/day). And she's been despressed, which was the whole point of taking Prozac now anyway. When we went to Golden Corral tonight, she couldn't keep barely anything down. So we got a pregnancy test.

It came up positive. I'm a father, again. And I knew a week ago, before any test known to medical science could detect it. Woo! I'm fertile and ingenious!

Mikey sucks

2003-11-28T11:01:00.000-08:00

I got off the phone with my ex-husband a couple of hours ago. Good God...

To make a long story short, my mom called a couple of days ago and asked me to call Mikey (the ex-husband in question). This is because Christmas break is coming up, and she was hoping I'd be able to arrange visitation with my daughter for some time during that.

The deal has been that I get a week or so during the summer, and during Christmas break, to spend with my daughter. Basically, we go pick her up, bring her back here, and then take her back after a week.

Of course, every time I call and inquire about this, Mikey gives me a lot of shit. Sometimes we're not able to arrange anything at all. This is not good.

It gets worse, because technically the divorce has been up in the air (along with the custody agreement) for almost three years now. This is primarily because both of us moved several times, especially my darling ex. He says he's in New Mexico to stay, and he'll be refiling (for the fourth or fifth time) soon.

Anyway, so I called. And it turns out that my daughter has been having frequent seizures, was in the hospital a few days ago, and FLATLINED. Mikey didn't call... he says he lost my phone number, and couldn't get ahold of anyone. Says he tried to email me and it bounced. Riiiiiight.

No one has ever had problems emailing me except for him. I get 10-15 emails a day, mostly from my mom, and she's never had one bounce. Steve's never had one bounce. No one I talk to has had any problems with email bouncing except for Mikey. I call bullshit.

Of course, we all know he's a pathological liar, so this is nothing new.

So, my daughter is supposed to have an MRI done sometime in the next four weeks, has to get blood tests every other week because now she's on Tegretol (anti-seizure medication). And he won't let my parents pick her up without me being there, even if we can somehow work around our schedules... because he doesn't trust them to take her to a hospital if she gets truly ill.

Normally, either I go down there with my parents to pick her up, and then they bring her back alone, or they go alone both ways. This is because it's a damn long trip (1100 miles each way) and it's hard as hell to get time off from work. And I can't afford to fly down there...

I'm starting to think the only way this whole mess will ever be resolved is to get a lawyer. Fat chance of that, though, unless lawyers are now working for free.

Grr...

True tales of guarding

2003-11-20T21:55:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure what attracts so many worthless people to guard jobs. It might be the allure of sitting on your butt all day. Or that the Texas Workforce Commission refers all the hopeless cases to Securitas--minimum qualifications: can walk, can talk, can get to work on time. It really is an easy job. There's a big binder that details all the procedures you follow, and if an unexpected situation arises ask the supervisor. Sometimes you walk around. And the worst thing is, some people just can't keep the job. Some highlights from the past 6 months or so:

Charles T. Worthey, from Corpus Christi: Whenever Charles T. Worthey saw someone, he'd introduce himself. "Hi! I'm Charles T. Worthey, and I just moved here from Corpus Christi!" The man was, not to put too fine a point on it, Forrest Gump minus the Tom Hanks charm. His first patrol, he stopped making radio checks for an hour. This was a bad thing, since radio checks are the only way the guard at the guard shack knows you're alive. (Charles was on night shift.) They're normally made every ten minutes at night. As I recall Kataine related it to me, Charles returned to the shack after his patrol, saying that he had been making the radio checks. Every ten minutes. Apparently he never noticed the loud BEEP the radio made when he tried to transmit, or the fact that the lobby guard never responded to his checks with a 10-4. The incident that got him fired: a UPS truck showed up for a delivery. Charles would, at that point, verify the driver's ID, visually inspect the back of the truck, log the truck, and send him through. Except that he couldn't find his clipboard for logging trucks. The one that's hung on the same peg every time. It took him so long to find it that the UPS driver eventually turned around and drove off. So Charles ran after the truck, waving his arms and shouting "Don't go! Don't go!" For deserting his post, Mr. Worthey received his notice of termination.

Fat Fucker: I forget his name. He lasted one day. Sue me. He refused to walk three feet out of the guard shack to check employee IDs, because it was too hot outside. Instead he waved them through from the air-conditioned shack. He got multiple writeups his first day for that. Second day: no call no show. Ass canned.

Food!

2003-11-13T20:40:00.000-08:00

I've loved to cook for as long as I can remember. My mom taught me the basics of cooking when I was very young -- I could make hamburgers, cookies, and cakes before I started kindergarten. By the time I was a teenager, I could easily outdo my mom (who was a pretty decent cook herself).

Then I married Mikey, and found myself cooking on a daily basis. This wasn't so great, because Mikey was one picky sonofabitch. No vegetables, no visible pieces of onion...

For the first couple of months I was married, I treated him to gourmet European food every day. He bitched a lot about various things, especially the fact that much of the food I make is rather rich (and therefore not low calorie). He was decidedly unappreciative of my efforts, which pissed me off quite a lot.

In fact, he told me he didn't really like eating much, and as far as he was concerned, he could live on scrambled eggs and sandwiches and be perfectly happy. Maybe you're thinking "sandwiches are good!" -- I'm sure Steve is. But I'll clarify -- Mikey's idea of "sandwich" was Wonderbread, cheapo chopped ham, and generic imitation mayo.

One day, I spent over three hours making a very special meal for him, which was to be his first experience with Russian cuisine. I made chicken Kiev, fresh from-scratch black rye bread, and kasha with wild mushrooms. Dessert, too, although I don't recall what it was. (I'm not enormously fond of sweets, so I tend to forget these things).

Mikey was supposed to be home at 6:00pm. I'd spent from 9:00 until 3:00 scrubbing the house, then 3:00 to 6:00 cooking, or thereabouts. At 6:00, the chicken was done perfectly -- I tested an extra piece to be sure, and the herb butter sprayed out like a geyser when I stabbed it with a fork. It was beautiful.

6:00 went by.. then 7:00.. then 8:00.. and finally, a little after 9:00pm, Mikey walked in the door, his hair still damp from showering. Oh, I knew where he'd been... suspected, anyway, but getting a confession out of him was literally impossible. Unless confronted with unmistakable evidence, in which case he'd swear his "other personality" did it.

That's another story, though.

Anyway, I cooked this elaborate Russian meal for Mikey, being careful to avoid any foods he wouldn't like (ie, nothing with cabbage, which certainly limits one's choices!). And he showed up three hours late, without calling me, and looking an awful lot like he'd just gotten himself a piece of ass.

Hmm. Chicken Kiev, for those who aren't familiar with it, must be served immediately, because if you wait more than half an hour or so, the butter leaks out and it's just not right. It's supposed to squirt out of the top when you cut into it.

So yeah, three hours late without calling, most likely been fucking around on me, and to add insult to injury, he's not hungry.

His excuse for being late was that he was arguing with some people about his paycheck. He was working at Radio Shack at the time. From what I could tell, there was nothing wrong with his check. And if that was the case, why couldn't he call me?

I asked, but he immediately redirected it at me. "You're so suspicious, blah blah". Actually, I wasn't suspicious until he came home with damp hair reeking of floral-scented shampoo. I was *worried*. I thought he might have been in an accident or something.

But since this was Mikey, who was an unrepentant liar, I didn't have many options except to just say, "Well, okay, I'd appreciate it if you called next time." At the time, I explained it away, thinking perhaps he'd got drunk or something and took a shower to sober up...

I wasn't yet aware that Mikey was a cheating sonofabitch.

Anyway, that was the last time I cooked him anything truly nice. From then on out, it was frozen foods and Rice-a-Roni.

My brother is a bitch to cook for as well, although I did it sometimes. Probably too often, truth be told. He hates mushrooms, and pieces of tomato. Mushrooms, according to him, taste like athlete's foot, and pieces of tomato "are like biting down on a mouse's brain".

Still, my brother isn't too bad, because aside from those little things, he's not so picky and generally manages a compliment towards the food. He also loves my untraditional fettucine alfredo, which is nice.

Anyway, after all that, I added a few requirements to my list of qualities a man must have before I'll get involved with him.

1 - He must enjoy European food, especially Italian.
2 - He can't bitch about the calorie content of food I cook, even if it involves rich cream sauces or a lot of cheese. This means I don't have much interest in thin guys.
3 - He can't be excessively picky.

Steve fits into this nicely, because he's a great fan of Italian food, and food in general. He's also not precisely what I would call thin -- I say he has a pretty average build, he says he's fat. Whatever. He likes to eat, though, which makes me happy, because my cooking skills would be wasted on someone who doesn't.

Also, since the Mikey debacle, and watching the interaction between my brother and his wife for over a year, I started placing serious restrictions on my cooking.

I think this is essential when one person in the household has a certain skill that the others lack, and want to take advantage of. I learned the hard way, that people, in general, will exploit you if they can... and the more exceptional your talent is in a particular area, the more they'll exploit you.

Listen up, ladies -- this applies to blowjobs as well.

Steve isn't really the exploiting type, however. On the other hand, he can be remarkably lazy, and the rules I set forth regarding my cooking serve a couple of purposes. For one, they make me feel better, because I know I'm protected from possible exploitation. For another, they're nice for both of us, because he knows exactly what I am willing and not willing to do.

Boundaries are your friend, and I think when it comes to specific talents, it's even more important.

I like to cook. In fact, I absolutely love to cook -- it's the process of creation, I think, and creativity. I write my own recipes, or look to other recipes for inspiration, but rarely do I follow a specific recipe or actually measure anything. Measuring cups are for wusses!

Unless you're making bread, or really anything that's leavened. Then I fully support the use of measuring cups and spoons, because I use them myself for this purpose.

Actually, I'm kidding -- while it's true I generally don't measure, most people should. Not everyone can "eyeball it".

But I digress (again). Back to the subject at hand...

The main reason I like cooking, I think, is because I'm very, very good at it. Cooking for new people is especially good -- it's fun to be impressive. It is, perhaps, the only thing I'm really good at. Give me a sack full of random ingredients, and I'll have a gourmet meal ready in an hour or two.

Until recently, I'd been on strike from cooking for a while. This is because Steve got really lazy about keeping the kitchen clean, and I refuse to cook in a dirty kitchen. It took a while to get him convinced that "clean the kitchen" doesn't mean "wash the specific dishes I will be using to make dinner".

Seriously. I'd ask him to clean the kitchen, and he'd ask which pots and pans I needed. Then he'd sorta wash those exact ones, and I'd go to cook... only to discover I'd forgotten to tell him I needed a spatula. Then I'd finish making dinner and there would be no clean plates or silverware. And the countertops would be filthy, which sucks because I use them for everything from chopping vegetables to kneading bread.

So the first rule on the list was that the kitchen needs to be completely clean by 5pm every day. Now, the kitchen was a disaster zone when I was making the rules, so I cleaned it myself over my weekend (Mon/Tues)... I figured as bad as it was, it'd be hard to get Steve motivated to clean up the mess.

I'm not a terribly messy cook... I usually clean as I go, so in the end, there's just a few pots & pans to wash, plus the dishes we ate out of, and wiping down the countertops. It's about 15 minutes worth of work a day. And setting a deadline for the kitchen cleaning makes it a bit easier, I think.

I eliminated a previous rule I had, which was that Steve should hang out in the kitchen and help me while I'm cooking. It was a nice idea, and he wanted to do it, but it just doesn't work out well. This is because I'm generally so involved in what I'm doing that I have a hard time paying any attention to him. I'm also a perfectionist when it comes to cooking, so I'd be watching over his shoulder to make sure the onions were chopped exactly right.

He never said so, but I'm sure it bugged him.

So now, he gets to sit on his butt and play on the computer while I cook dinner. I actually don't mind this, except in certain circumstances, which are covered by other rules on the list.

I also refuse to cook things that I won't eat, unless it's a pretty rare thing, and in these cases, I expect Steve to help out with it. I've also set certain limits on requests, because I've been through the whole "you're making me this, this, and this" too much. Not from Steve, though, he's always been considerate about that.

So, we started off on the new cooking setup this week. I cook six days a week, provided the kitchen is clean by 5:00. And when I say "cook", we're talking about full-blown gourmet dinners. Yay.

I'm happy now -- my fridge is stocked with fresh vegetables, herbs, blocks of cheeses (fontina, pecorino romano, parmesan, gruyere, mozarella, gorgonzola...) and some lovely cuts of meat. I've got meal plans for the week... today we had Glazed Topside with Mushrooms, and Penne Arrabiata, made from entirely fresh ingredients... mmm.

Tomorrow -- skewers of marinated chicken breast chunks, hot italian sausage, cherry tomatoes, and mushrooms, along with miniature pizzas (Pizzette Semplici). All from scratch, of course... well... I admit I don't make my own sausage (normally). I'm not fucking Martha Stewart.

On an unrelated note, there's been less and less drama lately... maybe this relationship is finally stabilizing?

Emotional Support & Guidance -- Future

2003-11-09T01:10:00.000-08:00

Another exercise from "The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders", by Joseph Santoro, Ph.D. and Ronald Cohen, Ph.D.

In this exercise, I am to write about ways in which I have been able to overcome or compensate for the lack of emotional support during childhood, as well as what ways I would like to be able to overcome/compensate for that. I'm also instructed to write about the sources of support or guidance I have in my life now and what additional sources I might have later.

In addition to all that, I am to write about what major life choices I anticipate I will make in the near or long-term future and how I intend to use sound judgement and not past emotions to make these decisions.

When it comes to trying to repair relationships rather than destroy them because of a single mistake, I've taken the opposite extreme of my parents. My current relationship is a great example of this -- I know most people would have given up and decided it wasn't meant to be long, long ago. But here I am, still working and still hopeful.

Overcompensation, perhaps, but compensation just the same.

Splitting, I think, something that I developed because of all that... if someone becomes a horrible person because they say or do something that hurts your feelings... well, that's what I was taught happens, time and time again. So I think this is how I learned to cope with that... rather than feel guilty for putting that person out of my life, I just hate them instead.

I'm very outgoing and friendly, probably because I'm always seeking to fill the "bottomless pit" with more and more friends.

I've chosen a partner who is almost as clingy and needy as I am (well, sometimes), who doesn't mind being supportive and doing a lot of cuddling... no doubt this is a compensation.

As for what ways I'd like to overcome or compensate for my lack of emotional support as a child... I have no clue. Well, I'd like to overcome the emotional volatility bit and the excessive neediness... but how? Fuck if I know! Best answer I can come up with is "with this book".

Adding more people into my life (close friends) would probably be another good way I could compensate... it's got to be hard for one person to try to meet all of the emotional needs I have. I feel like a vampire sometimes... like I'm sucking Steve dry.

Current sources of emotional support and/or guidance... Hmm. Steve provides most of that... well, support anyway. He's good at that. I don't know about guidance... I've never really asked for it, but I bet he'd be able to do a lot if I gave him the opportunity.

I have a few long-distance friends as well, that I know I can lean on. Unfortunately, contact with them is a bit tricky sometimes, because I don't have much opportunity at home, and currently can't use any kind of chat from work... just email. But that's nice, in and of itself, and I know if I want to talk or vent to someone, there are a few people I can write to, who will respond in a supportive manner.

One of these people is a friend I've had for the last few years, although we lose track of each other every now and then. He emailed me recently, though, and we've got a nice exchange going, which makes me feel a lot better. Having a support system is nice, even if most of my friends are hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Future sources... hopefully, Steve will be around for the long run, and I'll stay in contact with the friends I mentioned. But I'd also really like to get some local friendships going... unfortunately, I have very little opportunity to meet people right now, and I've lost contact with everyone I once knew here in town (except Victor, but he's real on and off).

Major life choices... Hmm... whether (additional) children are in my future, I guess. Whether to pursue custody of my daughter at some point. And fuck, I'm 25, I've got to choose an actual career *someday*.

As for how to use good judgement as opposed to past emotions... ugh, I don't know. I do know that decisions of that sort have got to be made without even letting my parents know I'm thinking about them until after I've chosen. Otherwise I might get trapped into doing what they want even though it's not what I want.

Or the opposite, like when I married Mikey. I married him mostly to defy my dad... to prove him wrong, because he told me that Mikey would not marry me... that he'd fuck me and dump me. And my pride would just not let go of that, so I married a man I didn't even LIKE, let alone love.

Not something I want to do again. Still, I feel that influence even now... like I know, even if I decided it was best to break up with Steve, I don't think I could bring myself to do it. I know if I did, I'd get shit from my parents, or at the least get asked a lot of uncomfortable questions. It's just not something I want to deal with. Christ, even if we did break up and do the roommate thing, I'd delay telling my parents for as long as possible.

I have no idea why I'm so afraid of their reaction to that...

Emotional Support & Guidance -- Present

2003-11-09T00:52:00.000-08:00

Another exercise from "The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders", by Joseph Santoro, Ph.D. and Ronald Cohen, Ph.D.

In this exercise, I am to write about how I think failures to receive needed emotional support and guidance in childhood may be influencing my current behavior. I am asked to provide a specific example of something I have done within the last week and link it back to my childhood experiences.

I do believe that my failure to receive emotional support and appropriate guidance as a child is influencing my current behavior quite a lot. This is a new idea to me, because until I began the work in this book, I have always thought of my parents as having done the best job raising me possible. I still think they did pretty well, all things considered, but I was too emotionally needy for their approach to work well.

A good example of those influences is that fact I feel terribly ashamed, weak, and pathetic whenever I cry, which I do a lot of these days. I hate feeling weak or vulnerable. I hate revealing my flaws to other people -- I am ashamed and embarassed.

I'm also certain that my current needy and clinging behavior has a lot to do with my childhood and early adult life -- I guess I'm making up for lost time, and driving Steve insane in the process.

This exercise asks for a specific, recent example, so I'll cite something that happened this very evening. I was pissed off and hurt because of something Steve did (specifically, wanting to play on the computer when we could only have a total of an hour and a half together tonight). Steve kept asking me to take a time-out and use "The List" but I kept resisting. I insisted that I was perfectly calm, even while tears were running down my face.

It was very much a scene that could have been copied from my past. I felt so humiliated when Steve turned my face towards him and said, "So you're calm, huh?"

I'm sure the reason I was so resistant tonight is because I did not want to feel vulnerable and exposed around him. This is because we had been bickering over a computer I was fixing for a co-worker. He just seemed way too hostile to open up to, while that was fresh in my mind.

He was right that I needed to take a time-out and go through "The List", though. I just couldn't bring myself to do it and didn't see the point.

Emotional Support & Guidance -- Past

2003-11-09T00:37:00.000-08:00

Another exercise from "The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders", by Joseph Santoro, Ph.D. and Ronald Cohen, Ph.D.

In this exercise, I am to write about who was available or not as a child when I needed emotional support/guidance, and how I adjusted to that.

As a child, I had little emotional support from my parents. My brother was a little better, in the sense that he at least tried, until he moved out at the age of seventeen. My relationship with my brother deteriorated after that.

It was quite clear to me that there were only two acceptable emotions to display around my parents -- happiness, and anger. To show any other emotion was to be weak and pathetic.

I was taught, by example, that if someone treated me badly, the correct response was to talk shit about them, mock them, or get back at them. There was no other response because in the view of my parents (especially my dad), a relationship with problems (any relationship -- with a friend, relative, SO, co-worker, you name it) should never be repaired. It should be destroyed, and promptly, before you get hurt again.

The best example of this I can think of took place when I was 10 or 11 years old. My best friend (and neighbor) Laura, and I, had been hanging out together and staying the night at each other's houses for two years. We were also in the GT program together.

Anyway, I got on the school bus one day and went to sit down beside Laura. She said to me, "I'm sorry but I promised [another girl] I'd sit by her today."

I was a little miffed at this because I was an emotionally sensitive child, and besides, she was my best friend. So when I got home, I related the story to my mom, and my dad overheard it.

Dad said that I should stop being friends with her, and tried to cheer me up by talking about how she was a shitty person and I could do a lot better anyway. So I did -- I stopped talking to her completely, in fact.

The next day, my dad asked if I had stopped talking to her and I said that I had. Then he said in a very derisive tone of voice that he figured I'd go back to her just like my brother went back to his (now ex) wife. This was intended to shame me into continuing to avoid Laura, and it worked.

My parents still sometimes talk about her in mocking tones, referring to her as "Large Laura" (she was overweight). It doesn't sit well with me, even now, because I think dumping her as my friend was mean and uncalled for. But even now, I laugh along with them and pretend to find her revolting.

My dad was terribly intimidating and difficult to please, but I tried as hard as I could because I loved him dearly.

I quickly learned when I was very young the value of emotional control. My dad did not tolerate crying. In fact, no one around me seemed to tolerate it... I have a strong belief to this day, that everyone, unless proven otherwise, is hostile. If someone is kind to me for no apparent reason, I always wonder what's in it for them.

One time when I was in first grade, my parents had let me skip school to go to Springfield (a larger nearby town) to go shopping with them. On the way back, we were near the school I attended and my mom asked if I wanted to go back to school for the rest of the day. I saw my friends outside for recess and said that yes, I did.

So they dropped me off and I went out to the playground. Out of nowhere, I was hit with this rush of guilt, because I had chosen to spend time with my friends instead of my parents. I started crying.

My first grade teacher, Mrs. Harris, came up and asked me why I was crying. Unable to vocalize my feelings at that age, I merely responded, "I don't know."

Mrs. Harris then proceeded to berate me loudly in front of the other children, calling me a "stupid crybaby" and pointing out that Kristi (another girl in my class) knew why SHE was crying -- because she had a run in her tights.

Mrs. Harris was a bitch. She spanked me on my first day of Kindergarten, but that's another story for another day.

Breakthrough!

2003-11-08T00:34:00.000-08:00

Steve and I had a rather long and eventful day, at least as far as our relationship work goes. Interestingly enough, this was the direct result of his taking the lead. That's a rare thing, in and of itself -- I'm usually (almost always) the one who initiates and leads these discussions. I think encouraging him to take the lead more often is a good idea.

After a lot of difficult and not-so-productive work with a therapist, sometimes something will come up and eerything clicks into place... suddenly all of the apparent contradictions make sense. This is termed a "breakthrough" and it's precisely what we experienced today.

It was not an easy day, but I am proud to say that all things considered, I handled it quite well -- no temper tantrums, no emotional outbursts, and thank God, no dumping. A few times today, Steve gently suggested that I might need to take a time-out and go through "The List". I declined, each time because I felt we were on the edge of something, and we were.

I learned several things today, the most notable being:

1. It is okay for Steve to feel like a failure sometimes.

2. It is a very bad idea to speak negatively about yourself to an autistic person whose opinion you value, especially if you tend to be persuasive.

3. Never underestimate the power of an attitude adjustment.

I'll get to those in a moment.

I also discovered the source of my unhappiness in this relationship -- why I keep suggesting a breakup, why I keep saying that Steve doesn't love me, and why I've been pushing for more and more "romantic behavior". Until four months ago, I felt loved, cherished, and treasured by him. That ended abruptly on "That Thursday" (which seems to be the source of nearly all of our troubles). In fact, I have been under the impression that the only reason Steve has not yet left me is because it would be difficult and inconvenient for him to find someone else.

As of this writing, that is not (no longer?) true.

In order to explain the rest, I'll need to go into the concept of splitting (black and white thinking) briefly. Or not so briefly -- brevity is not my strong point.

As an individual with BPD, I do not have any neutral or middle of the road opinions, especially about other people. Within two or three hours of interaction with someone, I feel one of two things for them. I either feel love and admiration (usually of a platonic sort), or I despise everything about them. There are no "okay", "mostly good", or "mostly bad" people in my head.

If I love someone, they are considered to be "split white". If I hate them, they are "split black". Note that, in my mind, a person who is split white seems *perfect*, whereas a person who is split black appears to have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Furthermore, an individual may switch from being split white to black, or vice versa, many times. The longer I have known them, the less frequent and more difficult the switch is to make. So, if I have known you a few days, you may become split black because you do something that annoys me, such as humming. Whereas if I have known you for a year, you'd have to really piss me off (say, punch me in the face) to change to split black.

To further complicate matters, I split myself on a regular basis. It's usually pretty easy to tell by my energy level -- if I hate myself, I'm going to be depressed and not feel like doing much of anything, except perhaps (in severe cases) self-injury or suicide. On the other hand, if I have split myself white, I'm confidant, energetic, and talkative.

In in doubt, one can always ask for three words I would use to describe myself. If the answer is something like, "Intelligent. Confidant. Sensitive." then I'm split white. On the other hand, if I say, "Fat. Lazy. Worthless." then it's pretty clear I'm not feeling too good about myself.

This is the reason I have had problems with substance abuse in the past -- being split black to myself is not pleasant (to put it lightly), and when high I am always split white.

In the rest of this post, I'll attempt to describe some behaviors that have caused major problems between us. I'm doing this based on the theory that the way I think is abnormal unless proven otherwise, so I may overexplain some things. I'm not sure... I thought I was pretty damned normal and *everyone* thought in black and white terms until just a few days ago.

Watch closely. Here we have the mess that is interaction between a man on the autistic spectrum, and a borderline woman (who also happens to have a mild case of schizophrenia).

Item #1 - It's okay for Steve to feel like a failure sometimes.

When Steve first arrived in Texas, he had a tendency to use the phrase, "I've failed!" every time he made a mistake or was unable to do something (even if it wasn't his fault). This was upsetting to me, because I thought it meant he was splitting himself black and felt horrible.

So I'd argue it with him -- "You haven't failed! It's not your fault! You did really well considering the circumstances! blah blah blah." In fact, I pushed him into the idea that he should never, ever feel like a failure, because he's a good person and tries really hard, etc.

Steve, on the other hand, didn't seem to grasp the fact that "failure" has very negative connotations. To him, "I've failed" means the same as "I made a mistake". This was, in fact, how he worked into what he calls "fixing himself" and I call "learning from your mistakes/self-improvement". "Fixing" indicates that he's broken, which he also says pretty often... I think he's not picking up the negative connotation there, either.

Apparently, I was sufficiently convincing when I told him that (about two weeks after he arrived), and he started thinking of himself as a victim of circumstances. In other words, he stopped taking personal responsibility for his actions. Ugh.

Today I reversed my stance on that issue, based on the new information I gained about how he interprets the words "failure", "fixing", and "broken".

Item #2 -- It is a very bad idea to speak negatively about yourself to an autistic person whose opinion you value, especially if you tend to be persuasive.

This is a theory I expect to have confirmed once Steve reads this post. I arrived at this conclusion tonight while I was on patrol, an activity that lends itself to a whole lot of thinking.

First of all, I'm a very persuasive person. This is why I excel at jobs such as sales and customer retention. I'm also damned good at making people like me, and psyching up subordinates (doesn't apply much now, but it did when I was working in management). It's a handy skill when you're leading a group of people, whether it's part of your job, or even in an online game (I used to run guilds).

Unfortunately, I also tend to talk about myself in negative terms for a couple of reasons. This has been particularly true over the last four months, as I have spent almost all of my time split black. Also, my parents taught me that speaking of yourself in positives is a bad, bad, bad thing -- only self-centered, obnoxious braggarts do that. This is why I have a difficult time with job interviews -- I can sell anything with ease, except myself.

I told Steve at one point today, that he has got to stop thinking of me as the "psychobitch girlfriend". He needs to recognize that considering the circumstances, I've survived some nasty ordeals in my life. That includes psychotic breaks -- I mean, that's tough shit to deal with, right there. How well would YOU cope if your brain was "possessed by aliens" and you started acting like a raving maniac despite your best efforts?

But today while I was on patrol, I realized the reason he thinks of me the way he does is because... I've TOLD him, over and over again, what a useless, insane, ugly, fat, piece of shit I am! And convincingly, at that.

Why? Because that's honestly how I feel about myself in some circumstances. It's not that simple, though -- I'm not fishing for compliments exactly, but it's a coping mechanism I use when I'm on the verge of splitting myself black and trying to prevent it. I announce how much I suck, and hope someone tells me I don't, so I don't split black and start hating myself.

A typical conversation between myself and an NT (neurotypical, or "normal" person) goes like this:

Kataine: I'm such a fucking nutcase.

Other person (wondering why I'm being hard on myself): Why do you say that?

Kataine: Look at all these scars I have from cutting myself up that time!

Other person (trying to make me feel better): Yeah, but you were under a hell of a lot of stress, and considering your genetic predisposition towards mental illness... I think you did pretty well just to survive it all. Besides, you haven't cut yourself in months. You're not a nutcase, you're a really cool person who just happens to have more challenges than most of us do.

The same conversation, with Steve, goes like this:

Kataine: I'm such a fucking nutcase!

Steve (looking for evidence to support my claim): Why do you say that?

Kataine: Look at all these scars I have from cutting myself up that time!

Steve (convinced by the evidence and agreeing my conclusion is logical): Hmm... yeah, I guess you are.

After all, to Steve, words like "nutcase", "crazy", and "psycho" don't really have negative connotations, anymore than "mentally ill" does. But he does pick up on the negative way I say it, and oftentimes I push the issue by getting even more negative about myself... and presenting convincing evidence that I am correct.

End result -- if I talk negatively about myself, Steve winds up agreeing with my conclusions. After a lot of this, he starts thinking rather negatively about me as well, and questioning why he's with someone like me. Especially since I also talk quite positively about him, and also provide convincing evidence on that. The obvious conclusion is that he's too good for me.

Not a good attitude to pick up in a relationship you want to work. Mostly my fault, yes -- I fail to make allowances for the fact that he is autistic and when I say something, he hears WHAT I SAY. Literally. The "hidden message" is lost on him.

From here on out, I'm going to try to be a lot more clear on this count. "I'm feeling bad about my appearance" is probably a lot more likely to get the needed results than, "I am soooo ugly and fat!!"

I'll have to get to Item #3 later, because I'm out of time. Oh well, more later. For now, I'll say I'm feeling a whole lot better about this relationship than I have in four months. Woo!

Needs

2003-11-07T23:57:00.000-08:00

This is the fourth exercise from "The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders", by Joseph Santoro, Ph.D. and Ronald Cohen, Ph.D.

In this exercise, I am directed to write about my most important emotional needs, how well they were met by my parents when I was a child, and how I am trying to satisfy my unmet needs today. I am also to write about how that has changed over the last few months, and how I think it will change over the next few years.

I am a very needy person... of that there is no question. With that in mind, let's take a look at how this breaks down.

Most important needs: Acceptance. To feel attractive. Love. Consideration. Respect. Trust. Honesty. Openness. Appreciation. Physical affection. Intimacy. Independence.

So, let's see... as a child.

Did I feel accepted? Not really. My parents accepted an image of me that they had created, but not the real me. I was supposed to be a certain way -- the gifted, well-behaved child. If I acted in any other way, it was either heavily criticized then swept under the rug, or ignored completely.

Did I feel attractive? Oh, fuck no. I remember, starting around age 10 or 11, my dad forced me to get on the scale every day, in front of him. If I gained so much as a pound, I was treated harshly and told I was fat and would "never get a man". Fat was synonymous with "hideously ugly". Actually, it was worse, because if you were fat it was YOUR FAULT. TOO MANY TWINKIES, BITCH! The irony is that I was not a particularly heavy kid, but my parents were both obese.

Did I feel loved? Yes -- my parents were affectionate and frequently told me they loved me.

Did I feel my parents were considerate? Sort of. I was bitched at for wanting time alone, but my preferences were always taken into account. For instance, what restaurants to go to, where to go on vacation, etc.

Did I feel respected? No. They did respect my wishes about some things, but they also practically stalked me -- read my email, searched my trash bags, etc. They were also very disrespectful in their communication with me, very often harshly critical -- especially my dad.

Did I feel trusted? Hell no! See above stalking behaviors. Furthermore, I heard the "Nothing is wrong with you!" speech far too many times. In the sixteen years I lived at home, I was permitted to go to a doctor once. And once to a psychiatrist, at my insistence. I had chronic pain in my upper abdomen for over two years, and literally snuck out and took a cab to a doctor's office. The doctor suspected gallbladder problems but I couldn't afford a followup. I think now it was probably related to a car accident I was in when I was 14, but it rarely bothers me anymore.

Did I feel my parents were honest with me? Dad, yes. Mom, no. Dad was perhaps too honest -- for example, telling me the circumstances surrounding my birth and how I was definitely not a wanted child. And telling me he suspected my mom was having an affair. Mom, on the other hand, is devious and proud of it. Sometime after the fact, she bragged to me about how she got me to talk about things then used the information against me (referring to the time I ran away).

Were my parents open with me, and did I feel I could be open with them? Dad, as noted above, was at times too forthcoming. Mom was, I think, pretty open without being scary about it like my dad. I certainly did not feel I could share much of anything with my parents, especially any problems I was having. These would be met with harsh criticism or even outright mockery.

Did I feel appreciated? No, definitely not. I was praised for my high grades, sure, but that's not the same. The words "Thank you" were never uttered in the household by anyone. I did a lot of work as a kid -- chores, as well as hard work like carpentry, hauling loads of boards around, hours of work in the garden, picking up rocks in the yard, pulling weeds, working at my dad's businesses... but this was required of me and I was never shown appreciation for any of this. Not even when I saved up money for months to buy them gifts.

Were my parents physically affectionate? Yes, definitely. Probably a lot more so than most -- I was showered with hugs and kisses very frequently. Except when they were openly displeased with me, which I avoided most of the time.

Intimacy? Not sure how this applies to my childhood, but on the subject of emotional intimacy, I'll refer back to openness above -- I was unable to share much of anything with my parents unless I was certain they would approve.

Did I feel independent? Off and on. In some ways, independence was encouraged -- for example, I was allowed to choose my own relation, and make a lot of choices as to what activities I wanted to participate in (if any), etc. On the other hand, being away from my parents was highly discouraged, and I got guilt-tripped about it a lot. Like being told I cared more about my friends than about them, or that I must not love them if I wanted to spend time in my room alone.

My parents were very self-sacrificing in some ways -- in the entire time I lived at home, I never once had a babysitter or even spent so much as an hour in the care of a relative. Even when they were running two businesses at once, with no outside help. Still, many of my emotional needs were unmet as a child.

How am I trying to satisfy my unmet needs today? For that, I turn almost completely to Steve. And he's doing a pretty damn good job of it, considering how hopelessly needy I am. When he can't be around... well, there are always good old-fashioned internet friends. Yay or something.

How has that changed over the last few months? I have no idea, and don't think it has much, really. Except I've tried to make my needs somewhat more clear to him.

How do I think it will change over the next few years? Hopefully, I'll be somewhat less needy. Barring that, maybe I'll make some better local friends, so Steve won't have to do all the work. That is, assuming we are still together in a few years. One can hope.

Defending Your Life

2003-11-07T01:08:00.000-08:00

This is the third exercise in "The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders", by Joseph Santoro, Ph.D. and Ronald Cohen, Ph.D.

In this exercise, I am to write about the pain I have experienced in life and how I have defended myself though denial, over-eating, drugs, alcohol, anger, self-injury, withdrawal and isolation, or other dysfunctional coping mechanisms. I am also to write about how I would like to be able to cope with pain in the future.

Oooh. I suspect this is going to be a long entry.

My parents are the masters of denial. If something bad happens, it's quickly moved into the "Never Talk About This Again" basket. That includes my drug abuse, psychotic breaks, every falling out they have had between me and them or each other, etc.

It would be fair to say I learned this ugly art from them, and while I don't practice it to the extreme they do, I still use it.

The most obvious example of this would be grief and shame over relinquishing custody of my daughter when she was three years old. I love her dearly -- she was by far the most beautiful and precious person to ever be a part of my life. And yet, I think about her maybe once every few months... briefly, at that, because I can't bear thinking about her and the avalanche of guilt that accompanies it.

When she first left with my ex-husband, I started drinking like a fish. I became a hardcore alcoholic practically overnight. Wino, I guess, I was drowning my sorrows in cheapass boxed wine. Once, I had $15 to spend on groceries, and most of that went towards the purchase of another box of wine. I was drunk from the time I woke up until I passed out in the early evening.

I started using hard drugs when I was very young -- thirteen, in fact.

I'm not really sure why -- probably because I was miserable, but I don't clearly remember why that would be. My parents were great... it wasn't them. I think I just don't want to remember. Watch closely, folks, this is denial in action.

So yes, drinking, drugs, denial... lots of that. Self-injury... rarely, but it's happened. I sliced the living shit out of myself a few months back, following some of the worst experiences of my life... after I miscarried, lost my job, had a psychotic episode, failed suicide attempt, and almost lost Steve. Literally hundreds of permanent scars from those cutting episodes that went out of control.

Suicide attempts... yes, three times. Once after my parents found me (after I'd run away from home with Mikey), once after I got demoted from a position I loved, once as noted above, following the miscarriage and lost job. I've never made a bullshit suicide attempt, as those strike me as pathetic and lame. Cry for help, my ass. It's pathetic enough that I never succeeded, although at least I know I *should* have. Most likely would have, last time, if Steve hadn't called the ambulance on my ass.

Anger is on the list, and Mikey fits in there. I hate everything about that man, just thinking about him pisses me off. I don't think he could draw a breath without further angering me. He probably hurt me. In fact, he probably hurt me a lot. But I can't see it, all I can see is that I would love to shove a splintery 2x4 up his ass and give it a few good twists. Maybe inject some Drano into his scrotum, while I'm at it. Yeahhh...

As for the future -- how would I like to be able to deal with the pain? Mmm.. this is a rough one. The most honest answer I can provide is that if it ever gets to that point again, using a more effective method to off myself.

But I don't think that's what the authors of this book want, so I'll aim a bit higher, despite the fact it seems like an impossible dream right now. It'd be great if I could somehow move through painful experiences, without repressing them, without hiding it from myself and everyone else, without emerging with even more baggage.

My Genes and Me

2003-11-07T00:38:00.000-08:00

Second exercise from "The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders", by Joseph Santoro, Ph.D. and Ronald Cohen, Ph.D.

I am supposed to describe the movements of my "microcosmic dance" (the piecing together of one's genetic code) and write down my impressions of what it means. Then I'm supposed to talk about how genetic influence affected me today, and how I may be breaking free of any of the negative influences.

This exercise is just a bit more New Agey than I can comfortably handle. I'm apparently supposed to move around the room in a symbolic dance that represents my genetic origins.

Uh, no. Not only would I feel incredibly stupid, I couldn't gain any insight from something like that. Furthermore, I do not dance.

That said, the rest is doable.

So, let's see. Genetic influences.

My mom carries the gene for schizophrenia and perhaps other related mental disorders. After all, both her brother and mother are paranoid schizophrenic, another brother has OCD, another is bipolar, another is a kleptomaniac and pathological liar, and who knows what else? Mom, herself, is most likely schizoaffective and certainly has generalized anxiety. My own brother is bipolar (and probably NPD, too), and my daughter has Asperger's.

Dad, on the other hand, was always remarkably stable. He's belligerant, loud, racist, and almost never displays an emotion other than anger... but I wouldn't classify him as mentally ill. He's just a strange old man -- seventy-eight at the time of this writing.

On the other hand, Dad's genetic code has graced me with a predisposition towards diabetes and heart disease. Skin cancer, too, since he's responsible for my pale skin and profusion of moles.

My brother sometimes says of me, "You're a little too much of Mom, and not enough of Dad."

In our family, this is understood to mean that I'm mentally unstable. My brother denies that he's got his own issues, despite the fact it's glaringly obvious to everyone around him.

Amusingly enough, my parents refuse to admit that I have any sort of mental problems, although they readily agree that my brother is fucked up. That's funny to me, because I'm the one who wound up with schizophrenia, which is arguably the most severe mental illness there is. Denial, denial, denial. After all, I'm the "backup kid", as Steve puts it.

I guess it's hard to admit that both of your children are broken.

My mom was 28 when I was born... she turned 53 today. My dad, on the other hand, was 53 when I was born, and recently turned 78. Twenty-five years and a foot of height apart, and yet they somehow have been together and mostly happy for the last thirty-five years. Pretty amazing, if you ask me.

My parents are good people, and I think they did an excellent job raising my brother and I. Not entirely the way I would have done it, but damn well just the same. I suspect my dysfunctions are more based on genetics and PTSD from my previous marriage than they are on childhood trauma.

Still, we shall see. I told Steve yesterday morning that I've noticed I'm very defensive about my parents and my childhood, and it's true. I don't think they really did anything wrong, and certainly weren't abusive, but I probably do have some childhood trauma just because of how sensitive I was (and am).

Breaking free of the negative influences? I am not, unless you count reality-checking as a coping mechanism against schizophrenia. Well, I'm reading this book, and actively trying to do something about my BPD.

When it comes to physical health, I'm definitely not doing a damn thing. I have about a 50% chance of getting Type II diabetes, and you sure don't see me exercising or eating healthy. Skin cancer? I've never worn sunscreen in my life. Heart disease? I'm sure the cocaine addiction didn't help that much, and fuck, I'm 25 years old with a previous heart attack... and I smoke.

So, in short, my mom's genes are at least partially responsible for my mental disorder(s) and my dad's have me all nice and lined up to die at 50.

Beginnings

2003-11-07T00:16:00.000-08:00

I'm currently working through a book called "The Angry Heart". Although it's intended to be an adjunct to therapy, shrinks are not currently affordable. No health insurance and all that jazz.

Anyway, since I've been updating less frequently than normal, I think I'll start posting my exercises from the book. After all, it's a form of directed journaling, and might even be interesting to someone.

Below is the text of my first exercise from the book, in which I am directed to write an entry about some of the significant beginnings in my past, as well as what reading this book means to me and what I hope to achieve.

...

Perhaps the most major beginning I recall in my life (thus far) was moving out of my parents' home. It was not an easy or pleasant time for me, but it was then that I felt I had achieved freedom and become an adult. I did many things for the first time -- rented an apartment, paid my own bills, shopped for groceries, spent time alone... I was free (or so I thought).

The second major change, or beginning, occurred when I told Mikey to go without me and that I wanted a divorce. This was at once one of the best and worst times of my life. I felt infinitely relieved that he would no longer be a part of my life, but I was devastated at the loss of my daughter. It was this event in my life that led to the first true freedom I had ever experienced. I cut my hair, dyed it neon pink, got multiple piercings, stayed out all night drinking, visited friends (for the first time in eight or ten years). I felt alive and was amazed at the control I had over myself -- just little things were exhilarating to me, like being able to listen to whatever music I wanted to.

The third, and most recent, major beginning in my life was when I decided to pursue a relationship with Steve. It would be easy to write something about how he changed my outlook on life or relationships, or how we clicked perfectly and I knew he was the one. While this is true, this change was in fact something much more about me than it was about him. It was about radically changing my approach to loving relationships. Having seen the patterns I'd experienced before, I could no longer stumble around blindly hoping things would work out. Instead, I took a proactive approach -- I made my needs, wants, and desires clear, as well as my limits. I researched the topics of relationships, effective communication, and problem solving. I was ready to build something -- an intimate, loving, mature relationship... and Steve seemed to be the perfect partner for this endeavor.

I am reading this book because I have come to realize that taking a proactive approach will not be enough. I have too many issues -- insecurities, past hurts, poor coping mechanisms and emotional instability -- to achieve what I want without resolving these. What I hope to gain is simple -- control of my emotional reactions, healthy coping mechanisms, and resolution of past trauma. It should be noted that simple does not mean "easy", especially in this case.

I want to change. I want to stop hurting Steve and myself. I want to no longer be a destructive influence on our relationship and our lives. I want to find the grey area. And above all, I want to experience the one thing I have never felt -- calmness. Contentment. Peace.

Call the National Guard!

2003-11-06T23:24:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think the tagline for this blog should be, "Witness the demise of a dysfunctional relationship!"

No demise yet, however. What we're witnessing is stress taking its toll. Steve's depressed, as am I -- I wonder if Prozac all around might be a good idea. Our sex life would deteriorate, but I have to wonder if that's such a hard price to pay. We were happier back in the days before we ever had sex, anyhow -- not because the sex is a problem, so much, but because this relationship has never been based on sex.

Anyway. I called Steve tonight, right after I posted that last message. I was upset to the point I was having a hard time talking... my voice was cracking under the strain. I asked him to read the post, and he did, and we talked.

"If we were to go to a marriage counselor," he said, "do you know what they'd say?"

I did not.

He said they'd tell us we needed to take a vacation. And what a nice dream that is -- to take the time to get away from everything and just enjoy each other's company again. Unfortunately, it's impossible (for now).

So, what now? We talked for a while, and it went relatively well. Which is to say, as well as it can go when we're talking about the fact that this relationship is falling apart and neither of us really know what to do to get it back on track.

I thought maybe having fun together was the answer, and for a time, he agreed, but then he decided that wasn't really it. He wants more time with me, just me, without distractions and without drama. This sounds quite appealing to me as well... just not sure how to go about it.

Somewhere, in the hurricane that has been our relationship, we've lost hold of each other. I was the first to let go. That was months ago, after we lost our unborn daughter. I pulled away and withdrew emotionally from Steve, because when we first found out I was pregnant, he panicked at the idea of becoming a father at eighteen... and thought that I should have an abortion.

He didn't realize what he had done, that it was a rejection of the worst sort. And I hold no bad feelings towards him because of it -- he didn't know, his reaction was understandable, and he did accept and even look forward to having this child in the end. So I pulled away when we lost her, and that was the beginning of the end.

Since then... crisis after crisis, and I set the pattern. Rather than leaning on each other for support, in the best cases we back away from each other... in the worst, we openly oppose each other. It's become such a deep-rooted pattern that correcting it, and repairing the damage that's been done, is a monumental task.

Something happens, one of us is upset, and since that day it's no longer a matter of "Let's face this together". Now it's all "Me vs. Him" in a battle of the wills. I win a lot. Nearly always. Which I'm sure is why he's struggling so much more than I am.

Steve said to me, tonight, "It's time for emergency measures." I took the first of these last night. I call it, "The List".

The List is a method by which I can force myself to calm down. My emotional volatility is a major destructive force in this relationship -- because of the way I react so strongly, our fights get escalated out of proportion until we're ready to call it quits and break up.

It's not the only reason -- see the previous post I made. The devastation left behind is multiplied by the number of red herrings Steve comes up with before the truth emerges.

Then it's squared by my emotional reactivity, if not cubed.

So, the List. I made the List last night, and asked Steve to enforce it without exception. If I'm upset or angry, I *must* complete everything on the List before we can discuss the issue at hand. It works, or at least the one time we've had to use it so far, it worked.

And I'm certain it'll continue to work, as long as I actually do it. It's hard, sometimes, and in the midst of one of my temper tantrums, it's even harder to find the motivation to go through a damnable checklist instead of just saying, "FUCK THIS SHIT YOU ARE DUMPED GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!"

Not that I've ever said that. Thought it, perhaps, but never said it.

We have a new rule. "No dumping" didn't work out, nor did the week rule (no dumping for a week). Now it's "No dumping without a professional second opinion (couples counseling)."

There's an old saying that engaged couples inevitably believe that no one has ever been as in love as they are. I know that's not true about us, although I certainly used to revel in that feeling. But I have to say this -- we are fucking determined. Anyone else, I think, would have given up on this relationship months ago... especially since we're not even married yet.

"You're dumped" is a whole lot easier than going through the process of filing for divorce and all that good shit.

That said... now what? I'm not sure. Steve is suffering more than I am, that's for sure. He's more inexperienced, he has a harder time dealing with the emotional rollercoaster than I do (I've been doing this my entire life). The stress of our relationship is definitely harder on him than it is on me.

So, I'm giving him the reins for a while. "What do YOU want?" is my new mantra. He wants less structure -- the schedule idea was nice in theory and shitty in practice. He wants more time together. I don't know what else. But for now, it's time to focus on him and see what both of us can do to improve his existence.

After all, I'm reactive in nature. If he's happy, if he's feeling it the way he used to, I'll be happy, too. That simple. Of course, he's reactive, too... back when we had nothing but positive feelings for each other, we were mirroring that to each other and were incredibly happy. Now that the negative has entered the mix, we're mirroring that, and it's like an infinite pit of shittiness.

...and I'm finding it's a whole lot easier to introduce negativity than it is to introduce positivity. Blech.

Fuuuuuuck...

2003-11-06T20:34:00.000-08:00

Updates have been few and far between lately, I admit. It'd be easy to chalk this up to being busy, and it's true I have been, if fucktons of drama at home count as "busy". It'd probably be more accurate to say I'm lazy, though, since I do my blog almost entirely from work and I generally don't have any drama there.

Still, I've been pretty damn drained by the time I get to work.

Tuesday was hellish. Six, count 'em, SIX hours of drama, complete with a mutual decision to break up, lots of crying (on my part), well wishes that we'd find the right people (on both of our parts) and eventually the determination that it was all a crock of shit, so we didn't actually break up. Or maybe we did, and got back together five minutes later, it's hard to say. I don't think it really matters.

I am not an easy person to be in a relationship with, mostly due to behaviors centered around my BPD. We all know this. Steve, on the other hand, is infuriating to be in a relationship with. He's also clueless and unmotivated when it comes to figuring out his internal workings and making adjustments to them, so in a way, it's worse.

I think a shrink would do both of us a lot of good, but I think he'd benefit more than I would, just because of his utter lack of self-awareness. I can figure myself out, and figure out what I need to do to correct certain behaviors on my part. He can't even identify his own problematic behavior half the time, and certainly can't figure out why he does these things or how to correct that.

We have two overwhelmingly huge problems in our relationship -- one for each of us. How convenient. It's all based around communication, but still, these two things are separate and distinct, and each of the two belongs exclusively to one of us.

I think my readers have a pretty good handle on what my major malfunction is -- emotional volatility. I am one moody motherfucker.

Steve, on the other hand, is pretty calm most of the time (less so when I'm erupting like Mt. Vesuvius, but still). His problem, however, is something that triggers even more of my moodiness and BPD-style behavior, and is horribly, horribly frustrating to deal with.

He'll get in a terrible funk, then attempt to tell me what's bothering him, and chances are we'll go through multiple relationship-crippling diasters before we figure out what's REALLY on his mind. And then find out that all the other shit was merely a figment of his imagination, or as he puts it, "red herrings".

Observe:
On Tuesday afternoon, Steve informed me that he was getting an urge to break up with me, so that he "could do things he can't while he's in a relationship". Such as what? I ask.

"Play computer games and look at porn."

Now, before I continue, I have to address the porn thing. This is undoubtably incomprehensible to most, if not all, of my readers. All I can really do to explain the why is note that:
A> You cannot expect a person who is schizophrenic, comorbid with Borderline Personality Disorder to be rational about everything.
B> My ex-husband beat his meat while looking at pornos, to the exclusion of having sex with me.

That's the best I can do for *why*, but the *what* is easier. I have an aversion to pornography that rivals most peoples' aversion to anally raping six month old babies.

There are lots and lots of things that Steve could do that would piss me off. For example, he could have a ten year long affair with my mother, get her pregnant, and bring me home an STD. I would be quite angry, but only perhaps one tenth as angry as if I caught him jacking off to porn. Or looking at it, at all, for that matter.

Irrational? Yes. Unrealistic? Depends on the man, but in this case, I don't think so. He's not actually (seemed to have) had any problems with this single condition I place on our relationship. There were a couple of misunderstandings, which created tremendous fallout, but he's never once (before Tuesday) complained that he missed porn.

Besides, it's not like he doesn't get laid regularly. I'll put out at a moment's notice, and I'm always willing. Okay, red days get in the way (we're using NFP currently), because he's not a great fan of condoms, but still. I'll have sex with him any day, any time, with the simple condition that he wears a rubber on the eight days surrounding ovulation. Or else doesn't mind getting me knocked up.

In fact, he's stated several times that he doesn't consider porn to even be important to him and doesn't miss it at all. Good enough for me.

But I digress. Back to the point -- he said that, and I barely even heard "computer games". The P-word had been spoken, and terrible drama was now inevitable.

So that led to the good, old-fashioned standard P-word explosion.

Me: "WHY?!! What on earth do you get from this that you're not getting from me?!"

I happen to think that most men would happily trade in their multi-gigabyte collection of porn for a 36DDD nymphomaniac. I could be wrong. Men?

And then we went down this bizarre road in which it was revealed to me that apparently Steve doesn't think I'm as hot as he's assured me I am, practically every day, for the last almost-year. In fact, he was apparently "dissatisfied with my appearance". WTFWTFWTF!

I resisted the urge to strip him naked and make him stand in front of a mirror, while I pointed out his gut, receding hairline, back hair, love handles, the field of zits on his back, stretch marks and microphallus. Okay, I'm exaggerating now -- he doesn't have a microphallus. By any means. Unbearably poor hygeine, yes, microphallus, no.

Had I been thinking, I'd have recognized the fact that by essentially saying, "pictures of half-plastic/silicone, garishly painted women are more attractive than the real you," he was making an underhanded attempt to sabotage our relationship. In fact, I think he wanted me to dump him.

Weirdly enough, he wasn't aware of this until it was pointed out to him.

So we went through a horrible bunch of drama, probably the worst ever. Right down to the good old-fashioned, "I don't think you love me, at least by my definition." "Maybe I don't, maybe I've been fooling myself this whole time because I've been so desperate to be loved."

This was presented as one of three possible theories. That's the thing about Steve -- he can't say "This is how I feel", more like "Here are some theories about how I might feel, let's see if we can find the right one." Unfortunately, just the fact that he's presenting such things as possibilities is not exactly easy to deal with.

So the shit hit the fan, and I figured I was going to have to move out. In theory, it'd be nice to have him as a roommate, but in practice I think it'd just be too hard... especially once he started bringing home other women and fucking them a room away from me. Ugh.

And then, after that, I realized something suddenly. All this crap had started right around the time he decided to stop playing computer games entirely. We know he has an addiction, and if we did break up, he'd get to play games all he wanted... hmmm...

I mentioned this. I'm also well aware of the fact that when there's some kind of hidden (or not so hidden) dissatisfaction going on, it's hard to remain attracted to your SO. I've experienced this phenomena several times. When you're in love, they look perfect -- even features that would usually not be to your taste are treasured, you decide they give him/her character.

Quote from an email Steve sent me several months ago:
"[...] You are *so* beautiful, more beautiful than any other woman [...] I cherish you, all of you, and the most important thing to me is getting you to understand...even your stomach, with stretchmarks and whatever, is the best stomach in the world, I'm sure."

A great example of this is back hair. I've generally gone for the lean, muscular, not-hairy kind of guy, and found back hair pretty darn unappealing. I *like* Steve's back hair... it's nice, I like running my hands through it. It's part of who he is, and I love all of him, even those features that would make many women think, "Yuck."

On the other hand, when you're feeling resentment towards someone, it's like they magically start getting uglier. You can't help but notice those little flaws, and they annoy you, and eventually disgust you.

So, I did the only thing I could think of, and made an attempt to work out a schedule where he could spend sufficient time gaming without having too much of a negative effect on our relationship. After all, NOT gaming was having even more of a negative effect.

Last night he was up far too late, gaming much of the time. In fact, he never did manage to fall asleep, and had to call in to work today. While I don't think the gaming was the main cause, I do believe it contributed, and I'm rather concerned about that. Current solution is, no gaming after I go to work, because he needs to spend that time asleep.

We'll see.

On another note, I went looking for that quote from his email from months ago, and now I'm feeling just awful. I used to read all the email he'd sent, as a way to cheer myself up and feel a bit less lonely on those long nights at work. Now it's devastating to read.

I'm just in shock, having gone through all that email (107 messages, in fact) and realizing that I'll probably never hear words like that again. I don't know what's happened, or maybe I do -- months of crisis after crisis has worn away at what we had until it's not even recognizable as what it once was.

We're locked in this awful cycle where the drama hits and we tear hell out of each other, again and again. It's unbelievable. I used to get irritated after he got here and I'd send him email, and he quit writing back (mostly due to time constraints, I guess). It's not that he stopped writing back that upset me so much, it's that he stopped expressing those things that made me feel so cherished and loved.

And as much as it hurts to say it, I think it's because those feelings aren't there like they used to be. This is more than just the end of the infatuation stage -- our relationship has been ravaged by all the trauma we've endured. Some inflicted on each other, some inflicted by factors out of either of our control.

The worst of it, I think, is that I still feel that way about him. I still look at him and feel this incredible joy, that he's mine, and hope he always will be. Somehow he's lost it, I think... and I don't know what to do. All I know is that I miss what we had, and I'd do anything in the world to have that back.

DSM-IV kicks my ass

2003-11-02T20:17:00.000-08:00

I have a knack for recognizing the pathology of everyone around me. It is my firm belief that everyone has a spot in the DSM-IV -- if I haven't assigned you one, that just means I haven't spent enough time around you.

Of course, it could just be that I attract the mentally ill.

Either way, it's been apparent to just about everyone around *me* that I've got certain psychological problems. I've been described as unstable, emotionally volatile, controlling, excessively clingy and needy too many times to count.

I've seen a few shrinks while in the throes of a psychotic break. Schizophrenia is easy -- take two antipsychotics and call me in the morning. Further, it's recognized as one of those few psychological problems that doesn't require time with a therapist -- just a diagnosis, medication, and perhaps occasional hospitalization.

So what's happened, inevitably, is I've been given a prescription and sent upon my merry way, without even considering my everyday behavior. After all, I have little trouble holding a job, and in public situations I certainly appear quite normal -- so why bother to investigate further?

The why is a lot more obvious if you're someone who has lived with me, been in a relationship with me, or God forbid, both at once.

I've never figured my behavior to be abnormal -- atypical, sure, but not abnormal. I mean, yeah, I'm very emotional, I have a lot of intense mood swings, I HATE HATE HATE being alone... but that's just part of who I am.

Still, it recently came to my attention that my "normal" (ie, non-psychotic) behavior was not helping my relationship with Steve. Combined with his autism and lack of experience, it's certainly no wonder we struggle so much.

I was browsing around the web with this on my mind, when I ran into a website that had the full DSM-IV text available, and decided to read through it. This, for me, is "light reading material" anyway -- it's kind of fun to plug people I know into neat little categories.

I came across the following, however, and was greatly disturbed:

Beginning by early adult life, the patient has unstable impulse control, interpersonal relationships, moods and self-image. These persistent or recurrent qualities are present in a variety of situations and shown by at least 5 of:
-Frantic attempts to prevent abandonment, whether real or imagined (don't include self-injurious or suicidal behaviors, covered below)
-Unstable relationships that alternate between idealization and devaluation
-Identity disturbance (severely distorted or unstable self-image or sense of self)
-Potentially self-damaging impulsiveness in at least 2 areas such as binge eating, reckless driving, sex, spending, substance abuse (don't include suicidal or self-mutilating behaviors)
-Self-mutilation or suicide thoughts, threats or other behavior
-Severe reactivity of mood creates marked instability (mood swings of intense anxiety, depression, irritability last a few hours to a few days)
-Chronic feelings of boredom or emptiness
-Anger that is out of control or inappropriate and intense (demonstrated by frequent temper displays, repeated physical fights or feeling constantly angry)
-Brief paranoid ideas or severe dissociative symptoms related to stress

Except for the last, every single criteria fits me like a glove. That's seven -- five are required to make a diagnosis.

I would have said, "Yes! That's a perfect description of me!" except that I saw the actual disorder this is, and I balked. It's none other than Borderline Personality Disorder, which has some pretty negative connotations. Certainly, the one person I knew who had it (Chris, an ex) was uh.. not a pleasant person.

I spent a lot of time reading about BPD since I happened upon the diagnostic criteria, and there's no question about it. And then I told Steve, which may well have been a mistake.

I'm not sure. I felt it was the right thing to do -- I hate the idea of keeping things from him, and I thought he'd be happy to hear anything that might give him a better idea of how my mind works.

It didn't go over well, though. The stigma of mental illness, and BPD in particular, is very strong. And trying to explain splitting (seeing everything in black or white terms) to him was a nightmare in and of itself...

I guess we'll see what happens. I think the biggest problem was the fact that BPD is associated with unstable, intense, **short-term** relationships. We talked about that, since it's there are quite a lot of people out there who have been married to someone with BPD for decades. Hopefully he's feeling a bit better on that count...

I'll write more later.. right now I'm mentally and emotionally exhausted.

Jugs are awesome

2003-10-31T23:31:00.000-08:00

Yeah, yeah. I'm not really going to talk about my jugs, which I do happen to be fond of, but rather a simple plastic container that has the potential to completely revamp my relationship with Steve.

Sounds insane, right? Actually, it's not.

I still don't really understand how it works, but it does, and that's all that's really important.

I mentioned earlier I bought a book when we went to the mall a few days ago. I've been reading various relationship books and online articles for quite a while now... since Steve and I got involved. I'd had so many failed relationships in the past, I figured I must be doing a lot of things wrong, and this seemed like a good way to find out what and how to correct it.

Well, many of those books and articles had good and useful points, but few really get into the nitty-gritty of how to fix major rifts. Dr. Phil, for example, has a popular book called "Relationship Rescue" -- it's a good book, in its own way, but it's also very broad. Basically, it gives a good idea of things that get in the way of having a successful relationship and things that make relationships better. But it never really tells you HOW to implement all this.

This is very important, especially for Steve. Very specific instructions make things easier for both of us, and for him I think they're basically necessary. I can bitch that I want more romance, but unless I sit down with him and throw out many examples of behavior I'd consider romantic, he's clueless on what to do.

Dr. Harley, author of "His Needs, Her Needs", gets a bit more specific (and I believe has a lot of valuable information) but still didn't give us what we needed -- specific instructions on how we could talk about sensitive subjects without drama and fighting.

And then I bought yet another book. I grabbed it off the shelf without really thinking too much about the purchase -- it just kind of grabbed my eye. I'm not sure why -- even though I'd been reading a lot of Dr. Harley's site lately, and considering his books as possibilities, I passed his up and got this one.

The book, by the way, is "Fighting for Your Marriage" by Howard J. Markman, Scott M. Stanley, and Susan L. Blumberg.

And now that I think about it, the reason I didn't give much consideration to Dr. Harley's books is because he strikes me as a shady character. The guy just reminds me a bit too much of a used car salesman, or one of those people who do late night infomercials. Lots of gimmicks, little substance -- and everything is an absolute. He doesn't take into account the differences between individual couples.

Anyway, once I finally got around to (somewhat unenthusiastically) cracking open this new book, I realized I was onto something. You see, I'm really not a big fan of anecdotal evidence, and your average self-help book is full of just that. This is something else entirely -- "Fighting for Your Marriage" is based on a fuckton of actual studies involving thousands of couples. Yay.

Furthermore, it's nice and specific, with clear-cut rulesets. And I knew as soon as I got to their "Speaker-Listener" technique that this would make a big difference. The only question was what Steve would think of all this.

So, last night after work, I proposed that we try it. He was willing, although at first I got the impression he might just be going along with this to humor me. God knows I've suggested all kinds of shit before, and most of it hasn't panned out. But hey, he reassured me he really did think it was a good idea.

Today we tried it out, and the results have been astounding. The Speaker-Listener technique is something I'm familiar with, as I used to facilitate a support group (AODA, which is very similar to Narcotics Anonymous). I just never thought of applying it to a relationship.

It works something like this: Whenever a sensitive (ie, likely to induce drama) subject comes up, S-L is engaged. Or, if we start to get into a fight, we can take a time-out, go smoke a cigarette and gather our thoughts, then use S-L.

S-L itself is rather simple. An object is used to symbolize when a certain person has the floor -- that person is the speaker. The speaker says what s/he has to say, and the listener is only allowed to respond in ways to help understand what the speaker is saying (IOW, no reactions except that of support and understanding). This is rather like active listening, but less constrained. Once the speaker has said what s/he wants to say, s/he passes the floor to the other person and the roles are reversed.

During this process, trying to find a solution isn't allowed, only discussion of our viewpoints on the issue at hand. Afterwards, once the issue has been discussed to both parties' satisfaction, working on a solution is handled by another technique, if necessary. Most of the time, this doesn't even need to happen. Mutual understanding (not necessarily agreement) counts for a hell of a lot.

I explained all this to Steve last night, and then today when we got home, we were sitting out on the balcony, smoking, when something came up. He'd asked me if I'd written any blog entries last night, and I said I had... then he jumped up and started to literally RUN for the computer to go read them. I wanted to prep him first, because it seemed likely I'd written something that might be upsetting.

So I shouted, "Wait! Stop!"

He came back, but reminded me of the trash can drama, and wanted to know why it was okay for me to yell orders at him when I got upset if he did that to me. I argued it wasn't the same, and we were on the verge of yet another fight.

And then something incredible happened. Enter the jugs referred to in the title of this post... or rather, "The Jug".

Steve picked up an empty orange juice jug that had been sitting out on the balcony for the last couple of days. Yes, we're messy, but that's not the point.

Anyway, he handed me the jug, and indicated that it represented the floor. We talked using the S-L technique. There was no drama, no fighting... just mutual understanding of each other's feelings and perceptions on the subject. It went very well, and I feel like the conversation brought us closer rather than dividing us.

Steve says he's going to clean out the jug so we can continue using it as our S-L object. I think it's a good idea -- after all, people subconsciously associate all sorts of things with particular memories. For example, when my half-step-brothers' mother was killed (and they found out), they were eating liver and onions for dinner. Since that day, none of them can stomach that dish.

Positive associations happen as well -- Steve has mentioned he considers our bed a safe zone, and therefore one of the best places for us to talk things out. This probably has a lot to do with all the good memories we have surrounding that bed (get your mind out of the gutter!).

I count at least four times today that we would have gotten into yet another messy fight, were it not for the jug (and the habits using it has already started to create). The yelling thing, stuff surrounding a blog post from last night, a time management issue, and a comment he made about being alone... hell, maybe more, I'm not sure, but any one of those would have guaranteed drama that would have wrecked our day.

Except we didn't fight at all today. We talked a lot, but it was done in a completely supportive and understanding way. I am pleased.

Looks like The Jug is here to stay.

29% Slut

2003-10-31T00:43:00.000-08:00

Heather recently posted a link to The Spark's Slut Test, along with her score of 68% slutty. I figured, hey, what the hell, I'll take it myself.

At one point it asked the fewest number of hours that had passed between having sex with two different people. I was quite alarmed to discover that it wouldn't accept a four digit answer, so I put in "999". The actual number is somewhere between 2000 and 3000 (or 3-4 months).

End result -- I score at 29% slutty, which is well below the average of 46%.

I find this interesting, probably because it got me thinking. In nearly every relationship I've been in, the biggest source of friction has been my puritanical attitudes toward sex.

Generally speaking, in a situation like this, you've got three choices:

1. Loosen up.

2. Find someone who has similar attitudes.

3. Get a man with more normal desires, and resign yourself to being cheated on.

The first option sounds good in theory, but I sincerely doubt it'll happen. Nor do I want it to. It bothers me -- why should I be expected to do things (or accept behaviors) that make me incredibly uncomfortable at best, or at worst, devastated and betrayed? I'm quite happy about the state of my sexuality, anyway. I don't *want* to change.

The second option is even trickier, because the vast majority of men who have attitudes similar to mine are also heavily religious... and I'm a devout atheist. I did have a relationship once with a man who shared very similar views to mine in this area, and who wasn't particularly religious. Unfortunately, he dumped my sorry ass for another woman after six months.

The third option is just plain ugly, but I think it's what I'm going to wind up dealing with. Steve's certainly a lot "looser" than I am, despite the fact he was extra-virgin when I met him. I have little doubt he'll cheat on me, or worse (again), but I can't bring myself to accept that.

I could just remain single and unlaid for the rest of my days, I suppose. I don't like that option either. I LIKE SEX, DAMMIT. In fact, I'm possibly a nymphomaniac -- ideal for me is somewhere between one and three fucks a day.

It'd be nice to blame Mikey for the attitudes I have, but in truth, while his actions did make them stronger, they've been in place since I was much younger. For example, I have an incredibly strong aversion to porn. I remember the first time I saw pornographic images -- I was eight or so, I guess. I threw up.

I haven't been as honest about this with Steve as I should have been... I tend to insinuate that Mikey is the reason, and it often seems true until I think back far enough and remember things from before I ever met my shithead ex-husband.

I haven't been honest with myself, either. I agree to things, and sometimes do things, that I just am not comfortable with... somehow I manage to convince myself that maybe, with enough "practice", I'll like it. Fat chance, in reality.

I think this was what was lingering in my mind, subconsciously, when I asked Steve today how he'd feel about having an open relationship. It's not that I want one -- I have zero desire to have sex with people who aren't him. But I think, on some level, it's an appealing option... because maybe we could set it up where he could go elsewhere for things I'm going to be uncomfortable with... and make some kind of agreement that he can't tell me about it.

I guess it's just a matter of which option would be more harmful in the long run -- force myself to do things that make me feel bad, or give him the freedom to stick his dick in whatever orifice presents itself. I'm honestly not sure.

Note: Blogger is being weird again. To see the rest of today's posts, click here.

All roads... (Part II)

2003-10-30T23:53:00.000-08:00

Recent searches that have led readers to the Asylum:

Nine week old fetus (Yahoo)

Prozac sex drive kills (Google)

old men asylum (Yahoo)

depo provera spotting message board (Google)

pictures fourteen year old brothers fucking thirteen year old sisters (Google)

how to end a relationship without hurting someone's feelings (Yahoo)

Gotta love that next to last one. Just the fact that there are apparently quite a few people out there searching for things like that makes me glad that, if nothing else, my fiance is not a sick fuck.

Life goes on

2003-10-30T23:50:00.000-08:00

First of all, I want to thank everyone for the support I've gotten since the last post I wrote. I'm definitely prone to emotional fits -- I don't mope or linger over things for long when they go wrong... instead, I wind up compressing my emotions and letting them out in one extreme outburst.

Note I say "compress" rather than "repress" -- I don't hold things in, I just let them out all at once. It's messy, but at least I get over things fast and am ready to move on quickly.

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good now.

Something occurred to me recently. I am not an easy person to live with. I mean, look at this -- I'm divorced, schizophrenic, incredibly emotional, clingy, needy, demanding, and I've got an amazing case of PTSD from my first marriage.

My darling ex-husband (Mikey) and I were together for six years. During that time, I was allowed to leave the apartment a grand total of about 30 or 40 times. Most of that was prenatal appointments... I was literally a prisoner. And I had nearly no human contact except for him (and for the latter half of the relationship, our daughter) for the majority of that time.

Mikey was abusive in some nasty ways, ranging from his (often sucessful) attempts to make me cry during sex, to choking me until I nearly lost consciousness, to not allowing me to have any friends and little contact with my family, to lying about *everything*...

The lost post had more detail on that, but suffice it to say, when that's what your very first relationship is like... from age 16-22... you just don't come away unscathed.

So, I'm the ultimate psycho girlfriend. Unlike Mikey, I do have a few redeeming qualities -- I'm a 36DDD nymphomaniac and a damn good cook. And uh, I pay my half of the bills. That's good for something, right?

Anyway. My point is, and I'm sure any of my ex's would be glad to verify this, it'd be a tremendous challenge for anyone to maintain a relationship with me.

Then we have Steve. He's been through more shit in the last six months than he had in the previous eighteen years. Check it out:

He moved 1800 miles to live with a woman he'd never met in person, severely pissing off his parents in the process. Then I somehow wound up pregnant, lost the baby along with a quart of blood or more, freaked out pretty bad about that. Lost my job, went psycho and tried to blow my brains out, spent a few days in the hospital, came home and had a couple more psychotic episodes. One of these involved me slicing myself up with a razorblade, badly enough to leave well over a hundred permanent scars.

And there's other things, that alone would add up to a damn high stress level. Steve's under a lot of work related stress, stress from our relationship, stress from his mom, stress from money problems, stress from my near-constant health problems...

Anyone would have a hard time dealing with all this, but he's eighteen years old, autistic, and has ZERO previous experience with women.

There is no question we have a high-maintenence relationship. Hell, we're both high-maintenence people (especially myself) and once you put the two of us together and add lots of traumatic events... it's amazing we haven't killed each other, let alone broken up.

Which is not to say it's all bad. In truth, most days are good, and I'm happy most of the time. It's always one way or the other, though... I can't recall any "okay" days, just great ones and horrible ones.

There was a little girl, who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good, she was very, very good,
But when she was bad, she was horrid.

Anyone remember that nursery rhyme? If you replace the little girl with our relationship, it's a very accurate description.

Yeah, one of those intense, dramatic, rollercoaster relationships. I've had a few of those before, but never quite like this, or for anywhere near this length of time. It's been my experience this sort of thing is short-lived and ends badly, or else the drama cools down, things stablize, and all is well.

In less than a month, Steve and I will have been together for a year.

I think the problem here is that we get lazy. It's a cycle -- something awful happens, we work our asses off to get things going well again, and everything is great... then we get lazy and stop trying so much, because after all, it's going well. Then everything slowly degrades, another something awful happens, and it's way harder to deal with because our relationship is already suffering.

I used to try really hard to be proactive about this relationship. Unfortunately, Steve got bored with it. I think this was for two reasons -- one, I wasn't going about it in a particularly good way (for him), and two, he hadn't yet realized how important it was to maintain the relationship.

I haven't been trying as hard as I should, these days. That's something that has to change. Hell, at this point, I'd say our efforts are roughly equal -- I'm doing less, he's doing more. Both of us need to do more, especially when it comes to following up on decisions we've made to do just that.

Steve is, however, trying. That's not something I could confidently state until recently. But he is, and it's great, and I'm trying to remember to shower him with positive feedback so he continues to do so.

We sat down together recently and made lists of everything we needed from each other, putting X's next to those items that weren't being met satisfactorily. Then we went through them and had a long talk about what we could each do to get those needs met, and make each other happier. I think it's a good start, the discussion went very well.

If we had unlimited money, I'd think both of us should probably see a therapist. We don't, however... nor do we have health insurance. Couples counseling is another possibility, although I'm reluctant just on the grounds I fear they may tell us we're just not suited for each other.

This book I bought a few days ago is based on seminars held nationwide that are supposedly well-researched and proven to greatly reduce the risk of divorce. I have to say the list of sources is very impressive. Anyway, there's a guy who does the seminars about 30 miles from where we live, and we're seriously considering going to one... assuming we can afford it.

That was Steve's idea. Maybe I hinted a little, but he's not very good at picking up hints anyway, and he did suggest it. Just the fact that he thought it would be a good idea for us to do something like that makes me very happy. After all, for a long time my chief complaint with him was that he doesn't seem to want to do the necessary work to keep this relationship running smoothly.

Maybe that's changed. If so, I think we stand a good chance at making it. Yeah, we've got problems, and lots of them, but perhaps not anything insurmountable.

...and hopefully he won't cringe so much when he reads *this* post, as opposed to yesterday's.

Uhhh...

2003-10-30T22:04:00.000-08:00

Blogger just lost my post, again. This is getting pretty annoying -- I was going to copy it into the buffer before I submitted this time, just to be safe, and I accidently hit submit before I did it.

Doh.

I'll make another shot at it shortly, but for now, I'll just say things are looking up.

Dear God...

2003-10-30T02:54:00.000-08:00

I spent two hours writing a post about everything that's happened in the last few days. Blogger went down, and I lost that detailed accounting. No, I don't have the patience to write it all out again. Instead, I'll write the abstract version. Not much in the way of juicy details, but hell, it's something.

I ended my first marriage with grounds of "irreconcilable differences". I suppose that was true enough, if you call "he's an abusive asshole, I'm just using him for money" irreconcilable differences. I think, though, that it'd be a lot more true of my current relationship.

I don't think you can have a relationship for more than a few months before someone gets hurt. At least not if it's serious. That's life. But there's a big difference between the normal ups and downs of relationships, and what Steve and I are facing.

This is something else, something I've never experienced before. We fight on a near daily basis, and every month or month and a half, things go to total shit when he does something that leaves me feeling like I've been backstabbed by my best friend. This man, whom I love more than I've ever loved anyone, has inflicted more pain on me in the last five months than I've experienced (in total) in twenty-five years.

It's caused by carelessness, a total lack of consideration, laziness, panic, and God only knows what else. Never malice, though. Steve is like a bull in a china closet, and slowly but surely, he's breaking me... one plate at a time. Sometimes a whole stack of plates, like on Monday.

In five months:
He violated my one and only dealbreaker, twice.
He lied to me, about something highly sensitive and emotional in nature.
He left me to rot in a hospital bed without bothering to visit, while planning on dumping me as soon as I was released.
He told me he wanted to cheat on me, because he thought he'd get an ego boost from it.
He told me he was no longer attracted to me, and merely loved me like a sister... then changed his mind.
He tried, repeatedly, to pressure me into doing something that he's aware makes me feel humiliated and degraded... because it makes him feel "powerful and dominant".
He was physically violent (borderline) with me, once or perhaps twice, depending on your definition. Only bruising, but that's bad enough.
He has constantly avoided situations in which I needed support -- sometimes by ignoring me when I was upset and playing on the computer, very frequently by falling asleep when I needed him.

...and all this without malice. There's not a mean bone in his body -- Steve's perhaps the nicest man I've ever known, if you consider nice to mean that he never intends to hurt me.

But it seems altogether too often that he just doesn't give a fuck about me. Oh, he swears he loves me, and that my happiness is more important than anything -- and then he does things he knows are indescribably hurtful to me. And apparently it's because he forgets I exist, or something. Or forgets that I've practically begged him not to do those things. I don't know. I'm just baffled by all of this.

...and I don't know what to do. I love him, it's nearly impossible to imagine life without him. He can be a truly incredible person, and most of the time, is. Every night at work, I spend the whole time looking forward to coming home just so I can see him for that precious half hour we have before he goes to work. There is no better feeling in the world than being held in his arms.

And yet, everything goes horribly wrong. He drops one bomb or another, and I'm left devastated, feeling as raw as if someone had peeled away my skin. I feel like I'm living with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, except Steve doesn't mean to do these things to me. Where should I draw the line? "Oops, I fucked your sister... I just forgot you existed!" "Sorry I broke your arms and legs, I didn't realize it was going to make you unhappy."

This time I truly hit the end of my rope -- I was ready to move out and call it quits for good, despite the fact I'd promised I would never do that. I guess I justified it, because he'd broken the most important (to me) promise he'd ever made. But he cried, and he begged, and he swore he'd do anything if I just wouldn't leave him. So I couldn't, as much as I know I should have... if nothing else, for my own sake.

I'd give anything in the world for this shit to stop happening. I can handle the constant drama, the fighting, the misunderstandings and hurts and whatever else, but I can't handle being betrayed again. Maybe I'll numb myself to it eventually, I don't know... maybe once this has happened so much that I just don't care anymore, we'll have a nice, peaceful co-existence. Yeah, kinda like the last few years of my ex-marriage. Fuck that. Fuck it with a goddamned telephone pole.

I think much of the reason that I fell in love with Steve is that he seemed to be the total opposite of my ex-husband. And yet, as time goes by, he resembles that sonofabitch more and more. The two things that Mikey did that turned my affection for him into pure hate, are the two things that Steve did this time.

I went to the bookstore yesterday. I looked long and hard at a book that was supposed to help you decide whether to dump your SO or not. I resisted the urge to buy it, and instead picked up yet another relationship manual. This one promises a "divorce prevention system". I haven't even cracked it open yet. I don't have the energy, and I'm caring less and less.

I think there's something wrong with me. Well, we all know there is, for Christ's sake -- I'm certified psychotic. But I can't even begin to understand how I can love this man, and want him to be happy, when he's done this much to me. Yes, he's got good traits, lots and lots of them, but we all know how much good can be undone by a single betrayal of trust. And there's been plenty of them.

Yet another of those fucking self-help authors, this time a Dr. Hayley, talks about the "love bank". He says that when you do something good for someone, you're putting a deposit in there. Do something shitty, and you're making a withdrawl. If the balance gets high enough, you develop loving feelings towards a person. If it gets low enough, you no longer love that person and in fact begin to dislike them.

By all rights, that account should be sitting at -$40,000 or so. Well into the negative numbers, anyhow. Apparently I've got a magic fucking love bank, because God help me, I still care about Steve.

I haven't stopped caring about him. I've just stopped caring about my own happiness.

Happy Birthday to Me

2003-10-29T21:56:00.000-08:00

Today was my 25th birthday. It sucked.

Actually, my day went pretty well, but aside from the following, my birthday went by unacknowledged:

Lupe, an older guy I work with, called me shortly after midnight to say "Happy Birthday".

Steve told me "Happy Birthday" after being prompted, and later sang it to me (again, after prompting) while I giggled like a little girl.

My mom called to say "Happy Birthday" and told me my dad said to tell me the same. Also, they'll be taking me out to a buffet tomorrow.

But I'm not complaining, because the day went pretty damn well. This is surprising, because the last few days have been dramafests from hell.

Steve made dinner -- a huge brisket. It was quite good, very tender and yummy. Pasta with creamy garlic sauce, too. Yay for food.

I'll post more in a bit, but want to get this up before midnight...

Thin Ice

2003-10-26T00:09:00.000-07:00

It's raining yet again -- this time complete with some fairly high winds and lots of thunder. I have to say the weather fits my mood well -- I'm still brooding.

Last night I sent Steve a lengthy email explaining what I feel is a grave issue within our relationship -- specifically, conflict resolution (or the lack thereof). I believe I asked at least two or three times in that email for him to please take me seriously, because this wasn't a minor thing.

Our conflicts aren't getting resolved to either of our satisfaction, and this has been going on for a matter of months. It'd be easy to just blame it on his total lack of cooperation in this department, but I'm more interested in finding out what's causing that.

Anyway, we talked about it today, and apparently our arguments are never resolved to *his* satisfaction and never have been. This came as quite a surprise to me. I had no idea because he never speaks up to tell me if something is bothering him, and when the subject comes up, he tells me he's satisfied with the state of our relationship.

In fact, he said this again today, or something similar. We ate out at a local dive this evening, and during dinner, he said "I think as long as we're happy to be with each other, this relationship is doing great." This was after I mentioned I did an online relationship assessment thingie that said we're "on shaky ground". Thin ice is more like it, in my view, but he disagrees.

This is where being in a relationship with an autistic man gets frustrating.

He says that we've never resolved a conflict to his satisfaction (in eleven months!). He has an unbelievable repertoire of tricks to avoid, delay, and abort drama. He says I steamroll him and he doesn't get a chance to make his case because I make it too clear that he's wrong and I'm right. He hates it when we fight, and we do so on a daily basis.

...and he also says he's satisfied and happy with our relationship, and that we're doing quite well... just a bit unstable. He took one of those "relationship satisfaction tests" the internet is chock-full of (at my request) and scored us as near ideal.

What the fuck?!

Expressing my own concerns about the state of our relationship doesn't get me very far. This is when Steve brings out the box of band-aids and offers one.

...okay, that wasn't very nice. What happens is more like this:

I express a serious concern about the state of our relationship, and Steve and I discuss it. We come up with some ideas as to what we might do to improve the situation. Sometimes these ideas get implemented, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

Either way, he seems to consider the issue resolved, closed, and no longer in need of discussion once we've had a fifteen minute talk and brainstormed a few ideas.

Steve would make a terrible manager. I can see it already -- corporate HQ calls to tell him there's a major problem with production at his location. He calls a meeting, a brief brainstorming session is held, the meeting is adjourned and he considers the case closed.

Alright, that's not really fair either. Truth is, it's as much me as it is him. I make suggestions, sometimes repeatedly, but I don't followup either. For example, I've mentioned three or four times in the last five months that I feel we should take some time out to discuss our issues every day. That probably sounds excessive to most of my readers, but we have so many issues most people would have split up months and months ago. Anyway, since he never gave any feedback on the suggestion, I figured he didn't like it and stopped bringing it up.

Still... the band-aid solutions continue and I don't think he's seeing it. I don't think he realizes that an issue that's been increasingly severe over the last few months is not going to be solved by a fifteen minute discussion.

Band-aid:
"I'll try doing this..."
"...and I'll do this..."
"Sounds good."
"Okay, so what's for dinner?"

Hate to break it to you, but band-aids do not cure cancer. It'd be nice if they did, though.

Not that the band-aids we wind up with aren't helpful -- they are. But they're a small step in the right direction, when dealing with something this major. And I'm getting tired of feeling like he thinks I'm dragging up ancient history when I try to followup on things like this.

Five bucks says that he'll never mention our issues with conflict resolution again, unless I initiate the conversation. For that matter, five bucks says he'll never bring up *any* relationship issue on his own.

That may not be fair, either, since his bringing things up was part of today's band-aid, and I'm hoping he'll follow through.

What really has me concerned here is the way he doesn't seem to recognize the gravity of major issues, when they do come up. Maybe he does, I can never tell what's going on in his head... but I'm pretty certain that since we had that conversation, he hasn't spent even five minutes thinking about it.

I just get the feeling that I can say, "Sweetheart, we are in deep shit here" over and over again with little effect. It's like he's not going to really get it until I finally give up and inform him I've had all I can take and would rather be his roommate.

All roads lead... here!

2003-10-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

On a somewhat lighter note...

I get endless amusement from reading my list of referrals each day. Sitemeter makes my day -- specifically, the web searches people do that lead them to my site.

Recent searches that have led people to the Asylum:
twenty year old man is fucking two thirteen year old girls (Yahoo)
how to fix a toilet clog getting worse (Google)
Missouri age leave home consent (Google)
lambskin condoms feeling (Yahoo)
I vomited all over the (Google)

Occasionally someone will actually find this site doing a search that's related to the theme -- for example, someone found it when searching for information on triggers for psychotic breaks. Another found it when searching for information on autism.

But for the most part, those folks who stumble into the Asylum when doing a web search, and actually click the link, are looking for something unrelated and bizarre.

Not that I'm complaining.

Vicodin kicked my ass

2003-10-25T22:47:00.000-07:00

I'm in a strange mood tonight -- dark, fatalistic, introspective... just in time for Halloween, I suppose. Then again, I feel entirely too goth for my taste. I'm hoping if I write out the junk going through my head, I'll stop brooding.

Little known fact: I fucked a fat Mexican goth once. I wonder if he has anything to do with my dislike of moods like this.

...or maybe it's the coke. I don't know. This is my addictive mindframe. Not that I've touched cocaine in a year and a half, but I don't recall feeling like this since then.

I've been taking too much Vicodin. Still, that's nothing new -- when I've been prescribed opiates, I eat them like candy until they're gone, rapidly increasing my dose as my tolerence goes up. And it goes up fast -- I remember the days of six bag shots... enough smack to kill a horse.

The weird thing about opiates, however, is they don't hook me. Still, I've been hitting the Vikes way too hard and I'm going to pay for it when I run out. That'll be in about three hours, I figure.

Steve asked me how many I had left today. My gut reaction was defensiveness. This bothers me. It also bothers me that I've been waiting until he's not looking before I take them, because I don't want him to see the quantity I've been taking.

It's only been a week, but as fast as my tolerence shot up, I'm expecting a bit of physical withdrawl. Nothing I haven't done before, and I'm not even really dreading it. I'm almost going to be glad when I'm out -- last night at work was close to a mirror image of one of my worst coke binges.

I'd feel great -- exhilarated, talkative, friendly to everyone -- and then reality comes crashing down. So there I am digging out the pill bottle, taking more in a (quite effective) attempt to forget that everything sucks, at least for a little while.

The problem was, I hit that point where my tolerence was shooting up higher and higher over the course of hours... three of those suckers (and these are 7.5's, folks) wouldn't cut it, and I started stacking.

Stacking is bad. I don't know why. But every time I do it, regardless of the drug, I wind up in a very bad place. With coke it turned into, "let's see how much of this shit I'm physically capable of snorting, and maybe I'll manage to OD this time." Coke binges turned from "I'm going to have some fun" to "I'm trying to coke myself to death" in a few hours.

I wasn't trying to off myself this go-round, just to find a plateau where I wasn't skyrocketing to uber-high and then dropping like a lead brick into the depths of depression.

By the time I got home, there was approximately 37.5 mg of hydrocodone floating around in my bloodstream. Considering the normal adult dose would be 5mg and the maximum 10mg (which is too much for most people), that's quite a lot.

...and I had barely achieved "normal".

The nice thing about opiates, for me, is that I can stop and I recognize when the time has come to do so. This may have something to do with the fact that whatever drug I'm using (even alcohol), I binge -- and opiates are just not good for binging. Tolerence rises too fast, and after a while I realize it's just not doing the trick anymore. So I stop.

Of course, as high as I let it get this time, I'll have some physical symptoms, but the craving just isn't there.

After I got home last night, I went to bed to sleep it off. That's another thing I like about opiates -- I can sleep, and when I wake up I feel okay. Certainly beats the hell out of those incredibly miserable, sleepless nights coming down from a coke binge.

I felt weird, though, after a while... I'd be on the edge of sleep, then get this odd feeling, as if I was on the verge of losing consciousness. Back in the coke days, I would have welcomed that sensation with open arms -- thinking maybe I'd finally managed to do it, and I'd pass out and die. Every single coke binge ended like that -- in a desperate attempt to OD and end my suffering.

Opiates are different, however, and I've got a whole hell of a lot more to live for than I did back then. I had this sudden vision -- Steve coming home from work at lunch, eager to spend those precious fifteen minutes with me, and finding me in the bed... in a state of rigor mortis. He'd always wonder, I think, after the autopsy report showed I'd ODed -- had I done it purposely? Had I chose to leave him, in the worst possible way, without a word? Without even telling him I was unhappy?

So I forced myself awake, and started breathing deeply. If overdosing on opiates is going to kill you, it'll be from respiratory depression. If you can stay awake, and breathing, you can survive even a massive overdose. This is one case where willpower can save your life.

I waited until I stopped feeling weak and faint before I let myself sleep.

If I hadn't, would I have died? It's hard to say -- in someone without tolerence, that 37.5 mg would certainly be potentially fatal. I sincerely doubt it, though. I think I just panicked. That, too, is part of the addictive mindframe.

Still, that was a clear-cut, impossible-to-ignore sign that it was time to start weaning myself off. So that's what I'm doing, although I'll run out before I'm properly weaned, and expect a few days of feeling rather ill. Shit happens.

I don't regret it. Being high 24/7 has been good for our relationship -- I managed to handle Steve's mom visiting with a minimum of stress, we've had a much-needed break from drama, and I managed to express a lot of things I wouldn't have been able to without the Vikes. That's one of the best things about me on opiates -- I'm much more open about my feelings, and yet not harsh at all.

I do, however, regret some of my behavior surrounding this little adventure in prescription drug abuse. The understanding was that I'd take these until I didn't need them (for pain), then split the remainder with Steve. Well, I've stuck to the agreement, except that I've been abusing the fuck out of them in the meantime.

I wonder if there was an unspoken agreement that I was supposed to be sticking to the prescribed dose. I don't know -- but I do know that the tolerence as far as pain relief goes, increases at roughly the same rate as the tolerence to the high. In other words, I wasn't taking more than was necessary (except for that final stacking incident) to eliminate the pain.

Perhaps more importantly, I'm feeling rather dishonest now. I didn't tell Steve I'd steadily increased my dose all the way up to three times what I'd started with. In fact, as noted before, I was waiting to pop my pills until he wasn't looking. Lie of omission? I don't know. I'm not sure if this falls into the category of things I'm expected to reveal.

If I really thought it did, I would have told him though. God knows I'm terrible at keeping things to myself, especially if it involves me doing things I wasn't supposed to. If I had an affair, I'd call Steve from the other man's bed (as soon as he pulled out) to inform him of what I'd done.

At the time of this writing, he still doesn't know what I was doing, or what happened last night when I was trying to sleep after work. He'll read this, though, and while it's probably not the best way to communicate such things, it's easier.

I'm going to cross my fingers and hope he's not mad.

Trash Can Drama

2003-10-24T23:39:00.000-07:00

One of few things about this relationship that I am proud of is that Steve and I do not fight over stupid shit. Or at least, it's very rare that we do. Today was the second such argument I can recall in the eleven months we've known each other.

Our main trash can was overfull. Not so overfull that things were spilling out of it, but full enough that adding anything else would be a bad idea. It had been full like this for a couple of days, and Steve told me he'd take it out when he did the laundry last night. He forgot.

I'm not the sort of woman to get pissed about things like that. In fact, I'm pretty damn laid back about it. So this afternoon, when we were getting ready to go out I said, "Hey, let's take the trash out on our way down."

He agreed we should, so I went over to the trash can and started removing the bag.

"Don't take the bag out!" Steve shouted at me, in a rather commanding tone.

I was thinking, "Who the fuck died and made *you* God?" but I said, "Huh? Why not? I'm taking the bag out."

...and Steve starts semi-forcibly pulling items out of the bag and putting them into another one. I was annoyed -- after all, I've been taking trash out since before he was born (literally!), and he was treating me like I was incompetant or something.

I stepped back and let him do what he wanted. Afterwards, I pulled the bag out, while he muttered something about not being able to close it up because it was too full. I think it was something like, "I want to see you get that bag closed completely."

It closed, easily, with plenty of room to spare -- it would have closed fine if he hadn't taken things out of it, too.

But whatever -- the trash bag, and whether or not it needed to have some items removed before taking it out, was the least of my concern. I do NOT take well to having orders shouted at me.

We talked about it afterwards, and the subject got dropped, but I'm still not really feeling much closure here. Mostly because of a few things that came up during the discussion...

At one point, Steve said, "I think that's one thing my parents did better than yours -- I don't have a problem with authority."

This comment was incredibly disturbing to me. I don't have a problem with authority -- when it's a legitimate authority figure, such as my supervisor at work, or a police officer. Steve, however, is most certainly not an authority figure to me, and never will be. I certainly hope he doesn't think I'm supposed to take orders from him.

Before that, I said something like, "Christ, I'm not incompetant, you know." And he replies, "Sometimes it's hard to tell."

Now what on earth is that supposed to mean? I'm not sure, but if he's got that little faith in my abilities (emptying a trash can, for God's sake!), then we have some serious talking to do.

And then when I was trying to explain to him how I felt about having orders shouted at me, he got this bored, "I'm tired of listening to you" expression on his face. I said something to the effect that it looked like he thought I was lecturing him. He confirmed this.

Argh.

We had more drama later, which wasn't too bad, and then he was trying escape routes... wanting to take a nap to avoid talking to me, for example. Not cool.

I'm incredibly frustrated now. I can't remember ever feeling quite this way about our relationship. Somehow our conflict resolution skills have evaporated, and I can't figure out why.

Steve avoids conflict like the plague. I have absolutely no idea why, despite the fact this has been going on for a few months now. He falls asleep in mid-conversation, and then we wind up having a truly major bout of drama as soon as he wakes up. We talked about this tonight, but to be pefectly honest, I have little faith anything is going to change.

And worse, it's like I can't even tell him how something he did made me feel, anymore. If I try, he acts like an insolent child who is being lectured. Or he rags on himself, with one version or another of "I failed yet again". I used to believe that he was taking it that hard, but I'm not so sure anymore. Now it seems like a guilt trip intended to get me off his back.

In other words, Steve is using not only techniques to avoid and delay conflict, but also to abort it prematurely. This is not a good thing. Just thinking about it has caused my stress levels to skyrocket. The man is a whole lot more devious than he appears to be (although I'm not sure how much of that is conscious).

Not that I'm assigning him all the blame -- I'm quite certain that I'm at least partially responsible for all this. I just have no idea what I'm doing to cause or encourage the problem.

Bleah.

Who will watch the watchers?

2003-10-22T23:50:00.000-07:00

Apparently, they'll watch each other.

The ultimate job for a thief is night shift security. After all, there are rarely employees working overnight to report the guards, and generally only a few guards on duty. It'd be incredibly easy for a guard to load expensive items into his car while on duty, completely undetected.

So, I wasn't terribly surprised when Louie informed me today that there had been some recent theft that had been blamed on the guards. Specifically, some rather expensive drills had been stolen. I was gone when this happened, so I guess I'm not a suspect. This is good, because I certainly haven't been ripping off company tools.

Anyhow, this has led to a new policy. Now, when we arrive at work to relieve our fellow security officers, we're required to search their cars and bags before they go home. Sounds logical, right?

Not really. If one of my co-workers is stealing, I doubt this will do much good. After all, there are only ten of us, and we're a pretty tight-knit group. I have a hard time imagining any of the guards turning the others in, unless it's the new guy that's ripping things off.

On the other hand, if I found out who was doing it, I wouldn't hesitate to rat him (or her) out. Self-preservation rules the day -- if it *is* a guard, and it continues unchecked, we could very well lose our contract. That means I'd be laid off or transferred, and neither appeal to me.

So, if I notice a co-worker trying to sneak out of the facility with a drill-shaped bulge in his pants, I'm not going to assume it's his penis. After all, I hear the locals have small ones -- stunted growth from malnutrition, I suppose.

Chamber of Horrors -- Part I

2003-10-22T23:19:00.000-07:00

After the last week or so of suffering, I had an appointment with the oral surgeon today. We arrived at the office at around 1:20pm and I was called in after just a few minutes (my appointment was for 1:30).

They did one of those 360 degree x-rays. I was wincing the whole time -- not because it was painful or anything, but because I've had them before and they were insanely expensive. This time they didn't charge me much for it, because the total bill for the day's visit was $90 -- less than my regular dentist, who only did a spot x-ray.

After that, they took my vital signs, and for some bizarre reason my blood pressure was high -- 139/77. I've never, in my entire life (and probably hundreds of BP readings) had it come out higher than 120/80. My blood pressure is normally quite low -- around 100-110 over 60-70. I suspect their electronic BP machine needs calibrated or something.

The dental assistant led me off into another room, where she popped in a video about having wisdom teeth removed. "I'm not here for my wisdom teeth," I explained. She informed me that it was the doctor's policy to have all patients who still had their wisdom teeth watch the video. I shut up and watched.

Then the oral surgeon himself came in to talk to me. He didn't strike me as overly competant -- he seemed like a wholesale wisdom tooth remover, who had little experience in much else. After looking at the x-ray, he thought I'd had the ones on the left side out, which I haven't -- they're in all the way because I had one molar on the top and bottom removed when I was much younger.

He examined me and tried to convince me to keep one of the teeth -- oddly enough, the one he felt I should keep, is the one that's the source of all the pain and problems. I insisted I wanted them both out.

Then he decided I should also have the wisdom teeth on that side taken out at the same time. I went along with this, figuring it wouldn't be much more expensive and I might as well get it done then.

I'd thought I was going to get it all done that day, but no, this was just a consultation. It turned out that was for the best, anyway, since the estimate I was presented with was shockingly high.

Anyway, he asked if I had any questions. I had one -- I informed him I'd been in severe pain and my dentist only prescribed enough medication to last until that appointment. He gave me another 30 Vicodin ES. I lied, though, because just yesterday my dentist refilled the prescription for 20 she'd given me. So, since last Friday, I've been prescribed a grand total of 70 Vicodin ES -- the equivalent of 105 regular Vicodin.

Yay for me. I like Vikes.

So after the oral surgeon finished giving his speech about what he thought I should get done, I met the billing woman to pay for the visit and look at the estimate for what I needed done. She asked what I was looking at getting done -- just the two teeth that need to go, or the wisdom teeth as well. I asked for the price on the full thing first, which was over $1,100. Ouch.

Just to get those two teeth out (including the associated jawbone work), it'd be $656, which is bad enough. My choices were to pay up front at the time of the visit, or apply for a "dental credit card". I tried applying, despite my horrible credit, and didn't get it. She told me the credit company had advised a "strong co-applicant". Unfortunately, Steve has no credit whatsoever.

Mom to the rescue. My own parents will be in Texas in a few days, and they agreed to co-sign on it for me. "If you don't pay, we'll geld Steve," my mom said.

So, I'll be going back to the chamber of horrors early next week. I'm not looking forward to this at all, but at least I get IV benzodiazepenes for my trouble.

Meanwhile, I'm staying high on Vicodin... life is good.

Steve's Mom

2003-10-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

So, my future mother-in-law spent the last few days visiting. It was... interesting.

The first day was the worst, but in reality, even that went much more smoothly that I had expected. We met her at the hotel she was staying in, and within five minutes of our arrival, she was carping at Steve because his shirt was *slightly* wrinkled.

"I hope you don't go to work looking like that," she said. "Now take that shirt off, I'm going to iron it!"

So, she hadn't seen her son in close to six months after he moved out suddenly and went halfway across the country... and the first thing she notices is that his shirt has a couple of minor wrinkles. Sheesh.

My impression of Steve's mom wasn't helped much by this, I have to say.

We went out to eat shortly after that, her treat. Just a few minutes after sitting down at the table, she decided to announce that when she had accessed Steve's email account (the day he left home) to find out where he was, she also read every single one of the emails I had sent him. There were well over a hundred of them, many of which were quite personal in nature. Some of them also included my opinion of his mom, which wasn't very high.

I'm not sure why she decided to tell us this, especially over dinner, but her tone wasn't very nice, and certainly not apologetic. I think she meant to let me know she knew I didn't like her, and that she didn't like me much either. Who knows? Well, whatever, under the circumstances I could hardly expect to have a warm relationship with my mother-in-law.

Steve rode in the front with his mom on the way to and from the restaurant. I guess I was a little miffed at that -- I was feeling a lot like a third leg throughout the first day, like my presence was being mostly ignored because no one wanted me there. On the second day, I asked Steve if he'd sit beside me when we rode together so I didn't feel quite so excluded... and besides, it's been my experience that couples sit together in cars whenever it's possible.

More on *that*, later.

After dinner, Steve's mom wanted to check out an ice cream shop that was near the restaurant, so we walked over to look. She and I were both stuffed from dinner, but Steve bought himself an ice cream cone. The weird thing was, on the way out of the shop, she apologized to me for bringing him in there. "It's my fault for wanting to go here," she said.

I thought that was odd, too. Maybe I'm not supposed to approve of his eating ice cream. Hell if I know... I guess Steve's family is a lot more health-conscious than I am.

We only had to spend a few hours with her that night, since Steve was at work until the afternoon. And when she said, "If you two are tired, you can go home," we took her up on that right away.

The next day, she was supposed to call us at noon, but we weren't home. I ran out of Vicodin ES and called my dentist to get more, then we wound up waiting around the pharmacy for about an hour and a half. The dentist hadn't called in the prescription yet.

So, we didn't get home until almost 1:00, and called her then. We'd decided to go shopping in Mexico for the day, and so she came and picked us up. I had assured Steve that it wouldn't be weird if he sat in the back with me -- after all, it's been my experience that couples sit together in a car.

Steve's mom didn't see it that way, however, and laid down a guilt trip on him for not sitting by her. Then she suggested I should sit up front with her, in such a way that I couldn't decline without being overtly rude, so I did.

It worked out pretty well, though. We made small talk on the way there, and it wasn't even particularly awkward. Amazing.

The trip to Mexico went well -- we spent a lot of time shopping, then ate lunch at a restaurant Steve and I had been to before. I felt a little more involved during all this, because I'd been going to Mexico for years. Steve had only been there once before, with me, and his mom had only been to Acapulco, which is quite different than a border town.

Afterwards, Steve's mom invited us to watch Runaway Jury with her at the movie theatre. I survived. After all, watching a movie, even one I didn't like at all, is a good way to pass time with someone you don't like much. Movies are nice -- no forced conversation required for two hours straight!

I pretended to have enjoyed the movie, despite the fact I absolutely hate courtroom drama, and felt it was awfully slanted towards gun control. (I'm a former card-carrying member of the NRA -- former only because I haven't got around to renewing my membership. I'm also a gun owner.)

Luckily, it was nice and late when the movie ended, and we got to go home. Yay!

Then there was today -- Steve's mom came over at 11:30 for a late breakfast, which we cooked for her -- omelets and southern-style hashbrowns. Since my appointment at the oral surgeon was at 1:30, she didn't stick around for long. She did compliment my cooking several times, though, which was nice.

Since her flight was that afternoon, we wouldn't be seeing her again before she left. Surprisingly, she hugged me on her way out. Although I don't expect to ever have a good relationship with my mother-in-law, I do think she warmed up to me a bit during her visit. Maybe she doesn't see me as the evil woman who bribed her son to leave home with promises of sex, anymore. Or maybe she does, and hides it well. Who knows?

We were both pretty relieved to see her go. Still, the visit went remarkably well -- undoubtably this has a lot to do with the fact I was high on Vicodin the entire time. And somehow, in all that time, I only slipped and said a bad word once -- I accidently said "shit" during breakfast today. She probably noticed, but she didn't say anything.

Steve's mom freaks out over the word "damn", so I was trying very hard not to curse. This is extremely difficult for me, because I've got a mouth like a drunken sailor -- I've been saying all sorts of offensive words and phrases since I was four or five years old.

I have to say that I'm glad she visited though. If nothing else, I definitely understand why Steve hates it so much when I'm critical. After dealing with his mom for that long, it's no wonder he's sensitive about it. It's also no wonder his self-esteem isn't that great -- constant criticism with very little praise doesn't do much for one's confidence.

SEX SEX SEX

2003-10-20T00:57:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling pretty stressed because Steve's mom will be in Texas to visit us in less than twelve hours, and my jaw hurts. So I'll write about something a little more pleasant, just to distract myself.

Sex it is!

Emode recently sent me an offer for a seven day free trial. I'm addicted to online tests (especially personality ones), so I jumped on it. Reading a ten-page analysis of my psyche after answering 50 or 60 questions is fun, and better yet, I can coerce Steve into taking tests too. Anything that lets me learn more about him is a good thing.

Anyway, Emode rates my sex drive at a six out of a possible ten. This is surprising to me -- I'd have figured more like a ten. I mean, sheesh, I'm a sex fiend. Three times a day sounds great to me. Is it any wonder I'm engaged to and living with an eighteen year old?

However, much of their score for sex drive was based off of things like having sexual thoughts about people at random, which I don't do. I'm very emotionally focused when it comes to sex, and I feel no desire whatsoever for men I don't have feelings for. Color me weird, or maybe just female.

We both took the Sexual Personality test. My results were pretty much exactly what I expected -- mainly that I'm very focused on the emotional (vs. the physical), touch (vs. visual stimuli) and non-verbal communication (vs. verbal).

Steve's results, on the other hand, surprised me. For one, he also came out on the emotional side, although not as much as I did. That pleases me, because every now and then he says something that scares me into thinking sex is all physical for him. The other surprising bit was that, according to the test, visual stimuli is more arousing than tactile to him.

Yes, men in general are more turned on by looking (which is why 99% of porn is male-oriented), but Steve never seemed that way to me. After all, he once told me he'd rather have an average looking woman who knew how to touch him than a really hot woman who didn't.

Anyway, after hearing those results, I asked him if I should perhaps get some lingerie. "Nah," he said.

That kind of surprised me, until I found out that his idea of lingerie apparently consists of crotchless panties and dominatrix gear. "No, no," I explained. "I'm not talking about Frederick's of Hollywood so much here, more like Victoria's Secret..."

He liked the idea then. So, if I can find any place that carries my size, I'll probably invest in some teddies or something. Heck if I know, I've never bought lingerie.

When I say, "carries my size", that is not to indicate I'm enormous. I'm not. However, it is incredibly difficult to find bras in my size -- 36DDD. Most bras with a band size of 36 only go up to about a D cup, and most DDD cup bras start with a band size of like, 40. Furthermore, I wear a size 7 panty, which makes a teddy proportioned to fit me non-existant -- I'm a top-heavy hourglass.

I have an awful time finding any kind of one-piece clothing. Swimsuits, dresses, etc., just don't come in sizes that work. My breasts are way out of proportion to the rest of my body, and it sucks.

Oh, well.

In other news, round two of condom sex happened today, and went amazingly well. I was horny and hopped up on pain pills, Steve hadn't got any for a couple of days, so we tried again and it actually worked. Yay!

The weird thing about this, is that he explained he was "basically fucking a muscle ridge". This is kind of amusing -- I do a ridiculous number of Kegels every day (1000+) and generally keep those muscles somewhat tense during sex, but an actual ridge?!

Well, he's got my old doctor to thank for that. Same woman who stitched me up just a tad too tight (don't ask) following my daughter's birth. I had minor bladder problems after my little girl was born, and the doctor advised me to do Kegels. "Do one thousand of them every day!" she said.

That sounded ridiculous to me, but I figured what the heck -- I could replace my standard fidgeting behaviors (biting my nails, tapping my fingers, jiggling my knee...) with Kegels. And hey, what do you know? It worked quite well -- not only did I stop dribbling when I coughed, now I can crack a walnut with my twat.

Okay, maybe I can't crack a walnut, but it comes in handy to have those muscles well-practiced. Once, for reasons I can't really explain (NOT lack of desire), I wanted Steve to blow his load in a hurry. I clamped down and it was all over in about fifteen seconds.

"I'm sorry I came so fast," he said.

I just laughed.

Banner love

2003-10-20T00:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm lazy, but I did manage to finally put Heather's banner up, and now I'm in the process of replacing the rest of my text links to other blogs with similar banners. So, if I've got a permanent link to you, and you have a mini-banner I can use, please leave a comment (or email me).

Heather has kindly made a little banner for my site herself. It's very basic, but hey, it's something. I absolutely suck at doing anything at all with graphics, so it's a hell of a lot better than what I'd have come up with on my own.

However, I'm an arrogant bitch, and I'm hoping one of my readers who has a little talent in this department might be able to help me out. What I'm looking for is quite similar to what she's done, except to basically make it look like the writing has been scrawled in red crayon.

If you take the bait and send me something like this, I'll happily provide a blowj... err... permanent link to your own site. Yes, that's it.

Follow the smell...

2003-10-18T23:48:00.000-07:00

I always check my referrals, otherwise how am I to know if someone is talking about me and/or this blog?

Today, I got an interesting one. Someone found this site via Google, so I was very interested to see what their search string was.

They'd searched for the phrase, "I vomited all over the".

For some reason, I find this incredibly amusing.

Stupid people suck.

2003-10-18T22:45:00.000-07:00

I have the easiest job in the world. A typical night goes something like this (names changed to protect the innocent):

10:00pm - 1:30am -- I sit on my ass, playing on the internet.

1:30am -- I wave at some people leaving the facility. My co-worker calls out on the radio, "All employees exiting facility. On patrol at this time." I write on the log the following line:
1:30am - All employees exited facility. S/O Gonzalez on patrol. - K.V.

1:40am - 3:30am - My co-worker is on patrol. I sit on my ass, playing on the internet, and every ten minutes he says something on the radio, I respond with "10-4" and write down what he said. For example, he says, "06 to central, radio check north parking lot." So, I write:
1:50am - S/O Gonzalez r/c north parking lot - K.V.

3:30am - 5:30 am - My co-worker relieves me and I go on patrol. I write on the log:
3:30am - S/O Vel on patrol - K.V.

Patrol consists of walking around a large facility and locking any doors that might be open, turning off any coffee makers that were left on, and checking the readings on three gauges/displays. Newbies even get a map.

5:30am - I post at the lobby. This means I unlock the front door, turn on the lobby light switch, and sit my ass down in a big, comfy black leather chair. Then I write on the lobby log sheet:
5:30am - S/O Vel posted at lobby. - K.V.

5:30am - 6:00 am - Some employees come in. I say "Good morning" to each of them. The other guard, who is still at the guard shack, flips a switch to open the gate when he sees a vehicle approaching, then steps outside. He makes sure the person entering has an employee badge, and waves them through.

6:00am - I write on the log sheet:
6:00am - S/O Vel off duty. - K.V.
Then I go home.

That's it -- working as a security officer on the night shift (at my site) is amazingly easy. I have a hard time imagining an easier job, really. I've worked here a year and a half, and I've never screwed up.

It's also an incredibly lenient job. For example, one of my co-workers got nine writeups in a month, for sleeping on the job. He didn't get fired or otherwise disciplined. He is, in fact, currently the lead officer on the night shift. I used to be lead officer, but I quit and he got promoted... they didn't want to demote him just because I returned. Although, he's gotten a couple fairly serious writeups recently and will probably not be lead officer for long.

And yet, when a new employee is hired, there's only about a 50/50 chance of them remaining with the company for longer than a month. Most of the ones who don't make it get fired for being incredibly stupid.

One guy got fired because he had his mom call in for him on his first day of work, to tell us he wouldn't be here because his car broke down.

One guy got fired because he refused to step outside the guard shack to check badges, as he said it was "too hot".

One guy got fired because he was bragging about stealing employees' lunches out of the refrigerators.

Two guys got fired for surfing porn on company computers.

One guy got fired for calling a phone sex line from the guard shack and running up a bill for over $100.

One guy got fired because he went on a two hour patrol without ever calling a radio check, and then chased after a UPS truck, nearly getting run over. (This particular guy was the dumbest ever.)

One guy got fired for making racist comments about Hispanic people (this town is about 95% Hispanic).

There are more, but those are the ones I remember specifically from the last eight months.

This job is sickeningly easy, and each new employee gets four hours of paid training, during which everything they have to do is explained in detail and demonstrated.

Until a couple of weeks ago, one of my night shift co-workers was a guy named Sef (short for Seferino). I liked Sef -- he was competant. Unfortunately, he quit because he's also going to school full time and wanted to have some time with his family, as well as more sleep.

Sef's replacement started working tonight. I'll call him GJ. I do not think GJ will last more than a couple of weeks in this job. He seems like a nice enough guy, but he's incredibly dumb. Also, his English is terrible, and this job requires that you can speak and understand English well.

GJ was trained by a bilingual guard, which is a good thing, because I don't believe I could train the guy in English if my life depended on it. I'm not sure I could train him in Spanish, either, because he's simply too dumb. We're talking slack mouthed, drooling, blank stare dumb.

I sent him out on first patrol. I had to explain three times how to sign out on patrol. He was extremely hesitant calling radio checks, but many of the new guards are, so I didn't think much of that. And he called some oddball radio checks (places we don't usually call), but again that's a typical newbie mistake.

When GJ got back, I spent fifteen minutes explaining a few things to him he might not have been told during training. I don't think he understood a word I said.

Then I went out on patrol myself, and called my first radio check. No response. I called it again. No response. "Central, do you copy?" No response.

I called him on the phone, and he stumbled over the greeting. "Did you get my radio check?" I asked him.

"Yeah. What was it?"

"Packaging."

"Okay."

"When I call a radio check, you need to respond with '10-4', okay?"

"Okay."

"Alright, thanks."

Ten minutes later, I called another radio check. No response. I tried a couple more times. No response. I called him on the phone again.

"Did you hear my last radio check?"

"Yeah."

"What was it?"

"I don't know..."

"Is your radio turned on?"

"No."

"Okay, turn it on, and make sure you say '10-4' on the radio when I call one, so I know you heard me."

"Okay."

GJ is responding with "10-4" now, after making me repeat each check at least twice, because he can't understand what I'm saying. My speech is perfectly clear, but I have to repeat myself very slowly so he can catch it because his English sucks.

I don't think this guy is going to last. We'll see -- his broken English will be a major problem, but I think his stupidity is what will get him fired. It's too bad, really, if he quits or gets fired, I'll lose days off again. Oh well.

In other news, I now have a "goose egg" type swelling on my face, along my jaw. It's quite painful and chewing has become impossible. I'm actually looking forward to Wednesday and the chamber of horrors -- I want this crap fixed!

My tale of woe

2003-10-17T23:05:00.000-07:00

About a year and a half ago, I had a root canal done by a local dentist, who I'll call Dr. Shitbum. I have a major dentist phobia, probably because I had three root canals done in one day when I was four years old. So, when they took me into the chamber of horrors, I requested nitrous oxide.

Most dentists will happily provide it, especially if you explain that dental work is very difficult for you without it. In this case, I was at a dental clinic with several different dentists, and when I requested it to the assistant, she went and got the equipment and brought it into the room.

Then Dr. Shitbum came in, and informed me that he did not approve of the use of nitrous oxide. I explained to him why I felt it necessary, and he said, "Oh, you won't be needing it. Now what we're going to do today is a root canal..."

Right around the time they jabbed those horrible long needles into my jaw, I started sweating, feeling faint, and found it hard to breathe. I would have walked out of the office, but I couldn't -- I'd called in sick to get this emergency appointment and was in fairly serious pain. I started crying, which is incredibly unusual for me when it has nothing to do with people I care about. (Which is to say, I cry pretty damned easily if I get my feelings hurt by Steve, or my parents, etc. But that's the first and only time a stranger ever brought me to tears.)

I suffered through the root canal, which was incredibly unpleasant. Aren't they always? Afterwards, the dentist gave me this condescending speech... "See now, that wasn't so bad after all, was it?"

"Actually, it was fucking awful, and I'll be finding a new dentist after today."

I guess Dr. Shitbum didn't take me seriously, because I was presented with an estimate for the completion of the root canal -- well over $300. He refused to do anything other than a full-blown cosmetic job (pins, porcelain crown)... and this was on a tooth in the very back, right in front of my wisdom tooth. Not like anyone would ever see it, Christ.

Afterwards, he asked what I usually was prescribed for pain following dental work. Vicodin. He said, "You almost certainly won't need this, but I'll go ahead and prescribe it to make you feel better."

I had a shitload of pain following that root canal. I found out why, today -- he'd drilled too deeply, penetrating the area between the "legs" of the root.

I didn't go back. Now, I know I should have had the root canal finished by someone else, but my fear of dentists led to lots of excuses, and I didn't get around to it. Besides, I'd had temporary fillings last for years before without any problems.

Then, several months back, the tooth in front of the root canaled one, which appeared perfectly healthy from the outside, exploded. I bit down on a slice of pizza, and there was a sickening crunch. A rather large piece of that tooth fell out. It was painless, though, so I again didn't bother to go to a dentist.

I procrastinated a lot. And then, three or four days ago, that temporary filling came out. Around that time I let Steve know I'd probably need to go to a dentist fairly soon. Meanwhile, I bought a package of "do-it-yourself" temp filling material, and packed it.

I'd had some pain once the filling came out, but not terrible. However, several hours after replacing it, I was in unbelievable amounts of pain. I was also at work -- go figure. This is why I didn't write any blog entries yesterday -- I was in far too much pain to concentrate.

I took 800mg of ibuprofen (Motrin) and 1000mg of acetominophen (Tylenol). The pain wasn't helped much. I also noted I was running a fever, and had swollen lymph nodes on that side. At this point, I realized I wasn't going to be able to wait to see a doctor... the telltale swelling on my gum told me I had an abscess.

So I tried to call Steve. No answer for a while, but at 5:30am, once his alarm clock went off, he picked up the phone. I explained the situation to him, and he told me he was going to call in sick so I would be able to get to a dentist right away. After all, dental abscesses can be dangerous, especially if you have a history of heart problems, which I do. Bacterial endocarditis, anyone? In fact, my own grandfather died from a dental abscess (infection spread to his heart). That was a long time ago,though -- during WWII.

I got home, spent a couple of hours resting, then called a dentist at 8:00am. Since the only local dentist I know is Dr. Shitbum, I had to pick one out from the advertisements. And unfortunately, none of the ones advertising emergency appointments or nitrous oxide were in my town.

One particular ad for a female dentist caught Steve's eye. She had pictures of smiling teeth and a rainbow background -- he figured that meant she would be especially nice and caring. So I called her office, and they were able to get me in for an emergency appointment. We didn't really have to wait all that long, either, even though she had to work me in between patients.

They did the standard x-rays, which were quite painful since I had to bite down. After a bit, the dentist came in, took a look at the x-rays, and audibly gasped. She explained that I had an enormous abscess, and my jawbone itself was infected. "This is more than I can handle," she said. "You're going to need to see an oral surgeon."

The infection was severe enough that I'd require antibiotics to get it under control before anything could be done, so she prescribed these along with Vicodin extra strength (7.5 mg, as opposed to the usual 5). She also let me know they would have to extract the root-canaled tooth, and probably the one in front of it as well, as the infection had destroyed so much of the teeth they couldn't be saved. Furthermore, I might very well have to have my jawbone trimmed.

Lovely.

On the bright side, she did say I'd be getting IV Valium, which hopefully will make my trip to the oral surgeon a little less awful.

So, Wednesday afternoon, I'll be heading over to the chamber of horrors. I suppose I'd be dreading the visit, but right now I'm so high on Vicodin I don't really care.

Kataine needs dental insurance

2003-10-17T21:02:00.000-07:00

It was a dental emergency. She called at 5:30 this morning, saying approximately, "ow, my jaw hurts like fuck". So I called in absent and we went to a dentist who did emergency appointments. We got a nice dentist, which means Kataine got 20 7.5mg Vicodin. Why so many? Because she's going to have to wait a week to have the teeth pulled. The abcess is so bad the dentist said "holy shit, here's some antibiotics. Call an oral surgeon in a week, I can't do that shit."

And that's why she needs insurance. This was caused by a temporary filling that fell out quite a while back, and neither of us was in a great hurry to get it replaced. Because it would cost a lot. Now we're looking at paying about $400 total for 2 teeth pulled. If she had insurance, it would've paid for the preventative care and most likely she wouldn't be in need of opiates all the time. Uh, don't tell Kataine that, she'll never want to get insurance ever. Besides, her job doesn't have dental, and her teeth don't suck so much that buying it separately would save money.

sigh

2003-10-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

I was unable to post yesterday due to a medical emergency. I'll catch up tonight, promise!

Addicted to gaming?

2003-10-16T00:24:00.000-07:00

I always thought the concept of being addicted to computer games, the internet, etc. was silly. I figured it was one of those things the freaky paranoid people who think computers are the root of all evil came up with. I was wrong.

I've been toying with the idea for some time that Steve may be addicted to computer gaming. I'm no longer toying with the idea, because it's verified fact now.

Negative impact on work? Check. It's awfully frequent he stays up entirely too late gaming, then has a rough time at work the next day. It's dangerous, because he's already on a final written warning for falling asleep at work.

Negative impact on relationships? God, yes. This is one of those things we argue over entirely too often. I wouldn't have cared about his gaming, if it was under control, but it never has been. He stopped gaming while I was at home, which was nice (considering our limited time together/opposing schedules), but as recently as three days ago we got into a big fight because he went to play games while I was upset and needed to talk.

More subtle, but just as destructive, is the fact that if he doesn't get his gaming fix, he gets incredibly irritable. It's likely all that fighting we did yesterday was because of the fact I had a day off and that meant he couldn't play on the computer. At one point, before I changed schedules, he said he didn't want me to because if I had the same days off as him, he'd get less time on the computer. Luckily, he changed his mind about that (before I took a sledgehammer to his computer).

Defensiveness? Yup. Even when he's gaming during times that I don't mind at all (anytime I'm at work and feeling okay, which is most every night), he gets defensive if I ask him if he's playing.

Guilt? I can't answer for sure, but it seems that way.

Inability to stop? At least five or six times he's stated he's going to stop gaming because of the negative effects on our relationship, etc. He stops for a few days, at most, then goes right back to it. Recently, he deleted all his games then reinstalled them less than 24 hours later.

It's a form of escapism for him, I think. Certainly, the more stress he's under, the more he does it... which I suppose wouldn't be a big deal, except for the fact it creates even bigger problems. I recall one time when I was upset about something, lying on the bed crying, while he played a computer game. For two hours straight.

Yeah, I felt real important. Loved, too.

That was a few months ago, though. He knows better now, so instead he just *wants* to go play instead of attempt to comfort me. But since he can't do that without further upsetting me, he just gets really bitchy instead.

So I got a day off, unexpectedly... thought this would be a seven day week. I was looking forward to spending time with Steve, but instead we had a bunch of drama. Mainly because he was incredibly irritable... apparently because he'd have rather been playing on the computer. The drama (see here) was bad enough I was ready to move out of our bedroom and into the extra one, indefinitely.

When I found out today that the whole gaming fixation was probably the cause of it, I finally had as much as I could take. It's been hard for me, in the past, to favor Steve stopping. I feel like I'm depriving him of something, I guess. But it's become altogether too clear that his habit and a healthy relationship are mutually exclusive.

So, he's decided (again!) to stop... but this time I'm not going to be the enabler. In fact, he's promised to quit, and if he doesn't, I'm going to kick his ass. Figuratively, that is, I'd never have a chance of doing it literally. He's got a 7 inch/70 pound advantage.

Speaking of addictions, I've got a thing for fresh prickly pears. My God, those things are good... not to mention cheap, at 17 cents a pop. Yum. Where have these lovely green fruits been hiding all my life? I hear the red ones are even better...

Shit hits the fan, yet again

2003-10-15T20:50:00.000-07:00

On Monday night, Steve asked me to call and wake him up at midnight. Nothing new there, he was off the next day and usually stays up all/most of the night when he's not working. However, he never answered the phone. I kept it ringing for six hours straight -- nothing.

Needless to say, I was a little concerned. Was he hurt? Dead? Not at home for some weird reason? And how was I going to get home?

I'm unable to drive, so Steve always brings me to and from work. Well, he missed picking me up once before, but that was before I started letting the phone ring for hours to try waking him up. Anyway, once 5:50am rolled around, I knew I was going to have to ask a co-worker for a ride home.

So I asked Lupe, who works my shift and has given me rides before. He's a nice old fart, and said of course he'd take me home. After all, it's not really out of the way for him. I'd also asked him to have George call me up at the lobby when he arrived, because I needed to relay a message.

George called at 6:00 on the dot. After I gave him the message, he said, "Hey, wasn't Lupe going to bring you home? Because he just drove off."

Lupe apparently forgot to take me home, which meant I was fucked. No money for a cab on hand, which meant I'd be walking. It's not all that far -- a mile and a half or so -- but with South Texas heat and humidity it seems like twice that far.

So I walked home, fuming and worried. When I finally got to our apartment, I saw the car was parked outside, so at least I could figure Steve was home. I ran up the stairs, now more worried about his safety than anything, opened up the door... and was greeted with the loudest snoring I've ever heard.

Apparently, he'd forgotten to set the alarm, and didn't hear the phone ringing. For six hours. Gah.

I woke him up, which was quite a struggle. I decided against bitching him out because obviously he hadn't intended to leave me stranded at work. Besides, I figured he felt guilty enough about it without me adding to that. Then we had a bit of a weird conversation, where he said if he'd needed to go to work, he would have woke up... since he doesn't have as much of an incentive to come pick me up as he does for making it to work on time. IOW, not getting fired.

This is the disadvantage of having a lifelong commitment to someone -- they're unafraid of being dumped, which makes it a lot easier not to do what needs to be done.

Okay, well, whatever... we wound up in bed talking for a while, and I noticed he was getting rather short with me. "You seem kind of pissy," I said.

"I'm pissy all the time," he answered. "Probably because your constant reminders to do things grate on my nerves."

This one just blew me away... I'd walked home because he didn't set the alarm. I hadn't bitched him out about it, even though he probably deserved it. And here he was bitching at me about "reminding him to do things". What the hell?

A spectacular fight ensued -- he said I wanted him to be dependant on him, that I was treating him like I was his mother, etc. Finally, I just said, "Look, you set the alarm for 5:30 every morning. I call you at 5:50 and you're asleep. What would happen if I didn't call?"

"I wouldn't wake up."

"Right, so I walk home, get here at 6:35, and since you don't want reminded.. after all you're an adult and can figure out the consequences of your own actions.. I get home, and don't wake you up. You have to be at work at 6:45. What happens?"

"I get fired."

"Exactly."

I don't like having to call Steve every damn morning and coax him out of bed (assuming he answers the phone!). It'd be absolutely wonderful if he just showed up to pick me up at 6:00 and made it to work on time without all that. But that's not going to happen anytime soon, and we really can't afford to lose his income. Mine alone is not enough to keep the bills paid, and food in the pantry.

He saw my point and apologized, so we went to sleep. We woke up around 6:00pm and went to go pick up my paycheck and cash it. Afterwards, I took him out to eat at Applebee's. On the way there, I asked him not to be mean to me for the rest of the day because I wasn't sure I could handle it.

Dinner went well, so we got home, cracked open a couple of beers and talked for a while. Then we started talking about movies I have on my hard drive (which hasn't been hooked up in about seven months), and decided to plug that sucker in and see what I had on it.

So I say, "I'm going to go take my hard drive out." My computer was laying on the living room floor, half-assembled. I'd grabbed the screwdriver and was taking it out, when he took it out of my hands and started removing it himself.

Well, whatever. I didn't feel like complaining, although it did kind of annoy me. What, I can't take a hard drive out? I've been building computers since '94.

Somehow we wound up bickering over whether there was a screw in a certain location. I said I didn't see the screw he was talking about... we got out the hard drive, and sure enough the screw he was referring to was there, just hard to see. I didn't think anything of this.

So then Steve's installing my hard drive in his computer, and he said something that made me think he was pissed. "Are you mad at me?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I'm mad about the screw."

So here we go again -- he's pissed off because I didn't see a screw in the hard drive? What the hell...

As I recall, I blew up around then. We were both drunk and belligerant, so the argument was heated and made little sense.

"Yeah well, you didn't let me take my hard drive out. I guess since I don't have a DICK I'm not allowed to touch my own goddamned computer!"

I don't remember much of the rest, except that he gave this bizarre explanation for his behavior that sounded incredibly self-centered. I pointed this out, he agreed he was self-centered, I said something about how he didn't love me or some such. Hurrah for drunkeness, I guess, I definitely had blown it out of proportion.

He stormed off into the spare bedroom. I moped in our bed. He came back a while later, I attempted to discuss the matter with him, and he fell asleep.

There is nothing that bothers me more than when he falls asleep in the middle of a conversation. Except, perhaps, when he goes off to play computer games when I need him.

So I took my pillow and slept in the spare bedroom. The floor is hard, and against my better judgement I went back to bed around 7:00am. By this time I'd decided to invest in some kind of makeshift bed and move into the spare bedroom indefinitely.

I guess we got everything straightened out, since. The last couple of days have been incredibly long, though, and I've no clue what this ugly new trend means. Oh well -- guess we'll wait and see.

Blah.

Blech

2003-10-14T00:24:00.000-07:00

I'm bored off my ass. It's all Steve's fault, you know. He told me to call him at midnight. As I write this, it's 2:25am, and I've been ringing his for well over two hours. No answer.

Most likely, he's asleep. The man is near impossible to wake up. Otherwise, he's either:
1> Dead.
2> Out fucking some bitch.
3> Awake, but too lazy to answer the phone.

#1 seems unlikely -- I mean, how often does an eighteen year old healthy male drop dead for no apparent reason? Not often.

#2 is also unlikely, because even if he were doing such a thing (which I sincerely doubt), he'd be smart enough to be home to answer the phone when he knows exactly when I'll call.

#3 is entirely possible.

But he's probably asleep. After all, he was popping pills before I left, and he's hard enough to wake without them. I recall one other time I tried to call for hours before he finally answered... usually it takes between five and ten minutes of the phone ringing to wake him.

And I had a hell of a time getting him out of bed to take me to work tonight. Once again, he was sleep talking during my attempts to rouse him:

Kataine: "Hey, wake up."
Steve: "Ugh."
Kataine: "C'mon, we need to go..."
Steve: "How about noon to five?"
Kataine: "Sweetheart, you have precisely three minutes to get your fat ass out of bed and get dressed."
Steve: "Ugh."
Kataine: "I'm kidding about your ass being fat, it's really not."
Steve: "What's wrong with noon to five?"
Kataine: "You're not making sense and I need to go to work! Like now!"
Steve: "Yeah, that's why I'm talking about it!"
Kataine: "Come on, dammit, wake up!"
Steve: "OKAY!!!"

When he drove me to work, I was seriously afraid he'd fall asleep in the car, especially on the way home. So about ten minutes after I arrived I called to make sure he'd got home safely. Well, that and I wanted to tell him I might get tomorrow off from work (which would be a godsend).

The phone has been ringing non-stop for two hours and thirty-five minutes. One has to wonder...

Tonight's been a bit odd, anyway. For one, the world's most annoying cop stopped by to shoot the shit with me. Unlike Steve, I generally enjoy talking to random people, but this guy just doesn't know when to quit. Last time he was here, he sat in his car talking to me for close to two hours. I guess that'd be okay, if the guy didn't suck.

But no, he's annoying as fuck. He thinks he's hot shit because he's a cop, and likes to tell stories about how he violently arrested people for rather minor offenses. Like this one story he told about knocking a doctor over the head, because the doctor was causing a scene in the airport. "Beat the shit out of that motherfucker! Said he was a doctor, ha! What's he gonna do, pull a scalpel on me?"

And once he caught a couple of teenagers screwing in a car, pulled up behind them with his lights out, and watched. Turned out it was a couple of gay boys in the car... so he went over and harassed them. "Yeah, I saw it all, you like sucking that cock, don't ya?"

He's a white guy, and a racist one at that. For some reason, the fact I was white made him think it was okay to go on and on about "those dirty fucking spics". I should have told him I was married to a latino. I'm not, but it'd have been funny.

That was bad enough, until he started making passes at me. He wanted me to call him and go ride around with him in his cop car. He gave me his phone number. I'd probably enjoy that, if it were any other member of the police force than him. I generally have a lot of respect for cops -- after all, my dad was one -- but this guy isn't a police officer. He's a PIG, pure and simple.

Luckily the pig wasn't out here very long today. He recognized me though, and decided it'd be a good idea to pull up and try to get in my pants again. Not gonna happen... I seriously dislike the guy, and besides, he's far too old for my taste. Late thirties, at least.

Mostly he just wanted to whine, though. Wah, he's not making enough money. Wah, his job sucks. Wah, he's going to go apply at the Sheriff's Office. Boo-fucking-hoo. He told me all this crap three or four months ago, and he's still doing the same job he was then.

So around 1:30am, the workers were leaving the facility, and I guess one of them ignored the speed limit sign for the driveway here. It's 15 or 20 mph, as I recall. Anyway, piggie saw the guy (a supervisor here) driving a bit too fast, and yelled, "I'm gonna get that sonofabitch!!" and took off with his lights flashing.

I took that opportunity to shut the traffic gate and kill the lights in the guard shack. I'm hoping if he decides to stop by again, he'll think I'm not here.

Blogger is still not working quite right, so to see all of today's posts, click here.

Falling apart at the seams

2003-10-13T22:26:00.000-07:00

That's my mom's expression. She used to use it all the time when I'd complain about feeling bad. "Well, you're just falling apart at the seams, aren't you?" I think it was supposed to indicate I was exaggerating.

My dad was much more blunt about it. When I was a kid, if I mentioned any kind of pain whatsoever, he'd inform me that at my age, I didn't know what pain was. "Just you wait until you're old, then you'll know pain! Now stop complaining, you're in the prime of your life."

From birth until I was 18, I saw the inside of a doctor's office once. That was because my mom noted I had strep throat, so I had to go get antibiotics. I think that's the only time they ever believed I was sick, until after I moved out.

Bitter old fuckers.

Steve's parents, on the other hand, marched him to the dermotologist's office because he had a few zits. We're not talk about severe acne, here, we're talking about normal teenage pimples. They gave him prescriptions he didn't bother to take (at least not often). I think the only purpose this doctor's visit really served was to make him think he had abnormally bad acne.

He told me he did, in fact. I was prepared for pizza face boy to meet me at the airport. One of the first things I said to him after we got back to my apartment is, "So where's this terrible acne?" I was thinking, "I think I see one little bitty zit... uh-oh, time for the dermatologist!"

Yes, I think it's a little silly to take a teenager with standard teenage acne to a dermatologist unless he requests it because it's causing self-esteem issues. Then again, it's a good thing Steve didn't have my parents -- he had appendicitis when he was a kid, and my parents would have told him to shut up and get his ass to school because there was nothing wrong with him.

Things have changed since then, though. My parents are no longer quite so anti-doctor, and have acknowledged the fact I do, indeed, need to visit a doctor now and then. I sincerely doubt they will ever accept the fact I'm schizophrenic, though. No way in hell is their perfect daughter mentally ill.

I've been having on and off bouts of RLQ pain for a month or so. It got bad enough a few days ago that I seriously considered going to the ER. Not appendicitis -- I could eat without problems, no nausea, and after about six hours it improved rather than getting worse. Mostly gone, now. I suspect it's gynecological in nature -- either something related to the endometriosis, or else Dr. Scumbag gave me PID when I had surgery following my more recent miscarriage.

I've sort of taken on my parents' attitude now -- "I'll go to the doctor if death seems imminent." I think this scares Steve, especially when I'm sitting around describing rather severe pain I'm experiencing, and all the different things it could be caused by. And then I inform him I'm not going to die so there's no need to spend money on a doctor. Poor guy. I should get health insurance someday, then I'd probably be less opposed to going to a doctor.

Meanwhile, I've had a bad case of insomnia for the last year and a half. Ever since the fried chicken incident, I've had a terrible time falling asleep, wake up far too easily, and have frequent vivid nightmares. It's all anxiety-based, I'm sure. I have no illusions there's some kind of organic illness at work here -- I'm just batshit crazy, and in more ways than one.

I have the paranoid subtype of schizophrenia. You know, "everyone's out to get me". I'll go into that in a bit, but since apparently some people out there are still misinformed as to what schizophrenia actually is, I'll clarify.

For some incomprehensible reason, a lot of people get schizophrenia confused with MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder). Schizophrenia is very different -- most obviously, a schizophrenic does not have multiple personalities. They can, however, have delusions that they're someone they aren't, but they don't switch back and forth or think they're more than one person.

Schizophrenia is characterized by magical thinking, delusions and hallucinations (primarily auditory). Paranoid schizophrenia includes ... well, paranoia. So the delusions and what-not generally revolve around people "coming to get me". My own schizophrenia manifests itself in three stages, which I'll describe below.

The mild stage is what I'm in most of the time. It closely resembles generalized anxiety. I blow everything out of proportion. For example, if Steve is ten minutes late getting home from work, I'm quite convinced that he's either gotten into a wreck and died, or he's fucking someone else. The worst of it, for me, is the associated insomnia.

It takes me anywhere from twenty minutes to a couple of hours to fall asleep, because I'm worrying... usually during this time period I get out of bed repeatedly to verify that the doors and windows are locked. I can't sleep at night, period. This is much of the reason I work night shift. I'm just way, way too anxious at night to sleep. I can't sleep with the fan on because the whirring might drown out the sound of someone breaking into the apartment. Any little sound (as quiet as a single mouse click) will wake me up, and then I go through the apartment, checking doors and windows, checking the closets and shower (to make sure no one is hiding in there).

I also have occasional mild auditory hallucinations during this stage. Mostly, I hear whispering, just a little too quiet to understand. I'm well aware of my illness when I'm in this stage, so I can pretty much block out the sound and go on about my business.

The moderate stage is usually triggered by stress. Auditory hallucinations increase, and are accompanied by some delusions and occasional visuals. The paranoia increases significantly. During this stage, I tend to hear things and think they're really there. My explanations for why other people can't hear them, or what they mean, are bizarre. Like the time I thought there was a guy in the AC duct trying to talk to me in Morse code. I figured my brain had an implanted UHF receiver in it, which is why only I could hear it, and it'd help if I ate sardines (because I thought they contained some kind of UHF-reflecting metal).

During the severe stage, I can only be described as full-blown batshit crazy. This is what they call a psychotic episode. It's rather like dreaming while awake, I guess. I'm only vaguely aware of my surroundings, if at all. I usually get extremely self-destructive, as well, often without realizing it.

For example, during an episode a few months ago, I thought my apartment was being invaded by "angels with steel talons". I had a lengthy battle with them before I eventually fainted or something, and came back to reality. When I came to, I was holding a razor blade I'd ripped out of a disposable razor (possibly with my teeth) and had well over a thousand cuts on my arms and legs. Many of them were quite deep, and I have extensive scarring as a result of this particular episode.

The good news is that these episodes don't happen often, and when they do, they can be handled as long as I have someone around who knows what to do. Risperdal will generally reduce my level of insanity by one stage within a few hours. Meanwhile, if I'm having a full-blown episode, I pretty much have to be babysat and if necessary, physically restrained.

The last time I had an episode, Steve was home and knew what to do. Amazingly, I'm pretty much always cooperative even when freaking out badly, so if he just tells me, "I'd feel better if you took your Risperdal" then I do it. Unfortunately, "I'd feel better if you don't hurt yourself" doesn't work. If I'm trying, physical restraint is a must, partially because I'm often not aware of what I'm doing. When I am aware, I can't just not do it -- it'd be like trying to force myself not to breathe.

Anyway, the insomnia I'm experiencing has everything to do with the paranoia aspect of my schizophrenia. I should point out that I am not medicated. I only take my pills when I absolutely have to -- ie, if Steve says "Take this because you're scaring me". There's semi-good reason for that.

The problem with schizophrenia, is while it's very treatable with medication, antipsychotics have a very nasty side effect profile. With the exception of the older ones (Haldol, primarily) they're also mega-expensive. And the older ones have even worse side-effects than the newer ones. In many people, they produce what amounts to a mild version of Parkinson's.

Risperdal is something like $200 a month, if I was taking it regularly, as I'm supposed to. This is one of the newer antipsychotics that is supposed to have a greatly reduced side effect profile. Side effects that I personally experienced include somnolence, lactation (!), greatly reduced libido, inability to reach orgasm, and horrible, gory nightmares.

The nightmares were the deal-breaker for me. The rest, maybe I could handle, but I have a problem with spending eight hours every night in hell. And I'm not exaggerating. I'd have three or four very lengthy, intense, and incredibly realistic nightmares every single night. We're talking about the kind where you wake up in a cold sweat with your heart pounding, and it takes a good half-hour to recover (if not longer).

I started dreading going to sleep so much, I finally quit taking the Risperdal. I do take another drug, a muscle relaxant that has the side effect of reducing my symptoms for some reason. Probably because it seems to reduce my stress level. That one I take when I'm starting to get weird or panicky, more as a preventative measure than anything. And if I've gone completely off the deep-end... well, time to take Risperdal for a few days.

Anyhow, I've gone off on a tangent as usual. This insomnia shit is driving me up the wall... it sucks to spend eight hours in and out of bed, then wind up getting maybe three hours of sleep. Every night. It's annoying as hell.

I think, even though it's certainly not going to kill me, a doctor visit might just be in order. I have a great doctor, an amusing bald guy who isn't afraid to prescribe scheduled drugs when they're needed. He doesn't overprescribe, but he's not like some doctors I've had who are so paranoid about their patients becoming addicted that they'll recommend Tylenol for severe pain.

Dr. Scumbag was like that... he sent me home with ibuprofen (Advil) after surgery, when my pain level was bad enough it took two shots of fentanyl to get it under control, after the morphine just wasn't cutting it. Fentanyl is potent shit, too... it makes morphine and Demerol look like candy.

I fired Dr. Scumbag, and didn't pay the last of the bills he sent me. Christ, the guy didn't even talk to me after surgery. He had the absolute worst bedside manner of any doctor I've met. Furthermore, he was an arrogant, condescending sonofabitch.

In other news, I've been trying to call Steve for the last 25 minutes. He's asleep. I let the phone ring for 20 minutes (redialing every 2-3 min.) and now it's busy. I suspect he knocked it off the hook and went back to sleep. Argh.

Drugs & Crime in Little Mexico

2003-10-13T02:19:00.000-07:00

Note: Posts are not displaying properly on the home page of this site right now (not my fault!). To see all posts from today, click here.

One of the things that came as quite a surprise to me after I moved here was the availability, purity, and incredibly low cost of drugs. Specifically, cocaine. This was nearly my undoing.

Coke, weed, X, and roofies (which are called "roach pills" here) are widely available, and quite cheap. Well, not the X so much -- everyone's selling it, but the prices seem fairly steep. This is probably because it's the one drug that isn't imported from across the border, but rather manufactured locally.

Back when I was working at the first call center, I developed an amazing coke habit. I was going on three or four day binges every week, usually doing an ounce or more. Bad shit happened, and I quit. I'll write more about that later.

During this time period, in order to make more money, I started selling crack. How's that for an admission of guilt? Christ. It really started out quite innocently, though. A co-worker heard about a recent coke purchase I'd made (a full ounce) and wanted to know if I'd resell him an eight ball. I only bought the stuff for my own use, so I was a little reluctant, but hey, I'd make a slight profit on the deal, so I did it.

This co-worker, Mario, then told me that he didn't snort it, he just mixed it in with weed and smoked it. I was appalled. For the drug-naive, cocaine in powder form does not burn worth a damn -- if you try to smoke it like that, you're wasting the hell out of it because you only get like 10% of the actual drug in your system.

Crack, on the other hand, burns beautifully and is absorbed quite well if smoked. I'd never smoked crack, and didn't have any interest in doing so, but I did know how to make it. So, I told Mario to pick up some baking soda when he went home for lunch, and I'd show him a little trick.

When Mario got back, I marched him up to the company's breakroom, and cooked up his eight ball of coke into a big, fat rock in the microwave. I didn't tell him what the finished product was, though, because of the stigma surrounding crack smokers.

I'd explain how to make crack in a microwave oven in thirty seconds, but I'm not sure of the legality of publishing information like that. I think I'd have to have some kind of goofy legal disclaimer or something, or risk some crack addict's mom suing me for teaching her kid how to do it.

Anyway, I told Mario to take a bit of that and mix it in his joint. He came back the next day to tell me how impressed he was. And suddenly I had people requesting that "special coke" from me. So, what the hell -- I needed money to support my habit, and I started selling it. The profits were nice. I referred to it as "freebase" because most people are reluctant to smoke crack and don't know they're essentially one and the same.

Unfortunately, some people decided to try smoking it on its own, rather than mixing just a touch in with their weed. These were the people who kept coming back for more and more of the shit. At that point, I guess I realized just how low I'd sunk -- now I was a crack dealer. Jesus.

I'm often asked if I smoked it myself. Out of curiosity, I did, a couple of times. Truth be told, I wasn't impressed. It's a sudden, intense high, but it's over in a couple of minutes and leaves you with an incredible craving for more. I preferred to leave my coke in the state I bought it in, and snort. That has it's own little set of disadvantages, though, like nasal damage and pain.

One of the results of the widespread drug use in this part of the country is increased crime. It seems every few months, another group of police officers get arrested for being involved in drug rings. Home invasions are quite common here as well, although the targets are usually dealers.

My brother had a car stolen and another broken into in the course of a month. Some guy stole his shitty old car (it's an early 80's Crown Vic) after robbing the convenience store near his house. The guy apparently held up the store and demanded beer. I shit you not. Then, he hotwired my brother's car, drove it off, got stopped by a train and caught by the police. He was too drunk to remember to open the door, I guess, because he tried to escape through the passenger side window and got stuck.

The other car had the back window broken, and that thief tried to steal the stereo, but only made it away with the faceplate and the CD that was in it.

The only crime I've been a victim of since I moved here was lunch theft. Back when I first started working at that call center, a few weeks after I arrived in Texas, I was ass-broke. So I was bringing ultra-cheap frozen burritos to lunch with me in plastic baggies every day.

And then the Burrito Bandit struck. Day after day, I'd go up the breakroom for lunch, and find my burritos were gone. Whoever it was would leave the bag I brought them in behind, and sometimes my can of generic diet cola. My brother, who was then working as a security guard at the same company, patrolled the breakroom looking for someone eating burritos. No such luck.

Eventually, after weeks of spending the day hungry, I decided it was time for some vigilante justice. I carefully spread open two burritos, slipped five Ex-lax pills into each, and rewrapped them. The burritos disappeared that day, but never again.

It's a good thing that the Burrito Bandit didn't return for more. I had a nice, new package of D-Con rat poison ready for next time.

Little Mexico

2003-10-13T00:24:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I have no intention of offending any Hispanic readers I may have. However, I'd like to speak frankly about my experiences in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and some of what I have to say may be taken badly. If this is the case, I apologize.

I live in a small (pop. 50,000) town about twenty miles from the border of Mexico... right on the tip of Texas. We (and by "we", I mean the gringos) call this town "Little Mexico". It's a fitting name -- in some parts of the town you'd be hard pressed to tell if you're still in the States or not.

I moved here just about two years ago -- in late October of '01. The decision to move was made on impulse, like most of my cross-country moves have been. Prior to this, I'd lived in Missouri, Washington state, Oregon, and briefly in Louisiana.

I'd been living in Seattle for most of my marriage, and a few months after I got divorced I moved to Portland, OR to attend Job Corps. During my stay there, I decided to go to this town in Texas, because most of the important members of my family had relocated here -- my brother was here full-time, and my parents spend six months of the year in an old fogey resort in town.

Also, I'd been here nearly every year the entire time I was growing up -- my parents travelled a hell of a lot, and this town was our winter destination of choice. I loved the place when I was a kid -- 80 degree weather in December and January, palm trees everywhere, Mexico & South Padre Island a short drive away...

Living in a town like this is a whole lot different than vacationing here. I figured that out after a few months. For one, it doesn't seem quite so strange to be a white girl (extra pale, at that -- I'm mostly Dutch and Irish) in a 90% Hispanic town when you're just a tourist. It's entirely different when you're working in a company with over a thousand employees, and you can count your Caucasian co-workers on one hand. For that matter, finding a job that doesn't require you to speak Spanish is rather difficult.

I started out working here at a call center, doing technical support for one of the largest nationwide ISPs (not AOL, thankfully). My first day of training was scary as hell. I'd never seen so many Mexicans in one place before. I wasn't afraid they'd pop a cap in my ass or anything like that -- but I definitely felt very out of place and very conspicuous. It was like I was some kind of foreign invader. It didn't help that much of the time my fellow trainees were speaking Spanish amongst themselves.

Not to state the obvious, but it's hard to insert yourself in a conversation (and therefore make friends) with a group of people who are speaking Spanish, which you understand ten words of, at an incredibly rapid rate. And my God, do these people machine-gun their language. It's amazing. I don't think I can think that fast, let alone talk that fast... and I've been accused of talking like a New Yorker (speedwise) entirely too often.

I did, however, make friends with a girl in my training class, who I thought was white at first. I was wrong. It's often hard to tell unless you know the person's last name (and if it's a married woman, you're just guessing). I'd thought, when I found out, that she was just being nice to the poor little gringo. Later, I came to realize it was more of a status thing. But more on that later.

The Mexican-Americans in this part of the country seem to have an odd informal caste system. This was something my mom had pointed out to me ages ago, but I didn't really see it in action until later. Apparently, the lighter-skinned a local Mexican is, the higher their social status (in general). This is apparently why a local newscaster bleaches her skin to a scary shade of white. We call her Casper.

One time my mom hired someone from a carpentry company to come out to her house and work on her shed. The lady at the company called back to let Mom know there was someone on the way. She said, sounding very apologetic, "He's a dark man... but he does good work!"

I've been hit on, on a near-daily basis, since my teens, but never so much as I am here. Apparently, having a white woman is a status symbol of sorts. I met a fellow ex-Seattlite down here at one point, who said something along the lines of, "My God, a blonde woman with tits like that living down here? How do you keep the men away??" I've since dyed my hair.

The attitude of the locals varies a lot, mostly based on age. The older Hispanics are much more likely to bleach their skin, and absolutely hate being called Mexicans -- "We're American, dammit!" The younger ones are a lot more laidback... I had a friend down here tell me that I needed to "learn to cook Mexican" and "get myself a brown man". The same guy joked with a co-worker that I was going to have his "little brown babies".

But even that guy seemed faintly embarassed about his own ethnicity -- he wore blue-colored contacts and told me he didn't speak a word of Spanish. I found out otherwise when I observed him speaking it rapidly and fluently with a co-worker.

I've been in a state of culture shock since I arrived here, and it doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon. I still can't get over the fact that almost everyone lives with their parents... we're talking about married, 30-something couples, who live with Mom, Dad, and a herd of brothers & sisters. Hell, sometimes the grandparents are living with them too. I have no idea how they stand it. I'd have lost my mind completely if I'd have stayed with my parents any longer than I did, and mine are incredibly cool.

I was shocked and insulted when I first started my current job and everyone seemed to assume I was living at home still. "Christ," I thought. "What do I look like, some kind of loser? I'm 24 years old, of course I don't live with my parents!!"

And then there's the food. Don't get me wrong, I like Mexican food... well, most of it. But it's certainly strange to go to the local grocery chain and see whole, frozen pig's heads for sale. They're gruesome. Some of the other local offerings include pork stomachs, beef tongues, hooves of all varieties, tripe, etc. I thought about trying some chorizo, which I'd heard was really good, until I read the ingredients. Lymph nodes?!

The locals have interesting sexual behavior, as well. They seem to lose their virginity and have lots of kids at an early age. Infidelity is apparently very widespread and accepted. I had a 19 year old co-worker who told me he lost his virginity at 13, was married with three kids and a fourth on the way, and had two mistresses, both of whom he had children by.

There seems to be little understanding of the concept of being engaged, too. Steve was referred to as my boyfriend until he popped the question -- now, despite the fact we've not even set a date yet, everyone calls him my husband. I've given up on attempting to correct this one -- if I explain we're not married yet, they just nod and smile and continue calling him my husband.

On the bright side, the cost of living is incredibly cheap. I live in a nice two-bedroom apartment, with a swimming pool, private balcony, central AC, dishwasher, etc... $450/month. Food is cheap, beer is cheap, restaurants are cheap... it's great. The pay sucks, but hey, when your bills are as low as ours are, making a lot of money doesn't matter much at all. Steve makes $7.25 an hour, I make $5.88, neither of us normally work overtime, and we're living "high on the hog" as my dad calls it. Well, we're definitely not strapped for cash, and go out to eat entirely too often.

Next up: Drugs & Crime in Little Mexico

Project: Stop being lazy bitches

2003-10-12T23:50:00.000-07:00

Steve is a lazy bitch, but then again, so am I. At least, under certain circumstances. I have this incredible aversion to cleaning up other people's messes, or even cleaning up my own if they're mixed in with someone else's. Which means, if I'm living with a messy person, I'll just add to the mess.

Steve's attitude towards cleaning was neatly illustrated by a comment he made today -- "As long as it's not attracting insects, it's not dirty. And sometimes even if it is, it's okay."

End result -- we're living in a pigsty. The mess itself doesn't bother me a whole lot, I guess, although I do hate having a dirty kitchen. Problem is, we're living in an apartment, and I live in constant fear that the manager will come knocking at our door... wanting to check something, or some such. Plus it's a hateful apartment so we need maintenence over there frequently.

And if that's not enough, Steve's mother is coming to visit us in about a week. I don't know about him, but I certainly don't want her walking in and seeing dirty clothes strewn all over the living room floor.

The kitchen has definitely been the biggest problem. I like to cook, and for that matter, I'm damn good at it. But I absolutely hate cooking in a dirty kitchen. When the kitchen is normally dirty (as in, it's been cooked in once or twice), it takes approximately 20 minutes to clean up. Cooking takes, depending on how elaborate of a meal I'm making, anywhere from 45 minutes to 3 hours.

So, we struck a deal when Steve got here. If he cleaned the kitchen, I would cook. It seemed fair to me -- yeah, cleaning takes less time, but it's also a lot more unpleasant than cooking. It worked, for a while. Then gradually, his version of "cleaning the kitchen" turned into "wash the minimum necessary dishes to make what I'm cooking".

And then it evolved into, "Pretend the stove and dishes don't exist, and buy lots of frozen microwavable food."

I went on strike. No more cooking until the kitchen was clean, and I wasn't about to clean it myself. I'm not very good at this sort of thing though, so I caved in and cooked a few times, and the kitchen just got dirtier.

Last night, however, Steve did something completely out of character (shortly after we'd spent some time discussing how we should go about cleaning the place up and keeping it that way). He surprised me by cleaning the kitchen. Rather thoroughly, at that. Well, more thoroughly than you'd expect from a male teenager.

Today while he was at work, and I was once again unable to sleep, I finished up -- swept the floor, cleaned the stove (ugh) and sink, wiped down some surfaces he'd missed. I was going to mop, but he called me from work and asked me not to. He wants to mop the floor himself, as it's something he's never done. I wish he felt that way about cleaning the oven.

Anyway, aside from the floor, which he'll do (or had better) tomorrow... the kitchen is pristine. It's the only room in the apartment that isn't an awful mess. And dammit, that kitchen is going to stay clean now. I'm not sure how, but it will.

The worst thing about living with an eighteen year old who just moved out of his parents house five months ago, is trying to teach him responsibility. It's very hard to do. He doesn't pick up after himself, or clean up his messes. He frequently leaves food out that needs to be refrigerated. He doesn't wake up consistantly without help. His hygeine is godawful.

The question is, since his parents utterly failed to install any sense of responsibility in him, what do I do? I don't want to act like his mom... it irritates both of us. I'm certainly not going to go through life cleaning up after him and reminding him to shave... that's even worse.

I think, once we've gotten the apartment cleaned up via joint effort, we're going to have to sit down and have a meeting on all this. I tried to do this before he even arrived, but it wasn't met with much enthusiasm from him. Still, the chores have got to be divided up, and hopefully the need for that is a little clearer now.

It's too bad we can't afford $100/week for an illegal maid.

I Don't Like People

2003-10-12T23:13:00.000-07:00

A comment Kataine received on one of her recent entries:

unamused wrote:
"'Just proceed as if you had asked and gotten a positive response. You don't need to ask permission before you start removing her clothes, groping and fumbling, or whatever it is you start out with. And God knows she'll be a whole lot more cooperative if you don't bother to ask.'

unwanted sex is referred to as rape."

The excellent thing about autism is that it correlates strongly with high intelligence. As does schizophrenia. Kataine and I figure our children will be about 75% likely to have at least one of the two, but they won't end up like unamused. Thank God for small favors.

In other news, I love Bugles. The snack food. Kataine says they taste like farts.

Anger Management IV (Oops, I did it again)

2003-10-11T23:12:00.000-07:00

Steve got reamed tonight. Not in the traditional sense, as I've yet to buy a strap-on, but I suspect the effect is quite similiar. Minus the sore ass, of course.

This time it was because of his lovely tendency to pull a disappearing act whenever I'm upset (at least, when it's his fault, or he thinks it is). This was like the meta-argument from hell.

I've gotten tired of being the proactive one in the relationship. Tired enough that the last time we got into an argument over it, I decided to quit doing it. But lo and behold, he wanted to work through some of our Dr. Phil book tonight. My lack of enthusiasm was pretty apparent. After all, I just can't see him bringing this forward of his own volition unless he was doing it in an attempt to please me.

Does that matter? Sure, it does, in this case. I have very little desire to do it anymore (see above), so there's no point in doing so unless he actually wants to do it for his own benefit. In which case, it'd be fine. I don't know why he brought it up tonight, but it was out-of-character enough that it seemed safe to assume it was because he thought I'd want to.

We talked about this all, briefly, and spent a lot of time lying around in bed cuddling. I figured everything was okay... yes, he said some things to indicate otherwise, but I did make an attempt to comfort him and figured that was the end of it. I was wrong.

So on the way to work, Steve insisted I was upset about something. If so, I'm not sure what it was, because I didn't feel particularly distraught. A little depressed, sure. Not like that's anything new. And then, while still insisting there was something wrong, he said he was going to go play computer games when he got home. Then we could talk about it, afterwards.

I was livid. This is one of those nasty little patterns that's been emerging in our relationship for months. For some reason that I will never understand, if I'm upset (or Steve thinks I am), he thinks it's perfectly okay to ignore me and either go play on the computer, or go to sleep. I guess that way he doesn't have to deal with my emotions. Must be nice.

The real problem here is that every time he does this, I'm reminded of the incident in the hospital, and once again I feel like I'm being abandoned when I need him. It's not pleasant.

So, he got home, I called ten minutes later to let him know I was at the guard shack, and we had the following utterly stupid conversation:

Kataine: "Lupe took first patrol, so you can call me here when you're.. done."
Steve: "Okay."
(At this point I said something, and I'm not sure what. It was probably along the lines of, "Have fun playing your fucking computer games, asshole." I don't know, but I was mad.)
Steve: "Uhh.. okay, I'll talk to you in IRC now, then..."
Kataine: "No!"
Steve: "Yes!"
*click* (Yep, he hung up on me.)

I was already in IRC, though, so I went ahead and talked to him, even though I really just wanted to say, "Go play your fucking game and leave me alone."

Actually, I unloaded on him. It was a strange conversation, where he compared going to play a game, alone, while I was upset with my lying in bed cuddling with him when he was upset. Like that what I'd done was equally bad, although I'm still unsure how it's inappropriate to attempt to physically comfort someone who is feeling down.

That one threw me for a loop. I think he was trying to say that I'd also made myself unavailable because I wasn't talking much. Then again, neither was he, so I don't really see it...

Anyway, I bitched him out quite thoroughly. Meanwhile, I was breaking the legs on a beetle. If you break a beetle's legs, but leave them attached, they can't stand up but they can still move them. The end result is that the beetle looks very much like it's swimming across a hard surface. It's rather amusing.

And now I feel guilty about it. No, not the beetle. I mean, about bitching Steve out. Okay, I think his behavior was unacceptable, and this was one of many times it's occurred, but I don't think he deserved the onslaught. There's got to be some way to get the message, "This behavior is completely unacceptable, and cannot happen again" through to him without screaming obscenities.

Since I'm doing the fourth of my anger management posts, I'll bring up a situation from yesterday that I haven't written about. This one is a bit ugly.

My marriage, which was also my first serious relationship, was emotionally, verbally, sexually, and physically abusive. The physical part wasn't a huge factor -- my ex-husband never actually beat the shit out of me, but he did use physical force in ways I find inappropriate towards your spouse. (Like dragging me to the bathroom and stating he was going to kill me.)

End result: I'm paranoid as hell about anything I think might be indicate the potential for future domestic violence.

There have been a couple of incidents with Steve that seem like red flags to me. The first was when I smacked him on the ass with a Twizzler (yes, the candy) not intending it to hurt. Well, it did, and he yanked the Twizzler out of my hand and hit me on the back of my bare thigh three or four times with it, hard enough to leave welts. Apparently he was just playing around, because he didn't even realize I was upset until a good ten minutes later.

The second time was when I pissed him off while he was on the phone with his mom. I was groping him, which wasn't a great idea, but I figured he needed some entertainment... anyway, he grabbed my hand and slapped it, then poked me (hard!) in the chest with his index finger. No real injury, there (a slight bruise on my breastbone) -- but again, it was pretty damned disturbing.

So now I'm quite paranoid that one of these days he's going to snap and beat the fuck out of me. If he acts out in a physical way, at all, when he's angry, it scares the shit out of me.

Yesterday, he was playing a computer game while I was at work, got pissed off because he was getting owned repeatedly, and apparently hit the table the computer is on. The force of the impact knocked over a bottle of soda on the table and screwed up his keyboard. He called to explain his keyboard wasn't working (it works now, but the keys are sticky).

I freaked out, and we had a rather lengthy talk about all this. See, he's got a history of breaking things, from before he moved in with me. Not that bad, comparitively -- my ex-husband threw a computer monitor across the room once, Steve just did things like breaking his mouse in a fit of rage.

It's been my experience that people who break objects when they're pissed, eventually realize it's much more satisfying to break their wives and/or kids. Not always true, but I've certainly seen it happen.

So we're currently trying to figure out some non-physical ways for him to release anger. Half the problem, I think, is that he allows himself to get that pissed off, instead of leaving the situation before it gets out of control.

I do the same thing, but I don't get pissed off about things like games. I get pissed off at people, exclusively. Then I turn into Queen Bitch. I don't do name-calling, and I don't make threats, but that's about it. I do get vicious, cold, condescending, you name it.

So, what now? Digging for the root of anger, as Dr. Phil suggests, is all fine and good, but damned hard to implement in the heat of the moment. I think both of us are going to have to learn how to remove ourselves from the situation, take a timeout, smoke, think, calm down, and proceed from there.

Otherwise, we'll probably end up in one of those crazy relationships where both parties throw TVs at one another. And that's something I'm really not looking forward to.

It may very well be time to actually invest ten bucks in an anger management book, for both of our sakes.

Why women don't put out

2003-10-11T07:07:00.000-07:00

Just about everyone seems to be under the impression that men have significantly higher sex drives than women do. I'm not so sure that's true. Mind you, I'm working off of an awfully small data sample here, and I could be completely wrong, but I have a theory on why this seems to be the case.

I'll preface this by saying that most people think I've got an outrageously high sex drive, for a chick. Ideal, for me, is once or twice a day, and "too much" is when I can't walk due to soreness. Anything less than twice a week, and I'm going to be seriously suffering.

There are three circumstances under which I will not put out for my SO:
1> I'm pissed off at him, or otherwise emotionally distraught.
2> I'm in severe physical pain.
3> I'm on the rag. (Which isn't actually a refusal, more like "Well, we can, but you're going to get your cock bloody.")

This may not be typical, so the fact I'm always willing under reasonable circumstances probably doesn't apply to all women. However, I definitely believe most men who complain about the lack of sex in their relationship are not getting the full potential of their woman's sex drive.

My theory is that men, in general, simply do not know how to successfully initiate sex with a woman.

I recently read a post where a man was citing an example of women's shittiness -- he said that if a guy asks a woman, "Want to do it tonight?" she'll tend to respond with, "We'll see."

I have a co-worker who complained to me about his wife -- he said, "I say, 'I want to have sex with you' and she always says, 'No! I don't want to!'"

John Gray, author of the Mars/Venus books (who I dislike for entirely unrelated reasons), repeatedly uses the example of a man saying to his wife, "Let's have sex" to initiate. He acts as if this is pretty standard.

My own Steve once told me, before we'd ever slept together, that if he wanted to initiate sex, he'd say something like, "Can we have sex now?"

Every time I hear an anecdote like this, and I hear them often (hell, I've got lots of my own from ex's), I just think, "Well, doh, no wonder she's not putting out." It seems to me that the absolute worst way to initiate sex with a woman is to verbally request it.

The problem is that most women don't go through life in a constant state of arousal, as most men do. Now, I'm not saying that you guys are all walking around with priapism, but I'm well aware that you think about sex a lot. I think it'd be fair to say that most men are horny most of the time.

So, when you verbally request sex, it requires a yes/no answer from the woman. You're basically asking the woman if she wants to have sex, and most women don't know yet. So they're generally not going to say yes, because at that exact moment, they're not feeling very aroused at all... and if they do agree, that means they've committed themselves to an act they may very well not want to engage in. "No" is a much safer answer.

Which leads to the question -- How DO you initiate sex with your wife/GF if you actually want her to spread 'em for you?

Unless you're one of those boring guys who think that foreplay consists of unzipping your fly, it's quite simple. Just proceed as if you had asked and gotten a positive response. You don't need to ask permission before you start removing her clothes, groping and fumbling, or whatever it is you start out with. And God knows she'll be a whole lot more cooperative if you don't bother to ask.

Added for clarity: I am NOT saying you should proceed if the woman's said no or otherwise refused your advances. I'm saying, don't ask in the first place. I assume my readers are intelligent enough to realize that if the woman is uncooperative, they should stop. Otherwise, you're committing rape, which is not only a bad thing, but will likely land you in ass-pounding prison.

One reason this works is that the woman can stop you at any time (since she hasn't technically agreed to it), therefore she doesn't feel pressured. More importantly, she doesn't have to make that critical yes/no decision before she's actually gotten turned on.

I will say this, though... it probably wouldn't work so well if you're one of those men who tend to think that foreplay begins below the belt. Now, I'm not saying that you've got to strew rose petals all over the bed, light candles, or anything else that'll make you feel emasculated. But grabbing the chick and just making out with her for a few minutes (remember high school?) works wonders. Or rip her clothes off, for that matter.

Next time: How to successfully get a quickie from a non-slut!

Undead Flies

2003-10-11T02:05:00.000-07:00

On Monday, our apartment was invaded by flies. This is undoubtably due to my really bad habit of going out on the balcony to smoke and leaving the sliding door wide open. Most of the flies were in the bathroom -- I'd guess about 20 or so there, hanging out on the mirror and several more in the shower.

Steve was freaked out by this, and as his partner, I felt I had a responsibility to freak him out even more. Thus, the following conversation took place:

Kataine: "They look like blood flies to me. See how fat and shiny they are?"
Steve: "Blood flies... what are those?"
Kataine: "You know, the kind that bite."
Steve: "Bite? Like, suck your blood like mosquitoes?"
Kataine: "Yes."
Steve: "Well, they don't seem to be attacking..."
Kataine: "No, they're not aggressive like mosquitoes. They mostly bite like, sleeping animals. Or people."
Steve: "I'm going to sleep under the blanket tonight."
Kataine: "So then they'll bite your head."

I noticed by this point that Steve was looking a little pale. "Don't worry, hon," I reassured him. "We'll get a fly swatter."

Well, we forgot to buy the fly swatter, and by the time we got home, it seemed there were even more flies in the bathroom. Steve was disturbed enough by this to ask me to accompany him when he went to take a leak. I think I was supposed to protect him from the flies or something.

I figured at this point, I should do something about them. After all, while it was kinda gross to have a bunch of flies in the apartment, I'm not in the least bit afraid of them. And hey, someday I might need Steve to kill spiders for me. I do not like spiders.

I couldn't find anything to swat them with, but I did find a can of Raid ant spray. I wasn't sure if it'd kill flies -- the instructions on the back only refer to ants, roaches, silverfish, and spiders. But what the hell, it was worth a try. So I went into the bathroom armed with my spray can and started shooting down flies.

And that's precisely what it looked like -- shooting down flies. The flies, when hit with the spray, would fly around in circles for a few seconds, then just drop out of the air and onto the floor. Then they'd spin around in circles on their backs for a minute or so, twitch a few times, and stop moving. Dead as doornails, or so it seemed. I sprayed every fly I could find in the apartment, and probably shot down a total of 25 or 30 of them.

I felt like some kind of heroine -- I'd defeated the Evil Blood Flies and saved Steve from certain bites. He was quite appreciative.

We noticed a while later, however, that many of the flies were still twitching. I shrugged it off, figuring that maybe the spray hadn't killed them all the way yet. After all, it was obvious they were dying...

The next day, again I saw that some of the flies were moving slightly... lying on their backs with their little legs slowly bicycling in the air. It seemed weird, but eh. Whatever.

So then today rolls around. It's now Friday (actually early Saturday morning, as I write this) and I was in the bathroom when I heard a faint buzzing noise. There was one of the "dead" flies that I'd left lying on the counter near the sink. But now, instead of just twitching a bit, it was moving its wings rather rapidly.

This seemed bizarre to me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that flies have a 24 hour lifespan. I'd sprayed those suckers down four days ago... so what the hell was going on here?

I stood and watched the fly for a while, and eventually it managed to roll over until it was standing on the counter. A few minutes later, it started buzzing its wings again... and then (and I am not shitting you) the damn thing took off. It flew. Crookedly, and not very far, but it flew.

I noticed today before I left for work that several of the flies seemed to be missing from where they'd been shot down and left to die. My only conclusion is that our apartment is now inhabited by a dozen or more tiny winged zombies. If nothing else, I suppose October is a fitting time for something like this to happen.

The rest of that story

2003-10-11T00:33:00.000-07:00

I'll finish up now, as I'm back at work with time to waste.

So yeah, Steve packed up and left without a word. Oh, he'd warned his parents he was going to move, but he moved the date forward by a month just a few days before he actually came out here. So they were expecting him to leave, just not then and there, and they probably thought they had a shot at talking him out of it before the big day.

No discussion of our history would be complete without mentioning Steve's mom. I spend a lot of time talking shit about her with my own mom, but I've learned not to talk shit about her in front of her son, as he reacts badly. For example, "Your mom is a stupid cunt," is not a good thing to say. It's not true, either -- she's not stupid.

Steve's mom freaked out pretty badly when he announced he was moving down here. I'm not sure exactly what happened, he wasn't terribly eager to discuss it and I didn't press much. I do know she was afraid I was male and/or a sexual predator.

I have to say I encouraged Steve to come down here early, partially because his mother's behavior was getting a bit ridiculous (at least in my opinion). The point at which I decided that she'd really crossed the line is when she decided she wanted to hire a private investigator to check me out. The idea of some sleazy private dick taking pictures of me going about my daily activities was uh, not pleasant.

Anyway, Steve packed his shit up and left one day. The plan went quite smoothly, which suprised me. He'd emptied out his CD, pocketed the cash, bought a couple of large duffel bags, and left while the parents were at work. He shipped his computer to my address, packed his bags and took the bus to the airport with the print-out of the electronic ticket I'd emailed him.

It would have gone perfectly, but neither of us thought about the password reset option on Steve's email address. His mom reset his password by answering the secret question, and found the ticket in his email. She called him at the airport in Houston, where he was transferring to another plane. The one thing I remember clearly that he said about this conversation was that she told him, "I've never allowed my personal life to interfere with my professional life."

It was when I heard about that, that I quit having much sympathy for Steve's mom. Before that, I figured okay, she's a scared mom, her oldest kid is moving out, no wonder she's flipping out. But sheesh... she might as well have said, "Oh, btw, my job is more important than you are, son. And I expect you to have the same priorities, dammit."

She tried again to call him when he arrived at the local airport, but he ignored the page. I don't blame him.

Meanwhile, I was trying to get the apartment I'd just rented ready. Well, as ready as one can get when all the furniture you have is a bed. I moved all my stuff over that morning. I loaded my brother's truck up, and he drove it, then I had to unload and carry everything up the stairs and into the apartment. That was pretty rough... I don't think it's easy for anyone to carry a full-sized box spring & mattress up a bunch of stairs, alone. Especially not a wimpy girl like me.

I got everything moved in, and my brother went back to his house. Luckily, he'd agreed to drive me to the airport to pick Steve up. Otherwise, I'd have had to take a cab (as noted before, I can't drive).

I unpacked, assembled the bed, and put away most everything I could. Then I tried to sleep and failed miserably. I noticed when I went to the bathroom there was no shower curtain, so I figured I'd better walk down the street to the closest store and buy one. There's a K-Mart and HEB (grocery store) about five blocks from the apartment complex, so I went there and bought a shower curtain, a pound of margarine, a package of wash cloths and a case of Bud Light. Somehow I managed to carry it all home.

I tried to sleep again, no such luck -- I was far too nervous. So I gave up, read a book for a while, took a shower, and got dressed. And waited some more. Eventually, it was time to head off to the airport and pick up Steve.

My brother waited outside of the airport in his truck while I went inside to wait for the plane to arrive. I paced like a caged animal for about thirty minutes before I finally spotted Steve coming down the escalator. We headed over to pick up his luggage, all the while eying each other warily. Up until this point, we'd spent countless hours (8+ nearly every day for six months) talking online, exchanged pictures, and talked on the phone a few times. We'd never met, and we were moving in together.

Needless to say, it was pretty damned scary for both of us. Once we got back to my apartment, my brother thankfully left us alone, and Steve proceeded to drink a twelve-pack of Diet Coke in the space of a few hours. I was amazed by the capacity of his bladder.

Four hours after he arrived, we were lying on the floor, side by side, talking. I made some kind of remark about how ironic it was that after all those months of saying we'd be all over each other, neither of us had the balls to touch the other. He did it then, with a look of sheer determination on his face -- he finally reached out and put his arm around me. Things were much easier from that point forward.

The next morning, we had a knock on the door -- I answered, and was shocked to see a couple of police officers outside.

Cop: "Is there a Steven ****** here?"
Kataine: "Yes, he's here."
Cop: "His mother has been calling... she's concerned about his safety..."
Steve: "I'm fine."
Cop: "Could you please give her a call to let her know you're okay? She's been calling us practically every fifteen minutes since yesterday..."
Steve: "Sure, I'll call her."

So Steve went down to the pay phone and called his mother collect, as I didn't have a phone line installed yet.

I guess she's relaxed somewhat since then. I don't think she's still trying to get him to come home anymore, although she did for a while. Oh, I'm sure she'd be overjoyed if we split up and he went back to Maryland, but at least she doesn't try to talk him into it.

Steve's mother is coming to visit us in late October. Luckily, she's only going to be down here for a couple of days, and she'll be staying at a hotel and getting a rental car. I'm not really looking forward to this visit. Not that I expect anything bad to happen -- I can get along with anyone, if I make the effort, and I intend to do so. Still, I have a feeling it's going to be pretty uncomfortable, and I'm certainly nervous about meeting her.

I guess we'll see what happens. As long as she doesn't try to kidnap him and drag him back to Maryland...

Steve's parents intimidate me, because they're so incredibly different from my own. My parents are relaxed, laidback, and often crude. His seem to be incredibly stuffy and self-righteous. I've dealt with such people before, usually in a work environment, but this is something else entirely. I mean... Christ, I'm fucking their precious little boy.

Yes, more!

2003-10-10T02:42:00.000-07:00

It's 4:42 am and I've got another hour and eighteen minutes before I get to go home. Needless to say, I'm bored. I was going to go read Heather's blog but I'm getting an error message. Figures.

Steve bitched when I wrote my background posts that I'd glossed over the six months we spent talking for hours every day, before we met in person. He's right, I did, and it was actually a pretty interesting phase of my life, so I'll write about it now.

Sometime in October or November of last year, I was banned from Anarchy Online for exploiting. I opened up a free trial account to use for posting on the boards, though, because I needed something to keep me occupied at work. Shortly before I was banned, I'd noticed several of Steve's posts, and had begun to develop a crush on him, despite the fact we'd never talked.

Well, in late November, he posted to the boards that he was quitting the game. I'd just started playing another game, so I sent him a private message, with the intent of luring him there. It worked. I persuaded him to email me, with the excuse that I wanted to share the gory details of my banning without the forum moderator being able to read it.

Steve answered my email with a rather lengthy one of his own, and I was incredibly flattered. It was like, "Wow, this really cool, funny guy is writing to me!" And within a few days, he was playing the new game with me. I think we clicked pretty much right away -- he was just great, and not an asshole at all (at least not to me!)

I'd just moved my AO guild over to the new game, and invited him to join. He did, and I made him an officer damn quick, mostly because I was trying to kiss his ass. I liked him, a lot, but I'd also read in one of his posts that he was a teenager and I assumed that meant he was off-limits.

Meanwhile, another member of my guild had displayed an awful lot of interest in me, and also seemed pretty cool, although I wasn't gaga over him the way I was over Steve. The other guy, however, was definitely legal (in fact, he was in his mid-thirties as I recall).

So I had a little pow-wow with some friends. "Jailbait, or the old man?" Mind you, I have absolutely no qualms about internet relationships. I believe very strongly that there is absolutely nothing wrong with finding a partner online, even if there's a large distance, as long as one party is willing to eventually move if things get to that point. So that wasn't even a factor.

My friends pushed for the old man -- after all, he was established, he made good money, and he seemed nice enough. He was also utterly infatuated with me. Steve, on the other hand, might not even be of age, was still in high school, and it seemed highly unlikely he had any interest in me other than friendship (judging from his behavior).

So I started talking to the old man (I'll call him "DF" for reasons that will be apparent later) more regularly. I carefully dodged his attempts to form a relationship with me, as I certainly didn't want to go anywhere near as fast as he did... I hadn't even seen a picture of the guy yet!

The trouble started when DF and I exchanged pictures. He was smitten by mine, and I was... uh... well, to be honest, revolted by his. The guy was a minimum of 400 lbs, looked like he hadn't shaved or trimmed his beard in months, was wearing sloppy, dirty clothes, and had the most awful slack-jawed expression I've ever seen on his face.

Around that time, DF made some kind of comment about how he wanted to buy me some kind of frilly pink dress that looked like one a character he had was wearing. I was kind of taken aback by this. I'm not the kind of woman who wears dresses, ever. Hell, a good portion of my clothes are men's, and the rest are boobie shirts and jeans.

And then DF wanted to call, so I caved in and let him. All the while, I was trying to convince myself that he was such a nice guy, surely I could accept his appearance, right? Then I heard his voice. My God. This man was supposedly a coder, and he sounded flat-out retarded. Badly retarded.

After the call, I backed off more, trying to cool him down and hoping he'd lose interest in me. He was still a damn good guild member, and a cool friend, but I just could not imagine myself in the sack with this man.

And DF pushed harder. He asked me to talk to him in IRC one day, and told me he thought total honesty was really important, so he wanted to share some embarassing secrets about himself with me. And that is when he revealed that he fucks dogs. Male dogs. In the ass.

If you haven't guessed by now, I refer to him as "DF" for "Dog Fucker".

I told him at this point that a relationship was out of the question. Sexual relations with animals is definitely a deal-breaker for me. Poor DF was devastated, but I tried to be gentle about it.

All through this time I'd been talking to Steve regularly, but had kept things at a friendly level. I joked that he was jailbait. He didn't know what that meant... he thought I was saying he was gay. Eventually, after some weird misunderstandings, he asked, and I explained what it meant. I stressed the fact that if someone is jailbait, that means you're tempted to bang them despite the risk of getting locked up.

Steve was 17 at the time, and I found it out then. I was actually okay with that. It's on the edge of my lower limit for ages I'd date, but his birthday wasn't too far away, so hey...

But in the meantime, I had an RL prospect. I'd recently discovered that a co-worker of mine, a guy named Chris (NOT the Chris I've linked to in my sidebar) was interested in me. Now that was a match made in hell. Good God.

I'll back up a bit. I was hanging out with Chris a fair amount... we'd become pretty good friends, despite the fact I ragged on him every chance I got. One day, we were standing outside talking at work, when I just randomly said, "Stop staring at my tits!" He turned bright red and looked away. "Well, shit," I thought to myself. "Chris wants to fuck me."

So I figured, "Why not?" He seemed okay, if a little odd. He was reasonably attractive, intelligent, and hadn't driven me nuts after working with him for the last four or five months.

And so, like any good woman, I started winding up the sexual tension crank. All women are equipped with this device at puberty, although some know how to use it better than others. I have an easy time of it, probably because I have big tits.

Within a few days, Chris gave me the "my pants are about to pop" look and asked if I'd get mad if he kissed me. I said no, and he did. He's tongue-tied, so it wasn't that great, but he apparently nearly creamed his jeans. He probably hadn't gotten laid in months. I'm not THAT good of a kisser.

He asked me out a couple of days later. I hemmed and hawed a bit, because at the time I was sharing an apartment with my brother. My brother is loud, outspoken, and obnoxious. I knew he'd raise a bunch of shit if I went out with anyone, let alone Chris, who he knew and disliked.

I agreed, and told my brother I was going to a movie with "some people from work".

It was a passable date, although I have to say the movie was more interesting than the guy sitting next to me. I was kind of psyched when I went home, though, because I'd become something of a hermit and hadn't gone out in a long time.

A few days later we had sex. At work, in the backseat of his car. It'd been over a year for me, and he was rough. It hurt, I bled (not much, but still). He noticed, and mentioned this in passing, as though he was observing that I have a mole on my right boob (which I do, btw). No apologies.

Then, not even ten minutes later, Chris split up with me, saying that he still had feelings for some other woman (who was living with her fiance). I was pretty unhappy, I mean... after all, I'd just had bad sex and then I got dumped. It sucked.

A few days later Chris called me, drunk, and said some shit about how I was too good for him. Then he said that if I really cared for him, I'd "hold down other women while he raped them". I told him he was right, I was entirely too good for his sorry ass.

I told Steve that I got dumped, and noticed he seemed rather pleased about it. Hmm. I decided to go after him, and started flirting with him a lot. I was joking that I was going to fly him down here and take his virginity. He said I could send a plane ticket for any weekend, and he'd happily show up.

A few days later, I told Steve that while I certainly wanted a piece of him, I wasn't really capable of no-strings-attached sex. And he told me he always thought there wasn't such a thing, anyway. I was smitten. I decided at that moment that I was going to get this man, come hell or high water. He was mine, dammit.

So Steve and I continued talking a lot and exchanging emails. I chased after him like a bitch in heat. There was another older guy who had a crush on me at the time, and we drove him up the wall by flirting constantly in front of him. This guy sent me his picture one night in IRC, and Steve did as well. The old guy was painfully ugly, and Steve... well... Steve was fucking hot.

After some time and a lot of shyness on both of our parts, we made it official. We were in a relationship. Damn, was I happy. I felt like I'd won the damned lottery. I still feel that way, actually.

I started saving money with the intent to move to Maryland, get an apartment, and move this relationship into real life. I prepared my parents and brother for this. My parents weren't real happy, and my brother was absolutely livid. I'd been splitting the bills with him and his family for over a year, and that meant he didn't have to work. My moving out meant he would have to get a job.

And then Steve surprised the hell out of me by saying he wanted to move to Texas, instead. Well, it certainly made things easier, in a lot of ways. We made plans, he told his parents (his mom went ballistic). I told my parents I wasn't going to move after all, and that there was a guy involved, who was moving out here instead. They were amazingly supportive.

About a month before Steve was supposed to move here, he made a snap decision to arrive early. We had the money together we needed, and I suspect his own parents were driving him batshit crazy. I bought him a plane ticket, and he just packed up and moved one day, without telling anyone.

I'd continue the story, but unfortunately it's time for me to do some actual work at work, so it'll have to wait.

People read this shit

2003-10-10T01:46:00.000-07:00

I know, it's amazing to me, too. They do, though, because my name and this link keep popping up in other people's blogs, along with mostly positive commentary.

Secretly, I've been saving all these comments and blog entries (by other people, that is) about me, and filing them away in a text document entitled "Ego stroking.txt". Yes, it's pathetic. No, I don't care. At least I'm not so hung up on myself as to paste them into my own entries (although any scathing comments will find their way here, as those are just amusing).

I've had a few requests for pictures. Unfortunately, I don't know of a site I can host them on (for free, I'm a cheapskate) and link directly to. If someone knows one, I'd love to hear about it.

Meanwhile, there's a couple shitty mugshots out there:
Me, with pink hair
Me, as a blonde
The second link will probably not work if you click it. You can, however, paste this into your address bar and it will load:
http://shub.20megsfree.com/kataine2.jpg

I have no idea why typing the link works, but links to it do not. Some protection against direct linking, I presume.

My hair is currently a dark red/auburn color, which I like better than the pink and blonde. Pink was fun for a while, though... it certainly got some amusing comments, especially from the old ladies.

I'll eventually quit being lazy and get more pictures up, including some of Steve. There's one faintly green & tiny, but hot, picture of him out there I know of, and another really awful one. I'll post the good one later if he doesn't mind, or I'll take a picture of him if he lets me.

There's also a picture of my tits out there, but that one I'm not going to post. Sorry. Steve would kick my ass, anyway. He wants them all for himself. That's fine with me, except he doesn't want me to get a reduction, and the damn things are entirely too big. Oh well.

And now for my obligatory "Why I'm writing this drivel" essay:

The primary purpose of this blog is to eliminate boredom. My own, that is. If I'm reducing anyone else's boredom, that's not just a happy coincidence, but also quite surprising.

I think I mentioned once that I work as a security officer for a high-profile defense contractor. It sounds a lot cooler than it is. In truth, my job consists of sitting on my ass in front of this computer for between four and eight hours a night. The rest of my shift is spent "patrolling", which means I walk around the facility, lock some doors, check some machinery, turn off light switches, and (I can't believe I'm admitting this) turn off coffee makers.

Well, you might be thinking, at least a job guarding half-built missiles and blueprints from terrorists must pay well, right? Ha. Guess again. I make precisely $5.88 an hour before taxes. Burger flippers makes more than I do. Then again, they don't get to sit on their asses playing on the computer all night, either.

Needless to say, I get bored. Back when I was gaming regularly, I ran a guild, and wrote a ridiculously lengthy email newsletter for my members to waste my time. I no longer have the time to play computer games much at all, as I can't do that at work, and I prefer to spend my time at home hanging out with Steve.

For a while, I'd waste my time at work by writing him really long email messages. I got sick of that, because he doesn't answer them. To be fair, I'll point out he doesn't really have the time to do so, because he doesn't get to do it on company time, and why should he type me messages when I'm at home? We'd both rather he was just talking to me.

So, one day about a week and a half ago, I decided to do this. I was, at first, reluctant to even give him the address, and quite afraid he'd mock me for doing it. But hey, he didn't, and in fact he occasionally writes a post here as well. Not as often as I'd like, but sometimes.

The other reason this seemed like a good idea is that I could sit down and type honestly and openly about my perspective of what's going on with us, without directly addressing him. For some reason that makes it easier. So, in that sense, this blog is something of a relationship aid. Certainly, it's proved useful in allowing me to vent without ripping Steve's head off...

Someone asked if my name is really Kataine. It is not. Kataine is a nick I used in an online game at one point (before I sold that account). It's not my usual nick, because I have a feeling if I used that one, certain family members I'd rather not read this, will do just that. Steve's name, however, is really Steve.

I was once told by some random person in that game that "Kataine" translates roughly to, "I'm hard (tough)" in Japanese. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but I've liked the name more since then. I actually got the nick from a random name generator I wrote several years ago.

Another reason today is shitty -- I've got my period, some 15 days early. Stupid hormones. On this particular subject, I'll restrain my impulse to share every detail, as I do have some male readers. Wouldn't want to give the poor boys nightmares...

Blah.

2003-10-10T00:18:00.000-07:00

Today has been an all-around crappy day, but on the bright side, there wasn't any drama. Yay.

It was supposed to be the last time I had to work that awful 2pm-6pm shift I hate so much. Since I went back to my security job, I've had the schedule reserved for noobs. Night shift four days a week (10pm-6am) which I like, but I also have split days off, and that one day shift on Thursdays. And it's only 36 hours.

I hate that 2pm-6pm shift because I have to wake up far earlier than I'm accustomed to, and for only four hours of work. Plus it's day shift, which means significantly more actual work, if you call walking around for two hours attempting to look like I'm doing something "actual work". Also, since Steve is at work until 3:15pm, I don't really have transportation on that day. My boss used to take me in, but now he's riding his new motorcycle to work, and I'm too much of a pussy to hop on the back of that thing.

But today was supposed to be the last day of that, since one of my co-workers on the night shift quit, and I was taking over his shift. Unfortunately, since the new work week starts on Friday at midnight, that meant I start my new schedule then... which meant I had to go back to work six hours after I got home.

So I didn't get enough sleep, and went in to work this afternoon... Steve took me to work during his scheduled break at 1:30 (which I'm certain, despite his assurances to the contrary, was a major pain in the ass for him). I got to work at about 1:35 and sat around looking dumb until my shift started. Floppio was on patrol, so I was stuck out at the guard shack until almost 4pm, running back and forth and signing people in, searching trucks, etc.

I did my patrol from 4pm until 5:30, when my boss called me up to the lobby to assist with baggage searches. This I don't mind, since my boss (Louie) is a rather cool guy and I like shooting the shit with him. Well, baggage searches ended at around 5:45 when most everyone had left for the day, and Louie decided to show me his collection of photos from his honeymoon. Again. I think this is at least the fourth time.

I smiled and made approving noises, and pointed out at least three times that I needed to go back to the guard shack as my shift was about to end and Steve would be coming to pick me up. He persisted. I looked at more pictures. What else could I do? I mean, the guy *is* my boss.

Anyway, I got back to the guard shack a couple of minutes past 6:00, and Steve was already out there waiting for me. We went home, and I immediately crawled into bed to sleep since I was hella tired and had to go back at midnight. Around 7:00, the phone started ringing. We figured it was his mom, but he was too tired to answer and talk to her, so I turned the ringer off.

I woke up at 9:00, feeling surprisingly awake, and washed some dishes & cooked dinner. I'm not sure why, because the kitchen was a disaster (as it has been, for months) and I generally refuse to cook unless Steve cleans the kitchen. It's a fair tradeoff, I think -- it takes maybe 20 minutes to clean the kitchen, and usually at least an hour to cook. Cooking is less boring than cleaning, though.

Side note: When I got home from work, I was hungry but too tired to bother eating. Steve cooked some frozen fish while I was at work. Rather than wash a pan to cook it in, and a plate, he baked it on a piece of aluminum foil and ate off the top of an old pizza box. Sheesh.

Anyway, I'm stupid, and not as stubborn as I should be, so I cleaned and cooked while he was asleep, then woke him up to see if he wanted to eat. While he was sleeping, we had the following conversation:

Steve: "Ok."
Kataine: "Huh? What are you saying ok to? A dream?"
Steve: "Yeah."
Kataine: "Hey, you should wake up now, I cooked dinner."
Steve: "How about those little can things?"
Kataine: "Little can things?"
Steve: "Sterno."
Kataine: "We don't have any Sterno, honey. I made the Frito pie..."
Steve: "You did?"
Kataine: "Yeah, you want to wake up and eat some?"
Steve: "Not right now, thanks."
Kataine: "Well, can you wake up for a little while? I'd like to get some time with you before I go back to work."
Steve: "Who are you cheating with?"
Kataine: "I'm not cheating on you, dear, I think you're dreaming..."
Steve: "Oh, it was a hook-up... maybe I could find a way to do that, that doesn't hurt my fucking arm."
(I noticed I was laying on his arm at this point, so I moved it, figuring he was referring to that in his incoherant way.)
Kataine: "I'm sorry, I think I was crushing your arm. C'mon, wake up, there's food."
Steve: "Ok."

He woke up a few minutes later and ate with me, while I resisted the urge to bitch too much about the fact he hasn't cleaned the kitchen in practically forever. We went back to sleep.

I got back up at 11:30pm and went back to work. So, I go into work, and there's my co-worker who's quitting. "Hey, Sef, last night?" I said to him.

"Well, no, not really... I got into an accident and I don't have insurance, so I'm staying on for a couple more weeks because I need the money. Louie was trying and trying to call you, but you didn't answer, he was going to tell you that you didn't have to come in tonight..."

Well, great. It wasn't Steve's mom trying to call, it was my boss, and he was going to tell me I didn't have to work that night, which would have been terribly welcome news. Only now, since I didn't answer the phone, I did have to work. Bleah.

And since Sef isn't quitting, that means I'll probably wind up working that damned 2pm-6pm shift on Thursdays for a while longer. Argh. Sef did say he was figuring on taking my old schedule and letting me have his, BUT he can't work 2-6 because of his classes. So unless Louie pulls a miracle out of his ass, I'm going to be stuck with it.

On the bright side, I might at least get Mondays & Tuesdays off, which gives me significantly more time with Steve, and that's generally a good thing.

In other news, I wrote a long post on ISCA, where there was some kind of debate raging over "assholes vs. good guys". I'm going to c/p it here, since it's like free content -- I already wrote it, but I bet none of you have read it!

Someone mentioned that nice guys generally wind up with divorced women, whose first marriage was to an asshole. How true that is... at least for me.

I was married to an Asshole(tm) for four years, after about a two-year long
engagement. Those were, without a doubt, the most miserable years of my life. He was overconfidant, egotistical, annoying as hell, overbearing, controlling, had the most godawful sense of entitlement I've ever seen in a person, and just all-around a real prick. So, six years or more after I *should* have kicked him to the curb, I finally did.

That was almost three years ago, and when I did start looking again for a serious relationship, my criteria for the perfect man looked something like this:
1. The complete opposite of my ex-husband.

...which is precisely what I got. Well, I can't say they're total opposites.. there are some traits they both share, such as having a penis. But now, I'm engaged to a man I'd consider my version of the "nice guy". I guess it's probably different than what a lot of people call "nice guys", though.

He farts, burps, tells disgusting jokes, shows me gross pictures he's found on the internet... but that's all in private. In public, he's shy, but polite, well-mannered, and just a pleasure to be around. I don't mind the crudity at home -- hell, I'm cruder than he is, and I find it hysterically funny when he rips one right in the middle of serious conversation.

I guess a lot of women like to be pursued, and like a man who is likely to start ripping her clothes off after the first date, but I don't. This may have a lot to do with why I went for this guy. There's no question I pursued him, start to finish (well, I didn't ask him to marry me, but I would have :P). We met online, and when we finally met in person (six months later) it took him four hours to work up the courage to touch me at all. And this after I'd told him repeatedly that I wanted his *expletive deleted* (Hey, my mom might be reading this!)

I suppose I understand why some women want men with a lot of self-confidence, who will pursue them, take control, yadda yadda... but I'd rather make a bunch of male friends (usually the shy, "nice guy" sort), get to know them and hang out with them until I find one I'm truly interested in, and then chase him. Women underrate the thrill of the chase, I think.. it's too long been considered a man's game. Pfft.

The Marlboro Man is calling me, so that's all for now. Undoubtably more later, as, like most women, I never shut up.

Hmm...

2003-10-09T12:14:00.000-07:00

Gogopimp of wab.co.za writes:
word on the street is, this blog is bizarre: it details the relationship between a schizophrenic woman and an autistic man (Kataine and Steve). I reckon the chick is both parties though, I mean, what the hell, this is the int-duh-net and, after all, she is schizo.

Still. very interesting. Probably quite sad if its true. The chick is clearly bossing the guy around. 'fore you know it shes gonna be stealing his lunch money and getting him to polish her shoes before and after work. shit, thats actually quite cool.

This raises two interesting questions. Is Steve real? And if so, is he my bitch?

Despite my schizophrenia, I'm quite certain he's real. After all, my parents, co-workers, and brother have met him, and none of them said, "Hey, dude, I think you've got an imaginary friend." For that matter, if he's a figment of my imagination, one has to wonder how I get to work every day -- I can't drive, and it's a hell of a long walk... and where's all that food disappearing to, if not down Steve's gullet?

But, as the man says, this is the internet, so one never knows. I could post a picture of Steve holding up an "I'm real, dammit!" sign, but who's to say that's actually him? If anyone's visiting the far south of Texas and wants to verify our existence, however, leave a comment and you can see our antics in person.

Which leads to the other, more answerable question -- is Steve my bitch?

He's probably more qualified to answer this than I am, and I'd love to hear what he has to say on the matter.

Meanwhile, my take on it -- there's no question that I hold most of the power in this relationship. Unfortunately, this isn't a situation I'm really happy with. As I said recently, one of my biggest complaints is that he doesn't stand up for himself. Human nature says the result of this is, yes, that I've made him my bitch.

I don't think he'll be polishing my shoes anytime soon, though.

More drama last night, this time revolving around some weirdness I didn't really understand, that had to do with what my idea of getting our relationship working properly entailed, vs. Steve's idea of this. And so I heard one of the most baffling comments ever from him -- "I'm basically satisfied with our relationship."

Well, hell. That's a surprise, but it does explain certain things in a much nicer way than "I'm too lazy for this."

After that mess, we had more drama -- first a mini-disaster having to do with porn banners, then I was bitching about the fact that Steve falls asleep at the absolute worst possible times. Then he fell asleep.

Once again, I slept against the wall. I swear I'm going to have to splurge on a futon soon -- wall-sleeping is shitty, and the floor is worse. Or else, I'm going to have to figure out a way to deal with his falling asleep mid-crisis, without staying as far away as possible from his snoring body.

It's not so much that it pisses me off, but rather I feel like I'm not particularly important to him. "Hey asshole, I'm over here crying, and you're sleeping like a baby.. WTF is this shit?"

I'll fill in the details later -- right now, I'm at work and doing a day shift, which means I have to actually work some. I'm in the midst of a schedule change, and today is the last day of our work week, which means I'm working 2pm-6pm, going home, then coming back at midnight. Bleah.

Anger Management, Part III

2003-10-08T02:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I blew it, and spent much of today quite pissed off. I think my absolute worst pet peeve is "Yes, dear." What I mean, specifically, is that I can't stand it when someone caves in to what I want, or they perceive I want, even though they really don't want to do it... and then raises hell about it much later.

I had a long and rather bizarre talk with Steve tonight in IRC. As I've mentioned before, I'm a hardcore monogamist. This is very much true, sexually, but on an emotional level I almost seem poly. I tend to have a few close friends of the opposite sex, who I suspect just fill in for whatever needs that my SO is not meeting.

Steve asked me today if I thought it was possible for one person to meet all of my emotional needs, and I said I thought it might be, but not him. Maybe it's true, I don't know for sure... but it was still not exactly a nice thing to say. Certainly, there's something that makes me maintain those intimate friendships I have with other men, despite the fact that at least one of them is quite destructive.

But I have to wonder if it's really possible for an autistic man to meet every single emotional need that someone like me has. I'm not just schizophrenic, I'm also horribly, horribly needy and clingy. And I'm a drama whore.

So I tried to figure out what it is I'm getting from these other men, anyway. In one case, the answer is "adrenaline" -- the constant drama and fighting I engage in with that particular guy is like some kind of illicit rush. In one case, it's that the guy will kick my ass (not literally) when it's needed. In the third case I examined, it's that the guy works as a sounding board... I think he fills the same role that most women go to their female friends for.

I don't have female friends. I can't remember ever having a close female friend, and I don't really do friendships that are anything other than very close. I don't know why this is, really. I'm sure there are plenty of cool women out there I could get along with just fine. But... those relationships I have that I consider friendships are really closer to a boyfriend/girlfriend situation, without the sex.

Ladder theory says they all want to fuck me. This is likely true. I can only think of one friendship I've ever had where there wasn't at least a certain amount of mutual attraction. The guy in question there is still a friend, I guess, although we don't talk so much as we used to.

Then there's Victor, who on the surface seems to be an exception -- after all, he's quite gay. But I'll admit on some level I find him pretty damned attractive, too. If I wasn't involved, and he wasn't HIV+, I'd most likely make a drunken attempt to "convert" him.

The real question is, when it comes to that one particular destructive friendship, why do I keep going back for more? I don't think the guy in question would loan me $5.00 if I was starving to death and living in a box. If I got in a freak accident and got badly injured, I think he'd laugh about it. He's an asshole, pure and simple, and we fight on a near-daily basis, with a massive blowout coming along every few months.

Obviously, I'm getting some kind of payoff from this, or I wouldn't continue it. It's the adrenaline rush, I'm sure... it's exciting in a bizarre way. And our interactions have just a touch of illicitness to them... as in, I know I shouldn't be doing this, I know I shouldn't be saying these things to this person, I know I should feel this way, because I'm seriously involved. With someone else. I am truly a drama whore.

If anything, it's happened more and more since Steve moved in, and that I think has a lot to do with the fact that he absolutely will not stand up for himself. I told him tonight, "You always turn the other cheek... you're like Jesus."

I don't want to have a relationship with Jesus. If I did, I'd go to church.

It's rather hard to maintain respect for a person who seems to have no self-respect. Sometimes it seems like Steve has this big "DOORMAT" sign hanging from his head. I don't want to walk all over him, but he makes it hard not to, and human nature makes it even harder.

Dr. Phil says we teach people how to treat us. Sometimes that means you have to flat-out say to someone, "This behavior is unacceptable, and it's going to stop. Now." If only I could get Steve to give me a firm kick in the ass when needed, I think our relationship would be a lot more balanced.

On the bright side, he is improving in this area. I've gotten him to announce when we're talking in IRC (while I'm at work) that he's going to go play a game and he'll be back later. This is a major step in the right direction, and it's so much better than when he'd get passive-aggressive and just start ignoring me a lot until I got pissed off and logged out.

Hopefully, now that he's seen that when he does that, I just say "Okay," and don't mind at all, he'll start asserting himself in other ways.

Mind you, I need to work on this a bit myself in some cases. Shopping trips come to mind. I've got to learn to put my foot down and say:

"Get your ass away from the checkout, because I am NOT done shopping yet."
"I'm buying this."
"I'm going into this store."

As it is, I tend to just trail him around through our shopping excursions like a lost puppy, then get pissed off because he didn't hear me timidly hinting that I might not be ready to go yet. This is not a good situation, either.

This whole issue with Steve's lack of self-assertion is definitely part of what provokes my anger. It's so frustrating to me when he caves in, because even if he insists otherwise, I'm sure he's going to be unhappy about it later. So I know it's not really over... and there's a part of me that hopes, when I yell about it, that he'll yell back.

Somehow I have to get him to understand that nothing really bad is going to happen if he asserts himself. Maybe I'll fume, or pout, or get bitchy. So what? I'll get over it. It's not like I'm going to leave him. I might be temporarily pissed off, or upset, but once the dust settles, we'll find a solution. We always do.

Maturity has hit an all-time low

2003-10-07T20:23:00.000-07:00

I said to Steve this morning, "We need to have some drama so I have something to write about." I was kidding. Nonetheless, I've got to be careful what I wish for...

I had figured on letting Steve sleep until noon today. Generally, unless there's some important reason for waking up (like the apartment is burning down) or I force him out of bed, he'll sleep for ten or twelve hours at a minimum. So I got up at around 4:00am myself, figuring I'd go back to bed after a while and finish sleeping.

But Steve woke up at 8:49am, after less than nine hours of sleep. I dragged him over to the computer to show him that not only was our blog getting a lot more traffic, but that people were leaving comments & mentioning us on their own blogs. I was pretty excited by all this.

After that, and listening to him talk about a rather bizarre dream he'd had, I wound up dozing off in bed. I wasn't all that tired, but I needed to get some sleep as I had to work tonight. So I slept for a while, he woke me up a couple of times, pulled me outside to smoke with him once, and I went back to sleep.

All of the time I was sleeping, he was lying in bed with me reading. I wrote about this once, but not here, so I'll quote what I said:

The one thing that gives me a lot of confidence in the relationship I have with my fiance is that he tries so hard, and is willing to do whatever it takes to make me feel happy and loved. At times I almost think he takes this a little *too* far.

For example, I've mentioned that I sleep better when he's with me than on my own. Since then, if I lie down to take a nap, even if he's not in the least bit tired himself, he'll immediately stop whatever he's doing and come to bed to hold me or lie next to me reading a book. I've told him he doesn't have to do this, as I'll eventually get to sleep when he's not there, but he says if I'm happier with him there with me, then that's what he wants to do.

So imagine my surprise when about seven hours after I'd first gone to bed, Steve woke me up and started bitching. Something about how he'd been in bed seventeen hours and he was sick of it. As I recall, I said something along the lines of, "Well shit, get out of bed then."

But no, that wasn't good enough. He wanted me to get up, and "do something" with him. He wouldn't define "something". He couldn't name anything he wanted to do. He wanted me to get out of the bed, right now, half-asleep as I might be, and pick out something for us to do. I just wanted to go back to sleep.

I got fairly pissed off at all this. After a while, I got out of bed, stomped to the balcony, lit up a cigarette and glared at him. "What the fuck do you want me to do?" I asked. No answer, he just laid down on the living room floor. Whatever. I went back to bed.

Steve acts like a three year old sometimes. This doesn't bother me... we have some good, totally immature fun. What bothers me is when he acts like a toddler and I'm supposed to be his mommy and entertain him. Gah.

I mentioned this to him a little while later, and he said something along the lines of, "You're a woman, you're older than me, and I have a close relationship with you... I'm going to wind up treating you like my mom sometimes." Great.

This is ironic, considering when Steve first moved in we had a few bickerfests because I was "being too helpful"... as I recall, he bitched me out for acting like his mom.

The rest of the night was a bust. Just one idiotic argument after another -- I was (and to a certain degree still am) irritated about the fact he woke me up and basically demanded I entertain him.

Pizza Hut says they don't deliver until later in the evening than we ordered our P'zones, so Steve elected to go pick them up. I didn't go. I was entirely too tired and irritable to go get dressed just to drive a few blocks to pick up some food, then bring it home to eat. I mumbled something about getting dressed being a pain in the ass. I got bitched at about that. I got more pissed.

Then we were eating and I jokingly threatened to throw my cup of marinara sauce in Steve's face because he ate all his and took some of mine. He goaded me on by making comments about how I was bitchy because I needed to get off. I'm amazed at my self-control, as I didn't hit him in the face with the sauce, but it was a very close call. Certainly, I wanted to.

I got lectured on this one. I always know when I'm about to get lectured, because Steve takes on this annoyingly fake "fatherly" tone of voice and starts out with the phrase, "In the future..." This time he said something about how it was a bad idea to make "physical threats, even jokingly". I'm not sure how saying I'm going to throw a cup of sauce at him is a physical threat, but whatever. Now if it were a hammer I was threatening to throw...

I was even more pissed after this. I seriously was beginning to feel as though my head was about to explode. More than anything, I just wanted him to shut the fuck up and go away. I didn't say that, however, because I know it'd just escalate the drama further, not to mention upset him quite a lot.

So I got up, turned the lights out, set the alarm for 9:30pm, and laid down in the far corner of the bed. Steve asked why I turned the lights out. I told him I wanted to rest. And then he picked his pillow up, dropped it at the foot of the bed, and laid down on the floor there.

I knew I was owned then. I mean, what do you do when your future husband, a grown man seven inches taller and way bigger than you are, is lying in a fetal position on the floor sobbing and saying he's afraid of you? The answer, at least for me, is that you do whatever you can to comfort him.

Some autistic people throw temper tantrums when they get overloaded. Others, like my own fiance, completely fall apart.

...and then I remembered the ominous words I got from a woman who is currently in the process of divorcing her husband, also on the autistic spectrum:

Well, that works just fine until the day, maybe 15 or 20 years from now, when you realize that you've raised three children, and you are married to the oldest one. AND he wants you to be his mother for the rest of his life.

I'm walking right into this, but at least I'm walking into it with my eyes wide open.

The Schizophrenic Experience

2003-10-07T06:35:00.000-07:00

Steve's asleep, and I've nothing better to do right now, so I thought I'd make an attempt to describe what it's like living with schizophrenia. I feel something like a freak show exhibit doing this, but hey, anything to entertain the masses. Besides, I'm bored.

The original diagnosis came when I was 14. I'd been hearing things, seeing things, and had some very strange ideas at the time. Everything had symbolic meaning. So I announced I needed a shrink, and my parents complied, albeit reluctantly. I mentioned this before, and I don't remember it all that well, except that the psychologist I saw seemed rather shocked.

Well, who wouldn't be? She specialized in counseling teenagers, going through normal teenage stuff. And then I came into her office, raving mad, checking the room for bugs, trying to explain the purpose of the leather bag full of rocks and cornmeal I wore around my neck.

She asked me if I liked my father. I was somewhat taken aback by the question -- at the time, I'd always had a good relationship with my dad. I think this woman was convinced that the root of all mental illness in teens was their dads. The question seemed out of place, and I wondered at what hidden meaning it had.

She informed my parents I should be hospitalized, and they drove me home, muttering. They were in denial. They thought I was going through a phase and I'd outgrow it. I never went to the mental hospital, and never returned to the psychologist. I remained unmedicated until I went to Job Corps, some eight years later.

Most of the time, I'm relatively normal. I hold a steady job, I'm outgoing and friendly. People I meet tend to walk away thinking I'm a bit odd, but can't really place why. Then, usually in times of great stress, I have an episode.

It's like an earthquake. At first there's a few mild tremors -- I hear whispering, I see things out of the corner of my eye. Ordinary things start taking on great meaning. I get terribly, terribly suspicious.

And then it hits, and reality crumbles. It's like living one of those crazy-assed nightmares people get. My location changes, people change from one to another, objects morph into other objects, voices are everywhere, everyone is out to get me. And nothing makes a lick of sense.

After a few days, it cools down (much faster with the help of medications)... things gradually go back to normal, but there's always the aftershocks. Semi-coherant episodes, where I act bizarre, but still have some grasp on reality...

One of the more amusing of these aftershocks occurred a few months ago. This was perhaps a week after I'd been released from the hospital after my last major episode. I was at home, talking to Steve in IRC while he worked, when he noticed I was out of it.

We have central air conditioning in our apartment, that comes out of vents in the ceiling. I'd noticed an odd tapping sound coming from the vent directly above me while I was sitting by the computer. After listening for a while, I determined it was Morse code. Obviously, there was some very small man inside the vent, and he was trying to communicate with me.

I explained the situation to Steve, who as I recall said something like, "Uhhh..."

I'd thought about trying to decipher the Morse code, but decided not to because it was grating on my nerves too much. I generally find my auditory hallucinations to be extremely annoying, and I'm willing to do just about anything to shut them up.

After thinking on it for a while, I determined it was unlikely anyone else could hear it other than myself. This is because inevitably, when odd things like this happen, everyone thinks I'm crazy. They're right, but I didn't realize this at the time. I figured I probably had an implant in my head, similar to the part of a TV or VCR that receives signal from the remote control. Since these signals were travelling through walls easily enough, it couldn't be infrared... it was most likely UHF.

UHF probably isn't blocked by metal, but for some reason I was pretty sure it was. It didn't occur to me to make a tinfoil hat, and besides I'm not sure we even had any foil in the pantry. I felt the best way to handle it was to get some metal directly into my brain. Luckily, this wasn't a self-destructive episode, or I probably would have stabbed myself in the head.

Instead, I decided to eat a can of sardines. Sardines, for those of you who haven't eaten them, have a metallic looking sheen on their skin (like many fish). I guess it's not really metal, but I was convinced it was at the time, so I chowed down on a can full.

Meanwhile, I was talking to Steve. "There's a guy in the ceiling, and he's annoying me with his Morse code, so I'm going to eat some sardines because that'll block the UHF signal." Needless to say, he was a little disturbed.

I remember he talked to me a little about it in an attempt to make me realize I was off my rocker. It didn't work. He pointed out no one would fit in the air conditioning duct, to which I replied that the person was likely a midget, or maybe a leprechaun. He told me that sardines don't really have metal in them. "Yes, they do, they're shiny!"

It's been some time now since my last full-blown episode, and I'm only medicated on an "as needed" basis. This is a lot better for me, because the side effects from taking my "nut pills" full time suck. Of course, that means I run the risk of going crazy at any given time, but it doesn't scare me as much as it used to. I'm no longer afraid that Steve is going to run back to Maryland if I hear voices.

I'll probably write even more later, as he's still asleep and I've got nothing better to do. As always, suggestions for future topics are welcome.

Comments Fixed

2003-10-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

Comments are now working properly. Thanks to Wowbagger for pointing out what was wrong. :)

Date Night

2003-10-07T04:53:00.000-07:00

Today did not go quite as planned, but overall it was actually a pretty good night. It'd be better if I could sleep, but sleep is always difficult... particularly if I've been drinking. So instead, I'll write. It seems there are now some people actually reading this (yay!) so I'm feeling a bit more motivated to keep updating.

The plan for today went something like this -- I'd stay up an hour or so after I got home from work to talk to my mom online, then sleep until Steve got home from work. When he got home, we'd take a nap until 5:00pm, spend a couple of hours working through our Dr. Phil book. At 7:00, we'd head out to Applebee's where I'd buy us dinner and drinks... then we'd hit Wal-Mart and buy beer, condoms and cigarettes. After that, we were supposed to go home, put some music on, drink up, and likely take the rubbers for a spin.

It didn't exactly work out that way, although it wasn't too far off. Steve went to work, I logged into IRC and talked to my mom for a while before I went to bed. When he got home, he was apparently more awake than I would have expected (he only slept 3.5 hours last night) and asked if I'd be interested in skipping nap time. I believe I mumbled something to the effect of, "Lemme alone, sleep now."

So he read for a bit, set the alarm for 5:00 and joined me in bed. After the alarm went off, we spent a couple of hours on the book, although we only made it through six pages. That's not a bad thing though, because we'd stopped to discuss a few things that came up as we read, and I think it went quite well. It was 7:20 by the time we checked the clock, so we got ready to go.

By the time Steve was ready, it was already 8:00 pm. This is mostly because he decided to shave before we left (I suspect it had been close to a week since the last time he shaved, and it took a while). We'd decided to go to Wal-Mart after going out, so the meat and beer wouldn't get warm in the car, and he wanted to pick up a bag of ice (which we forgot). So we headed off to Applebee's.

We sat down at the bar, as usual, and the cool bartender was there. I was impressed to see he remembered what Steve & I usually order to drink, despite the fact we've only eaten at Applebee's two or three times before. Unfortunately, I was on a budget (I only had $60 to spend) so mixed drinks weren't really an option... we had a couple enormous glasses of beer each, instead.

The food, as always, was excellent, and Steve, as always, finished eating long before I did. He headed off to the bathroom to eliminate some of the beer, and the bartender came by to ask if he was done with his plate. At first I thought he was asking about Steve's mostly full glass of beer, so I told him if he was done with it, I'd take care of it. It sounds rather dumb now, but at the time it was amusing.

While we'd been sitting there eating and talking, three old men had come and sat down near us. Winter Texans, I suspect, since they appeared to be white, and this town has very few of us gringos. Anyway, when Steve went to the bathroom, and I was joking with the bartender about his beer, one of the old guys said, "Is he done with her? Because if he is, I'm taking his seat!"

I have no idea why, but old men flirt with me constantly. It's a little weird, having someone old enough to be your grandfather trying to get in your pants. I don't mind, though, because they're generally not pushy at all... I think they realize I'm about forty years out of their league.

I used to joke with my mom I was going to get myself a rich old man, but in truth I'm kind of a cradle robber. I definitely seem to be more attracted to younger men. Steve, for example, is six years younger than I am -- I'm 24, and he's 18. Do I mind the age difference? Hell no, I love the age difference!

After dinner, we were supposed to go to Wal-Mart, but Steve had forgotten to bring money. Okay, this is partially my fault -- I didn't bring any of our common money with me, either, just my personal money to pay for dinner. And I forgot to remind him, since he's nearly always the one who carries the cash.

So we had to go home and get money before going off to Wally World. I measured Steve's height with a tape measure in the hardware department... he's always claimed to be 5'10. He's actually 6' 1/2". I knew he was taller than he thought, since he practically towers over my brother, who is 5'11.

Then, somehow, we wound up getting on the scales that are set up for "testing". This was probably not a good idea. Neither of us are actually overweight in each other's estimation, but we consider ourselves fat. It's kind of weird. Plus, we'd just gotten done stuffing our faces at Applebee's, had bladders full of beer, and were fully dressed, which probably added ten pounds as compared to a standard "naked in the morning after pissing" weigh-in.

I made Steve turn his back when I got on the scale. The bastard peeked. I was quite embarassed, and a little upset, but apparently he thought that I wouldn't mind. Well, whatever. We walked towards the checkout, both depressed about the numbers the scale had produced. Then there was the usual, "You're not fat!" "Neither are you!" exchange, and I guess we both felt better.

I used to have terrible self-esteem relating to my weight, which is kind of stupid, because I'm really not fat. I have meat on my bones, you can't count my ribs visually, I have quite a lot of T&A, but I'm nowhere near the size I would have to be to start shopping in the Plus Size section. I don't look like an anorexic model, and that really used to bother me.

It was really quite silly of me. I get hit on so much it's approaching ridiculous. If I spend a day alone, shopping at the mall, I'll come home with between six and ten phone numbers. I used to have a box full of slips of paper with guys' numbers on them when I lived in Seattle. I never called any of them. Actually, that's not true... I called one, once, when I was drunk, only to find out that he wasn't interested in dating me. He wanted to come over and fuck me. Story of my life, that.

I told Steve I'd stop worrying about my weight until he decided I needed to lose some. I'm 5'6 and I don't think I'd be happy with what I saw in the mirror unless I was under 100 lbs, anyway. Hell, I wouldn't be happy then, either, but I'd at least think I was thin enough. My opinion of my appearance, like just about everyone's, is highly irrational.

We checked out. I have no idea what the cashier thought when she saw what we were buying. A case of Bud Light longnecks, a package of condoms, a carton of cigarettes, a pound of ground beef, and a hammer. The hammer was Steve's idea. He says we need one. I have no idea for what, and he couldn't name any instances where we've needed one in the last five months, but I didn't see the harm in it, so we bought one.

After that, we went home and headed to the balcony for a cigarette. I cracked open a bottle of beer, Steve mixed this weird drink he's developed a recent fondness for (gin, margarita mix and lime juice). We had planned to stay up a while, drink and listen to music, but the music never happened and the drinking lasted about five minutes.

Steve was laying sprawled across the living room floor, wearing nothing but an undershirt. "I think we should practice with the condoms," he said. In other words, my eighteen year old lover was horny. What else is new?

Not that I'm complaining, at all. One of the biggest complaints I had about my ex-husband, before I just outright started hating him, was that he had hardly any sex drive. I called him "Once-a-month Mikey".

Neither I nor Steve had ever used a condom before, but because I've gone off the pill, it's a necessity on my fertile days. We went into this experiment with the lowest possible expectations, and still wound up disappointed. Here I was, on top of him, and he says, "Um, I'm having a hard time figuring out what's going on."

"What's going on...? We're having sex, dear."

"Oh," he said. "Am I in? I can't tell."

I found this terribly amusing, mostly because we've got a damn tight fit going, so "am I in?" just seems ludicrous. He remarked at one point that he wasn't having sex, the condom was having sex. We gave up after several minutes, as neither of us were really getting anywhere.

I have a newfound understanding of men who complain about wearing rubbers, especially after examining the "cock baggie" as we dubbed it. As thin as the material is, it still has a huge impact on sensation. Ladies, for those of you who don't understand why men dislike condoms so much... try sticking your finger in one, and rubbing it against your skin. Compare the sensation from that, to what it feels like with a bare finger. It's sad.

After this episode of "Adventures with Cock Baggies", we started throwing out ideas for alternate backup methods to use during fertile days. All the usual options for birth control have proved very problematic. At this point, despite the relatively high failure rate, I'd be happy to use a spermicide only (that is, if I could find one that doesn't irritate me.. *sigh*).

If I thought it was likely that we could get a doctor to give Steve a vasectomy after we have one child, we'd go for it now. Unfortunately, he'd only be 19 when our kid was born, and I can't see that happening. Maybe I could get a tubal ligation, but the expense is scary. And we'd really prefer to wait a little while before we do the whole kid thing...

I jokingly suggested kitchen-table castration. That didn't go over so well.

"I know!" I said. "We'll just save up all the drama and fighting, and do that during the nine-day fertile period. Then we won't want to have sex with each other anyway!"

I was, of course, mostly joking, but this is a good example of just how desperate we are. I think we're going condom shopping again soon, and picking up some different varieties to try. Maybe there'll be something out there that'll at least get sex up to the "acceptable" range. I've heard good things about the lambskin ones (I know they don't protect against STDs, but that's not an issue at all). They're expensive, but I'd pay for it myself if it meant decent sex all month long.

We went to bed around midnight. I suggested this because Steve seemed awfully tired. He said he was feeling rather emotional, too. I asked if I could do anything to make him feel better, and his answer was a bit odd -- "Don't be evil," he said. I assured him I would not, and told him to sleep as long as he wanted... usually I get impatient and try to wake him up after eight hours, even though he prefers to sleep quite a lot longer than that when he can. So I've resolved not to wake him up until noon, which will be twelve hours of sleep.

God, I wish I could sleep like he does. He falls asleep nearly instantly, sleeps very deeply, and for a long time. It takes me anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour to fall asleep, any little sound wakes me up, and I have a hard time sleeping more than six or seven hours. As I write this, he's on the bed behind me, lying stark-naked and face down, snoring loudly. I got up after spending four hours in bed, tossing and turning and occasionally dozing off for fifteen minutes at a time.

Whee...!

2003-10-05T20:44:00.000-07:00

Today was.. interesting. Well, to me, I'm sure anyone reading this would disagree, but that's just too bad.

Last night, I came to what I consider a pretty monumental decision. Despite the fact that Steve and I are engaged, until now I've been dodging the idea of a lifetime commitment. When this sort of thing comes up, I've been saying "I'll never leave you, unless... (insert ridiculously unlikely scenario here)." Somehow it's a lot easier than making it an absolute.

But last night I thought about this some more, along with the fact that it seems half the time we argue our relationship somehow winds up on the line. One of us (usually me) will make some kind of comment that could easily be interpreted as, "If we don't get this resolved, we're going to break up."

It's not a good thing to have happen. So I decided to get rid of my out on this one, and just flat out promise I wasn't going to leave Steve for any reason, ever. I had to think about this for a while, because it's a scary thought -- what if he screws around on me, gets some other woman pregnant, gives me gonorrhea, refuses to stop being unfaithful, etc etc?

I thought about it for a while, and the truth is, I'm absolutely certain he would never do anything so bad that I would truly want to give up on us. I'm as sure of that as I am that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. Which means I'm sure enough to make that promise.

I was all excited about this, once the decision had been made, and I called him from work to tell him that I had something to say but it'd have to wait until I got home, as I wanted to do it in person. Realizing that sounded really scary, I added that it wasn't anything bad.

So then I went home and told him this, and it was amazing. It was like he didn't notice. He didn't comment, and started talking about some promotion at work or something. I was not happy. I'd spent hours thinking about this, and it'd been a damned hard decision to make, but one I felt was right and would make him happy. At the least, I expected it to make some kind of impact on him. But noooo...

Some ten minutes later Steve noticed I didn't seem to be in a very good mood. He asked why. I responded that I had hoped that what I'd said would have at least a little impact. "What did you say?" he asked.

"I just promised you, like ten minutes ago, that I wasn't going to dump you no matter what," I answered.

"Oh, I already knew that," he said.

Now I was really blown away. Uh, needless to say, the rest of the morning didn't go so well. He mentioned something about how his real fear was a mutual breakup due to some kind of incompatibility. I just sat there thinking, "What the hell?!"

Then he had to go to work. This was 6:30am -- normally, I'd go to bed right away, but I was pretty shaken up and couldn't sleep. So I paced for a while, chain-smoked, and got pissed off. "What the fuck is his problem, anyway?" was one of the nicer things to go through my mind.

But I'm not allowed to get angry anymore, so I stopped to consider what I was really feeling underneath it all. I was hurt because he'd dismissed what I considered a major declaration of commitment. And I realized pretty quickly that this was way out of character for him -- which means Steve probably had completely misread what I was saying.

So, I wrote him the following email:

I suspect that you're not really aware of what happened this morning, so I'm going to do my best to clarify here. That's the problem with making certain statements in person -- it's much more difficult for me to be clear. I felt, however, that it was important to do this in person rather than via email. Despite how you apparently interpreted it, this was actually a very major decision on my part. So doing it via email would have been about as inappropriate as if you'd asked me to marry you in IRC.

I spent several hours last night at work thinking about this, and weighing whether it was really what I wanted to do, as well as if I could do it. Once I'd decided that I could, I thought it best to tell you as soon as I called you, so that I wouldn't have the opportunity to back out (due to fear). I had hoped that the fact I chose to wait and tell you in person would make it clear that this was a BFD.

I promised to you, this morning, that I would not leave you under any circumstances. Not under any reasonable circumstances, under ANY circumstances. This is an absolute. It means I'm no longer hiding behind, "Well, what if he ... (insert outrageous scenario here)"

Another, perhaps more clear, way to say this would be that I will not, under any circumstances, willingly exit this relationship. You would literally have to force me out. And when I say "force me out", I don't mean behave in such a way that I felt as if I had no other choice but to leave. I mean that you would have to break up with me... you'd flat out have to say, "I do not want to be in this relationship with you anymore, and nothing you can say or do will change that."

It was not an easy promise to make, but I wanted very much to do it, and I *will* keep it. Period. Again, this is an absolute.

The last thing I expected was for you to dismiss it, as though I was telling you something you already knew. Which is, in fact, what you said. You're wrong. Maybe you assumed it was true, but this decision is one I made this very night, and you couldn't have possibly already known it, because it was not true until 5:00am this morning.

And then you said you were more afraid of a mutual breakup due to incompatibility. This tells me two things:

1> Your level of commitment to this relationship is what I would expect of someone who was casually dating, not someone who is engaged. Engagement is a promise to make a lifelong commitment to a person. There's no "... if it works out" in there.

2> You didn't understand what I was promising you, or else you're refusing to accept it. There is no chance of a mutual breakup. It's impossible. The only way this relationship will end is if YOU end it. Alone.

For the record, although I'm not sure if this really matters much, the only reason I managed to explain why I was upset was because I absolutely did not want you to think that I was unhappy because you hadn't reciprocated. On the contrary, I don't expect reciprocation here. This was intended as a gift to you -- not only because you mentioned a desire for stability, but also because I wanted to do it. I just wasn't expecting you to reject it.

I guess now I know firsthand how you felt when I was unable to take marriage vows with you a couple of months ago. I'm sorry. :\

Then I went to sleep. When Steve got home, he read the email, and amazingly the huge dramafest that seemed inevitable never occurred. Instead, he agreed he'd misunderstood, apologized, and (this came as a total surprise to me) reciprocated the promise I had made.

So now we have security, I think. Security is good. I don't like spending a lot of time wondering if I'm going to get dumped. Now I know I won't. (Which may sound terribly naive, but Steve is definitely not the promise-breaking type.)

We took a nap after he got home from work, and woke up around 6:00 pm. After a little while, we took a quick shower together and ordered pizza. It got a little weird at that point.

Steve couldn't find his money. He'd put it somewhere in the kitchen, but couldn't find it anywhere, so he was bitching about it until I finally found it. I suggested that maybe he should put his money in his wallet, as he always carries that with him.

He didn't like this idea, for reasons I find utterly bizarre. If he puts his money into his wallet, it'll be folded into thirds. He doesn't like money to be folded into thirds, it has to be folded in HALF. What the hell this is, I don't know... me, I just wad up money and stuff it in my pockets. It spends just the same, whether it's folded in half neatly, wadded into an ugly little ball, or formed into an intricate origami penis.

But hey, if he wants to fold his money in half and lose it somewhere in the kitchen, that's his problem. I'm not going to find it for him when he does that anymore, though.

In other news, I might have gotten knocked up tonight. We were lying around on the floor talking when I became rather pleasantly aware of the fact my sex drive was back. "We're going to Wal-Mart tomorrow," I announced.

See, we're doing the whole NFP thing now, and the plan is to use condoms on potentially fertile days. Today was the first of these days for this cycle, but we haven't bought any yet.

So I groped on Steve for a while, momentarily forgetting the fact that eighteen year old males don't have much self-control, especially when they haven't gotten off in several days and have a horny woman crawling all over them.

It was almost 9:30 pm, which is the absolute latest I should wait to get ready for work (I have a twelve-piece uniform and I have to be at work at 10:00 pm sharp). He dragged me into bed anyhow, and announced he was about to do something foolish. So there you have it -- unprotected quickie on a potentially fertile day. I made it to work with two minutes to spare.

I am not much worried, though. Ideally I'd like to wait a while before we start reproducing, but neither of us would really mind if I came up pregnant, I think. I did, however, tell Steve he has 72 hours to hit the panic button -- if he freaks out about the idea I might have gotten preggo by then, I'll take the morning after pill.

Dr. Phil got neglected today, but I'm not working tomorow night, so hopefully I'll be able to make it up to him then. Or, in truth, make it up to myself.

Oh, yeah, and for any male readers -- if you have any advice relating to which brands/types of condoms are most comfortable, leave a comment please! Steve and I are clueless on this count, and going rubber shopping tomorrow.

Dr. Phil is my higher power

2003-10-05T00:10:00.000-07:00

About a week and a half ago, we went to the library. I immediately headed for the non-fiction section, looking for relationship books. I've been obsessed with relationships since around the time I first became involved with Steve. I'm sure it drives him nuts sometimes, but I believe that overall, it's a good thing. I suspect if I wasn't, our own relationship would be in a lot more trouble than it is, if we were even still together.

I dislike being immodest, but for once I'm going to do it anyway. I am the glue that holds this relationship together. Which is not to say that I contribute any more than Steve does -- on the contrary, I tend to think he contributes as much or more. I don't say it nearly often enough, but he really is everything to me -- lover, best friend, support network, sounding board, and partner in crime. The only reason I can see that he's not yet my husband is because of technical difficulties (now THAT is a long story.)

I was reading ISCA for a while yesterday. They've added a temporary forum called Recovery>, which is for the discussion of addictions, twelve-step programs, etc. There was a lengthy debate there over the "higher power" aspect of the twelve-step programs (such as Alcoholics Anonymous).

I'm an atheist. In fact, I'm a rather hardcore one -- I have a very strong and abiding faith that there is no God and no afterlife. Religion pisses me off, unless practiced far, far away from me. I get extremely annoyed when I sneeze and someone says, "God bless you."

Still, reading that debate over the whole "higher power" aspect of twelve-step programs made me think. I have, over the last week and a half, developed something very close to a God-follower relationship with Dr. Phil.

It all started with this book I checked out -- it's called Relationship Rescue. I let Steve see it, feeling somewhat embarassed, and he asked if the author was Dr. Phil. "Uh, I don't think so," I answered. "Wait, who is Dr. Phil?"

After reading through the dust cover, I realized he was, indeed, the author of the book. I'd never even heard of the guy before. But after spending a few minutes reading what he had to say, I was hooked.

I'd tried and tried for months to get Steve to be more proactive in our relationship. In fact, the biggest source of frustration to me was that he seemed to have little interest in doing the necessary work to get things going more smoothly.

By the time I checked out Dr. Phil's book, I had given up on it, and resigned myself to the idea that I would always be the one who had to figure things out. That all changed in a shocking turn of events.

As I sat on our bed, reading the book, jotting down notes & answering questions Dr. Phil posed, Steve suddenly showed an interest in what I was doing. In fact, he said he wanted to answer the questions, too. It was amazing -- he actually wanted to be a part of what I was doing.

Since then, we've been going through the book together, taking turns reading aloud to each other. We stop now and then to talk about what it says, and it's led to some of the best discussions we've ever had, IMO. It's just incredible to see Steve actually opening up and talking about the issues covered by that book. If it's not already obvious, his participation in this makes me very, very happy.

Meanwhile, I'm worshipping Dr. Phil. I'm not sure that's really the right way to put it -- I have yet to pray to the man, and I don't believe for an instant that he's omnipotent. However, I have developed a very strong belief that if we can get through this book together, and actually follow the given advice, our relationship will improve tremendously.

I've been trying to implement some of the things Dr. Phil says, but it's kind of hard. I'm definitely making an effort though. I'll probably go back through that book once we've finished and take a lot of notes so I don't forget everything I'm supposed to do. Old habits are a bitch to break.

As an example, I have this awful tendency to clam up when I'm feeling something and don't believe I have "the right" to feel that way. The little sex issue today was a good example of that. I did not want to admit that I felt rejected, because I felt like I was putting Steve in a really shitty position. So I went silent on him.

He encouraged me to tell him how I felt, no matter what that was, and I managed to force myself to spit it out. The world did not end. Maybe that wasn't handled in the best possible way by the two of us, but most importantly, it was handled. I didn't dismiss myself, I didn't hide behind anger, and I think I feel a lot better now than I would if I hadn't opened up.

Later on, I went silent again for different reasons. This time it was because I was in an emotional tangle and was having a hard time sorting things out. Again, Steve encouraged me to talk to him, but this time I wasn't able to have a rational discussion at all. I was too confused. Instead, I let him know that I needed some time to sort out my thoughts. Yeah, I actually asserted myself. Now that's a rare occurance.

His reaction was not what I expected. I thought we were in for an escalation of drama because of it, but I was wrong... he was very understanding about the whole thing. We spent some time cuddling quietly in bed in a darkened room, then took a nap before I had to go to work. I got the time I needed to sort out what was going on in my head, and it was amazingly easy to do.

The good experiences I've had from following Dr. Phil's advice make me much more willing to try other things. I'm having to approach each little bit as an "experiment". After all, as the good doctor says, what do I have to lose? If I don't do what I need to do, I'm going to be unhappy. If I do, and it goes badly, I'll also be unhappy, but at least I'll have had a chance to not be. Going on as I have been is unacceptable, so I really have to find other ways to handle situations. It's trial and error, but it's well worth it.

Next up: Dr. Phil's version of anger management. I read this as advice given to a woman with a similar problem to mine, on his website. I believe very much that he's right when he says anger directed at a loved one is really just a mask you hide behind to avoid vulnerability. From here on out, when I feel angry, I'm going to try to deal with it in a completely different way. I'll stop, let Steve know I need a few minutes to sort out my thoughts, then see if I can figure out what I'm REALLY feeling underneath the anger.

We'll see how it goes. It's going to be damned hard to do, but it's worth a shot. Just about anything would be preferable to ripping my poor fiance's head off every time he turns around.

Got Baggage?

2003-10-04T20:16:00.000-07:00

It has now been over two years since my divorce, and I'm still not right. Not that the divorce itself was traumatic, but the marriage certainly was. That's old news, though.

Most of my baggage is sex-related. For example, I have an intense aversion to pornography. We're not talking about the standard female distaste for it, either. Just mentioning porn causes me significant distress. Porn use on the part of an SO = instant dumpage. To me, that's a much worse offense than screwing around.

But I'm not going to rant and rave about porn tonight. That issue, thankfully, isn't a factor in my current relationship at all.

My sexual identity is incredibly broken. Engaging in sex is at once terrifying, disturbing, repulsive, and deeply satisfying. When my sex drive isn't vastly reduced due to medication or artificial hormones, it's also very enjoyable, and the "disturbing and repulsive" parts aren't really noticable.

Steve read my post yesterday about the whole issue with birth control pills causing problems for me. After a brief discussion, we've decided that I'll start practicing NFP. I'm happy about this, because I'd really like to enjoy sex again. So I stopped taking the pill yesterday, and I expect my sex drive back soon.

Well, yesterday we were lying around in bed talking and cuddling, and I was thinking about sex. Steve has this amazing mind-reading ability -- he always seems to detect when that's what I'm thinking, and then initiates. It's cool as hell.

Unfortunately, instead of just going for it, he remembered that post I made and asked me how I currently felt about sex. If I were a simple person, I'd have answered with "I want to have sex." But I'm not. Instead I mumbled something along the lines of, "Don't think about it."

This was remarkably stupid on my part. I did want to have sex, but I interpreted his question to mean, "Is your sex drive back yet?" which it is not. And that means I've got all the unpleasant emotions currently associated with sex to deal with, along with the utter lack of physical pleasure.

So then we had some brief drama due to the fact I'm sexually broken. Steve's response was something like, "Okay, we'll wait," and then suddenly I felt rejected for completely inexplicable reasons. After some silence while I tried to think of a way to avoid telling him this, I admitted it.

His concern was that I'd be angry at him if he tried to get some under the circumstances (see my previous post, "I have a big mouth"). I assured him I wouldn't. So we did.

It went quite well, except that he couldn't uh, finish. This is something I should have expected and been prepared for, but I wasn't. I'd forgotten that in addition to the stress of the situation we were in, he'd also gotten only four hours of sleep the night before.

Normally, when this happens (which is fairly rare), I'm just concerned that there might be something on his mind that's distracting him from the task at hand. If not, and it's just a case of being tired, or some physical problem, then I don't worry about it. After all, he doesn't seem to mind much, and the experience remains almost unchanged for me.

This time, however, it bothered me. I'd endured quite a lot (and in this particular instance, it was QUITE a lot) in my effort to provide Steve with the sexual satisfaction due him, and I still didn't get the job done. I felt very much like I'd martyred myself for nothing. It was as though I'd given up a kidney to save him, and he died anyway. My kidney wasn't good enough.

The martyr mindset is very much a part of my sexual experiences when I've got something breaking my sex drive. I've got this bizarre fear that if I don't put out, something terrible is going to happen. Maybe he'll cheat on me, maybe he'll dump me... at the very least, I am not fulfilling my duties as the female in this relationship.

Rationally, I know this is all a load of shit. I know Steve values me for a lot more than the sex. But I just can't get past the idea that if I'm not putting out regularly, I'm failing him. I'm not meeting his needs.

This is all neatly dodged when I'm not on any kind of prescription that kills my sex drive. My natural sex drive is astoundingly high, for a woman. It's at least as high as a typical teenage boy's. I'd do it three or four times a day, every day, if Steve could keep up with me.

I always figured that sex drive of mine is a major selling point to men. I don't feel like I'm very valuable as an SO without it. That's what makes me unique. It's the one aspect in which I feel I'm better than other women. Take that away, and I'm constantly afraid of losing Steve.

Oh well. Hurrah for NFP. I'll be back to normal soon, with any luck at all.

Meanwhile, condom suggestions are very welcome.

I have a big mouth

2003-10-04T02:55:00.000-07:00

Our sex life is on the decline, and I have a feeling I know why. It's my fault, you see -- I talk too much. This should come as no surprise to anyone who reads my ramblings... after all, this is the third post I've made tonight, and none of them are short.

I have a tendency to talk a hell of a lot about things that are bothering me, even if I don't realize that they are. Sex is a prime example of this. I don't know how many times in the the last few weeks I've gone on and on about all the negative feelings sex inspires in me when talking to Steve. A lot, anyway.

Thinking back on it, I haven't always felt this way about sex. Oh, certainly it's always caused some rather scary emotions for me, but I never noticed so much. These feelings always took a backseat to the fact that I really enjoy sex, and used to have a damned high sex drive.

Medication of various sorts has been interfering with my sex drive for quite some time now. First it was the Prozac, which greatly reduced my desire for sex and nearly eliminated my ability to reach orgasm. Then there was the Risperdal, which had similar effects. I'm not taking either, now, and the culprit is hormones. Specifically, birth control pills.

I don't think I would have realized anything was amiss, except I stopped taking them for a week because I was spotting after about two months of continuous BCP. Then once my period ended, before I resumed taking the pill, we had sex, and I was like, "Holy shit! I actually got turned on! I haven't felt *that* way in a long time..."

So here we have me, with no physical desire for sex at all, going through the motions for the emotional and relationship benefits. And then going on and on to Steve about all the odd and unpleasant feelings I get from doing it, which has undoubtably made him less enthusiastic about initiating. I'm certainly not initiating at all, because these days the best I can hope for is that he has a good time, and I get some cuddling in afterwards.

I don't like birth control pills, but my options are limited. Depo-Provera, Norplant, and the mini-pill all make me horribly, horribly depressed. Diaphragms won't work with my anatomy. There's no way in hell I'd get a *fourth* IUD after the problems I had with #1, 2, and 3. Plain old spermicides cause significant irritation for me. Sterilization of either of us isn't an option because we both want a child/children together someday.

Natural Family Planning occurred to me as a possibility last night. It sucks, in that there's something like nine days you either can't have sex or have to use a backup method. Add another five days for my period, and we get to have unprotected sex for a whopping 50% of the time. There's failure rate to consider, too.

BLAH.

You know, I have a weird feeling that this is much of why I have such a short fuse lately. Try this on for size: Sex is currently physically unenjoyable, emotionally uncomfortable, and basically all I'm getting from it is the "satisfaction of a job well done". Steve knows all this, I think, or has a pretty good idea of it. He still wants to have sex. Am I subconscious angry at him because of this?

Well, of course he still wants to have sex. Even if you ignore the fact he's eighteen years old, and male, I keep saying over and over, "Don't worry about what I said, sex is still a net positive, I still want to do it."

Then I don't initiate. I dodge it. I talk incessantly about how unpleasant it is. I've become such a passive-aggressive bitch, it's not even funny. Gah.

Autism isn't all bad

2003-10-04T00:03:00.000-07:00

So I got to work tonight and walked into the guard shack to relieve one of my newer co-workers. He's a Hispanic man I'd classify as mildly retarded, which means he probably has an average IQ. The guy's name is Flavio, but I refer to him as "Floppio", because I don't like him much. (This has nothing to do with the fact he's Hispanic -- it's because he's an annoying little dipshit.)

Anyway, I walked in and Floppio was arguing loudly in Spanish on his cell phone. This continued for about ten minutes, past time for him to leave and go home, without his acknowledging my presence. Well, whatever, the guy's too stupid to have any tact. I wish I could've understood what he was saying though, because I'm sure it was amusing as hell.

So Floppio hung up, then gave me this conspiratorial look and said, "I'm in big trouble... I have to go meet this chick now. Hey, if my wife calls, tell her I had to stay late and I'm on patrol, okay?"

I didn't respond, and he took that for agreement I'm sure. "This is the first time I've ever done this," he added, apparently thinking that made it alright to screw around on his wife. "Man, I'm glad she [his wife] doesn't have a cell phone, cause she'd be calling me all the time to ask where I am..."

I ignored Floppio until he went home. I secretly hoped his wife would call, because I was itching to inform her that no, he wasn't staying late tonight, he'd left at 10:00pm as usual. I'd rather just tell her what he said to me, but that probably would cause more trouble than it was worth.

I'm a hardcore monogamist. There is nothing that pisses me off more than listening to someone brag about cheating on their spouse. It makes me want to remove their private bits with a rusty knife... which leads me to the main reason I'm actually quite glad that Steve is autistic.

I mentioned at one point in another post that Steve had never so much as been on a date before me. Considering the fact he's really hot, funny as hell, extremely intelligent, and all around a great guy, that's amazing. I'm quite certain he could have just about any woman he wanted.

But he's atypically autistic, and his social skills are practically non-existant. Even if he wanted to cheat on me, which he doesn't, he has no clue how to go about it. Some woman would literally have to walk up to him and say, "Let's have sex."

Today we were talking about some totally unrelated subject, which led to my joking that I was going to start charging him $15 for blow jobs. "That is," I said, "until I realize Tommy [a coworker] will pay $25."

So Steve said something along the lines that since I'm a woman, I can threaten to cheat and it actually makes sense. "It wouldn't be hard for you to cheat on me," I said.

His response was, to me, hilariously funny, but I think he was actually quite serious. He said, and I quote: "What am I going to do, stare at a woman until she magically decides to have sex with me?"

I used to read a message board called ASPartners. It's a support group for people who have spouses on the autistic spectrum, particularly those with the mildest form (Asperger's). IOW, it's a bunch of bitter women complaining about their socially inept husbands and talking about how they're going to kick their asses to the curb. There are hundreds of posts there about all of the awful things these husbands have done, but not a single woman mentions infidelity.

Even supposing Steve figured out how to pick up women, I still don't think he'd screw around. I don't honestly think he wants to, which places him in the minority of men. See, another aspect of autism is resistance to change. Having sex with someone else would probably make him so nervous he wouldn't be able to get it up.

This also means he's most comfortable with "regular sex" (which means following the basic routine we've been using these last five months), and that's just fine with me. I'm just not a kinky person. I don't get bored with having sex with the same person, in the same way, for years on end. In fact, it's pretty damn appealing to me, and apparently to him as well.

It's certainly a lot better than being married to one of those guys who are like, "I only cheated on my wife because she wouldn't let me hang her upside down from the ceiling while I banged her up the ass with a Coke bottle, and a group of monkeys stood around us having a circle jerk! Our sex life is boring! Hell, she won't even dress up like Clint Eastwood and diaper me!"

@$#&%!!! (or, Anger Management, Part II)

2003-10-03T21:47:00.000-07:00

I don't think it's healthy to get homocidally angry at your SO. And yet here I am, entertaining a nice little fantasy of strangling him and watching his eyes pop out of their sockets.

I didn't intend to write about this tonight. What I was going to write about had to do with infidelity, and how I think the nicest thing about being with an autistic man is that I don't have to worry much that he'll cheat on me. I'll write about that later. Right now, I'm simply too pissed off to do so.

"We clash far too often and far too hard to ever be relationshippy." This is a quote from a particular ex of mine, but it's becoming more and more true of my current relationship.

You know how most of my relationships ended? I dumped the person when it got to the point where everything they did pissed me off. Which brings up another quote that's altogether too true -- "The one constant in all of your bad relationships is you."

I have an anger problem. I fly off the handle far too easily and with excessive force. I do not believe it is possible for me to peacefully coexist with another human being, unless I don't care about them at all. I am broken, and I need to be fixed.

Today was just one dramafest after another. In the end, just half an hour ago (twenty hours after it all started), I decided to log off of the computer rather than continue talking to my fiance. This is because putting my fist through the nearest wall, door, window, or face started to sound incredibly appealing. That's a definite warning sign that I've lost my temper.

The first thing that pissed me off took place last night at around 3:30 am. I'd already been having a bad night. Steve fell asleep early, I dozed off with him, then woke up around midnight and wrote an incredibly depressing post here. Then I went back to bed, and had a truly awful nightmare. I woke up crying. I have to give him credit here -- he was every bit as supportive as I could have hoped for, and within ten minutes I was feeling a lot better, so I went back to sleep.

About an hour later Steve woke me up. Well, I figure if he's waking me up in the middle of the night, he's probably got a reason for it. Although maybe not, he wakes up and says incomprehensible things sometimes. Then I just respond with, "Okay, sweetie, you can go back to sleep now." He generally starts snoring again before I've finished the sentence. It's worked up until now.

So, at 3:30 am he wakes me up, and we have the following conversation:

Steve: "Don't get drunk."
Kataine: "Okay. I wasn't planning on it."
Steve: "It'll save everyone a lot of hassle. [mumbling] locals in Eugene, Oregon."
Kataine: "Okay, hon, I won't get drunk. You can go back to sleep now."
Steve: "No!"
Kataine: "Are you okay?"
Steve: "Yeah."
Kataine: "Why don't you want to go back to sleep?"
Steve: "I'm too lazy to talk about that."
Kataine: "You're starting to worry me a little..."
Steve: (half-shouted, in a very angry tone of voice) "It's a bad idea to talk to me when I'm half-asleep!"

Well, truth be told I wasn't terribly rational right then, after the nightmare and all that good stuff earlier. So when he started in on me with that really nasty tone of voice, I became quite upset. To make a long story short, I went outside to smoke and calm down (I was crying again) and came back to bed.

By the time I got back, I was worked up into a righteous fury. "How dare he bitch me out when HE woke me up and all I did was try to make sure nothing was wrong?" I grabbed my pillow and the sheet, then stomped off into the spare bedroom to sleep, slamming the door behind me.

After 45 minutes I realized I couldn't possibly go to sleep, as it was far too cold and the floor is damn hard. So I went back to bed, and snuggled up with the wall.

That little situation was handled by noon, when Steve came home from lunch and we talked a bit. I found out he'd thought I said something I didn't (he was half-dreaming), and I came to the conclusion I shouldn't really pay attention to him when he's essentially sleep-talking.

Then he got home from work and we went shopping. We went to the mall first, and I made a comment like, "I'm just going to trail you around, we can go wherever you like." So I dutifully followed him around to a lot of places I had little interest in. After a while, remembering the way he'd told me I should assert myself when we go shopping if there's somewhere I want to go or something I want to buy, I walked up to Bath & Body Works and announced I wanted to go inside.

"I guess you're not just following me around," he said. I muttered something to the effect that if he didn't want to go there, we didn't have to, but the annoying pushy saleswoman interrupted us.

This was fairly annoying, but he said he didn't mind going inside, he was just surprised, so I didn't think about it too much. So then we were walking by one of those "Buy a huge cookie for way too much money" places, and he asked if I wanted a cookie. I shrugged and said, "Sure, I guess so."

Apparently this wasn't enough enthusiasm, because he seemed kind of miffed that I didn't jump up and down shouting, "OH MY GOD A COOKIE!!!" Actually, I did want a cookie, and even knew right away which kind I wanted, but didn't want him to think he was obligated to buy me one just because I glanced at the shop on the way past it. This is why I didn't act more excited about it.

Nonetheless, I was feeling even more irritated. We bought cookies, and after we ate them, we left because it was most certainly time for a cigarette before I clobbered Steve with the nearest available blunt object.

So then we went to HEB, which is our local grocery store. On the way there, Steve was reminding me that we were buying groceries with our common money, and that we had quite a lot of it this week, so if I wanted something I should just toss it in the cart. This is something we had problems with before, because I tend to feel like I have to ask permission to buy anything with our money.

We shopped for quite a while. I got pissed off about some baked beans and stomped around the store silently for a while. We solved the baked bean issue by substituting another type of beans with less sugar.

Then Steve noticed the cart was nearly full of groceries. We hadn't yet touched the meat aisle, or half of the frozen foods, but he suddenly decided we were going to check out and go home NOW. So he just suddenly started walking towards one of the checkouts.

"Umm, we're done?" I asked.

"Yep," he said. "I estimate about $70 in here."

"Well, there's a lot of money left then..."

"Yep." He continued walking towards the checkout.

"Do I have a say in this?"

(no answer)

By the time I finally got it across to Steve that it would be nice if he would ask if I was ready to go before he got in line to check out, we already had a woman behind us. Since he's a man, he tried to fix the situation by suggesting repeatedly that we get out of line so I could finish shopping. I declined as I prefer not to cause a scene whenever possible.

So we got outside and I noticed it was dark. "What time is it?" I asked.

"About eight, I think," Steve answered.

"Well, FUCK!" I was fuming now. We had this little setup where we each get a couple of hours a day to do whatever we want to do. I've been spending
"my time" working through Dr. Phil's "Relationship Rescue" book with Steve. Eight o'clock meant that I was going to miss out on my time yet again (the fourth day in a row) because I had to go to work soon.

So then we went home, talked about the drama, and ate P'zones from Pizza Hut. I think we got everything hammered out pretty well, but all of this crap was giving me a headache and I was on edge when I went to work.

And then the never-ending argument arose yet again. See, when I go to work, I spend much of the night online, and if Steve's awake, he usually talks to me in IRC or on ISCA (a telnet BBS). I like talking to him while I'm at work, though it doesn't compare to the real thing. However... my absolute number one pet peeve is when I'm trying to have a conversation with him and he's taking an excessive length of time to respond. Often this is as much as three to five minutes for a three-word response.

It pisses me off to no end. We've fought countless times about this. I've proposed God knows how many times what I think is a perfectly reasonable solution. You see, when his response time is that high, it means he's spending more time in another window doing something than he is talking to me. So, I've asked him to please tell me if he's doing something else. If I'm feeling patient enough to talk to him anyway, I'll do so. Otherwise, I'll log out with no hard feelings and do something else.

But no, Steve just can't do that. I've seriously been asking him to do this for so long it's ridiculous. At least since April, possibly before then. It seems so damned simple to me. Surely he can tell if he's doing something in addition to talking to me, and it's not that goddamned hard to type, "I'm doing some other stuff, too, right now." Christ. It pisses me off just thinking about it. If it's that fucking hard, he could get a macro or something.

So I noticed he had a high response time when we were talking. I asked what he was doing, and he responded he was reading a message board. He asked me if his response time was too high, and I said it was. He said, "Okay" then started talking to me more, so I shrugged it off and continued our conversation. Then a while later his response time shot up even higher, and I asked again. This time I was pissed.

Well, I pissed and moaned about it for a while. He said that he only has a hard time telling me that he's doing other things while talking to me if he wants to be playing games on the computer. This makes absolutely no sense to me, but whatever. I informed him that from here on out, if he doesn't tell me of his own accord when he's doing something else, I'm going to be seriously pissed the fuck off. The alternative would be that I will no longer talk to him while I'm at work.

So right in the middle of this conversation, Steve stops responding. Some three minutes pass, and I send another message. "Are you there?" No response. I call home. The phone rings for several minutes straight. Finally he answers and tells me he decided to go outside to smoke a cigarette. Of course he didn't fucking tell me. I logged off.

And that's when I started writing this. Meanwhile, as I was typing, he called to tell me he'd emailed me the specs to his computer, which he'd decided to sell about a week ago. I thanked him for the specs, and then he told me he'd deleted all his games, since they were causing more problems than they solved.

I'm not sure how to respond to this. Okay, it's true, his gaming has caused issues in the past (which is amusing, because before we met, I was much more of a hardcore gamer than he ever was). In particular, I have a problem with him spending time with me while moping because he'd rather be playing on the computer. Somehow this problem was eliminated, although I'll probably never figure out how that happened.

I don't care if he plays computer games while I'm at work, though. He could spend the entire time I'm at work, every day, gaming for hours on end, and I wouldn't give a fuck. All he has to do is say, "I'm going to go play a game now." This is apparently not possible for him, however, so instead he's elected to delete all of his games.

It's like they're some kind of bizarre sacrifice to me or something. Not the first time I've had that happen. Men under a certain age (20ish) seem to have a tendency to offer burnt sacrifices to their girlfriends. I have no clue how I'm supposed to respond to this kind of gesture. At least he still has the ISOs, in case he changes his mind.

He's wrong, I am nuts

2003-10-03T00:42:00.000-07:00

Since Steve wrote a nice little post about my schizophrenia, I think it's only fitting that I respond with my side of the issue. Not that I'm going to argue with anything he said -- rather, I want to fill in the blanks, and give a bit of insight into what the schizophrenic experience is like.

My first clue that there was mental illness in my family came from stories about my mom's younger brother, Tom. Tom is, to put it mildly, more affected than I am. While I often go for months or years between episodes, my uncle spends more time off his rocker than on it.

At one point, Tom drove his car into a crowd of people (at the least, injuring a few), climbed on top of the vehicle, and shouted, "I'm Jesus Christ, and I'm here for the third time to give all of you AIDS!" He earned a new nickname that day. We now refer to him as Uncle Jesus.

Tom has spent a lot of time in mental hospitals. They put him in a padded room sometimes. Once they did this while he was in the midst of a major psychotic episode, which, oddly enough, led to a major head trauma. For those of you who don't know what a padded room is like, it's basically a white room (with padding on all the walls, doh) and a padded door. The door has a small observation window in it, which is made up of two layers of shatter-resistant glass with a metal grill between them.

Well, Tom (quite understandably, I think) thought this room was a microwave oven, and that the nice folks in white suits were cooking him. So he ran headfirst into the observation window, repeatedly, trying to break free. Somehow he managed to break the glass, and his head, in the process.

I mention this because most, if not all, of my own psychotic episodes are accompanied by a terrible fear of being put in the microwave oven.

Tom was hospitalized again recently -- this time because he was driving around town naked, claiming to be a disciple of Jesus.

Enough about Tom though -- his experiences are more colorful and interesting than mine are, but this post is about me. Specifically, about how schizophrenia has affected my relationship with Steve.

Steve was not really aware of my mental illness until it bit us in the ass. This is my fault. Since it'd been over a year since my last episode, and there were no major stressors in sight, I didn't bother to tell him. Oh, I mumbled something about occasionally seeing and hearing things once, but I didn't give him the details. I'm quite ashamed of this, because if I had, he probably would have been much better equipped to handle what happened on the day we call "That Thursday". Truth is, I didn't tell him because I was mortally embarassed, and I was hoping that maybe I was "cured".

The events that led up to "That Thursday" were incredibly stressful, to say the least. That period of time, before and after the episode, were by far the hardest of my life. I think of those weeks as a dark smudge on my life history, and especially on the history of our relationship. I don't like to think about it much, but in order to illustrate the level of stress I was experiencing, I'll explain what happened.

About a month after Steve arrived, I realized I might be pregnant. I figured I was being paranoid, because I had an IUD, but I asked him to pick up a pregnancy test for me just the same, so we could be sure I wasn't. It came out positive.

That night we found out wasn't a very happy one. Both of us were in shock, I think. After a few hours, I'd gotten used to the idea, and had mentally begun the bonding process with our unborn child. However, I still hadn't gotten an opinion from him on what we should do, or at least what he wanted me to do. So I was lying in bed with him, wondering what our child would look like, when he finally stated his position.

"I want for you to have an abortion," he said.

This, um, did not go over well. In fact, I think I was in hysterics for a while. We spent a lot of time talking, and once he became aware of how I felt about this pregnancy already, he reversed his stance. I tried, as best as I could, to soften his fears, which were mostly financial in nature. We decided to keep the baby, and within a few days, he actually seemed fairly excited about the prospect.

The initial prenatal visits went well. They had to remove the IUD to prevent major complications later (like 2nd trimester septic abortion -- "infected miscarriage" in layman's terms), and warned me there was a chance of losing the baby when they did that. I had to go back a few days later, and they measured my blood HCG levels, to determine if a miscarriage was likely to occur. The numbers weren't quite so high as the doctor would like, but they had increased, and they were within the normal range. The doctor reassured me everything was okay, and I went home.

I remember that particular visit because it took a lot longer than you'd expect a simple blood test to take, and when I got out Steve appeared very anxious. He told me he was worried I'd lost the baby. Hearing that made me feel better, because I could finally really believe he did want this pregnancy to continue, that he wasn't just saying that for my benefit. We went out to eat in celebration of the good news.

On the Monday after the next, I had an appointment to go in for a repeat ultrasound. This was also the day I would be starting a new job at a call center, which I was very much looking forward to. I asked Steve to accompany me to the appointment so he could see our baby for the first time. He came along, and seemed pretty excited about it.

Well, to make a long story short, the ultrasound technician determined the fetus was no longer among the living. She wouldn't say anything other than, "There's less growth than we would expect. You'll have to talk to the doctor." I knew, though, watching her type on the screen -- "No FHTs today. No inflow/outflow today. No growth."

So, stunned, we went to the doctor's office, where he said something along the lines of, "Oh, I told you this might happen. Now, we're going to schedule a D&C for Wednesday, and I want you to come in tomorrow to have a laminaria placed." Actually, he said more than that -- he went into great detail about how the laminaria would work and the purpose of the D&C. But he couldn't be bothered to say so much as, "I'm sorry for your loss."

I went to work for my first day of training on the new job. I had a hard time staying very enthusiastic about it. The subject of absences during training came up that day, and I had a private talk with my instructor to explain my situation. I told her I did not think I would be able to come on on Wednesday as I would be in the hospital having the D&C done under general anesthetic. Even if I was released before time for work, I doubted I'd be in much condition to come in. The instructor was very understanding, and assured me that under the circumstances there wouldn't be a problem.

Tuesday, I had the laminaria inserted in the doctor's office. This is a little matchstick-looking object made of seaweed, which is jammed into the cervix. The seaweed absorbs moisture, which causes it to swell and dilate the cervix. Having a laminaria inserted is not pleasant -- I'd guesstimate the pain level as approximately that of chopping your pinkie finger off with a blunt axe. I moaned and groaned for a couple of hours, then went to work.

After I got home from work, I went to bed pretty much right away, at about 12:30 in the morning. At 3:00 am, I woke up and noticed my panties were awfully damp. I got out of bed, walked into the bathroom to check it out, and the floodgates opened.

I have never seen so much blood in my life. It was like someone took a two-liter soda bottle full of blood and what looked like large pieces of raw liver, held it between my legs and turned it upside down. I was terrified, and quite certain I was going to bleed to death. The volume of blood and tissue on the floor was at least a quart.

I called Steve at work to let him know what had happened, and told him I'd be calling the doctor for instructions. My fiance was, quite understandably, scared to death. The doctor was unconcerned. "Oh, I told you this might happen. Come in a bit early and I'll see if I can get your surgery done first." What he had told me was that I might pass the laminaria. He never mentioned everything else coming out in the process.

I got into the shower at this point in an attempt to clean up, and while standing under the warm water, I coughed. When I did, something warm and wet slid out. I'll spare the gory details, but suffice to say that a perfect nine week old fetus landed on the floor of the shower.

I went back to work the day after the surgery, and provided proof of where I'd been for the one day I missed, along with medical advice that I should not have attended work that day. I was given a written warning.

For the first couple of days following the surgery, I was still in shock over what had happened. Denial, maybe... I think I was denying to myself that this had meant anything to me. After a few days, I cracked and started mourning.

Mourning the loss of an unborn child is not an easy thing. If you lose a parent, a spouse, a sibling, or a child, everyone understands and is supportive. This was something else entirely, because while this baby was as real to me as a newborn would have been, she wasn't to anyone else. I'd seen her heartbeat on the first ultrasound, alone. I'd seen the tiny body on the floor of the shower, alone. To others, this was the loss of a pregnancy -- a concept, a hope. To me, I'd lost the daughter I loved. I would have given my life so that she could live.

So I withdrew, knowing that Steve didn't feel as I did about this. I understood that, and accepted it -- after all, he'd never had the chance to bond with this child. I spent time alone, grieving, quite certain that no one in the world could possibly understand what I was going through.

And then he told me one day that he did feel as I did, and I opened up and told him everything. We decided to assume it was a girl, as I'd had a hunch about that. We named her Eileen. We spent a lot of time holding each other and crying.

I felt better, and had begun recovering from what had happened when Steve revealed that he actually didn't feel as I did. That, in fact, he'd tried to convince himself that I did, so that he could be more supportive of me. This was incredibly hard to handle, because I'd already shared a lot of very private details about what I was going through with him, which I never would have done unless I thought he was going through this with me. Finding out that he wasn't really, that it was all a sham... it's hard to describe my reaction to this. "Emotionally violated" works, I think.

My stress level at this point was higher than I'd ever experienced before. I started having delusional thoughts. I was terribly depressed. The voices were muttering quietly in the background. I woke up one morning, and the only thought I had in my mind was to shut those bastards up. For some reason, I figured drinking might help. I poured a few shots of Captain Morgan's in with my Diet Coke and went to work.

A few hours before the end of the day, I was pulled out of the classroom and interrogated about my behavior. Someone smelled alcohol on my breath. I knew then that I was about to be fired from the job I'd wanted so badly, and I saw no way in hell we could survive even temporarily on Steve's income. I broke.

My instructor and the general manager drove me home, and when I walked in I was delusional as hell. Steve had to go to work. I was trying to call the dealer I'd gone to back in the days when I was using coke. I drank more. He asked me, at one point, "Are you trying to kill yourself?" I'm not sure if this was before or after he went to work.

I hadn't been until he said that, but I decided then that the only way to make it all stop was to commit suicide. The stress, the voices, the way I felt reality was melting around me -- this all had to stop, and offing myself was the only solution I could see. Steve came home from work early, in a panic.

My memory of this night is fragmented, and doesn't match up all that well with what exactly happened. I remember my friend Victor was there, and left me in Steve's care when he got home. I remember trying to call my dealer, over and over. I remember loading my rifle, and Steve taking it away from me. I remember talking to his mom on the phone, although I don't remember much of what was said. I remember waiting until he went outside for a few minutes, then taking every pill I could find, with particular attention to the prescription drugs.

And I remember Steve caught me in the process of doing this and called an ambulance. Above all, I remember that he didn't accompany me to the hospital.

When I got there, apparently I was ranting and raving. I don't doubt it, I didn't know where I was or who anyone was. I thought one of the nurses was Steve. I remember hearing the doctor remark, "This isn't severe depression, she's on a psychotic break."

Steve showed up and visited briefly. I was incoherant, I thought we were at home in the bedroom. I asked him where he put the phone. I thought at one point I was taking a call at work. He told me that he'd be here until I got out, but after that, he didn't know if he was going to stay with me. "Why is it you want to cancel your DISH Network account?" I responded.

Later, they took me up to a room, where they had someone watching me 24/7 to make sure I didn't jump out the window or some such. On the ride up to the room, one of the attendants asked the other if I had any family with me. "The fiance went home," she said in a sneering tone of voice.

The three days I spent recovering in the hospital were beyond awful. Aside from the hospital staff, I spent the entire time alone. I called Steve a few times... I remember begging him not to leave. He wouldn't give a straight answer. I remember asking him to please come visit me. He didn't. I was devastated.

Until all this happened, I'd been sure that Steve would never leave me, certainly not because of something I had no control over. I thought he would always be there for me, to support me and protect me, no matter what happened. I believed I could depend on him to stick with me through the hard times. I was wrong.

They let me go after three days, when I could put on a nice show of normalcy. Although Steve decided not to leave me, the following weeks were terrible, and our relationship was a shambles. He spent a lot of time playing on the computer while I pretended to sleep. We had sex near-constantly, and it sucked. A lot. I completely ignored how I felt, and tried to put on a show of being the perfect girlfriend. The only thing that mattered to me is that I didn't lose him.

Ignoring how I felt turned out to be destructive as hell. I'm still not sure if that was the right thing to do or not -- I have to wonder if he would still be here if I hadn't. I don't think he would.

I had a few more brief episodes during the couple of weeks following my hospitalization. During one of these, I inflicted hundreds of cuts on myself using a razor blade. I have extensive scarring from this. I'd thought I was being attacked by an angel with talons, when in fact, I was slicing myself to shreds.

Amazingly, despite all this, Steve remained and supported me even when I was ranting about the guy in the ceiling communicating in morse code to me. I started taking Risperdal (an antipsychotic) again -- I had a several-week supply left over from my time in Job Corps, that was not yet expired. The Risperdal made me tired, stupid, unable to enjoy most activities, and gave me horrific nightmares.

We tried, with copious amounts of alcohol, to talk about what we'd both been through. It didn't work so well. By the time I attempted to tell Steve how I'd felt, I was so consumed by bitterness and resentment that all I could do was bitch at him. "Fuck you," he said, and walked out of the room.

I decided the only way I could really let go of all that had happened, and the resentment I felt for him, was to "clear the slate" so to speak -- essentially, break up with him and start all over. This didn't go over well, either. He proposed that instead, we could reaffirm our commitment to each other by reciting marriage vows. I declined which was perhaps the hardest thing I've ever done. I simply couldn't trust him enough to be certain he would keep his vows. I still feel guilty as hell about that.

So we split up, briefly. I think we managed to spend about a day living together as friends before Steve cracked and asked me out on a date. Some residual stuff on his side came up after that, but it worked. We recovered, nearly completely I think.

As far as I know, the only lasting damage is our mutual lack of faith that Steve will stick it out. This is a big deal, because I suspect it's the one reason this relationship still hasn't stabilized. There can't really be stability when both of us are afraid he's going to abandon me if things get hard again.

My fiance is not nuts

2003-10-02T15:30:00.000-07:00

She doesn't like being called nuts. This is, as I found, equivalent to calling someone who's lost an arm "crippled". To his face. It does not go over well. I recommend against using the term "nuts" to in any way reference a mentally ill person who's in the room, especially if you're in arm's length of them.

I arrived at this little grain of truth the hard way. Which is how I find nearly everything out. If it's related to my relationship with Kataine, it's always learned the hard way. That is, through drama. I'm hesitant to attribute that to my autism, since how could *anyone* have an easy time relating to this alien, who from what I've been told is a more-or-less typical woman. When she's not on a psychotic break, of course.

Being autistic, I have a very odd way of reading body language. Normal people ("NT" or neurotypical for short) can just look at someone and tell pretty well how they're feeling, from what Kataine tells me. I can't. I notice a mannerism as being out of place for whatever the deafult state of the person I'm interacting with is. With luck, I already know what that mannerism means, and a dim bulb pops on. "She's sad, because she hasn't talked in over a minute." It works acceptably well. I can fairly reliably perceive Kataine's moods...after five months of living together.

It's how I tell when she's on a psychotic break, too. Excessive frequency and force in blinking, and excessive licking of lips. Overly wide gestures too, but I don't usually notice that first. Kataine says those are all signs of agitation, but I've never noticed them when she wasn't psychotic. Good thing I can tell, too. The first time she went psychotic on me I *didn't* know, and it nearly destroyed our relationship.

Not all scizophrenics are psyhotic all the time. A lot are normal almost all the time. Then something will trigger an episode, they go nuts, recover, and feel fine until the next time they're triggered. Kataine's trigger is stress. Her first episode, she was under a lot of stress. A *hell* of a lot. And when she went psychotic, she went, not to put too fine a point on it, completely fucking psycho.

Dealing with a psychotic person is impossible. Reason is useless. Their reality is totally fucking different from ours, and a reasonable argument won't even *make sense* most of the time. And on this occasion Kataine was fixated on committing suicide. I spent about four hours physically restraining her from making an attempt. And when I left her alone for five minutes to throw out some .22 cartridges and the magazine for her rifle, she popped about 150 pills. So, after four hours of desperately trying to persuade my fiance not to off herself, I leave her alone she'd promised not to kill herself. And then tries to commit suicide and nearly succeeds. The ambulance came and hauled her to the emergency room for a stomach Hoovering.

During these four hours I had found out that she was on a psychotic break. Which, if possible, made it even harder to bear than having no clue what was going on. I had an awful vision of becoming the wife from "A Beautiful Mind"--essentially a robot maintenance technician. Thence followed what is possibly the most shaming point of my whole life. I decided that this was more than I could take, that admitting defeat and going home to my parents was a more attractive option than living with the choice I'd made.

Needless to say, a lot of drama ensued. The end result today: Kataine has accepted what happened and moved on. I can now recongnize when she's having an episode and administer the proper medication. And I have a crippling fear that she might have an episode I can't handle and I'll try to bail on her again. In other words, I don't fear being rejected. I fear rejecting her.

This is not good for our relationship. I'm insecure, not because of what she might do, but because of what I might do. But as Dr. Phil says, worrying ain't gonna do shit for you. (I paraphrase) If it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. All worrying can do is make you stressed out, weaken your relationship, and actually make it *more* likely that what you fear will occur. So I'm trying not to worry. It's hard; anxiety comes very easily to me. I've got a lot of reason to try, though. I don't think anything in the world matters more to me than Kataine and our life together.

Except for margaritas. Man, those are the shit.

Anger management (or the lack thereof)

2003-10-02T01:21:00.000-07:00

It's past 2:00 am, and I can't sleep. Normally, this would be a good thing, but I'm not working tonight and I have to go in early tomorrow. I'm tired, or perhaps more accurately, drained. Drama before bed generally does that.

Anger has been, and continues to be, one of the biggest problems in our relationship. This is a little odd, considering that neither of us are particularly angry people, and it's pretty rare that we actually get pissed at one another. But when it does happen, the resulting mess is incredible.

Part of this is the fact that both Steve and I have some issues with expressing anger in constructive ways. I'm not sure that's even possible. Non-destructive ways, then. If that's even possible. As I told him last night, I'm shooting for non-abusive. I like to set realistic goals.

Even that's not really the main problem, though. The main problem is that we're both quite terrified of the other's displays of anger. We don't deal with our own anger well, that's true, but it's even more true that we deal extremely poorly with each other's anger.

This problem rears its head in ugly little ways, even when neither of us is pissed off. Earlier tonight is a perfect example of this.

Steve's mom called. That, in and of itself, is hardly unusual. She calls quite regularly, and talks at length. But this time I left the room the second I heard him say, "Hi mom," and went to go cook dinner. On the surface, there doesn't seem to be a problem there -- after all, that way he could talk with his mother undisturbed, and dinner needed to be made anyway.

But this isn't how it used to be, and there's good reason for that. I used to stay in the room while Steve talked to his mom and make an attempt at entertaining him. I'd involve myself in the conversation, which he liked, and inevitably wind up groping him, which he didn't like. I never thought anything of it until the last time he talked to her. After all, I invariably treat people the way I personally would want to be treated. When I'm talking to my own mother, anything to break the monotony is greatly appreciated.

Steve's mom, however, is a stuffy old coot. Okay, that's not exactly true, but she's a whole lot more proper and easily shocked than my own mother. If she somehow got the idea that we might be doing something other than sitting at arm's length from each other, she'd be highly disturbed. IOW, the giggling and occasional gasp in the background wouldn't go over well.

So, last time he was talking to her, not really realizing all this, I climbed on top of him and proceeded to get somewhat frisky. Mind you, I wasn't grabbing him by the cock or anything -- even I know that's not really a great idea when he's trying to hold a conversation with his mother. When the incident happened, I hadn't gone below the waistline, although I might have at some point earlier... I don't remember.

Anyway, Steve got pissed. I got the look of death from him, followed immediately by him slapping my hands away, then grabbing and slapping my hand once I'd moved it back, and a sharp jab to the breastbone with his index finger. This was a shock to me, because I had no clue up until this all happened that he wanted me to stop bothering him, and aside from the Twizzler incident, he'd certainly never hit me before.

"Hit" may be a little strong. It's probably not the best word to use, because I can imagine my readers gasping in shock and thinking, "Oh my God, he hit you! Dump him now!" I should note that he did not actually inflict any injury, and a minimum of pain -- the index finger to the breastbone left one of those odd invisible bruises, but that's it. I was mostly just shocked.

I moved off of him, turned my back, and sat there trying to compose myself. Steve kept talking to his mom as though nothing had happened. After another five or ten minutes, he hung up, and drama ensued.

I've gone off on a tangent, but this was necessary to explain why I jetted into the kitchen the second I heard, "Hi mom." Aside from the obvious (I was reminded of the incident), I've also decided to avoid pissing Steve off at any cost. At least until we get this whole anger management thing worked out. Removing myself from the situation not only guaranteed I could avoid a repeat, but also let me take my own anger out on the innocent hamburgers. Fry, motherfuckers, fry!

I fried the hamburgers, chopped and sauteed the onions, toasted the buns... everything was mentally converted in my mind to Steve's penis. Then I lit some candles, and dinner was served right as he got off the phone. (Note: Before you think I'm even crazier than I am, making a candlelight dinner while entertaining an angry fantasy of emasculation, I should point out that the candles were not a romantic gesture. The light fixture on our balcony isn't working.)

By the time I assembled the burgers, I wasn't pissed off anymore, but I was still very quiet while we ate. This is one of the few ways that Steve can tell something is wrong -- I normally talk non-stop, and if I'm silent for more than a minute, he assumes I'm angry. And the drama ensued once more.

It's a rare thing that I'm at a loss for words, but tonight I was. We attempted to discuss the issue, and I found I had little to say about it. He said he didn't know of any way to deal with anger aside from attacking the person (or object) that inspired it, either verbally or physically. I was trying to think of more healthy ways to express anger, and came up with nothing, because frankly, my methods aren't much better. When I'm pissed off, I turn into a stark raving bitch.

At one point, Steve noted that he didn't see a way we could express anger without hurting the other. I don't think there is a way, especially considering we both get very upset about the other being angry with us. I told him as much. "I don't like it," he said.

Well, great. Neither do I, but that's how it goes, and I do not believe it's possible to have a relationship with someone without hurting them from time to time. That's the nature of romantic involvement -- hopefully it's never purposeful, but it happens. I cannot imagine a relationship without at least the occasional argument, and someone's feelings are going to get hurt when that happens.

Actually, that's not true. The last two years of my marriage were like that -- no arguments, no hurt feelings, no tension. No sex. I wouldn't call that a relationship though, it was more like roommates who viewed each other with distaste and avoided each other as much as possible. Certainly not what I want this time.

I get the impression sometimes that Steve wants the impossible. He wants us to be happy all the time, smiling and laughing, and never to grate on one another's nerves or fight over anything. And when it seems that's what he's aiming for, I have absolutely no idea what to say.

Well, sure. That'd be great, I guess. Or not -- I think I'd be dreadfully bored. There's no challenge there, no room for improvement, nothing to work towards. I'd stagnate, or else do something awful in a subconscious attempt to get the tension back.

So I asked him -- "Is being in a relationship not what you'd hoped it would be like?" (Note: Prior to our involvement, Steve had never so much as been on a date.)

He replied that he hadn't hoped for anything in particular, and hadn't known what to expect. "What did you hope for?" he asked.

"Pretty much this," I responded.

Steve seemed rather taken aback by this. It's true, though, and I have to wonder if I never outgrew my drama whore tendencies. Not that I think we don't have room for improvement. There's lots of room for improvement. LOTS. But we're very much in love, both working towards making this relationship better, it's not abusive... what else could I hope for?

I don't know. I can come up with a list of relationship problems we're working on right now. But "no problems" isn't on my wishlist. There'll always be problems, although hopefully less at a time than we're currently trying to handle. If there truly were no problems at all, that in itself would be a problem for me.

I'm living with a freak

2003-10-01T03:28:00.000-07:00

Steve's words, not mine. I wouldn't normally call him that, but hey, he did it first, and I can agree, right?

It was clear to me pretty early on that the man I chose to involve myself with was somewhat on the eccentric side. I'm not sure exactly when I was clued into this, but the signs were there from the start. I gotta say that's part of his appeal, though.

Nonetheless, it's inevitably those little quirks that first interest us in a person that grate on our nerves later on. I won't be too mean, because not only do I know Steve's going to read this, but despite everything I love him to death. Still, I have to say he drives me up the wall on a daily basis.

Steve falls neatly into the autistic spectrum, somewhere in the "atypical" (PDD) region, as he notes in his background post. Luckily, he doesn't have any of those traits common to autistic people that I would consider relationship killers, like hating to be touched. On the contrary, he's actually quite clingy.

Maintaining a serious relationship with an autistic man is not a task for the faint of heart. Communication is particularly difficult -- we have so many misunderstandings it's not even funny. Steve tends to take everything literally, and my attempts at humor fall flat at best. At worst, they scare the hell out of him.

Today we were talking about a particular issue we have, which basically amounts to my clinginess vs. Steve's love of computer games. It's a messy problem that's been going on for months, and we've had countless discussions about it. This time he was trying to explain what it is he gets out of gaming that's so important he'd sacrifice one-on-one time with me for it.

So, Steve tells me he gets an ego boost of sorts from gaming. We were talking about this for a while, and the discussion was getting rather depressing. I thought I'd try to cheer him up by making a joke. "Well," I said, "You can play games all day long, every day... it'll destroy our relationship, but that's okay because you'll have an ego the size of an elephant!"

I figured this was a sufficiently ridiculous statement to at least provoke a laugh at just how absurd the talk we were having was starting to become. Wrong. Instead of the hoped for chuckle, I got a stricken look. Oops.

Deadpan humor, especially of the sort that sounds sarcastic, doesn't work well on the autistic crowd. I didn't really realize this until today, although I should have picked up on it long ago. This was far from the first time I've said something in an attempt to be funny and only succeeded in scaring the hell out of my fiance.

Then there's those times I'm sending what I think are quite clear signals I'm upset about something, and Steve completely fails to notice. Okay, fair enough, I should say something, and I normally do, but he's even worse at mindreading than your average male. Which is to say, completely inept.

That's actually a positive, now that I think about it. I can't be lazy about expressing myself, because if I want to get heard, I have to actually speak. I'm learning how to direct, which is a useful skill most women seem to be lacking.

Steve's weirdest autistic trait has got to be his near-obsession with numbers. I've learned it's a very bad idea to ask him what he's thinking, unless I'm prepared to be disappointed. God only knows how many times we've been laying in bed cuddling (often after sex), my mind full of sappy thoughts, when I've asked him what he's thinking about.

"Did you know," Steve will respond, "If you make a line of five fives, that's five squared... square that, you have a square made of fives, which is five cubed... then square that, and you have a cube made of fives, which is five to the fourth represented three-dimensionally..." Or worse, he'll be converting letters into numbers and noting the differences. Today he said out of nowhere, "Hey, IRC is two greater than ISCA."

... and then we somehow wound up talking about the standard deviation of penis sizes.

Then there's the lack of social protocol. Okay, I don't usually mind this. I mean, who else could I discuss cannibalism in North Korea over a romantic dinner with? But there was that one time, when Steve decided it'd be funny to drink a bottle of wine out of a brown paper bag right outside the entrance to the Olive Garden...

This is all pretty minor, though. The real issues come up when he does something totally inexplicable (which is quite often) and then can't even begin to explain why he did it. It's endlessly frustrating. "Why did you...?" is a hopeless question. The response is nearly guaranteed to be, "I don't know." Even worse is when that's the response to my asking how he feels. Or, God forbid, should I ask what's bothering him. Now that's fun shit -- knowing he's upset about something, but can't figure out what.

Sometimes he'll be terribly upset about something, then when I finally find out whatever it is that's bothering him, I'm left sitting there going "What the hell?!" Luckily, these occurances are fairly easily dealt with (most of the time) with some clarification and reassurance.

I recall one recent incident like this, where Steve looked really sad, and I was getting pretty worried. Then I found out what was bothering him -- I'd been lying in bed next to him, and my shirt kind of gapped open, so I pulled it closed. I'm not quite sure how he interpreted my covering of myself (I think he thought I was mad or something), but the truth was, it was kind of cold in the bedroom and I didn't have a blanket handy.

I could go on for hours, listing example after example of Steve's unusual behavior. In truth, though, most of it isn't an issue at all, and I find it makes him a much more interesting person to be around than a "neurotypical".

However, I have to say that it's created some challenges for our relationship. Communication is a nightmare -- it's like we speak different languages. I can't count how many times I've been so frustrated I've wanted to throw my hands up in the air and just say, "I can't deal with you!" And I'm certain he's spent his fair share of time thinking the same thing.

It's getting better, though, and despite everything, even if neither of us ever really understand each other, even if we never learn to speak each other's languages -- I'd never trade him for anyone else. I think, in some odd way, the challenge is good -- it keeps me motivated to try as hard as possible to make this work out. It's hard, but ever so worth it, because I love him far more than I ever thought was possible.

Steve may be eccentric, autistic, weird, whatever you want to call it -- but in spite of this, or perhaps because of it -- he's an incredible person, and in my eyes, he's perfect.

Our apartment hates us

2003-09-30T22:01:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why, but it's become quite clear over the last few months that the apartment Steve and I live in has it in for us. Maybe it's feeling neglected because we never clean up. Maybe it's pissed because I bled all over the walls some months ago. Maybe the damn thing just has a chip on its shoulder, since the sole reason I rented it was because it was the only apartment available and I had just over twenty-four hours to move in.

I'll start at the beginning. At the very end of April, Steve decided on short notice to move to Texas a month ahead of schedule. I was happy, excited, and nervous as hell, but it did put a kink in my schedule. I'd been staying at the house my brother had recently purchased, so suddenly I needed to find an apartment within three days... not to mention get the electric account set up, order a phone line, etc. I also had no transportation, which meant I was very limited in where I could get an apartment -- it needed to be within walking distance from my job.

So on April 30, I called up the apartment complex I had lived at until about a month previous. It suited all my needs perfectly -- close to my job, reasonable rent, a minimum of roaches, no rats over 8" in length, and all the usual frills (swimming pool, dishwasher, private patio, etc.). The only concerns were whether they would have an apartment available on such short notice, and whether I could qualify for it.

You see, when I lived there before in Unit 108, I was sharing the apartment with my brother. Due to the fact that I could not pass the gentlest of credit checks if my life depended on it, we'd put the lease in his wife's name. That was no longer possible because it'd just be myself and Steve, and he wouldn't arrive in time to sign the lease, so it had to be done in my own name.

I was in luck. Sandy, our apartment manager, remembered me from when I rented before and agreed to forego the credit check. She also told me she did have one available apartment, but it was a two bedroom unit and upstairs. Still, it was ready to go right away, and the price difference was minor enough that I immediately accepted. She asked me to come in the next day to sign the lease, so I hung up and gave Steve the good news.

I went to the leasing office and put down my signature at least a dozen times on a formidable stack of paperwork the next day. After all this, Sandy hands me the key. I'd rented the apartment sight unseen, because I assumed it was just like all the other two bedroom units in the complex, and I'd lived in one of these for over a year. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out quite that way.

The first thing I noticed was that the tile in the kitchen was scraped and peeling near the refrigerator and dishwasher. The carpet as well, was rather worn down. The railing on the stairs was a bit rusty, and the location wasn't the greatest (on the opposite side of the complex as the laundry facilities). Although I didn't know it yet, three of the four phone jacks in the apartment were non-functional. "Well," I thought, "it's got a roof, and a toilet. What else do I need?"

So I moved in, and the next day Steve arrived and joined me. Everything was great, for a while...

The toilet was the first to go. One day, maybe two or three months after we moved in, it started refusing to flush. I should note here that it wouldn't have been so much of a hassle, but we're lazy. Sickeningly lazy. So lazy, in fact, that rather than spend thirty minutes cleaning up the apartment enough to call the maintenence guy to fix this, we spent over a month manually flushing the toilet (every few days, at best) by pouring gallon jugs of water into the tank.

So here we were with a broken, foul-smelling toilet, complete with brown ring, when the bathtub rebelled. Actually, I lie. This particular incident was entirely our fault. On the advice of my friend Victor, we started filling the bathtub in preparation for an incoming hurricane. Then we forgot about it, and it overflowed to the point the entire bathroom floor had water over an inch deep. Fearing the worst, we went into a frenzy of cleaning and scooping water off the floor.

Our fears were realized when our rather bitchy downstairs neighbors came knocking at the door (at 3:00am no less!) to tell us that we were leaking all over their bathroom and ruining their precious furniture. They'd already called maintenence, so we had to come up with an excuse, and fast. We blamed the toilet, and somehow not only got away scot-free, but got the john fixed as well.

A week or two later, the kitchen sink got an incredible clog in it. Several days, an entire canister of Drano Crystals (the directions state to use a single tablespoon), and a lot of digging with a stretched out wire coathanger later, it was draining again... but now the garbage disposer has a rusted out hole in it. Every time we use it, it sprays water all over inside the cabinet under the sink.

Perhaps a week after the sink & disposer attacked, we had yet another incident. I was at work, talking with Steve in IRC when he went linkdead and called me. "The power's out. I saw a flash of light coming from the closet where the AC unit and water heater are. I smell smoke!"

To put it lightly, Steve sounded shaken. Well, to be fair, who wouldn't be? It was past midnight, and we both suspected the apartment might burn down. Luckily, there was no fire, so he lit a candle and I had him fiddle with the breaker box for a while. He discovered that the water heater breaker had attempted to flip off, but hadn't gone all the way, and also that there was no main breaker inside the apartment. Greeeat. That meant we were out of power until maintenence came over.

So, Steve cleaned up the apartment by candlelight, and called the maintenence emergency line. Sandy showed up and told him she'd send over someone the next day.

I stayed up late (6:30 am is my usual bedtime) and waited for Frank, who handles all the maintenence work in the apartments. After a cursory inspection, he determined that the central AC unit had leaked water into the water heater and shorted it out, which had in turn blown the main breaker. He didn't have the part for the water heater, but he did restore power. While he was there, I pointed out that the sliding door to our balcony was failing to slide (and had been for at least a week). Frank said he'd fix it the next day when he came back for the water heater.

I'd been convinced there was no way to fix the rebellious balcony door short of replacing some part or another, but sure enough, as soon as we had maintenence informed of the problem, it fixed itself. Frank gave me a look like I was some kind of retard when he went to check the door. It figures. He did fix the water heater, at least.

After that, things had been smooth sailing until just a few days ago, when the stove joined in on the fun.

Before I elaborate, I want to make one thing very clear. I'm a lot of things, but inept in the kitchen is not one of them. I've been cooking since I was four years old, and it's a very rare occasion when something I make comes out less than excellent. Certainly, I've never started a fire in the kitchen. In fact, I've been using broilers for years, and I'd been using this particular broiler two or three times a week for the last five months.

So I set up the broiler tray, put it on the same oven shelf I always use, slapped down a couple of Johnsonville brats, and turned it on. Then I stepped outside for a cigarette. A few minutes later, I went inside to check on the brats, and there were foot high flames coming out of the oven. After running around the kitchen shouting obscenities for about thirty seconds, while Steve stood there gaping, I remembered fire doesn't like water and put it out.

We laughed it off, and figured it was a fluke -- after all, we'd both been cooking brats the exact same way, in the exact same oven, for the last several months and never had a problem before.

The next day, Steve came home from work for lunch and decided to cook himself a bratwurst in the broiler. A few minutes later, the stove again burst into flame. After the fire was out, and the smoke had cleared, we pulled the remains of the brat out. It looked very much like what would be left of a penis if the urethra had been packed firmly with gunpowder, then lit. Blackened, split wide open, oozing an odd yellow fluid...

"It's okay, dear, I'll rinse it off for you," I told him, holding the brat cautiously under the tap with a pair of tongs. But for some inexplicable reason, Steve was no longer hungry.

Meanwhile, we sure could use a roommate. Anyone interested?

2003-09-30T21:40:00.000-07:00

Now you know how Kataine got here, mostly. She left out the best, most interesting parts--I suspect because the statute of limitations has yet to run out. Oh well. Her life, her story to tell. Right now I'm just concerned with how I got here, and not the reason she never finished playing Might and Magic VIII. I do want to note, though, that she glossed over the six months where we were talking several hours a day in about three words. A cupcake and a garbage disposal got more words than me. It's understandable, really. A garbage disposal does more around the house than I do, and a cucpcake is tasty.

My life is more boring than hers, although once has to admit that if Kataine hadn't chosen such an...um...unusual path through life we'd be pretty close to even. That shit is all true, by the way. If she's just lying, it's an incredibly intricate, detailed, and perfect lie. She's not *that* good at lying. Not that I'd know she were lying about everything, I guess. Well, she *is* schizophrenic. Having seen the evidence and held her during a few episodes, I can sure as fuck vouch for that. And I'd lay money that 90% of the things you read about her and said "WTF" came, directly or indirectly, from schizophrenia.

I was born and raised in Maryland, home of crabs. Blue crabs, steamed whole and served with Old Bay. That's the only way you can get them in Maryland, unless you want a crab cake. (Crab cakes come with the Old Bay on the side.) I wasn't positive that other varieties of crab even existed until I came to Texas and saw some huge motherfuckers at the Wally World. King Crabs, they're called. Come from Alaska. Weird shit. Served with butter or something, I hear. May as well get yourself a lobster and save the crabs for people who know how to eat them.

My mother was, to put it succintly, controlling. Since I wouldn't voluntarily socialize, I was required to pursue a parentally satisfying number of parentally approved activities. Like soccer. I do not like soccer, because I am overweight and out of shape and have been since the third grade. However, I played soccer because my mother required it. Not playing soccer meant no TV or computer and that meant I played soccer. Until the sixth grade, when it came to a choice of either soccer or a hyper-accelerated math program. Hyper math wasn't much for socialization, but it was a good enough substitute. When I expressed a preference, I got to quit running around a fucking grass field kicking a stupid ball that they couldn't even manage to paint one color. Instead, I spent two hours a week after school for two years doing math. After that whole thing, I entered high school with Algebra 2 under my belt.

I say Mom was controlling, but then I let her control me too. It wasn't until I met Kataine that I started asserting myself and decided that being independent from my parents was more important than playing on the computer and watching TV. I'm glad I made that decision, too. I found out later that my parents had a whole fucking plan set up to keep a lever on me after I graduated from college, even. Whether they meant it that way, I don't know. It always sounded like all they wanted was to help. But "we'll give you $50,000 after you leave college to get started, ohbythewaythatmoneyisforwhatwedeemworthy" sure sounded, and sounds, like an attempt to keep a lever on me. I won't belabor the point that when I was living at home, or at college on their dime they had some big fucking levers to pry *anything* out of me.

The diagnosis Kataine handed me reads Pervasive Developmental Disorder (atypical autism), actually. It's not full blown autism, not as severe symptoms or quite enough symptoms. But still. I'm pretty damn uncomfortable in social situations, to the point of preferring that people I'm not familiar with would just walk away rather than talk to me. Systems, mechanical especially, and details of all kinds fascinate me. I'll interrupt Kataine with pronunciation instructions all the fucking time when she's talking, or reality-check her dreams.

Her: So then the elevator cable snapped and we started falling.
Me: They don't do that when the cable breaks.
Her: I know that! It's a dream, remember?
Me: Yeah, I guess.

Repeat x10 per dream. I am, quite frequently, not really aware of my feelings, or at least have an *extremely* hard time articulating them. It must be endlessly frustrating for Kataine when she says "Why did you do X?" and all I can say is "I don't know" then after 10 minutes of thinking give some reason that sounds perfectly reasonable to me and incomprehensible to her. In short, I am not a Normal, or as autists like to say Neurotypical. As if atypical sounded better than abnormal. I don't give a fuck either way, and I bet real autists have a shaky grasp of connotations, to say the least. No doubt the term was coined by some oversensitive mother of an autistic child who didn't want to feel bad about having produced a freak. Autism is freakish, no way around it, less than one percent of the population makes you a freak occurrence.

Autism is definitely associated with bluntness. I will say something that is literally true, and then be surprised that someone took it badly. Yes, you *are* not as smart as I am. I am very smart. My IQ is very high. Yours is not so high. Why do you care? I'm fat and can't play sports, you're physically fit and could kick my ass at anything that involved movement.

That was just an example. I'm not so arrogant as to believe that no one who reads this will be smarter than me. Maybe even a majority of readers (if anyone reads this, which I doubt) are smarter than me. If it makes you feel better, tell yourself that you're smarter than me. We'll never meet, illusions (if they exist) will never be destroyed, everyone is happier. Like Vonnegut says, "believe in the foma (useful lies) that make you happy and wealthy and" well, the quote goes on but I forget it.

Moving 1800 miles to Texas never seemed like a big deal to me. It was what I wanted to do, so I did what was necessary to do it. This is, I've been told, not normal. Of course, loving someone from just talking in IRC and email plus a few phone calls is abnormal too. I figure, moving 1800 miles to be with someone you love is normal. And at this point I say fuck it and stop caring. The "why" of what I do never really bothered me, which is a constant source of friction in my relationship with Kataine. A lot of times the whole issue is that she doesn't understand why I'd do something, and I'm not much for helping her understand.

That's another post, though. Don't be surprised if Kataine ends up making a large majority of the posts on here, she's the one who likes to write. I, um, hate writing. And just wrote this huge fucking post. Why? *shrug*

In the beginning... (Part I)

2003-09-29T01:46:00.000-07:00

Before I start mumbling about my rather unusual relationship, it seems prudent to explain just what makes it so bizarre and provide some background into the situation. The former is simple -- I'm a twenty-four year old, divorced, schizophrenic woman living with her eighteen year old autistic fiance.

That's now. How I got to this point is perhaps even stranger.

I was raised in a rather eccentric household. My father was a businessman who owned various stores, hotels, etc., while I was growing up. My mother juggled her time between helping run these businesses and raising my brother and I. Sounds normal enough so far, right? Not quite.

You see, Dad is 25 years older than Mom. He's tall (or was, before his back gave out) and she's practically a midget at about 4'10. Dad's pretty normal, I suppose, except for his tendency to break out in song at random (we're talking about vulgar drinking songs from the 30s, here) and his odd ideas about money. It was Dad's idea to live in an extravagant house, own seven same year cars, and buy our clothes at garage sales. Mom, on the other hand, has generalized anxiety and I've suspected for years she also has Schizoid Personality Disorder.

"If you don't eat this cupcake, it's going to cry," Mom would tell me when I was a little girl. She looked like she was about to start sobbing herself, and I'm certain she really believes that objects have feelings. For instance, if an item of food was left uneaten, she thought it'd be deeply hurt and feel rejected. Eventually we solved this problem by purchasing a garbage disposer, which she immediately christened "Oscar".

Mental illness, along with exceptionally high IQ, runs in my mother's side of the family. Her mother, and one brother, are schizophrenic. Another brother has OCD, another is a pathological liar and kleptomaniac, and one of her sisters has Munchausen's. The rest of her six brothers and sisters, while clearly abnormal, remain undiagnosed.

I suppose I was a fairly normal kid until my teenage years. I did have some strange obsessions, like drawing numerous pictures of naked men urinating in the front and back covers of all my books when I was three or four years old. I refused to wear anything other than knee-length dresses until my teens, despite walking half a mile to meet the school bus in frigid Missouri winters. But I was a straight A student and could read more quickly than my own teachers by the time I reached first grade, so my eccentricities went mostly unnoticed.

The trouble started around sixth grade. That's when I started attending Junior High in a new town. I dressed oddly, wearing old-fashioned ladies' business suits (altered to fit) and pumps to school. I realized I wasn't dressing like the other children, but I didn't care, because I didn't feel like a child. I considered myself an adult from a very early age -- probably because I was more intelligent (although totally lacking common sense) than my teachers were.

That was one of the first things that turned me into an outcast. I was also quickly distrusted because of my grades (straight A's), my atheism (this was a rural town filled with ultra-conservative Baptists), and my profound interest in subjects like guns and explosives. I proclaimed myself a communist and informed everyone that when I grew up I was going to overthrow the United States Government and hand it over to the U.S.S.R. No doubt I believed it.

I hated school, and often just didn't go. When I did attend, I was openly mocked by some students, while others tried desperately to convert me to their religion. Even the teachers got involved in that, after a while. My one consolation was our Gifted & Talented program, where I could spend one day a week in a small trailer with students who were more interested in biochemistry than what clothes I wore or the fact I didn't go to church.

One day, shortly before the end of my eighth grade year, I was informed that the GT program had been cancelled. I was, to put it mildly, really fucking pissed off. During that summer, Mom suggested home schooling. I was incredibly relieved at her suggestion, and we bought a number of college textbooks for me to use, in whatever subjects I found interesting.

I attended home school for my ninth grade year. I studied whatever I wanted to, and since none of the subjects were things Mom was knowledgable about, she told me I'd have to teach myself. This wasn't laziness on her part at all, she was simply baffled by the subject matter, as she'd been forced (literally) to drop out of high school some twenty-five years before.

At the end of the school year, I had to take an assessment test required by the state to check on my progress. I scored at the 99th percentile in everything, and my grade level was estimated at "12+". Mom said, after reading the test results, "Alright, you graduate." I was thirteen years old.

At this point I began working in my parents' pawnshop full-time. They didn't pay me a lot, but it was nice to have a steady source of income at that age. It was also around this time period I became obsessed with drugs and drug culture. Working at a pawnshop made experimentation viable -- many of our customers were rather shady characters. I'll gloss over the drug use for now, but suffice it to say that by the time I was fourteen I was using a number of substances on a regular basis, including the hard ones.

At some point when I was fourteen years old, I started experiencing delusions and auditory halluncinations. I was so certain that some villian was plotting to murder me in my sleep that I changed bedrooms in my parents' house, from the second master bedroom to the guest room, because it was more enclosed. I believed I could hear people talking if I put my hand on a telephone pole. I heard secret messages in the hum of the refrigerator. I created an elaborate fantasy in which I was secretly a terminally ill Russian immigrant. I practiced a "Native American religion" I'd partially read about in popular fiction and partially concocted myself.

One day, after this had been happening for a few months, I walked up to my parents and calmly informed them I had gone insane and that I should see a psychologist. They were startled, but agreed, and called for an appointment.

The psychologist asked the usual questions, and after speaking with me for my allotted fifty minutes, told Mom that I was seriously disturbed and should be checked into a mental hospital. Dad was in denial, and drove me home without scheduling a followup. He was convinced there was nothing wrong with me and I probably just wanted attention.

I continued to work at the pawnshop, despite my increasingly bizarre behavior. I stopped using drugs for a while, thinking they might be excaberating the symptoms. It helped little, if at all.

Then in 1993, I discovered the internet. I was fascinated. I started spending longer and longer times at the public library, using Gopher, telnet BBS's, and playing MUDs. Eventually, using the money I'd earned at the pawnshop, I purchased a used computer (Tandy 1000HX) and an external 2600 baud modem for it. Once I had internet access from home, I stopped working and spent roughly 18 hours a day online.

This continued for about two years. I cracked passwords, distributed viruses, sent fakemail, read other people's email, and made a lot of friends online. I lied about my age and background and reveled in the anonymity of the internet. Then I met Mikey.

I call him Mikey, primarily because he hates being called that, and I'm not at all fond of the man. He was twenty-seven when I met him, and was dating two girls via the internet -- a fourteen year old, and a nineteen year old. I told him I was nineteen. We spent a lot of time talking, and eventually he expressed romantic interest in me.

For a quite a while, I'd been counting the days until I turned eighteen (I was fifteen at the time) so I could move out. I absolutely hated living at home with my parents, for some reason I find incomprehensible now. Mikey's interest gave me an idea, so I allowed him to become involved with me. Shortly after, he broke up with the other two, and swore his undying love for me. I reciprocated (in words, anyway), smirking all the while.

A few months later, shortly after my sixteenth birthday, I told him an outrageous story about how I was a Russian immigrant living under a false identity and being pursued by the CIA. I needed his help, I explained, because I was being held prisoner in a private home. He bought it hook, line, and sinker.

And so, one freezing January morning when I was barely sixteen, I left my parents' house in the middle of the night carrying two trash bags full of my clothes and personal belongings. Mikey was waiting for me there, in a rented car.

...to be continued.

In the beginning... (Part II)

2003-09-29T00:10:00.000-07:00

Mikey drove me to his parents' house, where he was living. The day after I arrived, he asked me to marry him. I consented, though I never deluded myself into thinking I cared for him.

At the time, this didn't seem unusual to me. I believed that spouses were merely selected based on convenience, and it was certainly convenient to have him hiding me from my undoubtably terrified parents. Besides, while I never liked him all that much, I was convinced I could live peacefully with him. And best of all, he was willing to move to where I wanted to go (Washington state) and support me while I played Little Miss Housewife.

Two weeks after my late-night escape to Louisiana, the police arrived. Mikey was arrested, and I was sent back home to Missouri with my parents. I stole a bottle of twenty Percocet from a woman's purse in a public restroom on the way home, and took them along with forty or fifty other pills I had in my purse (mostly diet and cold pills). This was my first of three serious attempts at suicide.

I threw up a few hours later, then immediately went to bed when I got home. In the morning, when I woke up, I couldn't stand up, and had to ask my mother to help me to the restroom. She had no idea what was wrong with me, just that I was quite ill. Dad came into my room and told me they were going to send me to a girls' home. I protested, and he relented, saying I didn't have to go if I would promise to "be a better daughter."

For the next few months, my relationship with my parents was strained at best. I informed them that according to state law, I could move out without their consent when I was seventeen. I got a job working at K-Mart and began saving up money to leave home. This job didn't last very long -- I was fired for "lack of productivity", shortly after I vomited all over the ladies' dressing room after drinking two full 16 oz. bottles of Robitussin.

I was in contact with Mikey, who had been charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and received two years probation. A few months before my seventeenth birthday, he sent $1000. I told my parents that it was a check I was receiving from a publishing company for a short story I'd written.

They didn't buy it -- despite the fact it was postmarked in Texas, it was a postal money order and the return address was faked. They called the Chamber of Commerce for the town it'd been sent from (Orange, TX), and were informed the street did not exist.

All hell broke loose when that money order arrived. Apparently, some money of my father's had gone missing around the time I ran away, and he thought this was somehow involved. I hadn't stolen the money, though (and years later it turned up behind his sock drawer). They'd also looked through the bags of trash I'd thrown out when I cleaned my bedroom, and found a bunch of used syringes.

I remember vaguely that they had me questioned by some law official or another, then drove me home. On the drive home, they were discussing what to do with me, and my father finally asked me if I really wanted to move to Washington state. I replied that I did, and he said he would drive me there, to my aunt's house in central Washingon, and I could take things from there.

And so he did. The day I arrived, I called Mikey, who was relieved to hear from me. "What's happened?" he asked.

"Things have changed... geographically," I replied.

Mikey moved to Washington and we left my aunt's house and found an apartment. I was not yet seventeen, so we tried to keep a low profile. Of course, he thought I was twenty, but knew my "fake ID" said that I wasn't.

Things changed dramatically after we began living together in that little apartment in central Washington. Up until this point, Mikey was a useful means to an end, and easily manipulated. I soon found that when it was just he and I, with my family over two thousand miles away, he was a completely different person.

The found the first clue to his true nature on the day we moved into that apartment. Mikey left me at home while he went to the store to pick up groceries. Before he left, he informed me that the "white boxes" were private and that I was not allowed to touch them. Of course, the instant I saw his car had left the drive, I popped them open to have a look inside.

The contents were disturbing. In there I found various lists of things he had done to previous girlfriends as "punishment", such as having them eat an entire box of Ex-lax then beg for permission before they could use the restroom. There were... extremely pornographic... Polaroid shots of a girl I suspect was underage. There was a list of pros and cons about two girls he'd once dated, a comparison of sorts. On the list were such things as "twat smells bad", "flat tits", "hairy asscrack".

There were also letters from another woman, dated recently, whom I had specifically inquired about a few times because she seemed to have a crush on Mikey. He denied it vehemently, but after reading the letters, it was clear she did and wrote at length about what she'd like to do to him. In these letters, I also discovered that the necklace he'd been wearing, and claimed was given to him by a male friend some years ago, was a gift from her. I was not pleased.

I said nothing, though, as I'd gotten myself into this, but I knew once I'd seen the contents of his "private boxes" that I would never feel any real affection for this man.

I won't write at length about my relationship with Mikey, but I will say it was an eye-opening experience. He was frequently emotionally and sexually abusive, and ocassionally physically. He did not allow me to have a driver's license, to leave the apartment without him, forced me to cut off contact with my friends, and severely limited contact with my family. He would not allow me to touch him in any way, unless he was interested in sex. All money, regardless of who earned it (for a time, I worked from home), was kept in his own private checking account. He was obsessed with pornography, to the point that he greatly preferred it to actual sex. Later (after we married), when I was six months pregnant, I discovered he had been carrying on an affair with the woman who had written him.

I spent six years living with Mikey, and as time went on, they got progressively worse. After a while, I was no longer allowed to leave the apartment for any reason, even to get the mail, or to accompany him to the grocery store. His obsession with porn decreased somewhat when he discovered that if he was brutal enough, he could make me cry during sex, and he seemed to enjoy this quite a lot.

Two years after we were married, my brother offered to sell us a house in Missouri that needed quite a bit of work. He said that we could stay with him for a month or so while we got the house into shape. Mikey and I accepted his offer and moved to Missouri.

At this point, I know now I had plenty of opportunities to get away from Mikey, but I was still hung up on proving I hadn't made a mistake and that my parents were wrong. On the bright side, the proximity of my relatives stopped him from forcing sex on me, as he knew my brother would probably have grabbed a shotgun off the wall and blown him away if he'd heard any sound of distress from our bedroom.

A year after we moved into my brother's house "temporarily" to fix up the other house, he announced we'd have to leave. This is because we'd been staying there for a full year and Mikey had never once made an effort to make our house livable. I'm amazed they put up with us that long -- seven people living in a two bedroom mobile home.

On the trip back to Washington, I drank one night until I passed out, and Mikey took advantage of the situation. I'd had him cut off for a year, so I guess this wasn't too surprising, but nonetheless it was that morning after I finally decided I would somehow leave him.

We got another apartment in Washington, this time in Seattle, where I'd always dreamed of living. At this point, despite the fact he kept me locked in the apartment 24/7, I felt less depressed because he'd agreed to let me play an online game (Asheron's Call), and I had someone to talk to other than him.

Before this last move, Mikey had worked intermittantly -- he'd get a job, work for a few months, then quit or get fired. Then we'd spend six months or so living off the money his mother sent us. After we moved, he didn't even attempt to get a job, nor did he allow me to. His mother paid our bills.

After a year of this, Mikey's mother informed him she could no longer afford to send us money every month for living expenses. He told me were would be moving back to Lousiana to stay with her. I let him know in no uncertain terms he would be moving back alone, and that I was filing for divorce.

Mikey was shocked, but didn't protest nearly as much as I expected. Six years after we'd first moved in together, he took a plane back to Louisiana and took our then three-year-old daughter to be cared for by his mother. (I had suggested this myself, as there was no way I was equipped to care for a young child on my own -- I had no job or driver's license.)

I filed for divorce, and looked for a job for three months with no luck. After that, my money had run out, and I decided to enroll in Job Corps in the hopes of gaining some vocational training that would let me support myself.

I spent six months in Job Corps, graduated as Valedictorian, and decided to move to southern Texas, as my brother now lives there with his family, and my parents spend six months of the year there.

During that nine months after Mikey moved out, I had several intense but brief relationships with other men. I'll write about these another time though, as I've rambled on quite enough already.