Bedding

Sometimes, you make a plan to sleep long-term on an air mattress you bought of Craigslist for twenty bucks.  An excellent plan, with just two major drawbacks.  One:  the words long term.  Two: the words air mattress.  Waking up on the floor after six hours is one way to ensure you will not be getting enough sleep, ever. 

So I Google and finally cave and ask my ex to send me the link to his mattress, because I remember that it was inexpensive and I happened to like sleeping on it.  He got the couch, which I bought originally, and left to him because I didn't want him to be able to say that I took anything from him.  I left him all of more expensive stuff I purchased for both of us while we were together and only took stuff I brought when I moved in or bought for myself.  He had insisted on paying me back for part of the couch, and I kept saying no.  Until I asked about the mattress, explaining the problem, and he went ahead and bought it before I could argue too much about it and said it was him paying me back for the couch. 

Honestly, I'm OK with that, because it is pretty fair, but I didn't want to accept it too easily.  I got dumped, and I don't want to be the bad guy.  He's still having to tell people he knows that I'm not a bad person, so, like, here, have a shit-tonne of evidence that I'm way nicer than I needed to be. 

I think I am going to build my own bed frame, though.  I will admit to being kind of a fan of taking somebody to bed and bringing it up as the opportunity presents itself.  Not that that's likely to be any time soon. 

Why Even Bother?

Whenever I have a job interview, or a really good posting pops up, I let my boss know. Every time, she says the same thing, "I don't want to lose you, but you do you."

We have had countless conversations about how this position does not allow me to live. Like, not just, "oh, doesn't pay for me to go out like a fancy person all the time," but, "I will very soon be in the place where I'm forgoing food because my expenses will be too great, unless something changes."  I don't know how much more clearly I can say, "If you don't want to lose me, you don't actually have to, fight for me to be full time."  Full time at my current rate would save me.  I wouldn't be exactly saving, but I wouldn't be short money every month unless I'm very careful, which is the current situation. 

So I have to find something else. Hundreds of people apply for positions. I can't find anything. I apply.

I'm feeling rejected and unwanted in every single aspect of my life.  Why even bother? 

Cleric of the Sandsculptor

My D&D character is a cleric of a god who she believes in, as an entity, but she's really uncertain about her role as a cleric, and whether she can really, possibly serve a god like a cleric really should, and whether the gods have any control over *her*. 

The irony of this is that the DM gave her a Paladin who is an unwitting servant of the god, too, so the Paladin turns to her for advice and Taavi, this poor little cleric defines it as well as she can, while she's literally getting confusing and unclear visions from her god and is mostly trying to ignore them as coincidence.

Today, while performing Thaumaturgical tricks and doing Identify spells and talking about my god for kids at a festival booth (Taavi never wants to do anything other than help- she is sometimes very not good at it, because the things the party wants to do have frequently been crimes, and Taavi's need to be helpful is at odds with her desire to also do good, so she's currently reasoning that helping her friends is probably good if not actively bad, maybe?  She really hopes her god is the laid back, understanding kind.), the DM gave her a teen who was being skeptical, and Taavi, through me, the atheist, the skeptic, the one my friend has to explain his wooga-wooga to in ways that make me stop raising my eyebrows at him, starts explaining her faith to this kid.  She says that her experiences make her believe the gods are there to help and advise, but it's up to us what we do with that information and the choices we make. 

There's a spell called Augury that tells you whether a decision you make in the next half hour is a good idea or not, basically. And I inform the kid this is a special spell that I can't use for just anything, but I'll cast it for him.  Does he have something he needs to decide to do next that he wants help with?  We cast the spell, and, after explaining how I'm going to cast, and what the answers can be, and taking all the flash out of the ritual, I ask him what he thinks the result is.  He thinks he's supposed to do the thing he wanted a decision about, and I say, "This is just advice, you can still make any decision you want, but come back tomorrow and tell me about it, OK?" 

There's a meme I enjoy about D&D that states that DMing is leading your party through weird parts of their own personality. I find myself wondering to what extent I'm Taavi and how or if that serves me in any way.  Especially now that I'm struggling with feeling deeply unnecessary and unwanted in most aspects of my life.  And because Taavi is deeply loved by the party, and I find her so very hard to play. Like, if I were capable of being Taavi full time, would that help? 

If it did, is that who I'd be OK with being? 

I Heard the Truth From Lenny Bruce Is Not Afraid

I'm angry tonight. I've been very concerned about my job, because I'm not in a great place financially (I do not need help as badly as a lot of other people, but the next year is going to be less than ideal), but I got word today that as long as there IS work, I will be OK. The rest of our part time staff can't work past Thursday, so they get two weeks of pay at 60% of the total average of their last four paychecks, and after that they're fucked. As most of them work multiple jobs and ours is the only one offering them anything, that's barely enough money to make a difference. My diabetic ex, and roommate for twelve more days, was trying to stave off depression yesterday when the owner of his part time job basically said that she doesn't believe in taking measures to keep anyone safe. And he fell in. He's convinced he's going to get the virus and die, and if that doesn't happen he's going to be out of work and get evicted and then the only option is to kill himself, because he has decided that this will be going on for six months.

So, this makes me the bad guy, because every night for the past four, I've been going out to pick up food and as soon as I get home get told something else I was supposed to magically anticipate him needing. I told him multiple times to let me know today what he needed, and I came home and that's when he told me half a dozen things we don't have, with the stores closing in an hour. In spite of my messaging him while I was at the store. Like, dude, I am doing this FOR YOU, and I come home and you freak out at me? I can't keep putting up with that. In 12 days there is a very good possibility that I am going to lock the door of my studio apartment and ignore when he knocks. His brand new, diagnosed-with-anxiety girlfriend can deal with him and find out what she got herself into.

I don't believe that, not exactly. I do right now, in exactly the same way he believes he's gonna die. He believed fervently for over a month that he was going to die from cancer and when he found out he DIDN'T have cancer, didn't bother to tell me about it for a week. I get that he isn't OK, but I don't know what to do with him. It's not just him, it's everybody like us. It's everybody who works a collection of jobs barely keeping them afloat. What's going to happen to all of us?

I Don't Think So, Cupid

I do not want to get a beer with you. I do not want to go to the gym or see some shows with you.  I do not want to get together to talk about where life is taking us to see if we "click."  I don't want you to be laid back and easy going, you guess. 

I want to make something with you.  To create and build and forge and discover with you.  I want you to say, "What if," and be able to say, "Yes, let's."  I want the words to work, to fit together, to find the scenes and the stories and put them together into something that matters.  Why do you want to get a coffee, and deal in banalities, when we could consider the universe? 

It's out there, you know?  Do you list your favourite movies and shows and songs in a block of text to substitute your personality in order to forget that everything is possible if only you would look up and go out and find it?  Did you know that this is it?  And you waste it commuting.  You waste it on mediocrity and student loan payments and saying you travel when really you get drunk in different cities.  Who are you?  Sitting in your car, your bathroom, your parent's house, your phone out, trying to make me believe you might be somebody. 

And who I am?  Nobody.  The difference is that I don't want to be nobody.  Is this what I was meant for when we are hurtling through time and space?  Is all there is the results of the next election and your opinions on abortion because you're a feminist as long as somebody asks but believe you are the head of your household and students should hear both sides between creation and evolution.  As though there are two sides.  As though there are sides.  As though from the moment of the Big Bang the universe was waiting to create the void that was you, because you would never dare to disturb it? 

I stand at the end of the dock and reach out, but there is no light.  There is no pool.  No car.  No dream.  And the blocks of the sidewalk don't form a ladder to a secret place in the trees.  No tuning fork struck on a star. 

Swipe left. 

If You Don't Talk to Anyone, No One Will Notice That You Haven't Talked to Anyone

I can't do it anymore.

Since the only reason I exist is to work enough to keep myself alive, why am I alive?  I'm not making a difference in anybody's life.  Well, not a positive one- I'm an annoyance to a few people occasionally.

I'm seeing a therapist.  I'm not sure how that's gonna go.  Her first bright idea was that I should write down what triggers my depression.  As though: 1. I don't know what triggers it and 2. As though that would help.  I told her, "If I were capable of writing about my problems in a way that helped me solve them rather than wallowing in them, I would be doing that already and I wouldn't be here."  She at least acknowledged that made sense.  Because I DO know: it's an unwavering conviction, with fairly sufficient evidence, that this is all there is for me.  My life's over.  I'm never gonna be anybody, I'm never gonna do anything, I'm going to die in a box office because I lack the ability to do anything else, and that includes act like a normal human being with actual relationships.

There's a secretary position at my boss's husband's theatre.  It's another city venue.  It pays 42k, so 6k more than I made last year.  It's a longer commute, such that it would be nearly impossible to do anything apart from drive to it, and it's a secretary job, which I actually consider a step down due to it being the exact same kind of job my mother and paternal grandmother did for most of my life. Neither of them went to college (mom went to business school), and I can't quite adequately express the shame I would feel if I had to tell people I was a theatre secretary. At least assistant box office manager has manager in the title and I supervise people.  But it's more money.  Yes, but at what cost?  Is this irrational?  Sure.  But it's perfectly rational to me because it would be one more indication that I am no better than any other member of my fucked up, dysfunctional family and how hard have I tried to distance myself from that, anyway?

Theatre?  My voice doesn't matter.  I'm a lower class, college educated, straight, cis white girl.  I've got nothing to say that nobody hasn't already heard.  And nobody likes me enough to say, "Hey, come and do things for us."  I fuck it up, because I'm not normal.

People can't like me as I am.  I'd need to at least be of a similar species.  And I'm some kind of reference library, not a human.  If I could figure out how to be a well-paid reference library, I might not care.  But that takes effort and drive I lack.  I started over once before.  I fucked it up.

So this is it, and I don't wanna do this anymore.

I Do Believe in Spooks

About a month ago, I applied for a second job as a ghost story tour guide.  Every step of this process has been such to leave me wondering whether this is actually a real job, or a very weird scam, or what.  The tour script is abysmal, with details that all but the least inquiring mind is going to go, "What?" about.  There's a story that I can't find a single primary source about, and it shows because it refuses to mention names, and it involves sexual liaisons, a prominent, yet strangely anonymous, political figure and a suicide. 

Tonight I finally got to shadow, proof that this job is actually real and does appear to pay money.  So I asked the guide, "How many times have people asked you the name of the politician?"  "Never." He pauses, "Thank Holy Jesus Christ."  He is the longest tenured tour guide, and though I've honestly spent less than ten minutes actually reading the tour (because it's awful), I kept wanting to stop, to interject, and to at least do SOMETHING to make the tour scary or at least interesting.  I mentioned to my brother that I was off to shadow and he said, "Carry cold iron, silver or jade to give to newbs in case they get too scared."  And I thought, "That's good."  

There is nothing on the tour to warrant this, in spite of the number of murders, suicides, and, in one case, unfounded mention of medical experiments.  But it would be very, very easy to take what's there, and create a spooky atmosphere.  And I am both a skeptic (of most ghost stories, the way they're told), and also a terrible coward.  I know EXACTLY how to scare the shit out of someone, and convince them that maybe it didn't even happen... or did it?  Because all you have to do is create an environment, a suggestion, and people will do shit in their own minds to scare the bejeezus out of themselves.  

The scariest house on the tour is actually condemned, built by a former Confederate doctor and later inhabited by a union buster.  Nasty people.  We even have to keep across the street from it because the sidewalk's closed in front of it.  Nasty house.  And the kid says, "Yeah, um, this next house is abandoned, so we're going to stay here."  And I look into the attic and see a purple light.  "Abandoned," I can't help interjecting, "save for the not-at-all-mysterious light in the attic.  That's nothing to worry about."  And suddenly the entire tour group takes a breath.  The kid goes on to talk about the house, and when we get to the end, someone says, "So.... if it's abandoned, why the light?"  The kid pauses.  He has no idea.  And I say, "It's the ghost light.  Construction workers use them so when the power is otherwise shut down to a house, if they need to get in and fetch something quickly, they can.  It also gives the impression to would-be burglars that someone might be in there.  But it's called the ghost light from a similar theatrical tradition of leaving a light on in an empty theatre.  It may just be for the construction workers or the theatre staff, but tradition says that the light is left on so that the ghosts may come and go as they please."  And the entire group is staring at the light in the attic, and the couple who have been as into it as anybody has been tonight goes, "Did the light just flicker?  I think the light flickered."

It didn't, but that's the power of what I can do with just a tiny set up and a lucky question.  

I've been doubting my ability to do anything, lately, but damn it, I am a good tour guide.  And I'm gonna buy a few little Allen wrenches to carry on tours because they're made of iron (steel, but, close enough), hold nicely in your hand to fidget with, and you can truthfully call one a "hex key."