Oy

The phrase "when the other shoe drops" has held an unhealthy amount of weight in my life lately.

Last night, I appear to have gleaned its meaning. Not only is my relationship teetering on the brink of nothingness, I've given notice at my horrible job, and when I checked my email I found that my father (biological) has contacted me to let me know he was getting divorced from his second wife, "G".

I liked G. I loved her. I remember telling my dad to marry her...round about Tacoma on an Oly-Seattle moving trip. I was a witness at their wedding. I painted them an anniversary present of the two of them embracing. ...but it seems that the reasons I chose to discontinue my relationship with my father have been some of the reasons G and he have decided to end their marriage. Dad's email hinted at mutual decision-making, but I'm fairly sure it was her idea. My father isn't enlightened enough to realize when he's f*cked something up. ...Although I can almost believe he's starting to figure it out. Forty years later.

...

I'm begining to realize I'm constitutionally incapable of working for other people. It's high school band all over again. I quit that mid-way through sophomore year--not because of freezing-cold marching band practice at 6am, not because of the consistently flat trumpet section or the nose-up first-chair flutes, but because our band director was such a phenomenal A-hole (and I'm sure continues to be). He bullied students who weren't like him (thick-necked conservative football-types who only cry when thinking about their long-dead huntin' dogs), was known to have had "relations" with students and god-forbid he find out your parents had recently divorced--he would call up your mother and hit on her. Creep show, right? But he liked me, and I just had to quit.
This is the pattern that continues in my life. Bullies make it in to power, they need competent help like me because they don't understand why their power isn't enough to make the business run smoothly, and because we live in a "civilized society" I have to quit when I get tired of their dull-eyed machinations. I have to quit...instead of challenging them to a death-match and hauling the tiger-skin from their still-warm corpse as my new consort hands me the tribal sceptre. "Let's reorganzie the accounting division!" I would scream above the awed cries of the masses, my muscles still glistening with sweat, my face streaked with blood.

No, I haven't watched Conan the Barbarian recently. But I plan to.

Several months later...

I bought two new plants on Monday, before I realized my bank account was entering the lower double-digits. I have them resting on the high, faux-granite breakfast bar in the kitchen of my new apartment in the Juanita neighborhood of Kirkland. I'm going to let them sit there for a week or two, in the company of more seasoned and hearty house plants, in hopes they will survive the eventual transplant from their tiny, crowded, grocery store pots.

I'm not yet sure if I've survived my transplant. I had outgrown Olympia in many ways, but like any rootbound greenery, breaking me out, busting up my roots and putting me in unfamiliar soil has shaken me to...well, my very roots. I'm wilting, I'm malnourished, I'm starved for the familiar.

That's about where the plant metaphor ends. I'm still working in a salon; the same product line, the same sales representative (bless you, Amy) and similar chat in the back room made it an easy transition. But the salon is in Fremont, an exhausting 10+ mile commute every morning and night. The salon is also owned by a frequently over-doped, psycho visionary who seems more possessed by entrepenurial spirits than driven by one of her own making. And I'm kind of in management again. *cringe* This means more hours, getting dressed-down for things beyond my control (Q: "Why aren't the stylists selling more retail!?" A: "Because their services are artificially over-priced and clients can't afford it???"), and generally inconvenienced in the name of a "collective goal" I haven't bought in to and am not paid enough to care about.

Just love it here...

It's like most of my thoughts during the day are first sifted through gritted teeth. I have no outlets, no drinky-weeknights with F & D (girlfriends of an incredible caliber) and walking home after too much at the BroHo. My parents have moved back to Spokane and are in the midst of their own financial crisis. My boyfriend is... Oh my.

Everyone says that moving in with someone is the biggest step you can take next to marriage and/or children, that it will make or break your relationship, that it brings up issues, desires and fears that you could never even have imagined. Well, I have a really active imagination. I couldn't (ha!) imagine that I'd left some concern un-turned, that I hadn't worried every rocking piece of my precariously balanced psyche and imagined every horrible fight, every possible malfeasance. I, of course, hadn't.

So far it's been, probably, farcical. If only I were viewing my life from row G, looking into 3/4 of my expensive apartment (3/4 would be easier to afford...) and scoffing at the obvious miscommunications, chuckling in sympathy for the oblivious and oversensitive characters. But, alas, I am on the stage, the 4th wall is up, and I am quite frequently at a loss for what to do.

I try testing myself--could I leave him? Do I want someone else? Something different? The answers, the truthful answers, have settled out to be Maybe, No, and Maybe. The attendant caveats being But I Don't Want To Have To, Absolutely No, and But Not That Different.

As with so much in this life, it all comes down to communication. Here's where I also wish I'd dated in high school. Boys, that is. Women may try to play silent and hurting, but eventually someone's gonna spill the beans, fights will be had, feelings trampled, tears shed; eventually everything is better after or it's not. Ta-da! With men, with My Man, it's like his retisence is contagious, tying my already knotted tongue in the sort of Boy Scout rope-trick I was never, as a girl, trained to unravel. I say something in a way I would to another female...and it just seems to make everything worse. He does not deal well with emotional dualities ("Well, I'm happy and sad about it..." "It's okay, but it's not.").

It doesn't help that I can't develop any sort of sense of self-righteousness, that I can't claim to know what is better or to appeal to him for his superior knowledge. We are, as they say, babes in the woods. Or more like babies in the dumpster. I seem to thwart his good intentions at every turn. The signs of happiness, productivity, he would like to see from me are impossible. I can't be creative right now. It's the transplant. I'm struggling just to stay green and healthy. The one thing I have drawn is a mug shot of Satan himself after a particularly vivid dream about being Wonderwoman.

*****

I think that's quite enough personal whining. But I suppose it's slightly more palatable than yet another blogger weighing in on the election? Wait and see and have a gun handy. That's my motto.