Masterminx

This stupid cough is driving me crazy. I even considered--very briefly--breaking down and going to the urgent care for a round of antibiotics. Fuck that.

The financial situation is really ugly. We're resorting to selling stuff for far less than it is worth just to break even. It's not wise, but it's survival.

KJ's stupid $40k truck has shit all over us in the last few months. In July, it was a fuel sensor for $2k. This month, it's the transmission. $3800 to fix after the 2nd gear and reverse literally melted. That's $3800 we don't have. So, KJ borrowed $3k from his mother and we're scrambling for the other $800.

And we couldn't pay the bills as it is. So, no doctors and no antibiotics.

Posted by masterminx at 7:55 PM | Permalink |

This time of year is strange for me. It rattles with the skeleton bones in my closet and weeps with previous years' tears. I have my most favorite and most dreaded moments bundled together in October. Living in Utah adds complication to the mess: Autumn is my favorite season by far, so October should be prime time for me. In Utah, however, October is more like the beginning of winter than it is the best part of Fall.

I hate this state.

It's not just the weather in Utah. My calendar has been marred by other events--unpleasant ones. My father died a couple of years ago on Halloween. It used to be my favorite holiday of the whole year. It's kind of hard to get into decorating with ghosts and bats when you associate the day with seeing your only family member lying cold and stiff in a hospital bed with a tube protruding from his slack mouth. I ran the tips of my fingers over his tattoo--a little smiling devil with his nickname (my name) below it--and I noticed how cool and crepe-like the skin was. He had lost so much weight so quickly when the cirrhosis took over. That was the last time I saw or touched him. He was cremated a couple days later.

So, you can imagine that I am not big on the celebration, now. The events following my father's death are equally horrible, but that's a tale for another time. Maybe in a book.

I am coughing almost constantly right now. I cough so hard that I'm almost retching. I clearly need to get some drugs or something. For now, I think it's going to have to be Alka-Seltzer Plus and a few hours of sleep.

Posted by masterminx at 12:51 AM | Permalink |

I never realized what was wrong with me until I saw "I Love You, Man." Peter Klaven's problem is my problem: all through school, I had boyfriends instead of friends. Now, I have no friends. My closest friends are married men--perfect friends, really. There is no sexual tension because my position as not-spouse renders me gender neutral, but the instinctive chivalry and protective posture keeps me from being treated shabbily. It works.

Well...it works most of the time. The drawback to having married men as friends is that you can't really hang out with them. I have my family and they have their respective families. Time is dedicated domestically on both counts. On my part, I have a spouse's jealousy to worry about. So I'm back to Peter Klaven. I need female friends.

I know that's easier said than done. I was raised by men for most of my formative years. My time spent in the care of women was marked by betrayal and abuse until it was too late for me to change my opinion. I have mentioned that my father influenced my opinion of women, in general. By his third marriage, I had no trust left. The moral of the story is this: even though I am a female, I don't get along with most females. I don't relate.

One of the keys to long life is having a healthy network of friends. Like a drowning woman, I am grasping for some sense of normal life. I have never felt this level of difficulty in connecting with others. Maybe this has something to do with the major disparity between me and the natives of this grossly conservative and fervent place.

This whole process feels like I'm trying to pull myself out of a feather bed onto a belt-fed meat grinder. Dying is so much easier than living. To die, one simply has to let go. Living is a constant fight for all of the futile forces that inevitably surrender to death. The implication is that one must have a good reason to fight a battle that can never be won.

I don't know when I fell into this flippant attitude toward death. I don't know if it is real or a product of chemical influence. Either way, I sincerely don't give a shit one way or the other. I could swallow up all of my medication and lay down to vomit and die, or I could drag myself out of the house for another meaningless day. I honestly feel no emotional difference toward either concept.

If I seek to fill the hollow of my life's meaninglessness with the old spirituality that I used to cling to so heartily, does that make me a desperate fool? Am I filling the emptiness with folly? I fear that I will become just another flavor of the ridiculous and pathetic believer that I chide others for being. I scorn these people for gutlessly following groupthink and subservience to a benevolent imaginary friend. I mock their man-made scriptures that have been re-interpreted by scribes over the years, stealing from the mythology of other cultures.

I don't want to be like them. I don't want to be mocked. I don't want to be the death row repentant. I don't want to be the praying atheist in the foxhole. I question my own sincerity. At the same time, I miss the feeling of belonging to the greater world as a part of Nature. I miss finding the meaning in smaller omens. I miss the sense of connection and the peace of stillness in the night and the quiet of a field. I long for the thoughtful meditation of staring into a candle flame on a neatly arranged altar.

Committing to a belief is so risky. Your convictions must be strong enough to withstand the mockery of others. I suppose that's why so many Christians huddle together under the flag of their version of worship: strength in numbers--acceptance and defense against the mockery of the thinking portion of the public. Validation. To become the majority is to arm oneself against the derision of the newly formed minority.

Posted by masterminx at 11:52 AM | Permalink |

I didn't understand how to describe my relationship problems until I read Madame Bovary. I knew my father's influence had loosened my definition of fidelity and marriage. It's a certainty that it ruined my concept of a woman's worth and left me very cynical about the insitution of marriage.

Madame Bovary's problem was that she could not recognize love in its true form. To her, love had to be romantic and dramatic. There had to be suffering and longing. There had to be flattery and weepy dedications. The madness of need or at least its appearance. That was love to her, and that is what she sought while her husband's constancy and admiration went unnoticed after the courtship ended.

Is that my flaw? I discovered at one point that my idea of affection was constant badgering. I am willing to accept now that my concept of love is still entrenched in that imaginary practice of protestation and praise. These are things that I don't get. This is the stuff of storybook romance and film dreams. Has everyone else in the world come to accept that reality is way more sedate and lonely?

I don't have that inner glow of self-assurance. I need someone to notice me and pay attention to me. I need someone to want to be near me, just like every other insecure girl. I want to feel pretty. Does a husband do that? Mine doesn't. My husband's idea of a compliment is staggering into me in the kitchen and squeezing my breast like a bicycle horn while I'm trying to cook him dinner. Or while I'm paying the bills. Or doing anything else at all.

Do I just give up that feeling of being attractive to anyone at all because I am married? Is that how it's supposed to work? That part of me that was so essential to my personality is supposed to just wither and die now. No arrousal, no lust, no sensuality, and no passion. That is what marital bliss is?

Is it me, then? Are these facts of life that I should have learned as I grew up? Should I have grown up?

Posted by masterminx at 12:25 PM | Permalink |

Here I am. I haven't written for ages because I've been sucked into the frivolity that is Facebook. That, and being married to an extremely suspicious man doesn't afford any privacy. Every time he sees me typing, he asks who I'm talking to. I don't even use a chat client at home because I don't want to deal with the hassle.

I want to affix his ex-wife's skull to a train car with a nail gun for having an affair with someone she met online. And for being a total bitch.

At this point in my life, I have resigned myself to living a flagging existence of disappointment until it's finally over with a whole lot more nothingness. Is this the mid-life crisis everyone talks about or is this something else? I can never tell what's permanent and what's passing.

I'm depressed. I've been depressed for some time, but I usually bob up above the surface once in a while. I wonder about being able to do that, this time. Real life stresses have collided with the chemical downturn to make it linger.

I have come to the conclusion that I am incapable of loving anyone. I am coming up on my wedding anniversary and I don't feel any sort of happiness about that. In my head, I jokingly refer to this as the 2nd-year itch. I have a hard time being happy about finding my spouse passed out on the floor or in a chair with a full beer spilling onto the carpet.

I knew he was an alcoholic before we married. I never thought about what that meant. I felt obligated to stay for other reasons. It's worse than I thought. He doesn't hurt me or insult me, he doesn't yell or break things. I feel that I should count myself lucky because I know it gets worse for so many other women.

Sometimes, I find myself wondering what it would be like to live with someone I loved and respected. What it would be like to have a sober man around. To be with someone who accepted me and desired me. I have always dreamed of being with someone I could talk to, who respected me, who I would be happy to be with. I have concluded that those loving relationships I grew up believing in do not exist in reality. Nobody loves their spouse forever. Nobody looks forward to seeing their spouse at the end of the day for very long.

To me, that's just so sad. I don't like myself at all. I don't like other people. I don't contribute anything to the world. What's the point, then? I can't think of a good one.

I think I'd be better off as a full-on sociopath. I'm incapable of real feelings. I don't even know what they are. It's like living in the Matrix--all of the things I've ever thought were real turned out to be illusions. If I have no way to tell when an emotional impulse is real, then I have to assume that I have never experienced one. I will never know if I do.

I'm empty. I just describe myself as empty all the time. I have no idea how else to say it. I don't feel hope, I don't have goals or dreams, I don't have any sense of pride in anything I do or have. I don't feel any connection to other people or nature or...anything at all. When I try to think about my future, I simply cannot.

I've decided to start looking for another job, but that's a futile exercise when I feel like this. I have no confidence, so I can't sell myself. I don't even know what I'm looking for.

So, here I am. I am wondering if this is what life will always be for me. If this hollow feeling will persist, then how do I embrace what life I have left?

Posted by masterminx at 11:49 PM | Permalink |