It’s funny how tapped out of rage and whatever other set of emotions to spew here I have become, combined with my being (overly) expressive in a closed environment elsewhere. Perhaps this should go to the plan of being an “anything goes, anonymously” blog that just happens to include mention sometimes of guilty parties. I certainly have ramped up in the opinions department directed outside of my own drama. Mmmm… Mmmm… Mmmm… From such thoughts fall mighty potential oaks.
The most immediate precipitating events have been an external nudge - one of many like it, in which I found myself wondering if I should blog under the alias Matt using a foreign word for Door as a surname, and fallout from the fact that between us we just plain make enough money to raise havoc with public assistance we’ve gotten during the past year or so. While I’ve never stopped being uncomfortable with it, all while being harangued about being a loser and, well, at least part of it not being necessary in her eyes… before she was diagnosed, anyway - the change is remarkable, a shame that however she overdramatizes it there may be nothing to speak of for mental health coverage for her for at least a year, she in part for that reason has come to worship at the altar of it. My discomfort combined with her jabbing combined with we were doing pretty well at the time combined with she still never lets me have time to do anything like that freely and I don’t ask made me late reapplying, which raised havoc above and beyond the income thing. Which would always have been a factor.
It was my reaction to one of the “you were late, nyah nyah” mailings about benefits that led me to a breakthrough leading up to and at my last counseling appointment. And I mean last, unless I get coverage or pay cash to go talk to her now and then, which had I the cash I would consider worth doing as one-offs, but not biweekly. I believe I posted about that, at least as a before the fact thing: Fear of her. Which the counselor says I mean to phrase as intimidation. Which it is, but there is fear. Primal, gut wrenching, sparked my tiny bit of PTSD fear. The PTSD being associated with my brother, triggered by his evil late ex playing him exquisitely - something my niece was pleased to know someone else had seen and believed - and applying drink to get him to kick in my door when I lived at his house and wake me with a punch to the face and a black eye. As I’d discussed long ago with the counselor, Laurie’s times when she burst into my room to yammer at me, pointedly waking or keeping me from sleeping at all, hit too close to home, so I fear her in that way, physical or not, bipolar being treated and her having been downright human to me much of the time for several weeks or not. In fact, I’ve been getting a glampse of what I saw in her and it helped me work all this out. Heh. I’ll miss her counselor, who seems to have been a big advocate for me. She keeps marveling at why I let her spend so much time with Dan, why I don’t grab time myself, and that’s another of those “look fat?” unanswerables. If I tell her I perceive it as I had no choice, she’ll claim I am absurd and go off on me, acting scary. If I say no she’ll use one of the tools to make me regret it or “allow” it anyway. Some of those tools in recent days confirmed my latest insight and that she’s aware what she’s playing, at least at some level.
Anyway, the same fear is related to my fear of crushes. The more I like them, the more terrified. The same fear seems to be related to my reaction to some bosses. What had me thinking was, well, why not all bosses? Why not all people who might be dominant types, intimidating to me? I may have mentioned my discussion of DISC personality types with the counselor. I seem to be S, and indeed tested online at a free “SCID” test (because who would dare steal “DISC” from those who charge big bucks for it) to exactly where I’d pegged myself. Not sure how much is selection bias, but I suspect not enough. I came out SCID. The negative word for the S type is Sucker. The prime positive/name of it is Supportive. We think Laurie is a D, which is the smallest percent of people and hardest child to raise, which sounds like her. That’s Dominant. I tested as if I were her and answering honestly and got DCIS. Our middles overlap. The paperwork the counselor copied for me, seminar notes, placed D and S as a bad pairing. And my S was huge, while my D was tiny.
I actually told her about an incident in 1st grade that I never told anyone except a single friend about, in the course of trying to puzzle out where I got the apparent fear of dominant people, emphasis on females. My grandmother who lived in same house? My mother, sister, aunts, other grandmother? Teachers? Girls who were peers? Cousins? I can’t pinpoint exactly, but I am sure it was early, and I am sure it was largely but not exclusively in the family. The incident with the teacher, who not inappropriately yelled at me and smacked me on the hand publicly for something stupidly innocent I did while spacing out and questioning in my mind whether reality around me existed as I perceived it right then. It was a weird state to be in, and while not common, hardly unvisited over the years since. That became the overwhelming thing for which I remember my otherwise beloved and very special 1st grade teacher. I realized recently it probably explains why I couldn’t bring myself to go visit her when I finished high school, as she’d wanted.
On a total side note, Sarah is fascinated by the idea of roller skating, which I’ve suggested she might be able to do with her grandfather, who was very into that. When it came up yesterday, I recalled to Laurie the first time I went roller skating, but what I remembered about it was that I didn’t instantly get on my feet, stay upright and glide around effortlessly, and therefore I was hopeless. I wasn’t perfect out of the box. Despite getting competent pretty fast, and absolutely loving the sensation of rolling rather than walking on my feet. Which then made me think of my father buying me a first bike that was too big for me to ride readily, too big for training wheels, and managing to set me up for failure. After a year, I learned and I loved it and I was determined to be the Best Bike Rider Ever, or something like that. I was always irate that in the meantime my sister rode the bike into the ground.
Worse, I was closer to Sarah than to normal. She’ll cry if she does something imperfectly and you notice. Or get angry at you. Which was her mother’s issue as a child, before she was even old enough for it to be anything but innate.
In the case of managers, or colleagues, there seems to be a range. I have to take you seriously and respect you before I really fear or am intimidated by you. Some who are just not competent or otherwise have no respect from me can be furies and it largely flows right past me. Maybe knowledge they have power over me gives a little concern, but there seems to be a correlation, close enough. If I don’t like you, I am less likely to be afraid. You don’t rate. The whole disproportionate response for me seems to be tied to how I feel about people.
It also, on reflection, seems to be influenced by my perception of rationality and predictability. I seem to need stability in my people. Someone can tend to yell, be brusque, bossy, loud, demanding… but if they are Just That Way and can be worked with rationally, or are explicable to me, whatever. If someone seems impossible to please, prone to unpredictable behavior, or has irrational spots that mar the competence, it hits me. If there’s not competence and the irrational person is a joke, then it’s not fear so much as - I want to say loathing just to complete the logical word association, but that’s not quite right. Or maybe it is. It puts me in condescension mode, even if purely internal.
Then of course the other factor is amount of power over me, amount you can ruin my life. Clearly a higher authority is scarier. If you have a client and deal with a manager who is pretty level and competent, she’s less scary than the owner who has the ultimate power, is more enigmatic, and is known as fantastic at his craft but would be hopeless on the business side without the manager, but who is still ultimately involved.
So. Laurie is dominant. Inexorable. Respected by me. Beyond unpredictable and, hello, now we know all this time she was at least some of the time in bouts of crazy. She has great power over my life. For almost 2 years she’s threatened to leave, take the kids and move across the country, leave and stick me with the kids, kill herself, throw me out, and I will for at least another 16 years have no choice but to deal with her to some degree, whoever has the kids primarily. She’s intense. She’s so “don’t fuck with me” intense that I almost hung up the phone without saying anything based on her tone when she answered it the first time I called. She made the decisions from day one, including the notion that this was definitely love and her rejection of the idea of marriage for her be damned, we’d get married.
And I love her.
That is part of the problem I had completely overlooked. I’d talked myself into believing I’d fallen way out of love, maybe was never in it, just as she claims I wasn’t.
It’s been her reformed and mostly pleasant behavior that brought that home. It’s been the times when it’s seemed like what the hell are we thinking, and the times we’ve come way to close to a spontaneous hug. The fear just didn’t fit until I reluctantly realized that’s in the mix. It’s not even so much a root of the fear as it is a root reason why anything she says goes. I do and do for her. I still cater to her in a lot of ways. I miss that I can’t discuss this with the counselor, but she probably could have told me this was the case and would be as pleased I realized it as she was that I decided beyond any doubt that I would never take her back, period. And that was something that made me say WTF to myself, why act so nice.
Yet I do hate her on some level and don’t want to be nice! That’s where passive aggressive behavior comes from for sure.
It’s funny. It’s almost as if she’s such a force that she needs both me and Dan. She’s been obsessed and angsting over the benefits stuff, but until that, and in snippets still, I’m the other one she talk talk talks to about work and the kids and the treatment and stuff she reads or watches or thinks. It sometimes bugs me we’re that close and friendly, given everything and the fact I need her to fit into the “damn ex” box. (Not to be confused with the damn Xbox.)
There was a time five weeks ago when she got a sudden promotion and schedule change that conflicted with my piddly shift at the job I inexplicably love, and that makes me feel good about myself and features managers I respect and don’t especially fear or find hard to talk to. (Part of that is age and maturity and an outlook similar to theirs, part of it’s the straightforward nature of the task, part of it’s my competence that I have no doubts about internally.) I would normally be there almost an hour longer on the 4 days a week affected. I was sure I would have to quit or be fired for not fulfilling the availability requirement, and they never did officially sanction it, but they have allowed me to leave early and arranged things around me. They like me. They really really like me. At the time I was anticipating the possible promotion, not realizing it’d be so immediate that she’d not get the matching raise for a month and have less money because she’s covering my shortfall, I considered the option of moving out as my response, rather than lose the job that is my reality anchor. That I didn’t lose it has, I think, made me more fearless and more open with people there, like a near death experience.
I’d had it figured that I could keep the part time job as a base. In my other time, freed from babysitting duty, I could job hunt, build web sites and develop them toward a revenue stream in my own name, be able to accept freelance work and seek it more actively, and maybe take a second or third “lowly” job of some kind. Basically have a life again. How funny is it that I so measure my worth by my employment (which is bad, considering what my employment has been!) and yet ended up being SAHD?
Anyway, after the 5 and maybe part of a 6th week, the idea was she would have a schedule that would start 1 hour later or 3 hours later and possibly be off entirely one of my work days. Starting an hour later technically violates my availability requirement, but it’s more along the lines of requests they normally get and live with. Well, no. They don’t normally live with them. They’ve made a big exception for me, partly due to the work I primarily do. And the fact I can do a variety of tasks to fill in for people. They’ve ditched people who’ve had to leave every day almost an hour later than me. It turns out they’re stuck with a computerized scheduling system and rotations and earlier starts than expected. Some days will be the same or just half an hour later. Some will be an hour later, and some 3 hours later. Sometimes there will be a Sunday shifts, sometimes not. And this week coming up they have decided to ignore the schedule and have everyone come in the early time and stay as late as needed. Now I am going to have to jerk work around with a some days super early, some days early, some days fine, and hey it’ll change! I’ll have to get a schedule from her in order to know.
That has me wondering, will they really put up with it? Probably, but I am not happy.
Meanwhile, she’s hot to have one of us move again. To help qualify for benefits and because she’s sick of me. Her notion of having me go is that I would come here each day and babysit as if nothing had changed! Except… no.
When I thought of moving as her promotion was pending, I realized I needed time to prepare, really, if I wanted to move my stuff really. If you thought you might move, you’d shed anything extraneous, de-packrat, organize and segregate your things, make it easy to pack and go. Then I realized that’s exactly the description of what she’s been doing for months. While burying my room in so much stuff I may never get to the bottom of it. Which scared me, because I’d rather be the one to “shake things up” by leaving. I hate this place and want to move. Even if I have the kids and she’s gone, I want to move. She likes it far better than I do.
People have wondered about leaving her the kids when she has trouble sometimes having them for an hour without “backup.” In which backup means I deal while she closes her door and hangs out in peace. Yeah, I worry too. Part of it is she’s just so unused to it and feels incompetent to take care of them and respond to what they want or need. Part of it is the ever present part of her that never wanted to have kids.
Worst case, she’ll adapt enough and I’ll lose the chance for custody if only out of spite or precedent. But it may be worth it for her to prove to herself she doesn’t want them, not full time, once and for all. I’m also not sure it’d be a bad thing to make the kids less absurdly daddy-centric. That’s partly her doing from the outset. There is nothing, nothing that I could be doing that is too important to come change this diaper. Or whatever. Paying work. Job hunting. Trying to leave for somewhere. Cooking. She’s always miffed if I’m truly occupied in a way that leaves her stuck with parent duty. She could use a break from the break. I could use a break from the abuse, and won’t get it otherwise. Even if I did come here to babysit during her work hours, that would be a reduction for me. She’d have to remember that she has kids at 3 AM too. Not just at 5 PM mommy’s home! Hi kids! Now out of my room! time.
Where was I? Contemplating the moving thing again, after her declaring one of us needs to go, and sounding too suspiciously like she might do it. Though she’s gonna get benefits better if she stays along with the kids and I don’t have a place here. I dunno. The logistics are hard. I’d prefer to stay local and keep the job I have now at least until I have something solid full time landed. One seems to have gotten away that came up last week. Would have paid enough to cover babysitting and left me approximately as well off as she is. Either we could have done well continuing to share the place, or she could have left and maybe contributed the online income or official support to the cause to make it fly. Because 50k less babysitting is not enough to support me and the kids on here. It is tempting, the idea of moving or crashing temporarily out of the state, but unless I moved to a job or promptly went and got something anything I’d be really screwed.
Rooms seem to run just under what I earn part time. Which is funny, since it’s not that much more for some of the local apartments, plus utilities. Logistics of my STUFF are kind of tough, there’s gonna be so much even if I purge some first and leave huge amounts behind. She’s excited by the idea of moving and starting from scratch getting furniture and household stuff that is hers. Which is funny, because I am too, and figured most of that kind of stuff was a sacrifice to the cause of wherever the kids are and learning my lesson.
Speaking of, I seriously can’t imagine ever letting myself get sucked in like this again. Something I was looking at the other day, where I noted a picture of my brother’s kids when they were young made me think of our kids who would arrive - before we met in person, made her say she should have noticed stuff like that seemed creepy at the time. I laughed and told her I’d been thinking similarly, but didn’t elaborate. I shudder, looking at the steady stream of cards and notes she mailed, sounding so contrivedly mushy. It feels now like fishing tackle, reeling me in.
I keep diverting.
I agree with her that a total change of paradigm would be good. I specialize in letting myself get to the breaking point, then doing just that. Well, sometimes abruptly, other times planned and only seeming abruptly to other people. Like the time I took a semester off from college and drove 1575 miles to stay with a friend for what turns out only to be 6 weeks, working a job in another state during that time. It was a total shock to my father and stepmother. She’d forbidden me, age 25 (the counselor was astonished when I told her about this), to help my friend move, driving there with him and taking a $99 flight home. Driving there months later was my reaction.
People are used to stability from me. Steady. Predictable, if odd. Always there to boss around or take advantage of. But push me and that might not remain the case.
On that note, really have to get to bed. I wasn’t allowed to nap in the morning. Heh. She was horrified I would consider doing such a thing while I was responsible for the kids. Wasn’t sleepy by then anyway, but needed rest, which ended up bing in my chair, reading, since laying down and reading was too much like a nap. It’s now 3 hours later than when I could have gone to sleep, and about 7 hours from when I can expect kids to wake me.