I am mostly crying

Honestly, I think I'd rather be in desperate financial straits on my own.  That wasn't how I felt before this past weekend.  I thought that Barry was helping: looking for bargains, making dinner, even running to food pantries (which is how bad our situation is).  But now I have to wonder how much money he was siphoning off for things we can't afford:  cigarettes, chips, soda.  Maybe our finances aren't even that bad; maybe he's just been misspending too much money.  But it's exhausting to have to police him on top of everything else I do.  Plus, I don't really trust that he's doing that much as far as job hunting.  First and foremost, he absolutely needs to be working, whether or not I leave or kick him out.

At least on my own, I would know exactly who was handling money well or fucking it up.  I would not have to discover that someone who was allegedly helping me was actually doing harm.  I felt a lot of love in pitching in together in this very bad situation, and absolutely heartbroken that he was actually working against me.  And it's not just the cigarettes or the money or the lying:  it's also that I'm the one who would get to nurse him through emphysema or lung cancer.  It's spending money we don't have on something very harmful.  I quit a cigarette habit twice as bad as his -- I smoked twice as much -- and it's been six years.  I'm not asking for something I wouldn't and didn't do myself.

I was really, finally feeling settled into this marriage, feeling a lot of love and appreciation despite a lot of lacks and problems (like no sex for many years), but now I really want out.  I want to be responsible for myself, period.

Of course, the big problem here is that there's no way to separate.  We have one reasonably priced apartment and one job.  I'll be trying to set aside money to move, although it's really not my preference, but he has no income and can't really stay alone or move.  (I'm not close to being that mean.)  So we're stuck together for the time being, which is really awkward.  I might even consider staying together in the apartment if he gets a job, and has some of his own fucking money to waste.

Barry is in denial.  He met me at the subway yesterday, which he had been doing some in better times, and I asked, "What are you doing here?"  He said, "I came to meet you.  What's wrong?"  I said, "I'm trying to decide whether or not I can continue to live under the same roof with you."  So he turned and walked home, then got into bed.  Didn't get up to make dinner or anything else.  He takes to bed when there's something he doesn't want to deal with.

I guess there's not much else to say at this point.  I'm going to Jannah's for a weekend a week from tomorrow.  All of these discussions with St. Ann's people are depressing me dreadfully.  Some of them want to meet.  But as much as they share the problems they had at the school and their feelings of worthlessness, they're all achieving now and I'm not.  These are not friends I want.  I don't need any help feeling bad about myself.  And I really wish they would all stop asking if I still write poetry.  Considering the fact that Emmett Jarrett, the teacher who edited the literary magazine, only saw fit to publish one of my poems in all those years (and it wasn't even one I considered one of my best), I can't imagine how these people identify me as someone who wrote poetry.  Everyone wrote poetry at that school, and a lot of them still do.  It's been many years since I even tried...in the early 90s, I may have tried my hand at some song lyrics, but that went nowhere.

a message to my St. Ann's friends

This was sent by personal message to a group of 26 members of the St. Ann's Faculty/Alumni group of Facebook, in response to a long message by Dave Samuels:

Dear David and friends,

David, I appreciate your honesty and clarity. My feelings about Stanley and about St. Ann's as an institution were also very mixed. I became quite troubled after about age nine, when my parents divorced just before the great divorce boom; none of my other friends had divorced parents, and I was lonely and confused. Stanley was not sensitive to this, was not supportive of my being in therapy. There was relief, and even joy, in my classes and with my fellow students, but I continued to feel quite alienated and unnoticed by the institution. I was also someone from what seemed a more average family than many of my peers -- we lived in the Heights, but in a modest rental. I was on half scholarship, and my parents struggled financially.

When I started to cut classes and neglect schoolwork, no one noticed or acted on it. No private or family conferences with Stanley were called. I got away with way too much. I did not fulfill the requirements of some classes and was passed anyway.

Toward the end of high school, the institution and particularly Stanley seemed so hell-bent on getting us all into prestigious schools that no one noticed that I didn't have the skills. I managed to escape St. Ann's without ever writing a term paper. I had no study or research discipline. I was admitted to Oberlin, Wesleyan, and Vassar, but instead accepted admission at my "backup" state school. This was because I was 16, had no major in mind, and my mother was very concerned because my family could pay almost nothing toward college and she was worried about the loans I would have to carry. Out of our graduating class of 68, I was one of two who did not attend a private college (and the other had only been admitted to a state school -- she may have been more neglected than I was). Stanley's response to this was to refer to my mother as "an hysterical woman" and then stop talking to me for three months. I always felt like a failure and an underachiever after that, which is basically why none of you saw or heard from me for 35 years.

There is one more thing I've ached to write about, but could not share in our online group as someone involved belongs on Facebook and I believe is in our faculty/alumni group. When I was in art class one day, and left my purse on the bookcase where we all left our books, a change purse was taken from it, which contained a few dollars, and a ring and a pair of earrings I had left in it. I was about twelve. I had seen a few girls standing by that bookcase, and a few days later, I saw one of them brazenly wearing my earrings at school. I was terrified. At the time, I was focused on the fact that someone had done something wrong to me, but in truth, I felt unsafe and terrified. I was not a confrontational person, and I suppose that was a family trait, as my mother suggested that I take the issue to Stanley. I did, and again focused on the fact that I wanted my property returned (the earrings were not costly but they were one-of-a-kind, purchase by me from the Summa Gallery downstairs). He did not seem to understand that I felt unsafe, and sent me away with a vague promise to talk to the girl in question. A month later, I went to see him again, asking if he had spoken to her, and he had not. The subject was never broached again. He never suggested that I speak to her myself, or that my mother should call hers. I have my own ideas as to why Stanley would not confront or punish this girl, but that isn't the point. He did not restore my sense of safety and he permitted the unjust and unfair action to stand without any consequences. He did not do the right thing.

I had some teachers who changed my life, and I now have all of you: blessings beyond blessing. This would not have been the case without Stanley. But Stanley also failed to support me when I had emotional problems, neglected my academic problems, did not provide justice when I was wrong, and behaved childishly when I did not choose the college he wanted me to attend. Stanley was a mixed blessing.

Love to you all,

Jenn

the question of congestion, and goodbye to Stanley

I'm home (8:41 AM) and will most probably be here all day.  I have something that is either a bad cold or the worst possible allergies, but allergy mes are not helping and it's been getting worse since Monday,  I can't stop coughing, sneezing, or blowing my nose.  I've e-mailed my intern and hope she can man the ship today; I can access office email at home, but I'm waiting to hear from Sarah.  I hope she checks e-mail before she goes to work (she usually starts at 10:00).

And I must say -- coming home last night was extra-miserable.  It rained, but since this was not in the forecast, I had no umbrella.  So I got drenched between work and the subway, and then got on one of those extra-freezingly-air-conditioned trains.  So I shivered, coughed, sneezed, and blew my nose the whole way home.  Still, I did finish that Preston/Childs books, and started The Strain by Gullermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan.  (Now Blogger feels like doing italics -- not bad.  Couldn't get a bold or underline to save my life some days back, but of course my text wasn't posting, so it didn't make much difference.)  I'll let you know if it's any good.  I may go back to Preston/Childs after that.

I went to Saint Ann's School for ten years, second grade through the end of high school, which was a school for gifted children -- fairly dysfunctional back then, better now.  It is in fact a highly regarded private (not religious) school at this time.  When I started in 1965, it had 63 students and was very experimental.  (The school was housed in the undercroft of St. Ann's Church for its first couple of years, which is why it has a religious-school sounding name.  You can't imagine how many times during my life I've had to explain that -- although these days, at least in NYC, the school is well-known enough that people actually know what it is.)

Over the past 20 years, until five years or so ago, when I mentioned Saint Ann's to parent-age New Yorkers, they say something like, "oh, with that guy..."  "That guy" was founder and headmaster Stanley Bosworth, who died three days ago.  The linked article pretty much says it all.  Stanley was brilliant and maddening and inappropriate.  He never hit on me, before or after school, but Beth Bosworth, "wife number three" as he referred to her in the article, was in my graduating class. Ewww!  To me, he was warm, difficult, and confusing.  And he pissed me off a few times.  But the bottom line is that he created a really amazing school, where I had some amazing teachers and amazing peers.  I was a bit of a social misfit when I was there, but have since become reacquainted with a lot of former alumni via Facebook, and I love almost all of them.  And just for that, if nothing else, I must be ever-grateful to Stanley.  As much as we in the Facebook St. Ann's Alumni and Faculty have bashed him and told bad-Stanley stories, there's a lot of grief there today.