kid-love: Jeffrey

I never need to think "Jeffrey who?" because there was always and ever will be only one Jeffrey.  I sometimes use the shorthand "childhood sweetheart," but that's not really accurate.  We weren't in kid-love.  It was a little more complicated.  We were eight or nine when we met (he's a month older) and saw each other every day between Memorial Day and Labor Day for five or six summers, and even now and then in-between.  Our families spent the summer in a small bungalow colony, 30 families, and pretty much all of the kids interacted with all the other kids.  There were certain age groupings, and some loose, gentle cliques; for instance, I hung around most with the kids of the five or six couples closest to my parents.  (My parents' clique was far and away the smartest and funniest, and they actually referred to themselves as "the In Group."  It was the mid-late sixties, but, you know:  )

So Jeffrey was part of all of this; his parents were one of several couples who spent time with "the In Group" but weren't really of it...or maybe you'd say they were secondary members.  And so Jeffrey and his brothers were pretty mainstream kidgroup players.  He and I had one of those hate-you things, classic boy-girl kid stuff, and always made fun of each other and teased and said mean things.  Boys and girls did play together, especially games that required a lot of players.  And these were really bonafide running-around-outdoors games like tag, kick the can, and hitting tennis balls off the handball court wall.  But that boy-against-girl thing was always there -- not that we played games in same-sex teams, but there were always squabbles that came down to "boys are SO stupid!"

Jeffrey and I were a particular pair in the boy-hate-girl-hate-boy facet of the kid social scene, and it was like that for years.  And then, of course, it dawned on both of us.  Things changed.  We used to do a little off-to-see-the-Wizard routine that was a thinly veiled excuse to hold hands.  We wrote a few letters in-between summers one year.  (He lived in Manhattan and I lived in Brooklyn, but at that age, unless our parents were having some kind of kids-included get-together, we simply didn't see each other between summers.)  We were sometimes shy with each other but it was clear to us that we shared a secret.  That transition was a tremendously awkward thing, maybe because the connection between us was so powerful and so weighty.  I've heard adults say, "I fell in love with my best friend."  I supposed it was something like that, except we didn't really know that kind of love when we were friends, it was an early friendship, and it was first love.

Did it get a little dim between summers, and did I also "like" boys at school?  Of course. But the summers began to mesh with my other life when I went to his bar mitzvah.  There was the business of dressing up, of picking the best gift I could think of (even then, I was obsessed with giving the perfect gift), of consciously looking forward to seeing him.  I remember how much he loved the gift (double live Judy Collins album, y'all), and what I wore (orange and white dress, orange tights -- early 1970's, y'all).  And even though there was still a lot of awkwardness and shyness, and not yet any kissing, we smiled at each other a lot and stole glances and we knew what was what.

About six months later, his family moved to Florida.

There is more to say about Jeffrey, I suppose...I've seen him three times since then and the last time was about 30 years ago.  We always had a very special feeling for each other, but never got to, ahem, express it physically.  I'm been web-searching him for years, but there are many, many Jeffrey Solomons out there who are not my Jeffrey Solomon.

Why he is particularly on my mind right now is that I dreamed about him a couple of nights ago.  I dream about Jeffrey maybe once a year, and he's always so real in the dream, so very much himself, his face precisely as I remember it, and the feeling is always the same, too.  I'm always wondering about Jeffrey, wondering how he is.

work, play, all the rest

Work:  very hectic.  Classes started this past Monday; suddenly everyone's around, and there's always something for me to do.  Lots. The fall intern I'd hired during the summer punked out on me at the last minute, so I didn't have one before the start of the term.  We weren't getting much yield from internships.com, so I had the idea of e-mailing half-a-dozen psychology departments at good local colleges  I got around 50 applications, and I believe it has only been circulated in two schools so far (Hunter and Baruch). 

Then I cleared the decks and interviewed four on Thursday and three yesterday and I have one more on Monday morning.  I'm looking for two.  There's one I'm absolutely going to ask.  The problem is that two other really good ones have the exact same times available, and I'm trying to split it up a little because three people in my tiny office is a lot; there are only two computers, and there isn't necessarily non-computer work every day.  There's one prospect who does have opposite days available, but I don't want to choose him just for that.  There's someone I like a couple of notches better.  I just have to decide if the guy with the good schedule is really who I want. The more coverage I have, the more other stuff I can do. 

I'm going to a couple of workshops on fundraising topics, which are both half-day affairs, and I'd like to at least have a warm body in the office.  I'm sometimes away from my desk to attend a meeting; I take minutes for the Board and the Executive Committee, and Fundraising has been asking me to attend their meetings.  I'm not sure why I keep having ideas they love; I've really never been involved with fundraising or development.  I think it's a mix of my education administration experience and my publicity experience, with a little writing skill thrown in.  I recently made a suggestion that we call our graduates "alumni" instead, which has a connotation of continued connection rather than here-and-gone.  Everyone went crazy for it.  A few months ago, I mentioned scholarships.  Who at a school hasn't thought of scholarships?

Play:  not much play, but I have a little time to kick back this weekend.  I just got paid on Thursday and I'm already stressed about money, but I'm putting it somewhat aside.  There's just not that much that can be done.  So I've been doing some of the things I like.  I have a lot of things I enjoy online:  my blog reader (I subscribe to quite a few blogs), a few games at Pogo.com, watching Netflix.  Facebook.  Tonight I ended up spending a couple of hours on YouTube; I was looking at something Barry had linked to from Facebook, and before I knew it, I was deep into My Favorites and also finding some new stuff.  I've posted quite a few of My Favorites here.  Some of them I love to watch over and over.  I actually posted three to Facebook, or I tried...Facebook sometimes eats my posts.  I know that one got up there:  Joe Flood singing "Miss Fabulous."  What?  you don't remember that one?  Well, then here it is again:

I was feeling very acoustic tonight.  Kind of mellow, although the Joe Flood song does totally rock, even on fiddle and bass.  Found a couple of new videos I liked a lot, although my favorite one wouldn't do anything for anyone who isn't crazy about old-timey/bluegrass music and familiar with the late lamented Wretched Refuse String Band.  It had one of their old recordings with a photo montage in tribute to the late lamented Richie Shulberg (aka Citzen Kafka), and some of the old band photos included one of my old sweethearts, who played with the band in the 70s.  Big sigh.

I'm not sure I really have that much to say tonight, but I wanted to slap something up here.  I hate to go too long without posting.  No earworms lately, no earthshattering events, nothing too outrageous. 

There was recently some serious flooding, in the wake of the pseudo-hurricane, in my old stomping ground of Binghamton, NY, which is unlucky enough to be at the conjunction of two rivers (Chenango and Susquehanna).  Apparently the nearby town of Owego was particularly hard hit, and I know someone who lived there.  I haven't been in touch with him for about eleven years, and I called and left a voice mail about a week ago.  Haven't heard from him yet, which is a little worrying, but I imagine it's very hectic all around there.  I'd just like to know that he and his family are all right.

I may have mentioned that I'm back in therapy.  Actually, I guess you'd call it analysis.  Back in the day, when I worked at another analytic clinic, it wasn't considered analysis unless you went three times a week.  Now, our students are required to do part of their analysis at twice a week, part at once.  So even though I'm going only once, I'm seeing someone analytic and I'm on the couch, so there you go.  I guess I'm about a month in now, and it feels good.  It's good to be able to spill things out and have someone look at them with me.  I guess when it gets hard, it's less pleasant, although I've already done a fair share of crying. 

I talked some about V., about the fact that I still do think of him and miss his friendship, or the illusion of friendship. My analyst thought it was not out of line not to be over it yet.  Three years, I guess, isn't that long to get over someone who was in your life for over 30 years.  Also, there was a time where I was hugely wrapped up and intertwined with his friends, family, fans...I was connected to a lot of people through and around him.  I'm only in touch with a few of them anymore.  There was something unpleasantly obsessive about the whole thing at times, but sometimes I enjoyed the large "family" that extended out to the west coast and back.

NOW I remember what I wanted to write about:  a certain prejudice.  I'm one of those violently liberal people who can't stand prejudice, based on race and especially based on religion.  I think I disappointed a close friend by refusing to hate all Palestinians and all Muslims.  I eye people very closely when I hear anything that smacks of bigotry.  But I realized today that I do have a problem with one particular group of people, and that's the Russians who live in the US, particularly here in Brooklyn.

We lived in Brighton Beach for about seven months, and when we moved there, I was really excited to move to the big beautiful apartment, to be so close to the boardwalk and ocean, and to have the opportunity to be around a different culture; I even thought that perhaps I would learn some Russian.  Uh-uh.  I cannot describe how insular the Russians who live there are, and how extremely rude and unpleasant they are to non-Russians.  I did not encounter a single person of whom that was not true.  I don't even remember being able to have any conversation at all with any Russian person there, not a chat in a grocery store or subway station, nothing.  In fact, in the stores, we could not get waited on until every single Russian person was waited on, even the ones who came in after we did.  It was as if we were living in a different country, and were entirely unwelcome.  And last summer, I suffered a very bad haircut at the hands of a Russian haircutter who was very brusque and curt and who did not give me what I asked for.

It came to mind today because Barry and I went to an an optometrist today to get po' people glasses (we can each get a free pair of glasses through Medicaid, which we only have until the end of the month), and it was very crowded, we had to wait an hour past our appointment time to be seen, and I believe that every other person there, customer, staff, and medical, were Russian.  No one was nasty to us, but just spending over two hours listening to Russian and English with heavy Russian accents really affected me.  I got cranky and didn't know why.  I guess I have to say, honestly, that I do not like Russians.

Then again, a friend of a friend was saying, a few months ago, how much she hates Canadians.  Canadians?  It seems her job requires her to deal with a lot of Canadians, a lot of her company's clients are based there, and she found all of them rude and conceited.  I guess, as much as you may not want to have that kind of opinion of a large group of people, your experience informs that kind of thing.  I actually rather liked Russian people before moving to Brighton; there were quite a few living in the apartment building where we'd lived in Midwood, and some of them were really nice.  Even the ones who didn't speak much or any English smiled and were friendly.  I guess Brighton just ruined it for me.

There's a new reality show on called Russian Dolls:  half a dozen rich tacky Russian girls in Brighton.  I laugh my ass off.  They're about as stupid and obnoxious as the Jersey Housewives, except they dress and groom in even worse taste.  THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE.  There's also a DirecTV commercial with a nouveau riche Russian guy that I find fairly hilarious -- although I also think it's kind of stereotyped and in bad taste. Go fig:

I'm a fool for that tiny giraffe, too.  

Well, I think it's time to watch a movie I downloaded today.  It's not, ahem, generally available for home viewing yet (if you get my drift), and I hope it's a good copy. 

things that dance on my head

Money (lack thereof) is dancing on my head, and depression is dancing on my head, and I'm sure they're in some way related.  I keep ending up in these situations a week or a week and a half before payday where I have $100 to last 10 days, or $45 to last a week, and none of it is due to carelessness.  We just don't have enough coming in.  So the least little pressure in any part of my life makes me cry -- or sometimes it doesn't have to be pressure.  I cry when I leave home in the morning, and I cry when I get home at night.  I cry at work.

Work is fine but crazy-busy coming up to the first day of class (Monday), and my fall intern punked out on me, isn't coming.  But I'm also worrying about what kind of health insurance they'll be able to provide, since the clock is ticking on our Medicaid (we only have it until September 30).  Any kind of co-pay is simply going to murder us.  Barry is already going to food pantries a few times a month.

Then again, I sometimes stop eating almost entirely when things get like this.  My appetite just vanishes, although I do eat well maybe once every couple of days.

I saw the GYN last night (boys, you may want to stop reading here), hoping to finally get hormone replacement therapy to help my lichen schlerosis, among other things.  Girls who have joined since I last wrote about this (boys, I repeat:  you really don't want to read this) is a condition frequently found in post-menopausal women when the vaginal skin gets dry and thin, there is often pain and bleeding, and the skin turns whitish (the "lichen" part).  This is now the fourth GYN I've seen in this practice (mostly because of scheduling, not because any of them was bad).  I've had one cream that didn't do anything, another that helped symptoms, and the last doctor recommended hormone replacement therapy.  HRT appealed to me a lot because I figured it would either help or slow things like dry skin and thinning hair.  But my regular doctor said that my liver enzyme counts were high and he didn't want me to start the drug.  So I lost ten pounds, took another blood test, and was pronounced good to go.  (My liver enzymes tend to go up when my weight is high.)  So the doctor last night gave me a prescription for the HRT -- YAY!  He did, however, say, "They told you that you shouldn't be eating tomatoes or spicy foods, right?"  no, none of the other three doctors had told me that.  Suck-o.  Just when the good tomatoes are out, too.  There's another fine excuse to cry.  And believe me, I'll be crying a lot of Medicaid won't cover the HRT.

I'm having dinner with Robin tomorrow night -- I tried to cancel earlier in the week because I didn't have the money, but she said she'd pick up the tab.  I don't have money to eat out.  I don't have money to buy The Herbal Remedy, which I think I'm giving up anyway -- or at least cutting down to weekends only.

Even though Barry does quite a lot around the house, I'd gladly take on half of those chores if he got a job.  I'm really sick of him not bringing any money in.  It puts a huge burden on me, and I always have to be the bad guy, saying he can't buy soda, or chips, or ice cream.  He still doesn't get the food-isn't-entertainment thing.  Food is to sustain you, if you can get it.  We can get enough food to live, but not for fun.

more disasters, old grief

There was a hurricane yesterday, or most of a hurricane.  Hurricane Irene was actually Tropical Storm Irene by the time it made landfall here, and though it actually did make landfall in New York City, damage and power outages were minimal.  I think I did myself more damage worrying about it on Friday.  Even though we're relatively close to the water, we weren't one of the "low-lying area" that had to evacuate.

Amazingly, mass transit was back up again today, pretty much 100%.  The MTA was incredibly smart and well-organized for this one.  They closed up shop about eight hours before they expected trouble (apparently, 39 mph wind speed is their cutoff), and stored the trains and buses in places unlikely to flood.  I live about one subway stop from one of the major subway yards, and it got totally flooded, but the trains weren't there.  The MTA wasn't able to restart entirely for days after the blizzard last December.

Otherwise, things are pretty much status quo.  My brother actually called yesterday and for the first time in a couple of years, we didn't discuss That Bad Thing, which was a whole lot more pleasant.  Of course, the occasion for the call, besides the storm, was That Other Bad Thing, the one where my mother died 30 years ago this month at age 45.  Her birthday is also in August, so August has just become The Month of Feeling Mildly Shitty.  Not much in the way of big crying fits, possibly because we don't really do any family get-togethers or (ptui! ptui!) cemetery visits. 

Those "ptui!s" are spitting noises, because I REALLY hate cemetery visits.  To me, they're very morbid, and seem like invitations to get upset.  To me, they're something like religious services:  services put you in a spiritual mood, but you don't have to attend to be spiritual.  Cemetery visits put you in a mourning mood, but you can mourn anywhere and in your own way.  One of the really bad memories I have of the period right after my mother died, maybe at the services or the cemetery, was overhearing friends and relatives talking about how upset I was and how much I was crying, in a way that made me feel like my outward mourning was being judged.  I've always considered it something kind of private.

I'm about the opposite of my aunt (who I did not call this month, although my brother did), who used to drive out to the cemetery and pick out the weeds around the headstones, bring water and paper towels to clean the lettering incised in the stones, etc.  (My mother, stepfather, and my mother's parents are all buried in one plot together.)  I just think it's fetishy to get so involved in the location of a dead body, even if the location is considered something of a memorial.  I have my own ways to remember, and my own places, and my own times to grieve.

It's true that death anniversaries hit me a little harder the first few years after the death, I suppose because it's still so fresh.  The five-year anniversary of my mother's death clobbered me so hard that it landed me in AA at the end of August.  Wednesday will be 25 years since I drank or did coke.  I also didn't go near herb for about a dozen years but did eventually start that again, so orthodox AAers or NAers wouldn't consider me clean or sober.  Still, I haven't had a drink in 25 years, or any coke, which was a VERY severe problem.

I recently ran into an old program friend of mine who had also been a co-worker at NYU.  She was something of an old-timer when I cleaned up, but apparently had problems a couple of years ago.  She said, "I've been around The Rooms for 36 years, but I'm sober for two."  I'd put it that way if I were still around "The Rooms."  I stopped going at around nine years.  But I went constantly for my first four or five years, anywhere from once to four times a day, and did tons of service (setting up, chairing meetings, speaking, sponsoring).

I have to say that I really did not make lifelong friends in AA.  Some friendships simply did not last because I stopped going; there are some people in the fellowship who do not care for those of us who have fallen away, and some who won't have anything to do with people who are not sober in AA, period (that means not even people who aren't alcoholics). 

I guess I mostly had AA friends who were good for my recovery during those early years.  On the other hand, recovering addicts share a lot of similar emotional problems, so a lot of these relationships had difficulties or endpoints.  The good end of socializing in AA was having coffee with groups of people after meetings.  I used to go to a double meeting (one after the other, same room) on Saturday nights, and then coffee with a big bunch of people, and that took care of the I-need-to-have-fun-on-Saturday-night urges.  But sober dances and sober dating were horrible.  You cannot possibly imagine anything as awkward as a sober dance, those alleged substitutes for going clubbing.  And sober dating mostly seemed a parade of people who changed their minds with the breeze -- like a guy who stared at me at meetings for sixth months and panicked on the first simple-ass dinner date.  There was one who liked me until he realized I was actually available, and then went back to mooning over a tall, blonde married woman in our group. 

I did meet one fairly amazing man very soon in my recovery; we had a fling fairly early, and seemed very close to getting together right before I met Barry.  The guy and I drifted apart after I got married.  In truth, he had major commitment problems and it would likely have ended badly.

And I met one very wonderful man, maybe one of the best I've ever met.  It took about four and a half months for us to properly notice each other -- well, maybe for me to properly notice him.  Unfortunately, I was rather dazzled by his better-looking friend, who treated me like shit.  But then I really noticed Joe, and realized he'd been crazy about me from the start...and before we could even go on a first real date, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died a little over four months later.  It just doesn't get much more tragic than that.  On top of that, since our relationship wasn't known by more than a few close friends, the two or three mean old maiden aunts who were his final caretakers did not offer me (or any other close AA friends) any keepsakes, nor did they invite us to join them after the funeral.  In fact, those nasty aunts tried to keep me and Joe's other friends away from him when he was dying.  One or more of them had decided that the best they could do for him was permit him to die calmly, and that having his friends around would disrupt his peacefulness.  They moved him to a hospital in Red Bank, NJ, and were clearly not pleased when I continued to show up there, with or without other friends.  They said anti-Semitic things.  (They were very old-school Irish, what I believe is called "Lace-Curtain Irish.")  They wouldn't stay in touch by phone, either before or after his death.  I guess they had good intentions, but they were so unkind to me.  And every time I visited, no matter how out-of-it Joe was, there was always at least one little window where he recognized me and knew I was there, which made it all worthwhile.  He'd even do funny shit which I'm convinced he knew he was doing, because I think he found his aunts somewhat of a pain -- the last time I was there, he kept yelling "What's THIS?" and grabbing my tit.

Anyway, who knows what might have been.  Joe was gone, his family was gone, and even our mutual friends vanished pretty quickly.  A few of us went out for coffee after the funeral, and one said to me, "You can't dwell on this forever," meaning that I should already be past it, an hour after burying him.  Another was the better-looking friend, who stayed glued to the woman he had dumped me for and basically ignored Joe the last couple of months.  (I understand that it's hard to see an old friend die, but that's no excuse to be an asshole.  Joe asked for Larry a lot, and Larry was nowhere to be found.)

I also seem to remember a lot of AA people looking rather impatient when I shared about "my friend" who was dying, who died, who had died.  My allegedly "near and dear" didn't stand by me too well.  I know these things make people uncomfortable -- hell, being in hospitals makes me uncomfortable.  But when I have to, I go to hospitals, I go to funerals, I deal with it.  A lot of people in AA seemed to stayed cocooned and whining.  That wasn't for me.

earthquake and other disasters, and some plans

Somehow, I missed the earthquake yesterday.  I must have been preoccupied with something at work.  Barry said things shook at home and the cats freaked out.

But I may not miss out on disaster entirely, since there's supposed to be a big frigging hurricane messing with the entire east coast all weekend.  It would have to be on the weekend I'm supposed to go to Jannah's and finally go out on her boat!

Since I'm getting somewhat involved with development and fundraising on the job, I think I'm finally going to get myself schooled in grant writing.  This is something I've wanted to do for eons.  If it's writing, I've got the chops, and I know that it's something you can do freelance and make some loot.  I don't know if I'll need to take a class or classes, or if I can just school myself, but if it's classes, maybe my job will pick up the tab.  I would mostly be using it for PPSC.

Amazon Associates seems to be working again, and is even showing the "best seller" that I was going to plug in my last post.  But it was a bit of a lightweight read.  I'm now on to another Childs/Preston, so that's today's plug.

I think I forgot to mention how extremely happy I am that the West Memphis 3 were finally freed.  In fact, there's a very good book about them, too.  The WM3 case involved the murder of three young boys, a totally botched police investigation, and the arrest and conviction of three teenagers who liked to wear black tee shirts and listen to Metallica -- they were of course accused of being Satanists, etc.  I think they served something like 18 years, and are now grown men.  There was also an excellent documentary, which I think is actually how I first heard about the case.  It was a dreadful business, and at least it's been made as right as is possible, since those 18 years are forever lost to those young men.

The Big Picture

Things with Barry pretty much righted themselves after about a week, although I'm still keeping him on a very tight leash with money.

The Big Picture is this:  one, my depression and anxiety are not being properly controlled.  I need to see a new psychiatrist ASAP.  I am still taking the lamotrigine (generic Lamictal), but a low dose, 125 mg a day.  (The bad psychiatrist had had me on 400, up from 200.)  I lowered my own dose because after my meltdown and after reading up on the drug a little more thoroughly, I decided that it's a nasty thing to have in my body and I only wanted to take a minimal amount until my med could be switched.  But Barry, who does my doctor research because he has the time, has had trouble finding a network psychiatrist who's taking new patients and who has hours outside of 9-5.  At this point, I told him any hour will work for me -- I just need to see someone.

The second point of The Big Picture is that I worry about money every waking hour.  I used to tell one of my therapists that I was bad with money, and he always said the same thing:  "No, you just don't earn enough."  It took me a long time to understand this.  The point was not to be perfect with money -- the point was to have enough that if you weren't perfect, it wouldn't be a disaster.  I'm not earning close to enough.  Even during a month without a financial catastrophe like having to replace a computer, we don't have enough money.  It doesn't help that our monthly nut just went up $200 -- $100 for my therapy, and $100 for my carfare (the Back-to-Work job retention program paid my carfare for 90 days).  There is absolutely nothing coming in except my salary, and even though I now consider myself good with money (WAY better than I used to be), there just plain isn't enough.

I find I have to poke at Barry all the time to look for work, take classes or see a counselor at FEGS, try to sell our unused CDs to someone on Craigslist, etc.  I think he feels that his doing all of the shopping, cooking, doctor appointments, etc is enough.  I don't know how many times I have to freak out and yell that we need more money coming in, that he has to get something, anything, part-time, minimum wage, I don't care.  That generally buys me one day of him saying, "I looked at Craigslist this morning."  A few times over this past week, I took some time at work to look at Craigslist myself, and forwarded him a dozen ads each time.  That shouldn't have to be my job.  (Of course, there have been plenty of times in the past when I've said "That shouldn't have to be my job" concerning something that Barry wasn't doing, and I've always realized that if I don't make it my job, it won't get done.)

So the upshot of The Big Picture is that I cry almost all the time.  If I'm not crying, I'm close to it.  I usually don't cry in front of other people except Barry and my therapist, but I cry walking down the street, in the subway, alone at work.  I went through this once before, toward the end of my time at Penguin -- also an impending-doom scenario.  It's mostly just silent weeping, tears pouring out of my eyes without much sobbing or fuss.  If I feel particularly agitated, I take a lorazepam (generic Atavan), which is my anxiety-rescue med (as needed, no more than twice a day).  Some days I don't take it at all, some days I take one or two, or even three or four.  (Each pill is 2 mg.)  But I don't want to have to do that.

I don't know how to make more income happen.  I've even looked around for a part-time job that I could do evenings or weekends, but haven't found one.

In addition, our Medicaid runs out at the end of September.  My employers promised (in writing) to provide insurance when my Medicaid runs out, and for Barry as well if he is not yet working, "estimated at $3,600."  I think that was my low-ball estimate because I didn't want to seem too grabby.  $3,600 is nothing.  Even if they pay more and get me a decent plan, I'll have co-pays, which I don't have now.  Or I may have to pay in to the cost of insurance, which I can't possibly do.  This in and of itself is enough to cause constant weeping.

I am supposed to visit Jannah this weekend if I can manage to hang on to $30 for train fare.  That would certainly be a much-needed break, and I think I could actually stop worrying about finances for a couple of days.

My Amazon Associates widget is again not working, but I am reading The Help -- the movie based on it just opened very successfully.  The book is a little on the liberal-southern-chick-lit side, but not bad.  I'd really rather have seen it told exclusively from the points of view of the African-American maids, since the white protagonist kind of makes me grind my teeth in embarrassment.

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.