zeptember

I love my man with all my being, fibre and existence.

Last night we tended to a friend whose one-year marriage is already in the toilet. We have had many discussions about some of our friends in relationships, and of couples in general - how many seem to be so dysfunctional. And we’ve wondered why this is so - after all, we’re in our thirties, now. Don’t people go through enough bad relationships when they’re younger to know that they don’t want anymore of that bullshit by the time they’re in their thirties, and don’t people therefore strive to be the best, most understanding, most communicative boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife to their partner, out of sheer love, respect and integrity?

We have often asked ourselves why the answer so often appears to be “NO” for couples, and why so often people in their thirties and beyond STILL have not grasped the idea that being open, honest, affectionate, domestically responsible, communicative, trusting, humourous, tolerant, and unconditional in a sexual relationship is a two-way street that leads to very strong bonds that encapsulates the couple for a lifetime.
We have no idea why people would not want these things from their partner, and why people would not want to put out these things for their partner.

Every time we have visited a couple we feel is dysfunctional (including his father and his father’s wife!), we always shoot each other *that glance* to let each other know we’re thinking the same thing. Sometimes I’m so overwhelmed with how alert and understanding my man is when we are witnessing such dysfunction in others, that I just grab hold of him, smooch him and tell him how much I love him right there on the spot.

I want people to be happy. I want to let couples know when things are broken, because I care so much, but I’ve learned that it only invites anger - bitter bitter anger - unless they approach me first to unload. I’m no marriage counselor, but damn, when your wife is telling you that everything you undertake is worthless and that her previous boyfriend, who had cheated on her, is better than you in everything you do - what do you think that does to you as a person, and why would you want to put up with that?

When your husband forbids you to work for a living, because “a woman’s place is in the home”, and he comes home from work to yell at you to quiet down YOUR kids because he’s had a rough day, what does that do to you emotionally? Worse yet, you then find an old phone bill while cleaning house - and it has 1-900 numbers all over it, and you realise he’s been watching pay-per-view porn on cable after you’ve gone to bed exhausted from cleaning, cooking and raising the kids all day - what do you think that does to you as a person, and why would you want to put up with that?

When you get knocked up and panic, thinking a wedding is the only thing that can save face for the both of you, but neither of you have either been together for any length of time or lived together or worked your shit out, HOW do you possibly think a wedding can make everything fall into place?

When you become disabled, then depressed, then despondant, then suicidal because your whole life appears to be yanked from under you, and while trying to kill yourself, your girlfriend, knowing full well of your suicidal ideation, calls you in a fit of rage to falsely accuse you of hurting or poisoning the cats, rather than calling you to talk you down and tell you how much she loves you, what does that do to you?

When you have moved across country with your fiancé, and he starts living off of you becuase he decided he now refuses to get a ‘corporate’ job, but yet consistently has found no way to contribute to the household and expenses, what does that do to you emotionally? Worse yet, when he tells you one day he doesn’t think the marriage is working and takes off to an ex girlfriend long since parted, what does that do to you as a person?

I have so many stories; the ones above span nearly a decade. And it’s still going on - SIX couples I know this year have or are in process of splitting up, and nearly all of them have a history of major dysfunction.
Why did they stay together for so long? Why when in such dysfunction did they proceed to MARRY?

It baffles me. It leads me to stroke the face of the man I love, and declare my undying love for him. It leads me to hug him and hold on tight to let him know how strongly I love him and appreciate him.
I have been with this man for seven years. We have had trying times. We have had arguments. We have been hurt and upset. We have cried. But we always work things through. We always learn from the mishaps and move on and try our hardest every day not to repeat such things that we know would hurt both of us. There are no grudges. There is no bitterness. Bitterness does not a relationship make.
WHY is that so hard for people past the age of twenty-seven to understand and deliver?

Tomorrow my friend is getting married. What I have seen of her and her fiancé’s interaction with each other so far over the few months that they have been together, seems promising, because my friend, who is extremely closed off and impenetrable normally, says she has spilled EVERY.LAST.THING about her ENTIRE life to this man, and he still loves and accepts her at face value. I have seen her become more relaxed, more affectionate, and more mature overall with this man. It doesn’t have to be that people must date for years and then get married and then have a family and everything is all right. No, people can know each other for days, weeks, mere months and know that they have found the person with whom they TRUST they can reciprocate openness, honesty, affection, domestic responsibility, communication, humour, tolerance, and unconditional love.

People just need to start loving, knowing and trusting themselves, first, BEFORE they get involved with another.

This is my wish to everyone to promise themselves in the coming year: Start telling yourself how much you love and trust yourself. Start getting to really KNOW yourself - your habits - your diet - your health - your emotions - all of it. Spend some quality time alone and in your head. Spend time naked in front of the mirror and fall in love with the god or goddess that you see before you. And before you start in with the whole “I’m fat” or “I’m ugly” bullshit - HEY, I’m 5′5″ and weigh 169lbs and have major cellulite these days, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing, loving and respecting the true nekkid me in the mirror, as well as eyeballing myself at all angles and discussing out loud with myself the exciting ways to exercise and lose weight and firm up WITHOUT berating myself or telling myself I hate myself and the way I look. Get it?

People of the world, start loving yourself unconditionally and deeply. Things will begin to manifest outwardly from there, and will attract back the love and respect that you deserve.

Spent all day yesterday sneezing and having intermittent faucet dripping nose action. Had some mild coughing fits but nothing too bad. The worst part was the foggy brain and being SO tired. And then the sinus headache started in around dinner time.

My man decided last night that since both of us are now sick, that he’d buy us dinner instead of having to make dinner. We got something quick and cheap and brought home Boston Market food. Of course, as I sat there chowing down, the food tasted a bit sweet to me. I said “great, I think there’s corn syrup in this”.
And I was right. I thought the corn syrup was in the creamed spinach but no, it was actually in the fucking squash casserole! And there’s wheat in the squash casserole, too! Not enough for me to get sick on it seems, but obviously I want to avoid it in the future.

Throughout the day and even after dinner, I found my stubborn streak and held onto it tightly, and got over a full day’s work done for my business. Even went out and bought printer paper, and though it’s a shade off, it still does the trick for printed reports. I’ll get OCD later and try again to match the colour from the site to printed paper.

Today I started off the day with the really bad nightmare described in my last post, and it took me about an hour to settle down (I think chamomile tea and a nice email from my friend wanting to buy my product helped, too).

I’ve been VERY tired again today, and my eyes feel itchy and swollen, AND I’m still feeling like george is gonna be here any second, too. I wish he’d make up his fucking mind and be early already, instead of dragging on the pain for days before the Real Pain.

I keep trying to get work done, but I can’t focus for shit. And now the coughing has started again. GAH.

I hate today and it’s not even noon, yet.

I was seeing my man off to work and as I looked out the door after him, I saw huge drops of rain start to hit the ground. I stepped out the door after him and called out that it was raining and he should have an umbrella.
It was a cold rain, too. My man had his leather jacket on. He didn’t realise it had started raining and seemed confused. I got the bat umbrella for him and handed it to him.

His car was parked across the street and as he approached it, a guy with a black trench coat walked past on the sidewalk, and then my female cat ran out the front door.

My man was pretty much oblivious to all of this and got into his car and started it. I chased my cat in my PJs out of the house, up to Oak Street, round the corner and halfway down to Clinton Street before I caught her, scooped her up, held her firmly, and marched back towards the house. My man saw me at the corner and leapt from his car, concerned about the cat. We got her back in the house and then I realised my man’s car was still running outside; I could see the exhaust in the cold. I went out the door to check on the car and the cat tried to run out again. We both caught her and my man put her inside. I continued towards his car, concerned, and that’s when I saw a white man adjusting a ski mask over his head in the passenger seat.

Adrenaline kicked in and I approached the car and said, OUT! OUT OF THE CAR! NOW! GET OUT!

The guy continued adjusting his mask and then pulled out a gun just as my man approached. My man was yelling at me to just get back in the house, and then the guy got out of the car. There were two guys and a girl in the backseat of my man’s car and they got out, too. They’d all been preparing for a joy ride after taking his car.

My man began asking them WTF they were doing and I ran towards the house, looking back frequently, to see the guy with the gun waving it around and trying to aim for me.
I think he shot once but the bullet whizzed past my head. I believe I had a flash that I’d be killed so I changed the dream so that I wouldn’t be - it’s rare when I’m able to exert control of my dream.

I faced the gunman, raised my hands, and came back down the stairs.
Yes stairs, because suddenly we lived upstairs in this house, instead of on the first floor. Only the stairs were on the side of the house where our current front door is.

The gunman and his accomplices pulled off their masks and we could see that they were all just teenagers. They started assuring us that they wouldn’t do any harm or take the car if we didn’t call the cops. My man told them we wouldn’t - he just needed his car back so he would not be late for work.

The gunman and his accomplices got all nicey nice with my man and I. They wanted to be our friends. They had smiles like snakes. The gunman wanted to call it truce and give me a hug. I backed away, calling him a hippie California “peace dude” person, and that where I’m from in Detroit we don’t act like that, and hell no I didn’t want to be his goddamned friend.

He frowned and looked all hurt, and turned to see one of his guy friends cozying up to my man and being all nicey nice, saying it’s okay, danger has passed, he can go to work now, they’re gonna go on their way.

My man was concerned about being late for work, and so he nodded and smiled and fended the guy off so to speak. My man drew further from me and I got up. The gunman spun and looked at me, and then smiled his snake smile again. I told him I was going, now, goodbye, and went back up the steps, into the house and closed the door. I looked out the window at the top of the door to watch my man as he got safely into his car and drove off to work.

That’s when the panic hit for the first time. Now I’m alone and the snakes are outside. They’ll try to get in, I know it.
I peeked out the door again and there they were, glaring and grinning up at the house, and they split up on either side of the house.
I went into the kitchen and there was one of them, peeking through the screen. But the window in the kitchen was small and above the kitchen sink. They’d cause quite a noisy ruckuss if they tried to enter the house that way, so I ran to the bathroom I think… or maybe it was a laundry room like at my Ma’s house.
I knew there was an open window that they could get into if they climbed up the back of the house.
When I got there, someone was already pushing through the screen but still had to get through the glass. This window was high up, so I had to climb something to get to it, to make sure the window was fastened. At the same time, there was another open window above the back door, with the gunman trying to poke his head through so he could slither over the top of the door.

As I tried to bash the screen to knock him away from it, the other kid broke through the tall window and jumped down on top of me. I began beating the shit out of his back, using both my fists clasped together, raised over my head and bring them crashing down on his spine. I was making good headway but realised the gunman was over us and could fire on me if he got a clear shot….

I began trying to will my cell phone open and operational, tied around my neck, so that I could call my man and call 911, but the damned thing was just not manifesting. I also tried to will my man back into the dream so he’d have a gut feeling that told him to come back home so he could save me.

Then I woke up.

It was 8:44am and I fled the bedroom looking for my man, but he’d already gone to work.

So naturally I felt very scared, just having awakened from a dream where he’d left me for work and bad things happened. Took awhile to calm down.

I think I had the nightmare because I can’t breathe from all the phlegm. Perhaps too what figured into the dream was the fact that people came into our backyard yesterday, stole our recycle cans, then returned them to our backyard full of garbage from their house next door!!! We didn’t find out til my man went to take recyclables out last night, and saw all this unrecyclable crap in the recycle cans - stuff like an ironing board and a battery backup system for a computer! That’s when we realised; earlier in the day the neighbors were moving out, and early in the evening, we heard garbage cans being rolled up the side of our house and I figured it was our housemate-neighbor (person who lives in the same Victorian house that we do) bringing in the garbage cans again (cuz the garbage men are supposed to fetch the cans from our backyard and return them on garbage day).
Had we been paying attention, we’d have realised that yesterday was NOT garbage day, and we could’ve caught those fuckers red handed!!!
But we’ve both been sick and therefore not very astute.

I think all that helped create the nightmare.

Well It Has Begun for me, I think.

Woke up last night unable to breathe out of my left nostril, and my throat was very sore. I chugged water and stayed up til my nose cleared. On top of that, I’d begun again having mild george pain, so that do0m is on its way Real Soon Now.

IF I GET A FULL BLOWN SINUS INFECTION AND GIRL DO0M AT THE SAME TIME, MY MAN IS IN TROUBLE.

AND DON’T FORGET I’M SLATED TO DELIVER FOOD TO A WEDDING ON FRIDAY AND ATTEND SAID WEDDING ON SATURDAY.

…Just tried to pinpoint how and when he got sick. If it took 3.5 days for me to get what he’s got, and he got sick on Saturday, then the likely culprit was his last day at the workplace on the Wednesday before Turkey Day. He says people have definitely been in and out of work sick for the past couple of weeks. Bastards.

I’d been using Clorox wipes, washing my hands frequently, and unfortunately for my man, not getting too close to him very often during this whole sickie mess.

But all to no avail. Currently I have a sinus headache, and have been sneezing all morning, and have been spitting up crud. Clearly I should have just moved out on Saturday night until this sickness had passed, and left B to fester on his own in quarantine. But no. I didn’t do that. To quote my man, “I am a kind and loving god” and stuck around and made him dinners and cleaned the house and bought him snackies and kleenex.

Well… now it’s his turn.

Let the good times roll.

Two nights ago, in the dead of the night, I awoke with a twinge of uterine pain. It was the first indication that george is on the way, and I felt apprehensive, like when someone you don’t like keeps coming around and you can’t figure out how to make them go away. I’d just had a very good bike ride hours earlier, and had been quite the busy bee cleaning house.
I thought, “Well there you have it - that was my nesting phase kicking in before the pain, trying to prepare the house for the arrival of george”.

Yesterday throughout the day I had annoying twinges of pain but kept on cleaning and also working on my business.
Today I was downright TIRED all day. Bushed. Beat. Rundown. I had to force myself to go on my bike ride, and I could only do six miles (four miles short of tying my ride on Sunday) before calling it quits. Granted, it was pretty windy today, too, but still. I felt disappointed in the fact that I’m so out of energy.

The other issue going on is that my man has been sick with a sinus infection since Saturday night, and today I woke up with a scratchy throat that’s not left me all day. While on my bike ride, my ears started feeling plugged up, and that hasn’t left me for the rest of the day, either.

By 8:30pm, I was falling asleep at the keyboard, though I still needed to get more work done. By 10:30pm I called it quits. I only got like five hours of work done today for the business.

Tomorrow is another day, a fresh start, I can only pick up where I left off and keep running with the torch until it dies out for another Downtime. But it still makes me sad and rushed, like I only have so much lifeforce left before this Saturday, when george is slated to arrive and start kicking me in the pelvis, shoving white hot knives through my uterus and lower back, dragging cleated shoes down my thighs, and shoving hot pokers up my ass.

Yeah, that’s what it feels like every month. You’d be apprehensive, too. Well, you’d be A LOT more than apprehensive, but then I’ve had this bastard in my body for 21 years, so I’ve had to learn to just TAKE his abuse. I used to vomit from the pain in the early days. I’ve grown somewhat tolerant of the pain over the years that I don’t puke anymore.

That doesn’t really help make things better, does it.

The other thing that sucks hard is that this Saturday is my friend’s wedding! And here I’m slated to be bedridden in horrible pain! I hope with ferocity that george is late. Personal note to george: Even a day late buddy, can ya do that for me, huh? You know, nobody invited you, you piece of shit.

I’m slated to bicycle again on Thursday, but as of this evening, my lower back is really bothering me. This is another sign that george is near. So I may be out of commission by Thursday. Not bedridden, but just not feeling well by then.

Today I laid out the days in which I can bicycle over the next month for a group of friends that have expressed interest in bicycling with me. When I sat back and actually looked at the calendar in depth, I realised that I only have anywhere from six to nine good days each month to bicycle, when spacing it out every other day. This both excited me and depressed me at the same time. I’m excited because it is yet one more tangible thing to view and strive for in my Uptime. I’m Depressed because that’s all I get, and healthy people get so much more time than I have to work with.

This is because I am so tired and have aches and pains within five days of george, that even doing housework such as dishes is enough to cause pain and/or wear me out. And then george arrives and from day one through day four of george, I’m pretty much bedridden. Actually, it’s more like Day 1 - Day 3 I’m bedridden. Day 4 I suddenly feel better and the bleeding subsides, so I do something like get out of bed and try to go to work, or walk to the corner and back, or get a load of laundry done, and then george comes back and kills me for another day and a half. Then he leaves again for another 27 days.
The week after george is all about getting back into my routine, withdrawing from the painkillers, getting my strength back.

So in visual format, using an example calendar below, let’s mark george in red, and mark the downtime on either side of george in purple:

 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7
 8  9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31

That leaves me with roughly 15 days out of a month where I’m functioning well - my Uptime. I only ever have half a month, while healthy people get an entire month every month, except for on occasion when they get a cold or flu.

This is not all laid out here for you to feel sorry for me. It’s to put life in perspective, for myself as well as for yourself. Enjoy the time you have.

Tomorrow is another day before my impending Downtime. There is much work to be done this week with the fading strength I have. My stubborn nature serves me well during this time. I can do this.

And for my Downtime, I have the laptop my man bought, and books I am borrowing from the library to read up on dietary stuff to help manage the pain, and drugs. I have lots of drugs for the coming pain.