2016

I left off with Keith returning to therapy because I totally bribed him. And it worked.

It didn’t change overnight. In fact, real improvement didn’t happen til around halfway through the year. He did get better steadily, but he was still very angry, especially because I didn’t have a job. He saw me as a financial burden and now that Edwin wad going to school he wanted me to get a job and pull my weight. Which is fair–we aren’t as poor as I was growing up, or even what we had been all marriage, we were much better off, but we were still living paycheck to paycheck. I published novels and was getting paid for that, but only quarterly and it wasn’t enough to sustain regular financial contribution.

And then I got a job. My current job at the bakery/deli/coffee bar. And I started contributing. I pay some bills now, and can provide my own necessities like medication and clothes and I can actually afford my doctors’ visits and such. I can get myself lunch if I don’t have the energy to make it. I don’t have to ask Keith for stuff anymore. I mean, sometimes I still do, because I’m making about 1/6 of what he’s making, but it’s something, you know?

And after that he just…changed. he calmed down. He became more supportive and listened better. I figured out–he gained respect for me. He hadn’t had any before, not since Iraq, barring a few instances like Edwin’s birth. He saw me as a Really Useful Engine (I am shuddering) and treated me accordingly.

Am I grateful? Yes. Am I peeved that he didn’t respect me at all for most of our marriage? Fuck yes. He thinks I brought it on myself, but recently we had a very serious and open talk about our history and the abuse in it and we were honest and he apologized for being awful. Which is a start–he is earning back my trust, but slowly. The more days we go without him jumping down my throat, the better it is. He’s not perfect, though–he still snaps sometimes and blames things on me. But it’s a lot rarer nowadays and while we are still different people with different viewpoints, we work as partners, finally.

So there you have it. Keith and I have a long and complicated history that involves some of the worst experiences of my life. But also some of the best.

2013-2015

I had to be drunk for this one. So…I’ll edit this later, but I want to get it out and post it while I’m less jittery about the whole thing.

I left off with the note that Keith laid his hands on me. He didn’t bruise me or actively harm me, it was a grabbing thing, and it was worse than anything he’d done before. I lost all trust. Everything he had earned back from the cheating incident, it was gone. He was still the broken man I got back from Iraq. He hadn’t changed.

I have a record of everything that went wrong between me and Keith after that. I had my personal blog on Tumblr, and I recorded most of his abuse (and still do, when it appears, though I’ll say now so you have a lighter note, I haven’t seen it in several months). Emotional abuse I just…couldn’t handle. I almost left him numerous times, even talked with him about ending it numerous times. I thought about ending it for myself a few times, to escape it. It was such a dark time in my life…I really struggled.

I had raised money (because I was not allowed money or any way to touch the money or any share in it without Keith’s permission or at least him actively knowing about it because I had no account of my own or personal way to get money) online to afford emergency supplies, in the event I had to get me and Edwin out fast. A duffle bag with clothes and essentials I could just grab and go with to the YWCA.

But he found out. And instead of flying off the handle, Keith seemed to wake up a little. And we talked. Openly, for the first time since he did it (it was months later by this point). He had very many issues with me, and I had very many issues with him. I believed, and still believe, that my issues were a lot more serious than his, because his were like, “The house isn’t clean.” And, “We’re too low on money to go to McDonald’s tonight so you have to cook something.” And my issues were like, “Hey please don’t yell in my face and blame me for everything and ignore that I’m telling you I’m struggling and you are actively making it worse?” But we acknowledged something had to change, and I decided it was time for me to go back to therapy and get meds again, because I was too depressed to do anything and in too much pain from my EDS, and struggling with our son, who started therapy for his speech and motor delays.

Notice that the solution of the problem was to change ME, first. This would happen a lot in our relationship during these years. How if I just made myself better, he would stop being awful to me. Because somehow I deserved it? That is what he was saying whenever he said, “Well you do bad things too, we BOTH have to change” and then never followed up with any changes for himself until forced. I had to force him to go to therapy with me, to talk things out. I had to find his therapist for him, when he finally said he would go so he could have someone to complain to about me. Which I found him, perfectly, because the guy who saw us for marriage counseling and Keith’s personal therapy was a total misogynist who also saw me as the ultimate problem here.

Was I burden? Yes. I was incapable of keeping a clean house, being a good homemaker. I was too sick. I was too depressed. I was too distracted. I was too traumatized, half the time. The abuse was (and may still be? IDK) in cycles–Keith downswings, turns into an angry abuser for a few weeks or months. Keith upswings, turns into the perfect husband for a week. Downswing, upswing, downswing, upswing, etc etc etc forever. I was exhausted and confused and a total wreck. Like I said before, I thought about leaving a lot, one way or another. I sought treatment for myself, though, and started a years’ long journey to find the proper balance of treatments for my particular cocktail of mental and physical illnesses. I got better and better all the time. And even if I never had? I did not deserve to be abused.

Eventually he fell off the therapy bandwagon. I continued to go while he took a very, very long break (like almost a year) and I continued to put up with the emotional abuse. I was useless, I was worthless, I was to blame for everything, his family didn’t like me and I was forced to be around them all the time even though Keith’s anger with me got worse anytime we were around them. I wasn’t good enough, I was too much of a burden, financially and emotionally, I wasn’t contributing, etc etc etc. I was the one with all the emotional responsibility every day, and I was absolutely just as burdened by him as he was by me.

But then…I found something he wanted. I had a bargaining chip. I won’t tell you what it is outright, but it is both a sex thing and not a sex thing at the same time. It’s just a Thing. But I said, okay, I’ll provide what you want, but you have to give me what I want. And what I wanted? Was for him to get a better therapist and go back to therapy.

And by fuck, it worked.

I’ll writer the conclusion soon. Almost there.

 

2012

I left off with the two of us moving back to the Mohawk Valley, with my family. My grandma took us in, and we started looking for a job for Keith. I was pregnant and hurting a lot (I had recently had a sharp downswing in my EDS, worsening symtpoms, and I hadn’t learned how to cope with it yet) and frankly I couldn’t get a job that paid more than child care would cost. So I was going to be a stay at home mom.

Keith got a job at the gun factory he works at now. My father, who is paranoid schizophrenic, was having severe delusions about us and my grandmother thought it best that we just go, so we found a new place to live. I was pregnant and angry all the time, both off my medications and severely hormonal and in a lot of pain. I took the first opportunity to go–I became caretaker for a woman in hospice. My stepfather’s ex wife, who had remained a family friend and gotten to know me in particular very well (she was an excellent source of history on my scumbag stepfather) and she welcomed us into her home in return for care.

Keith was supportive through it all. It was very, very difficult for me. I was underqualified and inexperienced and couldn’t handle how far it went when she started to go. I’ll write about it another time, but it was a very bad time (it includes more than just her, but a member of my family as well. After my current project I’ll write that one). She soon died.

So Keith and I were left with and ticking time bomb. The house wasn’t going to be our home for long–we may have had rights as tenants, but we were not going to be able to stay there long-term. I had the baby, and it was not a good place to raise and baby.

In the meantime, I had my writing, while Edwin took rare naps or played in his bouncy. I found my community and friends online and I was writing more and more and I was connecting with people like I never had before. I was not sleeping–the entire time we were in that house, which was over ten months, he never slept more than two hours at a time. I am glad I have a blog from that time, because otherwise I cannot remember what happened during this time. But I have read them, so I can tell you.

Keith had gone from one end of the spectrum to the other. He had been supportive (although he took control of money away from me because I had severely misused it, I was too tired to function right and I was not that good with money, I was so young and immature) and at the time I gave birth, he declared me the most beautiful woman ever, and was so present during Edwin’s early health problems that kept him in the hospital. He helped out when we finally got home…for a time.
But somehow along the way he fell back into old habits. Probably the monetary stress I caused, added onto the stress of a new baby, and raising a baby who is autistic and started showing signs (revealing to me that I am in fact autistic myself). And…well, things were rough. I was angry and off meds, he was angry, and…he did horrible things. We yelled a lot. And one time, he put his hands on me. I had never been more scared. I started plotting how I could escape.

I’ll continue this later.

2010 and June-July 2011

Continuing the story of me and Keith. We left off back together after being apart after an incident with cheating, and we were in college up North.

We had a good thing going at one point. We were attending classes, I had a job and then another, better job. He got a better job. We had rented our own house, and it had land and it was small but beautiful. We had a roommate, a girl named July (pronounced like Julie). And then another girl moved in, because her boyfriend kicked her out onto the street. Her name was Chel. She was in the play with me, and the younger sister of one of my best friends, and I thought, we have room. We have a couch she can sleep on. She and July are friends, she and I are friends. So I took her in.

At this time, Keith and I were not in great condition. We were okay sometimes, but he still had anger issues and I was starting to realize that I was worth something, that I could be free if I wanted to. I didn’t really want to–I wanted Keith. But things were difficult, we argued, but we also did really well together in some ways. However, my health declined, and Keith wasn’t that understanding, and July and Chel were convinced he was awful, and kept encouraging me to leave him. I got carried away by their opinions, and forgot about Keith’s struggles. I was just learning at this time what had happened to him over in his deployment in Iraq. But we were college students, partying and drinking and smoking and having bonfires in our backyard and goofing off, and everything. Life went on.

In June of 2011, I got my IUD taken out (I had had it since my abortion). It was wrecking my cycle, and uncomfortable, and I didn’t want it anymore. Plus…we were thinking about kids. We should NOT have been, at all, because we were so unsteady (I had just left my job due to poor health). Our friendships with July and Chel were falling apart (Chel had bad friends that were influencing her, and they stole from us while we were gone–my pain pills, which I needed). And July was moving back to Hawai’i, which is where she lived before college. She left a bunch of stuff and fell off the grid and didn’t leave on great terms with Keith, even though those two had been a lot closer than July and I. That had changed by the end.

Well…we were without jobs. We were looking for a new place to live, hopefully a house. We took a short break to go on vacation to Disneyworld, and were told that it would be all expenses paid by my mother-in-law. See, Keith could get everyone in on a HUGE discount because of his veteran status. He was fresh out of the Marines, early, honorably discharged. So we decided to go, and then…things got tense. They gave us a tiny bit of spending money, but got mad at us when we spent it? We saved them $1500 on tickets and they didn’t have to spend extra on rooms for us because they were renting a villa apartment thing anyway (it had 5 bedrooms) and they gave us like $200 and got upset when we spent it on Keith’s younger siblings getting lunch at Disneyworld and stuff like that. The trip was great, because Disneyworld, but I was in a wheelchair for it because of my pain.

And…Keith’s mentor/big brother in the military, a man named Kurt, was killed in a shooting. He got the news while we were sitting outside chilling on the back porch of the little villa. He was devastated, and I think that was when he decided he wanted a child. Because after that, he asked and we talked and we decided we’d just let things happen. If it happens, it happens. I think he realized how short life is then.

We went back up to NY, after visiting my cousin Frank and his wife Olivia (she and I are very very very close) and their little daughter Rose, who was turning 1. We made the trip back, and then…we lost the house. The landlord wanted us out, ASAP. Get out, get out, get out, basically. And we had nowhere to go. So my mother-in-law took us in and we stayed in her basement.

I hated that time there. I literally hid downstairs and didn’t even go upstairs to pee because she was such a tyrant. I’d hear her screaming all hours of the day. So I’d pee in a cup and dump it in the sink downstairs rather than go upstairs at all. I hid in my room, with the cats, and played Elder Scrolls: Oblivion for hours and hours. I almost 100%-ed the game, actually. Which is hard to do, on an Elder Scrolls game. But I did it. And I started reading fanfiction again, to escape. I had discovered the show Glee and was reading about it online, though I hadn’t joined its fandom yet. I was just drawn to its characters and the writers online sharing their stories in that community. I didn’t know then that I would find my home and life-changing friendships among these people.

But then…well, I got pregnant. Fact is, when I was in the ultrasound, it turns out that I had been pregnant while STILL on the IUD. And that’s like a 0.001% chance of happening, and yet the little fetus hung on for dear life. I thought…well, we’re in a bad situation right now, but this little thing clearly wants to be alive more than anything. I decided to keep it.

But then…well, things were very, very bad with my mother-in-law. She’s a difficult person at the best of times, she talks a lot and is kind of aggressive. She has poor opinions of a lot of people and isn’t afraid to talk about it or share it with people. She never really liked me, until later, when I’d proven myself, but the thing is, I was hurt in her house. I slipped on a battery that happened to be left on the stairs into the basement and fell down the stairs while pregnant. I was upset and worried. She wasn’t. And then I was without my medication for several days, and was withdrawing, and I got locked out of the house while they were gone.

Oh, the drama. I asked the upstairs tenant if they had a spare key or anything, and they said no. So I, being completely insane at this point because I was having a panic attack about not having my meds and being in the middle of severe withdrawal, joked that I wished I could call the police and have them knock the door down. Apparently it came across as, “I’m gonna do it!” Not “Haha wouldn’t that be nice?” And the neighbor emailed my mother-in-law to tattle on me and warn her I was gonna break in? Which I wasn’t. I went into the backyard and sat down and was on the phone with my friend Amanda’s mother (who is also a friend and like a second mother) and chatting, and my mother-in-law came home.

She stormed up to me and started screaming while I was on the phone. She threatened me in detail–about how she was going to take me by the hair and throw me down the stairs and make sure I snap my neck. While I was pregnant with her grandchild, which she knew. She told me to take my stuff and get out.

My friend’s mother Barb rose to the occasion. She immediately came over with her car and got us all packed up and took us to her house. Keith was at work at the time. We were officially homeless. We went to stay with Barb, but we couldn’t stay for long. We had to find a place to live fast.

We went to the county building and asked for aid from the state. They called all of our family members and asked who could take us in rather than sending us to a government housing situation. Keith’s mom said she’d take Keith back in, but I was not welcome, and she wanted Keith to separate with me. And my grandma, back home in Central NY, said she’d take us both. The state said, well, separate and go to separate homes, or we could sell our car and they could garnish Keith’s wages entirely and put us up in a roach motel slum.

We decided to go home and live with my grandma back in my hometown, leaving his family and the life we lived up North behind us. Together.

I will continue this later.

 

August 1, 2009 and November 8, 2009

More dates. Important dates. This is the second installment of my posts telling the story of me and Keith together. Our struggles, our lives. Scroll down to the post titled “July 25, 2008” and read the first part. Then continue here.

So I left off, Keith and I got married and then he shipped off to Iraq. In the meantime, I lost my home (I got evicted for non payment), I got robbed (the night I was moving out, either the landlord or someone else with a key got in and stole over $2500 worth of possessions), I had to move in a with a friend, and I lost my job. Eventually, I found somewhere to live with my stepfather’s ex wife (she was an amazing lady), but only for a month. Then, I moved back in with my grandmother and father for the remainder of the deployment.

Now, something happened that made Keith very angry at me. See, I was 19 years old. I was confused and left to put a married couple’s lives in order without my partner, I was power of attorney for my husband and I had to get on his insurance and stuff like that. Lots of paperwork. So I took all my paperwork and I went to a base to talk to someone about what I needed to do. She was very helpful–sort of. She had all these things for me to do, tasks to complete to get on insurance, get our lives sorted, etc. She told me, “You need to get on his bank account.” She said it legitimized things for the military regarding insurance, and if he died I’d have access to it immediately instead of having to go through a rigmarole of legal battles. It was absolutely necessary I get my name on it.

So I did. I had power of attorney, I had permission. So I put myself on there, and then talked to Keith about it, and used some money from his deployment pay to pay off the massive amount of medical bills I had accrued over the years and continued to accrue (and one time, get my cousin out of a drug deal that went south, it cost $50).  He knew what I was doing.

But something over there changed him. I’ve found out what happened there over the years, through secondary sources (he’d tell everyone but me) and I put two and two together and knew what he did and what he was made to do. Not good things. He faced IUDs, life and death decisions, live fire, and…stuff. A Marine Corps Infantryman, a lance corporal, put in horrible situations. And he came back changed.

When he got back, he wouldn’t kiss me. I ran to him and hugged him, and everyone around us was hugging and kissing with abandon. But he held me at a distance. And then we got back to the hotel room, and he fucked me. But it was so distant, and so bizarre. But then I went home, because he needed to go through bureaucracy and get settled in and evaluated and all that.

Then he called me, the night before I was going to go back to stay with him at the hotel for a while before we got our lives in order and moved back up North to be with his family. He called me. He was so, so drunk. He’d had 15 drinks in the course of an hour. I am shocked he didn’t die from this. But he called me–and he was crying. He never cried before that. So I packed all my stuff, and I got on the highway, and I raced the hour and a half to his base from my home and found him in his hotel room, trying and failing to throw up.

He was wild. He was ranting and raving about how he regretted our marriage, and how he wanted to fuck other girls, and how messed up his life was, and then he decided he wanted to drive to McDonald’s? I had to physically restrain him as he babbled the names of the girls he wanted before tying himself down that he’d never gotten the opportunity to bone. Finally  I got him to bed.

But things…continued. He was so angry all the time. He had a girl over to his hotel room to “hang out” and she stayed the night. He swore nothing happened, he still swears it, he says he slept on the ground, but she was one of the girls he named as being one of the ones he wanted to bone. And he was drinking so much.

We went up North to his family and got an apartment and enrolled in college. On August 1, 2009, we got married…again. His family thinks that’s when we got married period. Nope. It was for show. And Keith won’t tell them the truth. But I…well, I was pregnant. About eight weeks pregnant. And on August 15, I got an abortion. There was no way I was bringing a child into the world with Keith the way he was. Just…so angry.

He had a job, I was searching for one but unsuccessfully. He was drinking all the time, before and after work, morning noon and night. And…he was abusive. We’d argue about anything, and he’d literally chase me from room to room and corner me so he could scream at me uninterrupted while I sobbed and begged him to leave me alone. He was physically threatening. A few times, he grabbed me and shook me or pulled or pushed me around. One time, we were in his big lifted Bronco on a trail up a mountain and we went over this huge rock and I looked through his driver side window and saw STRAIGHT DOWN A CLIFF and I got very very scared because he was not in control at that time and I asked if I could get out and tried to get out. He pulled the seat belt across my throat and tugged it several times. Then he drove home screaming at me.

And then he went to a party one night without me. He didn’t come home til the next day, and he was pretty much blacked out. I started hearing rumors about this party–a friend of a friend said Keith was not alone at the party and disappeared halfway through it. Keith admitted to me himself that he thought he did something, wasn’t sure. So I had him call the girl he was rumored to be with on speakerphone and ask her what happened that night, because he couldn’t remember. I’ll never forget the way she said, “We had sex.” Like it was no big deal. But he had betrayed me. We went into our apartment, I slapped him, and kicked him out. He went to stay with his mom shortly after November 8, 2009.

But that was a turning point. He stopped drinking, and did everything he could to make amends. He gave me space, but he was there for me when I asked him to be. He backed off the anger for a while (it would come back), and he let me think. Eventually, I decided to forgive him. He moved back in, and while I wouldn’t have sex with him at all until he got tested and a negative result on STDs, we were together again.

I’ll continue this soon.

July 25, 2008

I’m going to tell you the story of me and Keith. It’s a long, ongoing story that can be disturbing and might make you question things between us, but let me be perfectly clear right off the bat: we are happier than we have ever been. Things are still rocky occasionally, but it’s no longer a constant stressor.

Now check what this involves and then you can judge if you want to read it. Domestic abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, severe mental illness, PTSD, and various mentions of relationship problems like sex and divorce and marriage and cheating. And young, stupid people doing young, stupid things.

This may be a series. We’ll see how far I get before I get emotionally drained by this retelling.

I saw Keith one time, a year before I met him. I was walking home from school, and some jackass in a black, huge ass Jeep was blaring some kind of screamo/rap? Something loud and strange. He zoomed down the street and took the corner so his tires squealed. I thought, “What an idiot.” I found out later that that idiot was my future husband.

Keith and I really met in college. He and and a buddy of his were in my acting class, and he did a killer Jack Sparrow impression (it was 2007, okay). One day, we went out for a smoke together and got to talking. I thought his friend was cute. I was in a relationship with a guy, my only boyfriend ever, whom I have written about on this blog (yep, that one) but I wanted to meet new people and was working up to leaving him and I thought, it’s college!

But I didn’t talk to the cute friend. I talked to Keith. He had so much to say (mostly about cars) and I thought, “What a cool guy.” So naturally I had to set him up with my recently singled best friend.

Thank god that didn’t get past the introduction. They’re friends, which is nice because we can all hang out together now. But then, I started hanging out with Keith more.

In the meantime, Keith didn’t waste any time to start hitting on me. He asked if I wanted to go out with him sometime (he asked it roundabout–you’ll notice this trend). I said oops, got a bf, but thanks! And then I dumped the bf, and asked if Keith wanted to go to a party with me. He said, sorry, but there’s this girl I’m really into, now, and I don’t want to mess things up with her. So I stepped back, and went, “Holy shit I do like this guy” because I was suddenly jealous and I knew what that meant. And being ace, I was not really overly attracted to anyone, sexually speaking, but I formed an emotional attachment. Not that you would’ve heard me admit it–I’m an intensely secret person about my feelings, or at least I was until I found blogging. I still am with most people with me in the real world.

But back to Keith. I wanted him–his attention. So I…kinda made myself available. I made friends with his friends (they were the COOLEST people when I first met them) and I hung around the student center where he liked to hang out and I went out for smokes with him and was his friend. I felt drawn to him.

And then one day, I guess he decided the girl wasn’t important at the moment. He and I joked, and flirted, and finally he made innuendoes and I returned them and he just flat out said, “You know, I would invite you back to my room, but I respect you too much.” And then I saw the look in his eyes–he was totally making fun of himself, he was laughing in those eyes. He knew it was the cheapest line ever. And I laughed and understood his humor and just flat out got in my car with him and went back to his dorm.

We had a friends with benefits thing going. But then he wanted to end it, after I was starting to develop feelings for him, because of that girl he liked–she found out we were fucking and threw a hissy fit over it and demanded he stop seeing me. No, she was not his girlfriend–she had been stringing him along for months, and the moment he started moving on, she seriously got mad at him for doing it even though she wasn’t actually interested in him. She was with somebody else and hadn’t told Keith so he’d keep pursuing her. She was a piece of work.

But then…Keith just couldn’t stay away from me. He invited me back to his place to “watch porn as friends.” Yeah right. We picked up right where we left off. He got weird about it, and finally I was just like, “Dude, I like you. I want you to know I am an option for you.” And he was like, shocked out of his mind. But…eventually he got over it, and made his decision. His decision was me.

To feel chosen, after only being chosen in a bad way all my life? That was fucking balm for my wounds. Keith asked me out by saying, “Will you…be my Valentine?” (in November). I tried to make him say it, but he was so bashful and playful. So I let him off the hook.

And then he left. He was a Marine Corps reservist, just finished college, so he was being shipped off to Iraq. He went to North Carolina for training, and then he went to 29 Palms, CA for desert training. We kept in very close contact–we visited each other every chance we got. We wrote letters and sent texts and called and continued our romance long-distance.

And then, I was hanging out at a friend’s apartment, and Keith called my friend. My friend took the call in the other room, and I was like, what’s going on? Friend came back. Said, “Just got off the phone with Keith. He’s gonna propose!” and then he spilled all the secrets to me and asked my ring size because he had been tasked with finding that out and then sent it back to Keith and calmly pretended like he hadn’t just told me everything.

So on July 4, under the fireworks, I waited for Keith to pop the question, as planned, about a year after we’d met. And…nothing. My information was bad. Keith had changed his mind and didn’t want to marry me after all. I was a little disappointed. I was so unsure, and a little relieved too. But then we got inside and made love and right as we’re naked he pulls out the ring. And I’m like, “Buh, wha?” Because I can’t shift gears that fast. And he was like, “It’s a ring.” And I was like, “I know.” And he asked me, and I said yes.

21 days later, we were married. His family didn’t know. We were gonna keep it a secret from his family, and have a second wedding when…if he came home. But if he didn’t, he wanted to take care of me, so he made it official with me fast. I was in his benefits and will, I had power of attorney, and he was going to a heavy war zone as Marine Corp infantry. It was terrifying. But I wanted to get through it together and then start our lives.

I’ll continue this soon.

Oh yeah, I said, life goes o-on

Long after the thrill…etc.

Well, I have PLENTY of thrills, thank you. Like a new Chromebook! Keith got it for me for Christmas, it’s so pretty and I finally have a new keyboard under my fingers after losing my old laptop (who was too cool and old to have a name, I like to think it was an eldritch horror trapped in plastic casing–Cthulu Computer. Anyway, that thing survived way too much to have been a mundane laptop).

Anyway. I have a new computer. And I’m typing on it and it feels like coming HOME. The steady tap tap tap of the keys, the invigorating movement of my fingers, the satisfying stream of words appearing on a screen. It’s beautiful and I want to experience it forever. And now I can for quite a while, hopefully. I will be doing my best to not break this one. Especially because it’s so small and cute. I feel like it’s a bunny computer. Maybe I will name it Small Fry in honor of my once-pet Small Fry, the dwarf rabbit I had once that I thought was male and ended up being female (her partner was Paige, thought to be female but was actually male–funny story, I asked both my divorced parents separately for a bunny for one holiday and they both obliged and were both told the wrong sex of the bunny. I had a lot of bunny babies after that).

Anyway! Life is pretty good. For the most part. I have to be honest, one thing is really weighing on me, but I want to talk about the good/mixed stuff first.

1. Mixed: Edwin’s progress report from his mixed assisted ed preschool came in, and I had a long convo with his speech therapist (he’s autistic, like me, for those who don’t know–severe language delays, moderate fine motor delays, mild gross motor delays, processing issues, sensory issues, especially with food, etc.). He’s made a TON of improvement since last year, but he still has a long way to go to be “caught up” (aka matching his neurotypical peers, which I don’t think he necessarily needs to do–as long as he learns at some point, I don’t care how long it takes him, and even if he never learns some things, that’s okay, we will work with it). We think a lot of his issues is not processing incoming information, so his receptive speech is weird. Which of course throws off his expressive speech because he doesn’t know what he’s responding to, he just says whatever when you ask him a question. Example: He was asked “How was your Thanksgiving?” He replied, “Christmas.” Which is cute but not an appropriate response. So we’re trying to find where he’s not processing novel questions and see if we can help him understand. It’s a lot of work but I don’t mind, he’s my baby and I will do anything for him.
2. Good: Keith is great. I know we’ve had a LOT of issues (and I will write about those at some point, proably soon). But we’ve worked through them, we STILL work through them, and he’s been amazing lately. Less rage, fewer downswings, longer time between downswings, and less severe downswings. He’s been very supportive, very understanding, very compassionate, very generous. Very sweet and attentive. I mean, he has limited time and energy, and he’s STILL taking care of me and helping me around the house. He only sleeps 4-6 hours a day, works the night shift, then does housework with me, maybe takes a nap and a shower, goes to class three days a week, does tons of homework and projects (he’s an engineering tech student, he’s doing really complicated math and he’s had to solve problems for actual companies and they might be implementing his group’s idea for efficiency and waste saving, it’s so cool), spends time with me and the kid, and he works over 40 hours a week, and then he sleeps just a little bit. Weekends are the best time, because he usually doesn’t have that much overtime and he can get a full night’s sleep next to me (I miss sleeping next to him at night, I LIVE for Saturday nights when I finally can). He works so hard, and he still finds time for us and supports us and has an active role in his son’s life and that’s amazing.
3. Good: I have pain medication! For now, while I can afford it. I can only take it when the kid isn’t around or when I’m home from work, because it lessens my ability to function, but I have pain free time every day now and I feel incredibly about it. It doesn’t stop me being tired from all the pain I do have, and I’m still pushing myself too far, but my flare ups are fewer and farther between. I haven’t had any severe back  or leg spasms since I started them about three weeks ago. I’m also using fewer of my muscle relaxers, which don’t just make me a little woozy, they send me right to sleep so I can’t take them during the day unless I have time to nap.

Mixed/Bad:

Work. I love love love my job, I really do. It’s a small business, locally owned and operated, one store with a bakery, deli, and coffee bar, plus a little bit of a convenience store as well (we have like dairy products and eggs and snacks and condiments and butter and a truly impressive amount of sodas/energy drinks/teas/etc.). The sisters running it are incredible, they’re just so cultured and beautiful and poised and committed to the store and to the community and they’re just so wonderful, seriously. My job is good, there are amazing people working at this place, and it’s work I like doing. And it pays really, really well for food service/retail mixture that it is. Way above minimum wage, with regular raises if you’re a good worker (I am, I already got one raise after three months there, and not a small raise either). They’re generous and understanding and are working with me on my disability. And that’s what’s bad.

See, they’re having attendance issues. Girls calling off left and right. Doing it multiple times a week. No medical excuses, no shift coverage, people refusing to come in to cover a shift, but insisting others take their shifts anyway. I am part of this, but the difference is I have legit medical reasons and I get doctor’s notes to corroborate, because I know how unexcused absences can add up and tarnish your reputation. But alas, I have been sick a lot, and my son has been sick a lot. Often one leads to another so I’m out multiple times for each of us. And a lot of it is because the stress of my Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome is fucking with my immune system. I just get under the weather more often than non-disabled people. Today, after seeing a new policy on absenteeism posted on the board by the schedule, I got sick and threw up–because I had my flu shot yesterday and I get sick from those sometimes. So I had to go home. But I talked to the office first, with the help of the floor manager whom I’ll call L, and talked about how I don’t want to be  burden to the company and I feel like I’m an unreliable worker and I’m sorry for that, but my body isn’t cooperating, and I want to do better, but I’m under a lot of physical stress. They researched my disability on the spot, and are going to be reading up on it some more, and I think that’s lovely that they’re going to that effort to talk about it. I said I want to try lessening my hours, maybe, making myself take shorter shifts and spread out further, instead of my usual consecutive 6-7 hour days. However, if they decided I wasn’t right for the job because I can’t do the work, they can let me go for medical reasons without drama, I won’t fight them or sue them or something. They said they’d talk it over amongst themselves, and get back to me.

So I’m like…well, either way, my job is going to change. Either fewer hours, or I lose it completely. I really don’t want to lose it, but if that’s what I need for my health, then that’s what I have to do. I am going to be pursuing disability once I get all my medical records together. I just have to request the records from my pain doctor and my psychiatrist, both of whom I see this month. Then…a lawyer my therapist recommended out in the next city over. If he wins it for me, I pay him out of my monthly disability payments. If he doesn’t win it for me, I don’t pay a dime. It’ll probably take a year or so to get this all through, but…we’ll see how it goes.

So. There you have it. A long-ass post glimpsing into my life right now. Seriously, how long is this damn post? And it’s only a fraction of what’s going on lately. Man. I have a lot of life.