Always

I have this friend.

I always, always, always have this friend... always a different friend, always the same situation.

Cowardice

I am such a hypocrite.

Such a lying, hiding, whining, sniveling, fucking coward.

All that SHIT about change, and praying for courage, and wanting to reinvent myself and my life and my dreams... it's all just fucking bollocks. I couldn't reinvent the fucking wheel, with all of ancient fucking Mesopotamia standing alongside me, giving me pointers.

And yes, you, YOU, you know who you are, I probably *did* say 'fuck' one or two times too many up there, but strangely, I don't GIVE a fuck. Moving on.

I am so sick of this. I am just... ill... when I think of the way everything turns out. When I think of how hard I try, and how I'm so fucking *inept* that my best efforts produce no tangible results... I just want something more. I just want to have what I want, and not feel guilty or heartless or ashamed or conflicted about it.

Like a wise man once said--OF COURSE I want to have my cake and eat it too. WTF else would you do with cake?

Or like an arguably wiser man once said--eat, drink, and FFS be merry, because tomorrow you're worm-food (okay, bacteria-food, but it doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?).

Any way you look at it, life is meant to be enjoyed, and I am just not enjoying mine. Partly that's because, yeah, I really kind of AM a slut, and I want to fuck most of my friends, and poor me, I'm too married and too maternal to do that... on the other hand, I also want some basic rights and freedoms that I'm being denied. I want to be able to have friends in my house, without having to face the Spanish Inquisition if some of them happen to be male (it's at the point where I *do* expect it, haha). I want to be able to set up a direct debit to the charities of my choice, without worrying that the other party on my fucking account is going to log on and cancel them all when he's in a strop. I want to be able to have people sleep on my floor for 3 nights in a row, I want to be able to get absolutely shit-faced once in a while, I want to be able to change my clothes in front of my webcam once in a while and give a friend a thrill, without feeling like a complete cunt.

Marriage is meant to be something sacred, I get that. It's a joining of hearts, of souls, of bodies. It's a meeting of minds, a diversifying of skills, a pooling of resources, that's meant to last a lifetime (longer, if you're a Mormon)... But somehow, marriage is the only equation in which adding 2 positive numbers actually reduces the sum total...??? Marriage, a union in which 1 + 1 = .... 1?

Surely that only makes me a half of something, as opposed to a whole... surely that makes me something other than what I was meant to be.

I'm just tired of it. I'm tired of compromise. I'm tired of being less than I am.

I just want to go back to being myself again.

Trouble

There's gonna be some, shortly. I've had a look at everything I have, and everything I am, and everything I want, and I've come to the conclusion that almost everything has got to change.

I'm terrified. There are a million and one thoughts flying through my head right now, and aside from one or two oh-that'll-be-a-relief style thoughts, they're all pretty frightening. But the thought that scares me most, is the thought that 5-10-15 years from now, I'll have exactly the same things as I do now.

I cannot live like this forever. I don't want to hurt anyone, but that includes myself. I want the chance to make my life the way *I* want it, without any inferference from anyone else. My kids, it goes without saying, are part of 'my life' and their obvious interaction with me is in no way interference. But as for anyone else who's involved in my day-to-day life...

I should not have gotten married so young. SO young. So YOUNG. I was foolish and brainwashed and immature, and I am so sorry for the hash that I've made of this, but I don't want to keep making it. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I know what I need to do.

It's like that prayer that some people (my dad included, lol) are meant to pray every day--God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference... I am trying to scrape up the courage to change those things that are within my power to change.

But, oh. It takes so much courage sometimes, to do the right thing. And I am such a coward, in so many ways.

And as for serenity while doing courageous things...

Yeah. Well. Courage over serenity, is just going to have to be my motto.

Random Rant

Do you know what really narks me off?

People who think that the only thing that matters is the degree of wrongdoing. You know the ones I mean--yeah, I stole some money out of your purse, but I only took some change so it's okay; yeah, I used your name on this office memo, but it's a good memo, so what do you care; yeah, I slapped my kid, but it didn't leave a mark, so it's fine.

People like that drive me round the proverbial fucking bend.

I work for a bank. I use the term 'work' loosely, but my endless supply of sick days and holidays aside, when I'm working, I answer the telephone and help people sort out their finances. This OFTEN involves sorting out complaints, because like any huge soulless corporation, we fuck up a lot, and mange to screw over perfectly nice, reasonably intelligent people so many times that they are reduced to shouting, swearing, tear-shedding imbeciles. Today, for some reason, I am reminded of a phonecall I took a couple of years back.

This was shortly after we, the customer service people, the lowliest of lowly advisors, the absolute bottom of the call-centre food-chain, were given 'empowerment limits'--i.e., instead of running every refund by our managers before agreeing it, we were told that we could refund up to a certain amount of money within our discretion. Naturally there were still rules regarding appropriate refund decisions, the primary rule being, NEVER refund unless the customer SPECIFICALLY asks you to... and if possible, find a way to decline their request anyway.

The following is the more or less accurate description of a call I took, just after being given the freedom to obey my conscience, instead of my T/L.

[beep] Me: "Hello, thank you for calling ShatWest, my name's Azifyu Kaer, how may I help?


Random Southern Wifey: Oh, hello, sorry to trouble you; I opened a savings account a few months back, and it was done incorrectly, and I'm trying to get some money back..."

You know, I can't be arsed with this lol. I'm not getting into the entire conversation, but basically, we'd opened an account without her permission, and she'd lost some interest because of it. I don't remember the exact amount, but it was 50-odd p. Less than 60p, for sure.

And it was blatantly, obviously our error, she'd logged 3 separate complaints, been fobbed off by at least half a dozen advisors and one manager, and now, she was calling up to see if I could help her. That's what she said. Could I help her.

I logged a fourth (FOURTH) complaint for her. I referenced the other complaints in my notes on the system. I refunded her 50+p, apologised about a hundred times, and agreed, loudly and wholeheartedly, at her statement that, 'it's not so much the money, but, well, I know it's a cliche, but it's the principle of the thing.'

Too right it is. After that call, my boss came over to give me some feedback--I just looked at her. It's the only time in my entire career that *she's* backed down from *me*. Because really, people know when they're doing wrong, don't they? But they just go ahead and do it anyway.

Sometimes people make me sick.

She's So Vulnerable

The above is (I presume) the name of a Roxette song... certainly the phrase itself appears a number of times in the song, mostly in the chorus and the repetitive fade-out at the end, so it's a fair assumption. Before I go off on a tangent--because you know I can--I'm going to remark on the point of bringing up that song; namely, the fact that every time I hear it, it makes me think of myself.

I genuinely don't know why I am the way I am. Was I born like this? Overly sensitive and frightened of being hurt and generally cowardly? Or has life made me this way, with all the doors it slams in my face, and all the rugs it snatches out from under my feet, and all the people who drop me in great big piles of smelly shit? Do I do this to myself, with all my sad songs and meaningful movies and heartbreaking books? Is it somehow my fault that I have the soul of a poet, the brain of a psychologist, and the broken, bitter heart of a scared little girl?

Either way. My fault or not, I AM overly... prone to being wounded.

I'm so sorry that sometimes, that makes me all the more prone to being wounding, as well.

Ranting

I use it as a release valve. If you've ever seen a psychologist in any way other than just passing him on the street, you'll have heard the idea that depression is just anger turned inward. I try to avoid depression, by SPEWING as much rage and bile and venom outward, as I possibly can. Most of the time, I manage to avoid hurting most people. There's usually someone I piss off, if I'm in a mood--not one specific person, it varies, depending on location/opportunity/etc--but aside from the fact that I usually catch someone a glancing blow with my barbs, insults, caustic observations and general fit-pitching, I limit the damage I cause fairly successfully.

I know I'm a narky bitch. I know I wind you guys up. I know I'm a lot of work. But I don't know any other way to be... other than defeated.

I can either rage against everything, or just give in. It has always been my way, my goal, my ideal, to stand and fight, if I believe my cause is just, but... oh. Just lately. Everything seems to have gotten so much harder than it used to be.

I was thinking about it the other day... I don't care about bears chained and forced to dance in Pakistani circuses. I don't care about kittens left in dumpsters. I care about starving children in the developing world, but only enough to give them my spare change; I'm not gonna be writing any letters to my congressman or crying over it. I care about children being beaten and sexually abused, but I only care £5 a month; I won't be answering any helplines myself, or lobbying for government change.

I care that my daughter doesn't speak, but I'm tired of walking the line between trying to educate her, and trying to change the person she is. Don't speak, my love. You're my heart anyway... and, I don't care what you do. I'll love you anyway, and that's all I've got the energy to do, so just do as you feel.

I care that my son gets overlooked. Hi, Bunnyman. I forget to cuddle you sometimes, because your sister doesn't want cuddles... I'll give you a squeeze now, sit you on my lap for a few minutes, and then continue on with my day for the next 3 hours, and I don't care, because some days, it's all I can do to change you and feed you and give you a smile and a 'Hi, Bunnyman,' and this is one of them.

I'm tired of this. I am just so tired of this. I just want it to end.

Do you ever feel... just... tired? It's been a rough few days, and that's not even the worst part. The worst part is, I *almost* had a way out, and then... well. These things happen, don't they?

I am so defeated right now, I can barely muster the energy to type this.

Now, as always, if I want something done, I'll have to do it myself. And it's alright for people to tell me that I need to do it myself; however--these are generally the same people who lived with their parents until they moved in with their fiance, or people who live with friends and pay a pittance in what they laughingly call 'rent', and other people who, in short, have at least 3 different sets of friends/family members within a 10-mile radius that they can run to if their shit hits their proverbial fan... I have no such luxury. I have no safety net. This tightrope walk is all me, and I'm about to fling myself through the air and hopefully manage to grab the flying trapeze before I land with a bone-splintering thud on the ground below.

This is the last time I'm doing this. I don't have the strength to do this anymore. I have spent the last 2 years screaming and raging and begging to be released, and if I can't make it happen this time, I am just going to stop.