Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Current Events

Well, I have a laptop now. And a part-time job. You would think this would make computer time easier, but since I don't have internet, not so much. My new strategy is to type out my posts at home, then save them and take them to a place with internet to post.

Of course, that means I don't get to read all of your posts before I start writing, which annoys me because I use that for inspiration to direct my thoughts. But I am overdue to write about current events anyway.

DH ran out of work with the union a month ago. He kept doing side work for about 10 days afterwards, but that dried up and he wound up sitting at home for a couple of weeks. It was good, in many ways. We had a chance to really start building on the new foundations that have been laid. The boys got to spend valuable time with him. Eventually, though, the financial strain began to grow. Still no new work. And since he is still a junior member, he can't collect a percentage of his pay during the slow times.

I decided to look on Craigslist for temporary work. That wasn't very successful, but I did land a part time job as a receptionist in the local farmer's market. I love it. And that's how I got the computer. Some guy named Rusty, who reminds me of my family without the religious aspect, has spent two of the four afternoons I worked so far blabbing away with me about everything from the President and the Second Amendment to the origin of UFOs. I mentioned needing a computer, and it turns out his son refurbishes computers, so he got me a nice laptop and told me to pay it off $20 a week. Cool!

Naturally Whiz Kid just assumes it belongs to him, like everything else in the house. So this is the first I've been able to use it.

Meanwhile, DH got a couple of calls back about new permanent work. One was a dream job - very local, AutoCAD design which he went to school for, and field work too. (He originally abandoned CAD for construction during the big building boom because he hated being stuck in an office all day.) They loved his drawings, which they obtained from his former employer pre-Turd. They told him to start the following week. Then his driving record came through with the DUI, and that was the end of it. Their insurance company won't let him drive a company vehicle until three years after the SUSPENSION is over (it's been 2.5 years since the DUI), and they wouldn't accept him driving his own vehicle. He was devastated. However, the other job seems to be ok, it's just in construction again so I still have strong misgivings about the pay and the effects on his health. He needs something less physically strenuous.

Speaking of the Turd, it seems he is still screwing us over from the grave. The truck DH was driving had originally belonged to his sister, and he gave it to DH in exchange for the thousands in back pay that he could not come up with. We couldn't come up with enough money to transfer the title in the beginning, and later it seemed the Turd always had some excuse. After he passed away unexpectedly a few months back, his stepson began pestering DH to give the truck back. Of course he argued, but since we didn't have the title we didn't really have a legal claim to it. Neither did he, however, since unbeknownst to him his dad never properly obtained the title himself.

Well, the stepson is a state trooper. And a couple of weeks ago, the truck disappeared from outside the methadone clinic. It was parked up the street (their parking lot is miniscule), so although we reported it stolen there didn't seem to be any surveillance cameras nearby. And assuming that it wasn't the Turd's family who took it, which it may well have been, they are the ones who will get it if it is found. Either way, we are unlikely to see it again. It just figures.

So, mercifully, our neighbor just got a job where she drives a company vehicle. And we asked her if we could rent her car from her on a weekly basis. The job DH is doing now is pretty local, and she was agreeable to that. I am so thankful that at least one person we know isn't bent on making DH suffer the rest of his life for his mistakes, even if it means having us homeless. My mom actually had the nerve to mention to me how concerned she is to see him driving someone else's car, just in case he gets caught with some drugs and the car is confiscated. I resisted the urge to scream at her incoherently for the outrageous hypocrisy of wanting him to be unable to travel and work, but refusing to watch the kids so that I can work because I am supposed to be a homeschooling, non-working clone of her. Not to mention her refusal to support me in trying to separate from him before. Her thinking is so skewed. But this is between him and our neighbor.

I think my mom has enough respect for us to keep her opinions to herself except with me. But I'm sick of her attempts to passive-aggressively bully me into doing things her way. She doesn't want to watch my kids because they don't listen to her, and I don't spank them regularly. Also because she doesn't think I should be working. But she thinks DH can somehow obtain work by magic that requires no transportation and will support us all, if he just wants to badly enough? WTF? Not that she said that in so many words. It's just the obvious conclusion to be drawn from her "advice" and "concerns." Some days I am just flabbergasted to see how my sister describes her and think that this is the same person we are talking about. The mother she knows is someone I have apparently never met. Also, I can't help being hurt when she watches my neices and nephews constantly despite her busy schedule; and yet on the few occasions I get desperate enough to ask her, she is often too busy or watching the others. And my one sibling and spouse, at least, are not doing anything at all necessary. They are attending a bodybuilding/self-defense class twice a week.

I know it's not healthy to be resentful, but I am. I have medical exercise therapy I am supposed to be doing, and I don't because I feel bad asking her to watch my kids when she has so much else to do. But it seems that my brothers have no such qualms, and she is always happy to make time for them. What gives? I need to be working so that we can eventually move into a decent sized home, and get a vehicle of our own. But she thinks those are luxuries that pale in comparison to my children's need for my constant presence. Meanwhile it seems to have completely escaped her that she is now living in a 7-bedroom house with a huge kitchen, DR, LR, basement, attic, 3 bathrooms, etc., and there are only two more of them than there are in our tiny cabin. Which would literally fit into their kitchen and diningroom. Yet she still complains about lack of space. Any time I mention being crowded, I get a comment about the kids having too much stuff. Which they don't by the way. They hardly have anything. It just looks like they have a lot because there is nowhere to put anything away.

I tried to point this out to my youngest sister the other day. I told her that us living here is like them trying to live in the other rental cottage, which has two bedrooms and larger rooms downstairs. She scoffed at that idea, saying that is ridiculous because three of us are little children, and they don't need anywhere nearly as much space as adults. Ummmm.... What? She said that she and my other siblings have a lots of things they have collected over the years that they need room for. Oh, kind of like I DID TOO, UNTIL THEY ALL GOT DESTROYED FROM BEING IN STORAGE FOR YEARS AND YEARS, AND NOW THE FEW I HAVE LEFT ARE STILL IN STORAGE? You've gotta be kidding me. That's not even an argument. That's just downright "I refuse to admit that you have a point because it doesn't fit into my reality." And besides, Whiz Kid would certainly behave better if he had a room of his own, whether they choose to believe that or not. And they can think whatever they want about a child's right to privacy and personal space. The fact still remains that I have no privacy from my children, which is every bit as important as the privacy she takes so for granted and feels so entitled to herself. Seriously!

Then, there is the fact that my mom is so critical of my boys' admittedly dreadful behavior; but they didn't act like that before I went to work two years ago and had her watching them, and they saw my youngest brother behaving that way. I suppose she views their behavior as proof that I should not have gone to work. I view it as proof that she isn't doing any better with my brother than I am with my boys, and he has even less excuse for acting this way since he is nearly 16. But it does fit quite well with her view of children that she would hold a 7-year-old at greater fault for disrespect than a 16-year-old. Ugh.

I have become so disillusioned with religion lately, and I am trying hard not to let that carry over into disillusionment with my personal faith. I decided to go ahead and make an appointment with a counselor. I called my insurance and they said I would be covered, so I have an appointment next week. Maybe I can talk to her about the things I can't talk to my family about. And maybe she will prescribe medication to help with the claustrophobia, if that's even possible. I'm willing to try anything to survive this until we can move on.

I used to think, way back when, that counselors were for people who didn't have any friends.

Yeah. That would be me.

Even my mom had her cult leader. And when she lost her, she had a nervous breakdown and nearly died. You'd think that would tell her something, right? I guess not.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Delving in...

Well, I decided today would be a good day to get into why I restarted my blog and deleted everything prior. I have limited time, so I won't waste it on current events although there are several.

As I mentioned in my profile, DH is a clairvoyant. Or something of the sort. He hates it. He first became aware of it around the time the sexual abuse started, and since both go back to his earliest memories it's hard for him to separate the two. You can take or leave what I am going to say, because I am well aware that many people choose not to believe this stuff, and many more are simply unable to comprehend or relate. That makes it no less real for those affected, however.

I have never considered myself a clairvoyant/psychic/whatchamacallit. But I have always been sensitive. Growing up in a family who believed everything spiritual that didn't glow with a well-defined heavenly presence and sound like Scripture was by default evil, I just filed away my feelings and impressions in a section of my mind I keep for "interesting stuff." Things I don't expect or feel the need to answer, but still think they may be important somehow, someday. My ability to do that is, I suspect, the reason I survived my upbringing with an open mind.

For the past year I have been looking into the Orthodox Church. I felt that when something goes wrong, it makes sense to go back to the drawing board. Which in Christianity, means Orthodox. I am aware the Catholics disagree, but whatever. Not the point. Also we have been watching all these shows like "Paranormal State" and "A Haunting," and combined with DH's struggles and susceptibility to spirits, weird feelings began to grow oppressive.

I grew up with the belief that our faith should not be tied up in objects or rituals. And I honestly believe that. So it really struck me that objects like the crucifix and holy water, and rituals like the sign of the cross, work. My theory, which I am not entirely sure is wrong, is that it has to do with the force of the individual's spirit, and those objects give the person confidence to strengthen their spirits. Also, I was shocked to realize that dark forces are often accompanied by feelings of depression, hopelessness, and unreasonable grief. I had always assumed that evil would manifest with rage and hatred. It made me very concerned about the bouts of depression that seemed to overwhelm me sometimes for no apparent reason. I began to resist them actively, confident now that I wasn't just "living in denial" by trying not to let it consume me.

I have always felt that DH was cursed. The person who abused him had a demonic spirit he communicated with, and he performed ritualistic abuse on his victims (along with other abusers) as well as abuse of personal convenience. After DH revealed the abuse to his mother, this person declared some very specific and creepy curses on him. They lost the court cases, criminal and civil; but I have no doubt that did not allay the abuser's rage in any way.

I got into an argument about forgiveness on a blog for abused men. I publicly declared my feelings about this person for the first time; and although I did not use his name or attempt to identify him, I had a feeling of dread when I posted it, as though I had done something very unwise. I felt that this person was looking for us, spiritually, and that somehow he had gotten our scent. I feared that I had revealed too much identifying information on my blog over the months, and it would be too easy for him to find it since he knew certain things to look for.

One of the things I have learned in my life is that my instincts are usually right. After I moved out of my parents' home, I had nothing in the way of a safety net of experience in the wide world. I decided that it would be wise to go on instinct, and not worry about waiting for proof. Because that's usually too late. I still do that. And that's what I did with my blog. After a couple days of being nervous and paranoid and trying to backpedal on my statement about forgiveness, I woke up one morning and knew that I needed to delete my blogs. There were several posts I would have liked to save, but it would have taken too long. The urge was immediate.

After I deleted everything, I went back to our house and decided to do something I had been thinking of for a while. I took out the olive oil and blessed the house. I made the sign of the cross with oil on all the windows and doors, and on my own and the childrens' foreheads. I prayed a short prayer, and then wrote a verse on the refrigerator that I had found at random, about Jehovah turning Balaam's curse on the children of Israel into a blessing. Balaam had the power to place the curse, until Jehovah took exception. I found the verse comforting.

About ten minutes later DH called. He was on his way to work. He said that I would never believe what had just happened; he'd been attacked by a giant bird while driving down the interstate. TWICE. He said the bird hit his driver side window hard enough to crack the rain shield and leave feathers caught in it. He was startled and unsure what had happened, until he looked in his rearview to find the bird CHASING HIM DOWN THE HIGHWAY!! He said he watched in shock as it flew over the truck and circled around to hit his driver side window again - dead on this time. If it hadn't been up, he'd likely have had a fatal accident. The interstate in that area is pretty crowded at that time and he usually drives in the left of four lanes.

I was terrified and didn't dare tell him what I had just done. I felt it was definitely connected. A few days later, I found the deck of tarot cards he has had for a long time in his truck. He kept it there because I found it in the house a while back and told him to keep it out. I wrote him a note telling him he should get rid of them. A couple nights later he started telling me about some strange things that had been happening. He told me that he had been reading the tarot again recently, had read it for me and the boys and some other family members, and had tried to read it for the princess. He said that when he tried, he heard an old woman's voice in his head saying angrily, "Haven't you done enough already?" And that ever since, whenever he tried to read it, all he could see were red orbs, which he says means a negative energy.

I was very upset that he had been reading it, as I have no doubt that is why I felt like evil had found us. The spirits communicate with each other, and they have their own agenda. He said that he had gotten rid of the cards. I didn't ask how. But I must say things have felt much better since. More real. The times when we are angry or stressed feel normal now, not like a spiral of negative emotion that just engulfs and consumes us.

More on my spiritual beliefs and thoughts later.