A Woman Alone

Today I set the clock for 10am and got up. Sleepy, I laid on the sofa and read, but at least I was awake.

It's really important that I continue this effort to change my sleep pattern. It has a huge effect on how much I get done that involves anything outside of my house. Phone calls, errands, doctor appointments...

I'm only just realizing how much.

Maybe if I stick with it through the weekend I'll be up to getting some things accomplished by next week.

Did anyone read my post on the passing of time? That one was good, I thought, describing some more aspects of my life with depression. I know it's hard to find because of the long rants I posted afterwards.

Dr. Phil talked today about the importance of a father making sure his daughter knows he thinks she's special and will go to great lengths to protect her. He says if the father doesn't, the girl will seek out male companionship elsewhere- teenage boys.

I had a father and a step-father. My step-father was just a huge asshole. My mother never should have married him. She probably still doesn't know that because she is so self-involved. But he sexually abused me, beat me, emotionally abused me. Like, I'm on the phone with a friend... rather than saying "get off the phone," he just goes and hangs it up. What do you call that? Complete and total lack of respect for me as a human being? He treated my things like they were trash. He even asked me to leave home a few times. The sad part is that I told him if he gave me some money, I would. And I would have, too. But Lame-O never coughed up any cash. So I guess he really wanted me to stay so he could treat me like dirt.

My real father lived in another state. I called him countless times begging for help, telling him the situation in my home. Not only would he not help at all, but he called me names and accused me of different things.

So both my fathers made it very clear that they thought I was quite useless.

And I got pregnant at 16. And have chosen crappy men all the way up until say, four years ago. That would be 35 years, or 20 if you want to begin counting when I was 15. But I had sex before then. Oh, and if you want to count the games with step-daddy, I had sex way before then.

I think Dr. Phil is right. He's right most of the time. If my father had responded by saying "nobody's going to treat my little girl like that," and followed through with action to prove he meant it, I would have had an entirely different view of my own worth. Hell, even if my mother had cared, it would have done a lot of good, but I'm not going to get into talking about her today.

This is not to blame them for my adult choices. It's to understand why I made choices that I did. And to understand the effect parents have on their children. Can I say it's their fault that I married the man I did? Of course not. Can I say that they put me in a position to be vulnerable to him, and to make bad choices for myself? Hell Yes.

(I hear loud music from outside as I type this...)

At 39 I'm still learning about myself and learning to make better choices, and to consider myself a valuable person. Some people have that before ever leaving their parents' home! And I'm well aware that many people have had a much worse childhood experience than I had.

What you get is what you get. Some people believe we choose the life we're going to be born into. I don't believe or disbelieve it, I don't know. Maybe. Maybe I'm learning lessons I needed or wanted to learn.

What you get is what you get. Accept it, work with it, move on. Make your own life better for yourself, fuck everyone else.

I always wonder how I did with raising my boys. I tried so hard, I can't tell you. Did I make them feel they were valuable? Did I protect them?

I think I did for most of their youth. I think after I became severely ill with depression I didn't give them the care they needed and wanted. Still today I know my youngest is disappointed every time I don't come visit him when he asks (which is not very often these days). I know that must make him feel like I don't care about him. I've explained over and over about how hard it is for me, but I don't think he fully understands. How can he? It's easy for him to go places. He'll be graduating high school this May, and he'll be wanting me to be there. And I really don't want to let him down.

A Woman Alone
Thursday, Feb. 26, 2004
4:23 p.m.

Pissy Mood

My sister finally decided to write again. Two long letters in one day. See how neglecting people make them magically care, where when I was writing lots of letters, at least half went completely ignored.

She told me to stop writing to the yahoo address. OK I told her, but I'm not writing letters that you're not going to read, so provide a place to recieve all my letters if you want to hear from me.

She swears she reads all my letters.

Then she asked what I was going to do about my laptop, which isn't working at all well. If you read this diary ever, you probably know I bought a new computer in January because of this. I sent sister a photo of new computer probably the day I got it. So why is she asking what I'm going to do, considering she reads all the letters I send.

Even if she reads them, at least half of what I say goes entirely unacknowledged. So why bother? I ask questions or share stuff I thought would be helpful or interesting to her. Guess what? I'm not bothering any more.

She's still bitching because I haven't been writing long enough letters to suit her. Funny.

She also has a list of reasons why she can't look through her things and see if she can find some old photos and such, that she told me she has, that I would love to have copies of, due to my interest in genealogy.

And she still has some of my things so generously given to her by my family. She's supposedly going to give them to me.

Yes, I'm in a pissy mood.

That lazy neighbor boy, later in the day, was sitting in front of his house with the radio on even louder than it had been when he checked the mail. It was just after dark. I turned on the porch light and looked out and I think he got a clue because that's when he cut it off. One more incident and I'm calling his parents to complain. After that, if they don't do something, I call the landlord. My landlord likes me. One nice, beneficial thing in my pitiful life. I am the nearly perfect tenant.

I'm trying to be understanding about the music. It usually doesn't last longer than maybe 10 minutes. But it's just rude. People have no respect for each other. It pisses me off. And he had it so loud this evening, rattling my windows! That's quite unnecessary. You can enjoy your music, at a pretty loud volume, without disturbing the neighbors. It can be done. Really.

Then, even later this evening, I get an e-mail from a lady who had given me some genealogy information a year or two back. I'd written to tell her about my new site and to ask if she wanted to be named on the site as a source, and as a person researching a particular surname. She writes back saying she already found my site and she was very upset because I'm "spreading" her information "all over the internet," and because I make it look like I did all that research in a couple of years, when in fact, she spent 20+ years doing it.

Well, no, I don't. All over my site I try to give credit to everyone for all the information I have and post. I try to be very honest about it. So I think if she actually read it, she would know she's full of it.

As far as spreading her information, there isn't anything from her except a couple of photos on my site, which I did credit to her!! My whole family file is online, too, in one place. That did contain her info. But I took it out of my database this evening. Totally out, lest I accidentally post it or share it or something equally horrible.

I feel very strongly about stealing other people's work. I do my best not to infringe on any copyrights, ever. I feel strongly about not taking credit for other people's work. She did spend many years doing that research, and I would NOT in any way try to claim her work as my own.

Now, this happens in genealogy online circles. You can't copyright facts, so all the names and dates she gave me are NOT hers to tell me what to do with. Many people do go around stealing, and not caring that someone else put a lot of time and money into something, never giving credit to the correct people. Some blatently try to make it look like they did all this work.

So it's a sore spot in the genealogy community.

But I DO NOT do that. I absolutely do give credit. Even tho she doesn't own the information, it's true that she spent her time and money and then shared it with me freely. I appreciate that and I respect that.

And it pisses me off that someone half ass reads something and then spouts off at me like that. She's upset, AND she thinks I used her. I can't MAKE her read the damn website.

I'm very proud of my genealogy site. I went to great lengths to cite sources for everything. I went to great lengths for everything I did on that site. And it's nowhere near finished.

Well, now that's all out of my system, I'm not going to let it bother me anymore. At least until I decide to write back to sister (tomorrow probably) and read more of her nonsense.

I really don't like people very much. I like them from a distance. I am concerned, don't want anything bad to ever happen to anyone, not even people who hurt me. But up close, people get on my nerves really bad. It's the bullshit. I don't deal well with it. Actually it's other stuff, too. But the bullshit is a big part of it. Games people just have to play.

My sister complains about stuff. I care and offer good advice when I know something that can help her. She writes back telling me why my advice won't work (usually bullshit, she's already had her mind up is the fact), but she continues to complain about it. I think she has every right to refuse my advice for any reason that suits her. But I don't think it's right to then continue to subject me to the complaining about the problem she's choosing not to fix!

Ok, maybe it's not out of my system yet...

A Woman Alone
Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2004
11:10 p.m.

Lazy Fuckers

I hear loud music outside my house, so I look outside to see what it is.

In front of my house, blocking the driveway, is the neighbor's car with radio blaring. The 16 or 17yr old neighbor boy has driven the car over here to stop and go check his mailbox. He walks across the street, gets the mail, gets in the car, turns it around in my yard, goes back to his yard (right next door), and goes in the house. This is not the first time this lazy shit has done this.

What's the distance between two houses? Maybe about the same as crossing the street? That's what he's saved his lazy fat ass from walking by doing this. What the hell is wrong with people today??

My own boys do it too. They don't do that exact thing, but they don't think they should have to actually DO anything, ever. And they didn't learn this mindset from me. In fact, I don't put up with it, which is a big reason they don't live here. It pisses THEM off that I won't do every damn thing for them, and actually expect them to do things sometimes. So they left.

NOTHING in the world, regardless of how much they claim to like it, or want it, is worth them actually DOING anything.

My youngest found someone to spoil him rotten. He's gained at least 50 pounds since leaving here. When he lived here, he was healthy. My oldest still resents me because he has to do things for himself, and I guess he will until he matures, if he ever does. Like every day he has to buy his own food, pay his own rent, go to work- it's all MY fault for MAKING him have to do those things.

I don't know where it comes from. It's the society we live in. I think my children have some advantage over many because I didn't allow it, so they have the right attitudes instilled in them somewhere, and hopefully they will show themselves eventually.

My neighbors are just so fucking lazy. And it's their kid they're hurting.

Have you ever noticed that the more someone has, the more they think they "deserve" and the less they think they should have to DO to get anything??

Have you ever noticed that the less someone has, the more willing they are to work, and the more appreciative they are for everything they do have??

And which is the happier, more content group?

Human nature. Go figure.

A Woman Alone
Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2004
4:09 p.m.