So, since I generally stop blogging when I'm feeling emo, and I've been encouraged not to do so, I have created another blog that will be all about those emo days. The link is in my menu on the left and it will include all my emo rants, poems, songs, etc. If you are into emo, then you can pop over there every once in a while to get your dose-- and if you're not then you can just pretend like my emo blog doesn't exist and just hang out at this one. The current feature on my emo blog is a lament-ish sort of poem. If you visit, then I hope you enjoy!
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Random Thoughts-- And Roommates Pt 3 of 6
Random Thoughts:
*Right now, my seven favorite people in the world are the people who came to help me move yesterday. I am all moved and my old apartment is already completely cleaned and ready to go. I suppose that the one person who offered to come but was unable due to circumstances beyond his control can be included, therefore making it my EIGHT favorite people in the world.
*My dad and my brother are the most dependable men that I know. I owe them a fabulous Mexican dinner and some beer.
*I can see cows from my kitchen window.
*Bowling left-handed is challenging. It's helping me learn to laugh at myself a lot more. (I know that I already laugh at myself a lot-- but usually only with friends, not strangers.)
*Earlier, I was watching TV and there was a commercial on about one of those expensive programs that is supposed to prevent identity theft. It's good to know that our most important identity, the one of "Child of God," cannot be stolen from us.
____________________________________________________________________
Roommates Part 3 - My ex-best friend's sister and my brother's girlfriend
After the special experience I was treated to my second year in the dorms, I decided it was time to move on to greener pastures. Then I realized that I am in Nevada, and therefore the pastures are BROWN. While the dorms were not the most pleasant living experience, they were still a vast improvement over living with my parents. So during the seconds semester of my las year in the dorms, I started looking for roommates to share an apartment with. Conveniently, my brother's girlfriend (also known as my current sister-in-law) decided that she wanted to move into an apartment around the same time. To keep it affordable, we decided that we should find a third roommate and get a three bedroom apartment. The third roommate wound up being my ex-best friend's sister who was the same as as my brother and his girlfriend, and who'd had a crazy crush on my brother since they were about 12, though she would never admit it.
To make it clear, the ex-best friend wasn't an ex-best friend because of anything bad that happened. She just moved away for college and we drifted a part. She was actually quite a good friend for most of high school. She was the friend I went to church with occasionally. The trouble was, both her and her sister, who would become my roommate, were raised in a rather legalistic Christian home and were not really allowed any sort of freedoms. So when my friend went off to college, she rebelled and became a bit of a wild child for a few year. These were the same few years when I was beginning to find myself and my identity as a Christian-- We drifted apart because we were headed in different directions.
I have to admit that when I found out that her sister was looking to move out of their parents' house, I was excited for several reasons-- The first was that I had hoped that it would bring me closer to my friend again. The second was that I had hoped that she wouldn't feel the need to rebel against her parents if she had moved out of the house and was living with someone she felt comfortable to be herself around; afterall, she had known me for about eleven years by this point. And the third was that I thought that maybe if her and I went to church together, we could get my brother's girlfriend to go with us, too.
As I'm sure you can guess, I was overly optomistic. By the time we all moved into the apartment in May of 2002, she had already rebelled, though I didn't know it yet. It turned out that she was dating a guy several years older than her and after a few weeks, we basically acquired a fourth roommate. Her boyfriend started spending the night most nights. She never warned us when he was going to be there, she never asked if it was okay and she let him eat all of our food. At first, my now SIL and I tried to include her when we made plans for dinner or nights in, or whatever, but she always turned us down. Then her boyfriend would show up and they would lock themselves in her room. There were several problems with this plan:
1) He was practically living with us, but was not paying rent.
2) He would oversleep, then try to rush to take a shower in our home, where he was not paying rent, or utilities, and would wind up making my SIL late, even though she had woken up in what should have been plenty of time to get ready.
3) She asked me to lie to her parents if I happened to see them at church. That if they asked I should tell them that she was not sleeping with her boyfriend and that he didn't stay the night. I made it clear that I would not lie for her, but fortunately her parents never asked me anything.
4) There were three shows that my SIL and I watched together every week at the same time every week. And every time the other roommate's boyfriend would be playing video games and would get pissy with us when we asked him to let us watch the show, and then even more pissy when we suggested that if he paid rent then he would have the right to decide what the living room TV was to be used for.
Who would have ever thought that it would be more awkward to have her boyfriend stay the night than to have my brother stay once a week?
Fortunately, we had only signed a 6 month lease, and when that 6 months was up, the third roommate decided to leave (sigh of relief) stating that she just didn't feel welcome because we didn't include her in anything and because we didn't like her boyfriend (aka the leach). Good riddance!
*Right now, my seven favorite people in the world are the people who came to help me move yesterday. I am all moved and my old apartment is already completely cleaned and ready to go. I suppose that the one person who offered to come but was unable due to circumstances beyond his control can be included, therefore making it my EIGHT favorite people in the world.
*My dad and my brother are the most dependable men that I know. I owe them a fabulous Mexican dinner and some beer.
*I can see cows from my kitchen window.
*Bowling left-handed is challenging. It's helping me learn to laugh at myself a lot more. (I know that I already laugh at myself a lot-- but usually only with friends, not strangers.)
*Earlier, I was watching TV and there was a commercial on about one of those expensive programs that is supposed to prevent identity theft. It's good to know that our most important identity, the one of "Child of God," cannot be stolen from us.
____________________________________________________________________
Roommates Part 3 - My ex-best friend's sister and my brother's girlfriend
After the special experience I was treated to my second year in the dorms, I decided it was time to move on to greener pastures. Then I realized that I am in Nevada, and therefore the pastures are BROWN. While the dorms were not the most pleasant living experience, they were still a vast improvement over living with my parents. So during the seconds semester of my las year in the dorms, I started looking for roommates to share an apartment with. Conveniently, my brother's girlfriend (also known as my current sister-in-law) decided that she wanted to move into an apartment around the same time. To keep it affordable, we decided that we should find a third roommate and get a three bedroom apartment. The third roommate wound up being my ex-best friend's sister who was the same as as my brother and his girlfriend, and who'd had a crazy crush on my brother since they were about 12, though she would never admit it.
To make it clear, the ex-best friend wasn't an ex-best friend because of anything bad that happened. She just moved away for college and we drifted a part. She was actually quite a good friend for most of high school. She was the friend I went to church with occasionally. The trouble was, both her and her sister, who would become my roommate, were raised in a rather legalistic Christian home and were not really allowed any sort of freedoms. So when my friend went off to college, she rebelled and became a bit of a wild child for a few year. These were the same few years when I was beginning to find myself and my identity as a Christian-- We drifted apart because we were headed in different directions.
I have to admit that when I found out that her sister was looking to move out of their parents' house, I was excited for several reasons-- The first was that I had hoped that it would bring me closer to my friend again. The second was that I had hoped that she wouldn't feel the need to rebel against her parents if she had moved out of the house and was living with someone she felt comfortable to be herself around; afterall, she had known me for about eleven years by this point. And the third was that I thought that maybe if her and I went to church together, we could get my brother's girlfriend to go with us, too.
As I'm sure you can guess, I was overly optomistic. By the time we all moved into the apartment in May of 2002, she had already rebelled, though I didn't know it yet. It turned out that she was dating a guy several years older than her and after a few weeks, we basically acquired a fourth roommate. Her boyfriend started spending the night most nights. She never warned us when he was going to be there, she never asked if it was okay and she let him eat all of our food. At first, my now SIL and I tried to include her when we made plans for dinner or nights in, or whatever, but she always turned us down. Then her boyfriend would show up and they would lock themselves in her room. There were several problems with this plan:
1) He was practically living with us, but was not paying rent.
2) He would oversleep, then try to rush to take a shower in our home, where he was not paying rent, or utilities, and would wind up making my SIL late, even though she had woken up in what should have been plenty of time to get ready.
3) She asked me to lie to her parents if I happened to see them at church. That if they asked I should tell them that she was not sleeping with her boyfriend and that he didn't stay the night. I made it clear that I would not lie for her, but fortunately her parents never asked me anything.
4) There were three shows that my SIL and I watched together every week at the same time every week. And every time the other roommate's boyfriend would be playing video games and would get pissy with us when we asked him to let us watch the show, and then even more pissy when we suggested that if he paid rent then he would have the right to decide what the living room TV was to be used for.
Who would have ever thought that it would be more awkward to have her boyfriend stay the night than to have my brother stay once a week?
Fortunately, we had only signed a 6 month lease, and when that 6 months was up, the third roommate decided to leave (sigh of relief) stating that she just didn't feel welcome because we didn't include her in anything and because we didn't like her boyfriend (aka the leach). Good riddance!
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The Dorms Part II (Post 2 of 6)
Fall of 2001
I returned to the dorms for a second year in the fall semester of 2001. I remained in the same room because my friend T and I had decided we wanted to continue living in the same suite. We didn't really know anyone else that we wanted to live with, so we decided to just wait and see who we wound up with. This may not have been the best idea. This was my first experience with Christian roommates, and I am quite sad to say that it was not a good one.
I had started attending Intervarsity Christian Fellowship during the previous school year and had met quite a few new people. Four of those new people wound up being my new roommates, and they were all best friends to boot. This would not have been so bad had it not been for the fact that this was the year I was working graveyard at the Evil K and they were VERY loud best friends. But of course that was not the worst of it. I was used to not getting much sleep-- that's what college is all about. There were several other quirks that made this an interesting year-- though nothing quite as umm... let's just say special, as the previous year.
For example-- all four of these girls were from Las Vegas. To them it was cold when the temperature got down to 80 degrees. They started wearing sweaters in early September. And that was their choice to make-- but they also started turning on the heat and setting it to 70 degrees around the same time. Since I was trying to sleep as much as I could during the day because I worked at night, we developed a heater war. I would turn it off in the morning when I laid down to go to sleep so that I wouldn't melt, and I would wake up a few hours later covered in sweat because it had been turned back on. And there's more:
As you may have inferred from the previous post, my best friend at the time was a male. If you have known me long enough and well enough, you may even know who the male is. This is only relevant because he was also a part of the Intervarsity group that I was a part of and therefore all of my new roommates also knew who he was and had an opinion about our friendship. They had decided amongst themselves to create a set of rules regarding how they felt they needed to behave around males, and they claimed that this list of rules were the way that all Christian girls (I say girls and not women because they were 19...) should live. The rules, as best as I can remember, were as follows:
1) Girls shall not spend time alone with a guy at any time.
2) Girls should not be in mixed company (ie, guys and girls together; same place, same time) after midnight
3) Girls should only have friends who are girls.
Needless to say, I broke each of these rules-- I did not feel that it was inappropriate for a single girl and a single guy to hang out together in public, nor did I feel it was inappropriate to be in mixed company after a certain hour. For this, I was never really accepted among them and was constantly being "confronted" (because that's what people did in Intervarsity) with claims that they were "concerned" with the choices I was making. What this really means is that I received numerous lectures about the dangers of having a male best friend-- primarily that even Christian guys could not be trusted to control their urges, and the fact that I trusted my best friend implicitely was somehow an indication that I was not right with God.
Now, you would think that a group of girls who were so anti-guy would be above the drama of celebrity gossip... Not so. These girls were obsessed with celebrity gossip-- who was dating who, who was having a baby and who was the daddy. Apparently, it was okay for them because they weren't Christians. Why a group of Christian girls who were deadset against relationships would condone the glamorization of celebrities' rocky romances is beyond me. It didn't really bother me most of the time.
But there was just one time when it went a little bit far. I came home one afternoon after class and I found the four of them in the living room with a box of tissues, all of them crying. I got worried. Had somebody died? Was somebody sick? Was it somebody I knew also? I waited a minute and then I asked what was wrong. A couple of them blew their noses, rather dramatically, before one of the girls opened her mouth and sobbed, "Justin and Brittany broke up," which was followed by some more nose blowing. (Keep in mind that this was back when Justin Timberlake was a boy-bander dating Brittany Spears who was likely just as trashy then as she is now...) This rather unimportant and predictable event elicited almost as severe of a reaction as what these girls had on September 11, which we all experienced together that year. How can anybody feel that this was an appropriate reaction? How does the end of the relationship between "Justin and Brittany" affect us? And that was pretty much how the whole school year went. Between the lectures about my "inappropriate friendship" and the overdramatization of the impact of celebrity relationships on our everyday lives, the noise, the heat, I was quite relieved when the school year was over.
I returned to the dorms for a second year in the fall semester of 2001. I remained in the same room because my friend T and I had decided we wanted to continue living in the same suite. We didn't really know anyone else that we wanted to live with, so we decided to just wait and see who we wound up with. This may not have been the best idea. This was my first experience with Christian roommates, and I am quite sad to say that it was not a good one.
I had started attending Intervarsity Christian Fellowship during the previous school year and had met quite a few new people. Four of those new people wound up being my new roommates, and they were all best friends to boot. This would not have been so bad had it not been for the fact that this was the year I was working graveyard at the Evil K and they were VERY loud best friends. But of course that was not the worst of it. I was used to not getting much sleep-- that's what college is all about. There were several other quirks that made this an interesting year-- though nothing quite as umm... let's just say special, as the previous year.
For example-- all four of these girls were from Las Vegas. To them it was cold when the temperature got down to 80 degrees. They started wearing sweaters in early September. And that was their choice to make-- but they also started turning on the heat and setting it to 70 degrees around the same time. Since I was trying to sleep as much as I could during the day because I worked at night, we developed a heater war. I would turn it off in the morning when I laid down to go to sleep so that I wouldn't melt, and I would wake up a few hours later covered in sweat because it had been turned back on. And there's more:
As you may have inferred from the previous post, my best friend at the time was a male. If you have known me long enough and well enough, you may even know who the male is. This is only relevant because he was also a part of the Intervarsity group that I was a part of and therefore all of my new roommates also knew who he was and had an opinion about our friendship. They had decided amongst themselves to create a set of rules regarding how they felt they needed to behave around males, and they claimed that this list of rules were the way that all Christian girls (I say girls and not women because they were 19...) should live. The rules, as best as I can remember, were as follows:
1) Girls shall not spend time alone with a guy at any time.
2) Girls should not be in mixed company (ie, guys and girls together; same place, same time) after midnight
3) Girls should only have friends who are girls.
Needless to say, I broke each of these rules-- I did not feel that it was inappropriate for a single girl and a single guy to hang out together in public, nor did I feel it was inappropriate to be in mixed company after a certain hour. For this, I was never really accepted among them and was constantly being "confronted" (because that's what people did in Intervarsity) with claims that they were "concerned" with the choices I was making. What this really means is that I received numerous lectures about the dangers of having a male best friend-- primarily that even Christian guys could not be trusted to control their urges, and the fact that I trusted my best friend implicitely was somehow an indication that I was not right with God.
Now, you would think that a group of girls who were so anti-guy would be above the drama of celebrity gossip... Not so. These girls were obsessed with celebrity gossip-- who was dating who, who was having a baby and who was the daddy. Apparently, it was okay for them because they weren't Christians. Why a group of Christian girls who were deadset against relationships would condone the glamorization of celebrities' rocky romances is beyond me. It didn't really bother me most of the time.
But there was just one time when it went a little bit far. I came home one afternoon after class and I found the four of them in the living room with a box of tissues, all of them crying. I got worried. Had somebody died? Was somebody sick? Was it somebody I knew also? I waited a minute and then I asked what was wrong. A couple of them blew their noses, rather dramatically, before one of the girls opened her mouth and sobbed, "Justin and Brittany broke up," which was followed by some more nose blowing. (Keep in mind that this was back when Justin Timberlake was a boy-bander dating Brittany Spears who was likely just as trashy then as she is now...) This rather unimportant and predictable event elicited almost as severe of a reaction as what these girls had on September 11, which we all experienced together that year. How can anybody feel that this was an appropriate reaction? How does the end of the relationship between "Justin and Brittany" affect us? And that was pretty much how the whole school year went. Between the lectures about my "inappropriate friendship" and the overdramatization of the impact of celebrity relationships on our everyday lives, the noise, the heat, I was quite relieved when the school year was over.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
After a Monthlong Delay...
I am proud to present my series on roommates as promised before my life momentarily imploded. Reconstruction has begun, and I am now ready to write these stories, which I hope will be entertaining if nothing else. The series will be six parts and will only include the most entertaining roommate stories. These stories are really about my crazy roommates--not the roommates I enjoyed my time with. I will be changing the names just because that's what writers do when they write about real people. :) I hope ya'll enjoy the series, and I hope they are worth the wait. Just as a teaser, the six parts will be as follows:
1) The Dorms, Part I
2) The Dorms, Part II
3) My Ex-Best Friend's Little Sister and My Brother's Girlfriend
4) The Time In Between
5) The Extremist
6) The Faux-Vegan and the Gamer (Or 4 Evil K-er's in One House?!!!)
The Dorms Part I
In the fall of 2000, I did something quite out of the ordinary and moved into the dorms for my first senior year of college. It had originally been my mom's suggestion, but somehow I became really excited about it. I moved into Canada Hall in August of 2000. My roommate was to be a Japanese student, which I had hoped would be an interesting experience. When I arrived on the day we were able to move in, my suite was already completely occupied. The living room was already set up, the kitchen shelves were all full, the bathroom counter had things piled all around and on my first day I was already feeling shut out. It turns out that I was moving into a suite with 4 Japanese students and a student athlete who had already been there for the whole summer together.
After about a week, I had a small space on the very top shelf and a drawer in the kitchen, a part of a shelf in the bathroom and of course my half of a bedroom. I also had three Japanese suitemates who were extremely shy but talked to me a bit, a Japanese roommate who wasn't shy, but who didn't talk to me and a student athlete suitemate who spent almost no time in the suite. I don't even remember my roommate's name, but I do know that she was a biology major. She was planning on going to med school because it was what her parents wanted, and she was dating a black man because it was what her parents didn't want. This much I got from the shy suitemates during our limited conversations. I'm also not sure whether she actually ever finished college because she was quite the party animal.
Unfortunately, there was nothing terribly noteworthy about these suitemates, and I was not making any friends. So when a space opened up in my friend's suite across the hall for the next semester, I jumped at the chance to make the move. I would not be roommates with my friend-- neither of us wanted to jeopardize our friendship in that way-- but I would at least have a friendly face in my suite. Plus I'd met a couple of her suitemates and they also seemed nice enough. It was looking like the spring semester was going to be MUCH better.
Fall semester drug on and on, and finally it was December and my new suitemates had told me that I could start moving my things in before it was time to go home for Christmas break. We set a date and I prepped myself for the move across the hall. Come moving day, they had cleared two full shelves for my food in the kitchen, plus one smaller shelf for my dishes and a drawer for my silverware and other similar things. My room was supposed to be ready for me to move in. My future roommate had been told that she needed to gather her things and get them all on her side of the room so that I could move in but when I opened up my room, I discovered that she had made no attempt to prepare for my arrival. Her clothes were strewn all over my side of the room and there was a blanket covering some boxes on the bed that would soon be mine. My friend came in and helped me toss her clothes over to her side of the room. She stepped out after that was done, and I proceed to remove the things from the bed. I picked up the blanket and before I could toss it across the room, I realized what was in the boxes on the bed. It was her umm... let's just say her personal pleasure toys. I was startled and disgusted all at once. I didn't know what to do. So I covered up the boxes with the blanket, wrapped it all the way around and tossed the whole package across the room and onto her bed. And then I considered burning the mattress, but I figured I would probably be charged for it, so I just settled for flipping it over.
I wish I could tell you that was my only encounter with her personal pleasure toys, but unfortunately it was not. We would meet again soon, during the spring semester, in a much less subtle way. I know that this first encounter was not at all subtle, and yet, it gets worse.
When we all returned for the spring semester, I almost never saw my new roommate. The suitemates said she spent a lot of time at her boyfriend's house in Carson. What they didn't tell me, was what she did with her boyfriend when she stayed at home in the dorms. So about four weeks into the semester, I came home late one night after hanging out with my best friend and my roommate was already asleep. I left the lights off and went to my computer and was instant messaging with my best friend (yes, I know I had just left him, but we were bored college students awake at 2am with nothing better to do) while I was working on an assignment for the next day. I heard my roommate's phone ring and I heard her answer. I expected it to be quite brief since she had been sleeping, but then I heard her start moaning. I continued my instant message conversation, thinking that maybe she'd just been yawning because she was tired. But then I heard a buzzing noise and the moaning proceeded to get louder and louder, until it became screaming. I called my best friend on the phone thinking that maybe she just didn't realize I was awake and that if she heard me talking, she would be embarrassed and stop. But instead, I wound up giving my best friend a sneak peek of what was happening in my suite, because she just proceeded to get louder and the buzzing persisted. I decided to go back to my best friend's room for a little while and left the room just as she was saying, "And now I am touching..."
The next day, she started up a conversation with me, as though nothing abnormal had occurred. I played nice, all the while just wanting to hurl as I tried to block out the buzzing sound.
Fortunately, that was the last time I saw her. Apparently she moved to Carson to be with her boyfriend, ditching her student housing contract and leaving me with a room to myself. I didn't find out about this until two weeks later when I came home after a weekend at my parents' house to find all of her things cleared out of the room. And by all of her things I mean everything that buzzed or hummed was gone, but she did leave me an unopened bottle of Kahlua, so I guess the experience wasn't all bad.
1) The Dorms, Part I
2) The Dorms, Part II
3) My Ex-Best Friend's Little Sister and My Brother's Girlfriend
4) The Time In Between
5) The Extremist
6) The Faux-Vegan and the Gamer (Or 4 Evil K-er's in One House?!!!)
The Dorms Part I
In the fall of 2000, I did something quite out of the ordinary and moved into the dorms for my first senior year of college. It had originally been my mom's suggestion, but somehow I became really excited about it. I moved into Canada Hall in August of 2000. My roommate was to be a Japanese student, which I had hoped would be an interesting experience. When I arrived on the day we were able to move in, my suite was already completely occupied. The living room was already set up, the kitchen shelves were all full, the bathroom counter had things piled all around and on my first day I was already feeling shut out. It turns out that I was moving into a suite with 4 Japanese students and a student athlete who had already been there for the whole summer together.
After about a week, I had a small space on the very top shelf and a drawer in the kitchen, a part of a shelf in the bathroom and of course my half of a bedroom. I also had three Japanese suitemates who were extremely shy but talked to me a bit, a Japanese roommate who wasn't shy, but who didn't talk to me and a student athlete suitemate who spent almost no time in the suite. I don't even remember my roommate's name, but I do know that she was a biology major. She was planning on going to med school because it was what her parents wanted, and she was dating a black man because it was what her parents didn't want. This much I got from the shy suitemates during our limited conversations. I'm also not sure whether she actually ever finished college because she was quite the party animal.
Unfortunately, there was nothing terribly noteworthy about these suitemates, and I was not making any friends. So when a space opened up in my friend's suite across the hall for the next semester, I jumped at the chance to make the move. I would not be roommates with my friend-- neither of us wanted to jeopardize our friendship in that way-- but I would at least have a friendly face in my suite. Plus I'd met a couple of her suitemates and they also seemed nice enough. It was looking like the spring semester was going to be MUCH better.
Fall semester drug on and on, and finally it was December and my new suitemates had told me that I could start moving my things in before it was time to go home for Christmas break. We set a date and I prepped myself for the move across the hall. Come moving day, they had cleared two full shelves for my food in the kitchen, plus one smaller shelf for my dishes and a drawer for my silverware and other similar things. My room was supposed to be ready for me to move in. My future roommate had been told that she needed to gather her things and get them all on her side of the room so that I could move in but when I opened up my room, I discovered that she had made no attempt to prepare for my arrival. Her clothes were strewn all over my side of the room and there was a blanket covering some boxes on the bed that would soon be mine. My friend came in and helped me toss her clothes over to her side of the room. She stepped out after that was done, and I proceed to remove the things from the bed. I picked up the blanket and before I could toss it across the room, I realized what was in the boxes on the bed. It was her umm... let's just say her personal pleasure toys. I was startled and disgusted all at once. I didn't know what to do. So I covered up the boxes with the blanket, wrapped it all the way around and tossed the whole package across the room and onto her bed. And then I considered burning the mattress, but I figured I would probably be charged for it, so I just settled for flipping it over.
I wish I could tell you that was my only encounter with her personal pleasure toys, but unfortunately it was not. We would meet again soon, during the spring semester, in a much less subtle way. I know that this first encounter was not at all subtle, and yet, it gets worse.
When we all returned for the spring semester, I almost never saw my new roommate. The suitemates said she spent a lot of time at her boyfriend's house in Carson. What they didn't tell me, was what she did with her boyfriend when she stayed at home in the dorms. So about four weeks into the semester, I came home late one night after hanging out with my best friend and my roommate was already asleep. I left the lights off and went to my computer and was instant messaging with my best friend (yes, I know I had just left him, but we were bored college students awake at 2am with nothing better to do) while I was working on an assignment for the next day. I heard my roommate's phone ring and I heard her answer. I expected it to be quite brief since she had been sleeping, but then I heard her start moaning. I continued my instant message conversation, thinking that maybe she'd just been yawning because she was tired. But then I heard a buzzing noise and the moaning proceeded to get louder and louder, until it became screaming. I called my best friend on the phone thinking that maybe she just didn't realize I was awake and that if she heard me talking, she would be embarrassed and stop. But instead, I wound up giving my best friend a sneak peek of what was happening in my suite, because she just proceeded to get louder and the buzzing persisted. I decided to go back to my best friend's room for a little while and left the room just as she was saying, "And now I am touching..."
The next day, she started up a conversation with me, as though nothing abnormal had occurred. I played nice, all the while just wanting to hurl as I tried to block out the buzzing sound.
Fortunately, that was the last time I saw her. Apparently she moved to Carson to be with her boyfriend, ditching her student housing contract and leaving me with a room to myself. I didn't find out about this until two weeks later when I came home after a weekend at my parents' house to find all of her things cleared out of the room. And by all of her things I mean everything that buzzed or hummed was gone, but she did leave me an unopened bottle of Kahlua, so I guess the experience wasn't all bad.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Breaking Free from Unforgiveness
Over the last few weeks, I have started several posts about the fabulous "Growing Up" series-- particularly about the need to break away from the ways of our families. I have found several unhealthy ways of living that are passed down through my family, such as secrecy, shame and self-sufficiency (that was actually the title of one of my prospective posts). But today I realized the one that is the most crippling, and the one that I drew the line on several years ago--unforgiveness and holding a grudge. That's not to say that I am always perfect at forgiving, in fact FAR from it, but unforgiveness is the biggest thing that I have drawn the line on and said "NOT IN MY HOUSE."
I have talked about my family and their lack of communication skills on my blog before. This was a major roadblock in my life for a very long time. I used to keep everything hidden, to myself-- but my tongue was let free almost immediately when I accepted Jesus' gift. The unforgiveness was a harder one to deal with. My whole life, my mother had used her unforgiveness as a punishment. She would scream at us so that we knew that she was mad, and then she would punish us with the silent treatment until we caved and apologized, whether we were guilty or not. And my dad stood by and went along with it, but when she was not around, he let it be known that he didn't agree with her ways. I, on the other hand, was always the vocal one, always making it clear when I thought something was not right, always trying to get what was fair and right, even if it was somebody else that my mother was angry with. As I'm sure you can imagine, this meant I got more than my fair share of unforgiveness. And I eventually always caved and apologized for whatever I had not done wrong. Actually, simply apologizing was never enough-- it was actually more like grovelling.
I drew the line on this about four years ago, not realizing at the time what a difference it would make. It was about a week before Thanksgiving and I was at my parents' house for a visit. My mom was making dinner and she went to the sink to fill up a pot and found that there were dirty dishes from the night before in the sink. At this point, she began to scream at my dad, berate my dad, rant at my dad, etc about how lazy he was and how if she hadn't married him her life would be so much easier and so on. This had been going on for weeks before this, every time I came over, my mom would ruin my ability to enjoy my time with them by flying off the handle on my dad. I'd had enough-- and I will admit right now, this was FAR from my finest moment--I stepped in for my dad, since he never stood up for myself... Only it came out totally wrong and I asked my mother, "If you are so f---ing miserable, why don't you divorce him." Now let me make it clear-- this was a very poor attempt to make my mother realize that she was being overdramatic and that dirty dishes in the sink were not cause for divorce. I am fully aware that what I said was wrong. And I immediately apologized. However, my mom would have none of it. She turned her wrath on me. But it wasn't the suggestion of divorce that had made her angry as I would have thought, it was the fact that I used the f word in her house. I am aware that this was not a good thing to say, and I have only let it slip a handful of times when I was EXTREMELY angry as an adult. I apologized again, quite sincerely, crying of course, as is my nature, but still she would not even take a break from her yelling. And this is the important part-- I am, and was immediately, fully aware that what I said was wrong. And I made my attempts to seek forgiveness. My mom told me to give my house key to my dad and get out. I did as requested and went home. For a couple of days I was miserable. I made my attempts to apologize, to seek forgiveness, and I fully understand my mother being angry for what I said, but she was not open to hear my apologies-- she hung up the phone each time I called for the first couple of days. And then she told my sister-in-law (though then she was just my brother's girlfriend) that she was having Thanksgiving dinner at her house and that I probably wouldn't be coming since I still hadn't apologized. At this point, I decided to break the pattern. I had made my apologies, several times and I was not going to grovel this time. I had said all I could possibly say, and there was nothing left for me to do. So I just let the situation be. I made my own plans with friends for Thanksgiving. After all, being miserable wasn't going to make my mother speak to me, and holding a grudge against her for holding a grudge against me wasn't going to do anything but make me unhappy. So for the first and only time in my life, I had Thanksgiving separate from my family. And I enjoyed myself.
Several days later, my mother apparently realized that I was not going to grovel this time and she sent me an instant message. We talked that way for several minutes and then she called me. She talked as though we hadn't fought-- I had let it go several days before, and since she was ready to let go, we were back on track. Since then, I have made it clear that I will not tolerate the dad-bashing, and I have also made it clear to my father that I will not tolerate mom-bashing. It is their relationship and I should not be expected to pick sides. They still do it, but I remind them that I don't have to come to see them if they are going to put my in that sort of situation. Additionally, as my communication skills have improved, both of my parents have come to communicate better with me. This doesn't mean that my mom doesn't occasionally fly off the handle, but I don't really fight back anymore. If she wants to be miserable and angry, that is her choice, but that is not something I want for myself. If only they could extend this improved communication into their relationship with one another. They both need it, especially my mother, but they just continue in their old ways.
I wish I could say that the effect of this unforgiveness in my family is only emotional, but there is definitely a physical aspect as well. My mom has a slew of health issues and most recently has discovered that she has rheumatoid arthritis-- this is important because it is aggravated by stress. I have noticed that when she hurts the most is when she is angry at my father for some thing he has done or not done that he was supposed to know on his own that he should do. If I could, I would explain to her that by getting angry with him for every single unintentional slight, the only thing she is accomplishing is causing herself pain, both physically and emotionally.
So the train stops here-- I am not willing to cause myself pain by holding a grudge.
Finito
I have talked about my family and their lack of communication skills on my blog before. This was a major roadblock in my life for a very long time. I used to keep everything hidden, to myself-- but my tongue was let free almost immediately when I accepted Jesus' gift. The unforgiveness was a harder one to deal with. My whole life, my mother had used her unforgiveness as a punishment. She would scream at us so that we knew that she was mad, and then she would punish us with the silent treatment until we caved and apologized, whether we were guilty or not. And my dad stood by and went along with it, but when she was not around, he let it be known that he didn't agree with her ways. I, on the other hand, was always the vocal one, always making it clear when I thought something was not right, always trying to get what was fair and right, even if it was somebody else that my mother was angry with. As I'm sure you can imagine, this meant I got more than my fair share of unforgiveness. And I eventually always caved and apologized for whatever I had not done wrong. Actually, simply apologizing was never enough-- it was actually more like grovelling.
I drew the line on this about four years ago, not realizing at the time what a difference it would make. It was about a week before Thanksgiving and I was at my parents' house for a visit. My mom was making dinner and she went to the sink to fill up a pot and found that there were dirty dishes from the night before in the sink. At this point, she began to scream at my dad, berate my dad, rant at my dad, etc about how lazy he was and how if she hadn't married him her life would be so much easier and so on. This had been going on for weeks before this, every time I came over, my mom would ruin my ability to enjoy my time with them by flying off the handle on my dad. I'd had enough-- and I will admit right now, this was FAR from my finest moment--I stepped in for my dad, since he never stood up for myself... Only it came out totally wrong and I asked my mother, "If you are so f---ing miserable, why don't you divorce him." Now let me make it clear-- this was a very poor attempt to make my mother realize that she was being overdramatic and that dirty dishes in the sink were not cause for divorce. I am fully aware that what I said was wrong. And I immediately apologized. However, my mom would have none of it. She turned her wrath on me. But it wasn't the suggestion of divorce that had made her angry as I would have thought, it was the fact that I used the f word in her house. I am aware that this was not a good thing to say, and I have only let it slip a handful of times when I was EXTREMELY angry as an adult. I apologized again, quite sincerely, crying of course, as is my nature, but still she would not even take a break from her yelling. And this is the important part-- I am, and was immediately, fully aware that what I said was wrong. And I made my attempts to seek forgiveness. My mom told me to give my house key to my dad and get out. I did as requested and went home. For a couple of days I was miserable. I made my attempts to apologize, to seek forgiveness, and I fully understand my mother being angry for what I said, but she was not open to hear my apologies-- she hung up the phone each time I called for the first couple of days. And then she told my sister-in-law (though then she was just my brother's girlfriend) that she was having Thanksgiving dinner at her house and that I probably wouldn't be coming since I still hadn't apologized. At this point, I decided to break the pattern. I had made my apologies, several times and I was not going to grovel this time. I had said all I could possibly say, and there was nothing left for me to do. So I just let the situation be. I made my own plans with friends for Thanksgiving. After all, being miserable wasn't going to make my mother speak to me, and holding a grudge against her for holding a grudge against me wasn't going to do anything but make me unhappy. So for the first and only time in my life, I had Thanksgiving separate from my family. And I enjoyed myself.
Several days later, my mother apparently realized that I was not going to grovel this time and she sent me an instant message. We talked that way for several minutes and then she called me. She talked as though we hadn't fought-- I had let it go several days before, and since she was ready to let go, we were back on track. Since then, I have made it clear that I will not tolerate the dad-bashing, and I have also made it clear to my father that I will not tolerate mom-bashing. It is their relationship and I should not be expected to pick sides. They still do it, but I remind them that I don't have to come to see them if they are going to put my in that sort of situation. Additionally, as my communication skills have improved, both of my parents have come to communicate better with me. This doesn't mean that my mom doesn't occasionally fly off the handle, but I don't really fight back anymore. If she wants to be miserable and angry, that is her choice, but that is not something I want for myself. If only they could extend this improved communication into their relationship with one another. They both need it, especially my mother, but they just continue in their old ways.
I wish I could say that the effect of this unforgiveness in my family is only emotional, but there is definitely a physical aspect as well. My mom has a slew of health issues and most recently has discovered that she has rheumatoid arthritis-- this is important because it is aggravated by stress. I have noticed that when she hurts the most is when she is angry at my father for some thing he has done or not done that he was supposed to know on his own that he should do. If I could, I would explain to her that by getting angry with him for every single unintentional slight, the only thing she is accomplishing is causing herself pain, both physically and emotionally.
So the train stops here-- I am not willing to cause myself pain by holding a grudge.
Finito
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Processing the Emo
Things are starting to catch up with me. I don't like not doing things I would normally do the way I would normally do them. I don't like feeling inept and I don't like needing help. Yes, I know this is an issue and yes I am working on it, but I don't like it. I don't like asking for time off from work in small amounts twice a week. It makes me feel like a nuisance. And I feel like an idiot. I feel like there should have been something I could have done to prevent myself from tripping on my pajama pants and making a mess of my life at the moment. My head knows that it could not be prevented, that it was just one of those freak things that could happen to anyone. But the enemy is telling me that I screwed up big time. That I've made a mess, dug a hole that's going to be hard to get out of. I feel like I'm not getting better fast enough, even though I'm still within the time line that was given to me. I just want this whole thing to be done, and yet is nowhere near being done-- I have at least two and a half more weeks of therapy left, depending on how things go, and we are just starting the grip/strengthening on Thursday of this week, depending on how I feel. Mostly my pride is hurt. It's stupid, I know, but that is the reality of the situation. I'm tired of laughing it off and I'm tired of the pajama jokes and it's probably just because I'm cranky right now, but that's part of the emo that I'm feeling right now.
I have 18 days before I move and I am freaking out. I am being quite bad in that I am not trusting that I will be taken care of. I'm kicking and screaming and trying to hold onto the control that I'm simultaneously trying to let go of. Ugh. What is the matter with me? Why is it so difficult for me to accept that the people who truly love me are genuine in their desire to help? I have a genuine desire to help those I love, so why should I expect it to be any different on the flip side? How did I get this stubborn and controlling? I think it is a bad habit picked up from my family, and the hardest one by far to move past--particularly as a single individual. My head knows all of this and my heart is trying to get in line with my head.
I am physically and mentally drained. I need to stop worrying, because all it is doing is making me more tired. I don't know why I'm telling ya'll this, except that maybe seeing it in writing will make it easier for me to do.
At any rate, it is time for bed. Tomorrow is another day, a better day. :)
I have 18 days before I move and I am freaking out. I am being quite bad in that I am not trusting that I will be taken care of. I'm kicking and screaming and trying to hold onto the control that I'm simultaneously trying to let go of. Ugh. What is the matter with me? Why is it so difficult for me to accept that the people who truly love me are genuine in their desire to help? I have a genuine desire to help those I love, so why should I expect it to be any different on the flip side? How did I get this stubborn and controlling? I think it is a bad habit picked up from my family, and the hardest one by far to move past--particularly as a single individual. My head knows all of this and my heart is trying to get in line with my head.
I am physically and mentally drained. I need to stop worrying, because all it is doing is making me more tired. I don't know why I'm telling ya'll this, except that maybe seeing it in writing will make it easier for me to do.
At any rate, it is time for bed. Tomorrow is another day, a better day. :)
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