tinea:any of a number of infectious diseases

�what is Man? a miserable little pile of secrets.� - andr� malraux

"i desire to live in peace and to continue the life i have begun under the motto, to live well you must live unseen." - rene descartes

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someday is now.

2018-04-26 @ 1:41 p.m.

i worked saturday because whatever, i wasn't doing anything anyway and it was kind of cold here. boss called me in the morning and asked if i wanted to come because he "was in a shitty mood and didn't want to flip out on anyone," so i said i'd sit at the new store and take care of a lot of stuff that badly needed to be done. i sat with new guy and we did so much! without boss annoying us every second to run around and do this and that, we got so many pictures taken, inventory arranged, website updated, emails replied to, etc. it was so productive.

from there i returned to the old place where our home base is and boss and i got some little things done but mostly he was bitching about how grumpy he was, so i just sat and shopped on amazon while i listened. he asked what i was going to do after work and i told him i had an exciting night of grocery shopping ahead of me.

so it was like 8pm and i went to the asian supermarket and got a shit ton of noodles (i'm on this insatiable ramen kick lately, but not like shitty cup noodles, i mean real imported instant and refrigerated ramen kits). my excitement level about trying these was over 9000, especially one pack of tonkotsu shoyu ramen that was in the refrigerated section. i got the last pack; the rest were sold out. that's usually a good sign. it was also much more expensive than all of the other brands of the same type available, so that made me feel a little more confident about them. (side note: i tried them sunday and they were amazing!! like restaurant quality, like i think that some of the small local restaurants around here probably buy these and serve them for $15-20 a bowl because they're that authentic tasting.)

after that i went to the regular supermarket and did all of my shopping for my meals for the week. it was so nice and relaxing just walking around both of the nearly empty stores, just browsing, looking at everything, surveying the selection for my future visits, getting ideas.

i couldn't help but think about how miserable boy always made the whole shopping experience. one or more of several aggravating things would always happen. we'd have a list of like seven things, and he'd always go nuts buying hundreds, literally hundreds of dollars worth of snacks and shit (which were ONLY for him, by the way, we'd get yelled at for eating "his" food). this was always extra fun when we were on a really tight budget. i would tell him that we couldn't afford all of it, we had other bills to pay, and he'd tell me i was so annoying, it was his money to spend, he didn't work as hard as he did to not be able to enjoy anything, etc etc. then when the electric bill was due and we were in the negative it was my responsibility to call them and beg them not to shut it off again. this happened like every month. oh, and when i would say we didn't have enough money for whatever bill it was, he would tell me i should have told him that we couldn't afford whatever it was at the store, that i should have told him to put it back, that i shouldn't have let him buy "all this shit! we barely even got any real groceries for meals!"

or, we'd go to the store with a small list, i'd beg him to just give me $30 and let me go by myself but he'd always say no, he needed stuff. so i'd be trying to get the things on the list and he'd be complaining, huffing and puffing behind me, rushing me through the store, walking away from me with the cart so i couldn't double check that we got everything we needed, so when we got home i'd see that one of the most important things on the list was missed early on and now i couldn't make this specialized dish he wanted. of course this was also my fault, and now he refused to go back to the store and refused to let me go back to the store to get it so we'd have to order out.

or - and this was when my anxiety and agoraphobia were really bad, and of course he knew i was suffering at the time but didn't care - he'd refuse to go to the store with me later at night when it was less crowded, and again would refuse to just let me go by myself, so we'd end up going like on saturday right in the middle of the day when it was fucking packed and all of the lines were super long. once again rushing me and rushing me, practically ramming the cart against my and other people's legs (once again, i mean he would literally hit people with the cart who were "in the way").

god. it was so frustrating. when we lived together it was frustrating, and when we lived separately in the last two years, it was even more frustrating. i drove 85 miles one way to see him once or more per week, paying gas and tolls all out of my own pocket, and there was never anything to eat there. he didn't care to buy any groceries, even when little A was living there. i had to beg him to go shopping so that both little A and i had something to eat in the morning, or for little A after school. just to have a box of cereal or something in the pantry so there was SOMETHING. but he didn't care. every night he ordered $50-100 worth of takeout, and would stop at 7-11 or whatever to get snacks for himself, and only himself.

he had the nerve to complain to me on several occasions in the last ... 4-6 months-ish of our relationship that "a home cooked meal would be nice." of course this was in a snarky, rude tone, with a look of disgust on his face directed at me because i was not cooking for him. i was the fucking guest! i drove 85 miles one way, on my own fucking dime, after taking a half day off of work because YOU ASKED ME TO, to come to your house. there was nothing in the fucking kitchen to even cook. no, he expected me to drive 85 miles, buy the groceries, wash all of his dishes from the week (because he had a dishwasher that he refused to fix himself or ask the landlord to fix, so i had to wash all of the dishes by hand because he wouldn't do it himself), then cook a meal, then wash the dishes again because i made the mess.

i'm sorry for all of that, but i really needed to just get it out of my system. i've looked back over this diary many times since we broke up and i only ever wrote about the good times. i realize now that i did so because i knew that a) if i had written about all of the bad times, that's 85% of what this diary would have consisted of, and b) because i was in serious denial as to how terrible of a person he really was.

sure, you may read this and think oh she's just bitter and now she wants to drag him. not really. i have nothing to gain from making him look bad to completely anonymous strangers after the fact. it's just the truth. there were so many awful, shitty, straight up mean things that he did to both me and little A, so many lies that i'm still discovering now, after the fact. and i never wrote about them because i think that i just didn't want to admit that i would let myself be treated that way. and i didn't want to admit that he was really like that. even though the sum of his awful behavior was so, SO much greater than the sum of his sweet, kind moments, and i knew it, i still wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. i didn't want to believe that he meant any of it, that it was on purpose.

this is just me admitting that now, i know better. that some people just are who - and what - they are.

so anyway.

i shopped, then went to pick up my laundry, then went by my (former) house to pick up my mail. the realtor said no one would be moving in for at least a month, so it would be safe to pick it up until the forwarding was finalized. man, what a bittersweet feeling. it was weird to turn into the community, down all of the familiar roads, knowing that i was now just passing through, that it was no longer home. to see my neighbors were home, but they were no longer my neighbors.

the mailbox is on the corner of the street, so i had to pass by my old home to get to it, and there it was, all of the blinds pulled open and the kitchen light was on, and you could see inside, the empty living room and kitchen. there was a big "no trespassing" sign posted on the door. it was such a strange feeling to see it like this, to know now, it's just a house. no longer my house.

as i drove away from it, i thought, i didn't really have a lot of great memories there. i loved the house itself, and i loved the upgrades i did to it, and i loved the neighborhood. but i gave it away too soon. i let boy move in and take up all of my space, i let him and little A use my things and destroy them, i let them fill it up with trash and clutter and negativity, all of which i ended up responsible for. my best memories were the first year or so when i lived completely alone with my dearly departed boycat. the rest is just a jumble of frustration and stress and sadness.

so here's to my new start.

and i'm really happy right now. i appreciate even the very little things - the ritual of going around every evening and turning off all of the lights, and closing the blinds. i can keep this place clean. i don't like trash and i don't like clutter. it's not that i just don't like them, but they clutter my mind. i felt like i couldn't think. there was so much in that house that i couldn't even wrap my brain around where to start. i couldn't do something so simple as vacuum or wipe down the table because i always had to spend an hour picking up everyone else's crap that they left around even after being asked a million times to pick it up and move it elsewhere, or throw it out. i would pick up boy's shit that he left around and put it in a big box, and put it next to the couch for him to sort through so we could trash the trash. my living room became full of boxes and bags that he would just push into the corner and leave there indefinitely. then, because he didn't want to look at them, he'd move them into the basement. oh, now that the living room is clean there's plenty of room for me to start a new pile of trash, that will be put into a new box. it went on and on.

so as much as i've lost, i treasure what i've gained in my new life. my evening ritual of turning down the lights, closing the blinds. setting my coffee maker for the next morning. doing my shopping on saturday night, prepping my meals and washing all of my dishes on sunday night so all i have to do is pick up a container and go all week.

everything feels so much easier and simpler and more peaceful now. not every day chaos. i revise my budget every week and don't have to worry every single day about not having enough money for this or that bill. not having to worry about whether boy got pulled over again today, whether he's going to lose his license for good this time, how many thousands of dollars it was going to cost this time to put yet another temporary bandaid on it.

and the worries weren't all boy-related. he was the cause of 75% of my problems but i hated being a homeowner, too. every year it was another thing. the air conditioner broke every summer. the fridge broke. the hot water heater broke. the kitchen faucet was leaking. the pipe under the kitchen sink leaked and ruined the cabinets. the upstairs showers were leaking. eventually the one in my bathroom wouldn't even spray, i could only take baths or use the other bathroom. then that one broke too. i know houses are a great investment and everything but there's so much more i want to do with my life than just save money to fix the same shit over and over. i always felt guilty when i wanted to buy something for myself because i knew, oh i should really save this $100 for a few months from now because it's almost may and i'll need the air soon.

it was all too much. boy and the house. and it's all gone now. i spent so much time worrying about those things, and about losing those things, but the truth is that i'm happier than ever without either of them.

so i feel amazing. i moved in and i have all of these wonderful little things that i am thankful for. and spring is here. it's 60 degrees and perfectly sunny and the trees are coming back to life and the birds are singing. i've lived so long under the black cloud that i can hardly believe how good it feels in the sun.

every spring i'd ask boy if we could go for a drive through the woods so i could see everything while it was blooming. every weekend he'd say next weekend, next weekend, next weekend until i missed it. anything he wanted had to be done that instant, had to be done yesterday, drop what you're doing to entertain me. but i waited and waited and waited because i thought, someday i'll finally get what i want. someday it'll be my turn.