He hits her.
He's done it more than once.
She's not leaving him.
She's one of the two people I would die for, the other being my son.
She said I wasn't there for her.
I didn't expect that.
September 2005 Archives
It's a quote from Kelly Clarkston, in case you're wondering.
Some things are a disaster, yet others are going so well. Talk about being conflicted.
I went and saw a new doctor on Monday. The morning started out horribly enough due to a lack of planning and organization on Michael's part. Well, I should have known by now, so I guess it's my fault. I should have had contingency plans. I need to set up a Disaster Recovery plan for my life. I ended up handing the doctor $350, and in turn he handed me Valium. Fair trade. I'm about to start an extensive and exhausting round of testing to find out exactly what is wrong with me. It's been proven I don't have Degenerative Disc Disease - now they think it's Fibromyalgia. I'm tired, and I just want to give up. One can only get so many answers before realizing that there is no answer. I keep trying, though. I don't hope for a cure. I just want to know what I'm facing. At this rate, I'll soon be in a wheelchair most of the time.
Valium isn't what I expected. I wanted something to calm me. I wanted something to numb me, emotionally. I still get upset, but it's like it's happening through a thin layer of apathy. I'm angry, but it's controllable because I just don't care. I view everything with a detachment that is a bit unsettling. Right now, by all accounts, I should be furious. I should be upset. I should be...something other than this feeling of cold heartlessness. It's like I'm watching everything unfold in a badly cast movie with a sub-par plot.
I stayed at work very late last night. We were given two days to complete a project that reasonably should have taken 6 weeks, at least. It's for a huge client. Sure, I'm a contractor that doesn't get paid overtime, but I don't mind helping. I finally got home near midnight. I reached in my bag, about to check my voicemail as I didn't have signal where I was, and it rang before I could bother. Michael was on the phone, angry as he's ever been. He started yelling at me immediately, because he tried calling twice and I hadn't answered. It was my first day on Valium, so I didn't know how to react to what I was feeling. I was just so tired, and I didn't see the necessity in getting upset. It makes sense to me, even if you're puzzled by the phrasing. I tried to sit there and let him get it out of his system. He proceeded to blame me for everything, up to and including Katrina. I just wanted to sleep. I told him I couldn't deal with his shit, and as I prepared to hang up, my phone died. Low battery, figures. I plugged it in, and made sure it stayed turned off, as it usually turns on when it charges. I knew he'd be calling back, and I was so stressed out, tired, and fed up in general that I couldn't deal with him. He AIM'ed me immediately, cursing at me more. So I blocked him. Then he started a new account, and AIM'ed me from it, telling me to "get my shit together and move out". So I said "k" and blocked him again. After he started another account, I signed off AIM. I was getting ready to sleep, so it made no difference to me. Three minutes later, I get an email from him. I told him I was marking his address as spam in my blacklist filter, and got into my pajamas. Five minutes later, he sent me another email from a different address. I have to hand it to him, this kid is persistant.
During our conversations, he got fairly abusive, probably due to my lack of proper response - that is, he wanted me to fight back. Some of the finer points of his conversation were:
1) I'm "useless" and "good for nothing" because I can't do anything around the house due to my disability.
2) I treat him like shit.
3) I obviously must not love him because I don't call him several times a day.
4) I obviously must not want to be in this relationship since I was doing what he told me to do. ie: move out.
The thing is, he tells me to move out at least once a week, or he threatens to move out. I am tired of the fighting. I stopped getting into the details of our fights on my blog a while ago, mainly because I thought it was unfair to him. This is just my side of the story. I'm being painted as the bad guy to everyone by him, though. It's time to fight back. I'm sure he'll try to make himself out to be as pristine as newly fallen snow. Dog piss covered snow, sure.
Michael is a good person at heart, but he fights with cruelty and hatred. Most people fight like this when they are younger, but eventually they grow out of it. Like, you know, once they get out of grade school, with the exception of IRC. When I fight, I choose to make it a battle of reason. I don't say unnecessarily cruel things, I just try to prove my point. Michael isn't so good at that. He didn't use to be like this, but he got tired of losing every argument; at least, that's my guess. He's not good at remembering things, be it dates, specific things said in a conversation, etc. He knows this, and he's even admitted to this on several occassions, but he'll bullheadedly try to say he knows he's right even when he's very, very wrong. I, on the other hand, am good at remembering the most obscure things. This is a trait inherent in most females. It is bred into us to remember every single word that you ever say, for the sole purpose of using it against you in the future. I never try to say things that are hateful. I never say something just to hurt him. I'm not capable of that. I'm not that type of person. It's just not in me. This isn't IRC. He says things that he knows are not true, things that he normally would never say, because he knows that at that moment, I will take his words at face value and believe them. In the back of my mind, I'll know he's wrong, but I'll believe him anyways. He says things that you should just never say to someone you love. He's told me his friends hate me, his family hates me, I ruin the life of anyone I come into contact with, he's the only person on this planet that would ever put up with my shit, I'm a bad parent, I'm faking my back problems, and that I killed my dog. Later he tried to deny saying these things, or he said he didn't mean them. The words were said. Once they are out there, they can't be taken back. I'm a firm believer in the word "sorry" meaning jack shit. If someone truly regrets what they did, they just don't do it again. It's that simple. He does this every argument we have, so it's obvious he doesn't feel that poorly about it.
Last week, I told him I didn't trust him. He got so angry. I didn't know what to say. It's not my fault I can't trust him, it's his fault for lying to me. He lies all the time, about stupid little things, but it's a lie nonetheless. I hate not trusting him. I want to be able to. He started yelling at me about this, and then he told me he didn't trust me, either. He doesn't want me hanging around James at all. I've hung out with James twice in the past four months, both times when it should have been Mike with me. The first time was shortly after the surgery that I alluded to in this blog several times, although I never got into specifics. Mike forgot about the date, and he scheduled himself available for a business trip putting him out of town the week just a day after the surgery. I tried not to be upset, and I did a pretty good job of it. I was scared though, because I didn't know if I'd be able to handle things on my own. James stopped by one night to check on me and see how I was doing. I thought it was sweet. He was the only one of my friends that was able to do that, and I appreciated it more than he could realize. The second time was my birthday - the big fuck up. Mike forgot what day my birthday was, and said he was okay to go on a business trip. We were supposed to go to Phantom of the Opera. That was my birthday present was from him. I didn't get to go, I had to sell the tickets to my boss. I was heartbroken. The power also got shut off that day, as Mike forgot to pay the bill - or the check got lost in the mail, so he says. I don't know, I don't care - all I know is that he was out of town, I was in a house that had no power, and I was all by myself on a day that would depress me regardless. James took me out for dinner to try to cheer me up. He kept me company, on a day that my boyfriend should have been there.
I'm tired of the constant disappointments. I don't think it's right that I should have to feel guilty about being in pain. I know Mike isn't living the life he wants to live, and he probably never will be able to because I am just not capable of it. I can't let him take it all out on me anymore. I used to think I was always snapping at him because I was in so much pain. Now, I know it's just because it's him. I'm tired of being abused. Sometimes words can be more painful than fists.
I know he's going to try to blame the downfall of this relationship on me. I know he's going to say it was my choice to move out, that I'm the one that made the decision. Maybe I did, maybe it is all my fault. I'm tired of having to ignore him. I'm tired of "breaking up" on a weekly basis. I'm tired of being told to leave. I'm finally listening to him. I'm fairly certain that this really is what he's wanted for a while, he's just been to scared to admit it. I told him repeatedly that I'm not the marriagable type. I'm not even the relationship type. Until I know what is wrong with my spine, I'm defective. I don't want to put this on anyone else. We had this talk a week ago, and he told me he'd try to be there for me. He was, that night. I cried, because I would rather he had not been. I don't like to depend on other people or expect anything other than the worse from them, because then I start to depend on it. I was right, too. He held my hand that night, while I laid in bed and spasmed in pain. It hasn't happened since. If I can't have constant support, I'd rather not have any at all. It's too hard.
I'm going to miss his family. I know he's going to make this as difficult as possible. I gave him one last chance tonight. I called him, and told him I was going through with it. He didn't fight it. Instead, he chose to attack me again. No one has ever been able to make me hate myself as much as he has. I'm FreeBSDGirl. Obviously, I'm the shit. What the hell was I thinking?
We'll see what the next few days bring. I should be busy enough with work, so I won't be able to think about it that much. They offered me a permanent position as a full-time developer. I took it. I wanted to call someone; I wanted to celebrate - but then I realized, there's no one to call. The one person I'd want to celebrate with isn't mine anymore.
Then I took another Valium. Good times.
I'm tired of hearing that the EU WoW servers are down. In lieu of moving to a country with WoW servers that aren't habitually down, here's your fix.
With a text editor such as Notepad or Wordpad, open <World of Warcraft base directory>\realmlist.wtf
Change the only line in that file to:
set realmlist us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com
This isn't going to make your service that slow - it's only going to be contacting that server until you get to your character selection screen. At that point, it'll contact the IP address of the actual realm. Obviously, EU and US share realms, but I'm not sure if the EU has a server cluster for each realm as well...or if they contact the same realms as us, and it's just their logon server that's different. Post comments here as to what you've found when trying this.
An interesting benefit to knowing this is in case you're behind a firewall that is blocking Blizzard IP space. Set up a forward outside the network, and change your realmlist to that server.
I'm almost up to level 24. I spent most of my time running around various places (Booty Bay, Darnassus) getting flight paths and buying expert books for cooking/fishing/etc. I managed to find a halfway decent group the other night, so I got a few of my quests completed. I think DM is tonight. Mike is leaving, so I'll have tonight and maybe tomorrow to myself - more leveling, yay. I just spent what little gold I had left on my level 22 spells, and I haven't yet had a chance to try them out. Since insomniax is being hella slow on their updating, I disabled it and installed a slew of new Addons, and I like it even better. I haven't managed to get Aristocraft working, but it was 3 AM by the time I installed it, so I had little chance to mess with it. It looks interesting, I guess. Still working on playing around with UI customizations to build my own Addon. It's not that I don't like the one's I'm using, they are all just a bit more and a bit less than what I require. Maybe if the reagent ones were ever updated...
Fun stuff in #wow on EFNet yesterday. People were whining (as usual) about Blizzard, and some asshat claimed that Blizzard was making $70 million a month, free and clear. I started cracking up in my chair. I tried to explain to him the error of his thoughts - the price involved in staff, bandwidth, power, redundancy, servers, etc... and he was like "I work for a big webhosting company, we have game servers, I know what I'm talking about." I'm sorry, but little quake servers run by individuals don't quite compare to a WoW Realm cluster. His response? "Well, I work for theplanet" ... and I didn't see what he said next, because I was laughing so hard my eyes were tearing up.
Theplanet is a bunch of fucktards. I haven't even gone into my experiences with them on the site, primarily because it's even exhausting to think about. They are the most computer illiterate monkeys I have ever had the misfortune of talking to. I am still looking around at new hosting options. Why, why, why can I not find competent hosting? How hard is it to provide my server with bandwidth and power and NOT fuck something up? He started bragging about how many servers they had and how much bandwidth they had...and it was all too much. My sides were starting to cramp because of trying to hold in the mind numbing laugher. End result, I told him my penis was bigger, and I'm a girl so that says little about him. He should go back to tech support and stay off IRC, as I doubt his company would want him giving out information about them on IRC, right? (Yes, #nanog, I can play those games too. Probably better than you can.)
Speaking of fucktards, some idiot - I'm guessing he's from #nanog, as I have no clue who he is - started spouting off random bullshit in #wow last night. That by itself was fairly comical - even more so when the channel started siding with me, wondering what this guys malfunction was. Funny, because the other day this same guy made some crack about drama following me around. I never really have IRC drama anymore, unless those people try to bring it - at which point I just ignore it. I'm too tired, and there's not enough pills in the world. Kids. :)
Still no response from the Hyatt, big suprise there. Worst service EVAR. Also, Nora Roberts is the shittiest writer to ever make the Top 10 list. I can't figure out why so many people buy her books. She has decent plot, I guess. It's all female crap. Her writing style is just so horrible, though. She writes like a teenager. The character development is so immature. She has to tell you exactly what everyone is thinking so you're not totally confused. I hate authors that try to hold your hand. Ugh. Give the readers some credit, come on.
I have the patch uploaded to this server. For obvious reasons, I'm not putting the link to the patch up here, but AIM me (sektie) or send me a message on Google's Talk (sektie@gmail.com) if you want it. The download speeds from my server have been recorded at up to 8MB/second, so it's quite a bit better than what Blizzard offers with their P2P downloader. :)
WARNING: This post is about World of Warcraft. If MMORPG's are just too nerdy for you, don't bother reading this. Reading about MMORPG's I don't play annoys the piss out of me, too.
I played WoW religiously this weekend, only pausing to refill my glass of wine (1999 chiraz, surpisingly good) and eat. I went from level 13 to level 20 - almost 21. I even managed to get my Succubus summon, a fact of which I'm quite proud. Hitting The Badlands up solo is no easy feat when you're a lowly level 20 warlock. I was only in a group once during the entire weekend, for about 30 minutes. The rest of the leveling I did on my own. Not too bad at all, in my opinion.
My new laptop is handling the game like a champ. In 1920x1200 full-screened, I'm getting 60 FPS on average, and 40 FPS in Ironforge! I could barely go to Ironforge on my old computer because the video card would lag so horribly. No weird pixelation issues with this one, either.
For now, I'm going to slack off a bit in the game. I need to head to Booty Bay to pick up the Expert Fisherman book, or I could probably pick it up from the auction house in Ironforge for under 2 gold. 2 gold is a lot when you're a low level, though. I'm already an expert herbalist and almost ready to be an expert alchemist. I think I'm up to 120? I need to find some Oily Blackmouth as well. I think the easiest way is probably to go fishing in Longshore (Westfall). A lot of my alchemy spells call for that as a reagent, so it'd be good to keep around. I'm going to work on getting my alchemy score up to expert, as I have a few receipes that Mark gave me that I can't use until I'm level 150+.
The following conversation took place in Stormwind City. I was sitting in the bank, waiting for my guild to get it's shit together so we could get on with the meet & greet. My character is Taniana, a Human Warlock female with tits more impressive than mine - which is saying quite a bit.
[1. General] [Gherela]: LTB copper ore
[1. General] [Farani]: it's what to buy nubcakes
[1. General] [Farani]: WTB*
[1. General] [Knightmear]: LTB works too
[1. General] [Farani]: w/e works
[1. General] [Knightmear]: You get the point, right?
[1. General] [Farani]: yes
[1. General] [Taniana]: semantics
[1. General] [Gherela]: WGS - wana get some Coarse stone
[1. General] [Derd]: lol
[1. General] [Knightmear]: lol
[1. General] [Taniana] WSB (will show boobs) - money
[1. General] [Gherela]: lol
[1. General] [Verina]: 4 money
[1. General] [Knightmear]: WSBF money
[1. General] [Knightmear]: :P
[1. General] [Taniana]: too many letters. I was trying to fit the scheme.
[1. General] [Knightmear]: ah
(5 minutes later)
[1. General] [Taniana]: oh my god, it was a joke, please stop sending tells.
This email is slightly edited, as I didn't want to give out any information about my room number, etc, but here's a bit of a story about what my day was like. I just sent this to Hyatt. I hope they burn.
To: consumeraffairs@hyatt.com
From: sektie@freebsdgirl.com
Subject: I'd have stayed at the Hilton, but Paris looks like a narcoleptic ferret with down syndrome.I would like to thank this specific Hyatt for making the worst day of my life even more horrible. I didn't think my day could get worse, but I was very, very wrong.
First, let me tell you about my day. It was my 24th birthday. My boyfriend had bought me tickets for Phantom of the Opera as his present to me. This was very sweet. Then he forgot what day my birthday was and left on a business trip to New York. I sold the tickets to my boss. Needless to say, I was very upset at the boyfriend in question. I got over it though, and decided to spend the night by myself at home on my laptop.
Everything went well and fine until the day in question. I woke up, wondering why my alarm had not gone off. I looked over, but to my dismay, it was powered off. I walked downstairs, still confused, only to discover there was no electricity. Yes. The incompetent boyfriend mentioned earlier also forgot to pay the power bill - or the check just got lost in the mail. It really doesn't matter to me, the end result was the same. I drove to work as fast as I could without fear of being pulled over, only to walk in right as the CEO was walking out. He greeted me, and I gave him a weak smile, cursing my luck. However, I'm usual a model employee, so this hopefully won't pose much of a problem.
During lunch, I had to drive home to get the boyfriends checkbook, as he had left it there by accident. I read him the account number at 1 pm. He had 2 hours to make a phone call to the electric company, but he didn't manage to do it in time. Guess what that means? Yes, that's right. I can't even go home and be on my laptop, because there was no bloody electricity until the next day.
Enraged, I call him and demand a hotel room. I tell him to find himself a room at the Motel 6, but I want a suite at the Hyatt. I give him the information for the one across from my office, and slam down the phone (for all the good it does me, as I was on a cell phone).
So, Hyatt hotels, it's true that nothing up to this point was your fault. You couldn't have prevented it. However, everything that went wrong after this I blame entirely on you.
You stated to my boyfriend that he could pay with his credit card, but he had to be in the city that night to sign for it. It was agreed upon that I could arrive early. I had told my boyfriend it was OK that he wasn't coming back this night, as he'd already missed his flight due to circumstances beyond his control. Because of what your hotel staff told him, he had to schedule a flight for that night, getting in very late - about midnight. I was displeased, as I did not want to see him. I was still very angry.
When I arrived at the hotel, I was greeted by a staff that seemed very, very confused. The woman trying to help me couldn't even work her own computer. She had to call over a manager. Finally, after having to give her $35 (whatever for, I have no idea, as my boyfriend already provided his credit card information), I went up to my room.
This is Atlanta. There are a lot of gay people in Atlanta. Many, many gay men. Please, take my advice, even if you choose to ignore everything else I complain about in this email. Hire one of the many gay men, and let him redecorate. The rooms could have been very nice if the blanket hadn't been of Walmart quality and the colors had been a little less reminiscent of the funeral home that serviced my grandmother.
Despite all that, I figured it wasn't the room I was paying such an obscene amount of money for. I was expecting a high quality of customer service. Unfortunately, this Hyatt was already starting to let me down.
Determined to enjoy my birthday night by myself in a hotel that was decorated by a colorblind Mexican, I called room service and ordered dinner. 20 minutes later, they call me back and say they can't charge it to my room. I call the front desk, and they tell me that it's ok, they'll call room services and straighten it out. 10 minutes later, I get another call from the front desk saying that my room is prepaid, and it's not necessary for my boyfriend to come in later. So his flight was for absolutely nothing. Also, I couldn't charge any food to the room. This was a serious problem, as I spent the last of my on-hand cash when I gave them $35 for the room that my boyfriend supposedly already paid for.
Now I'm hungry and angry. When my blood sugar gets low, I get bitchy. The desk clerk tells me that she'll ask her manager. I explain the situation to her manager, telling him that I have my boyfriends credit card information with me. It won't be a problem. If they need a hard copy of the card, he'll be in later that night regardless, because of what they lied to him about earlier. He refuses to be even the least little bit understanding, and denies me room service. Then he chides me for ordering pay-per-view, saying that isn't allowed for prepaid rooms.
So now I'm angry, hungry, and being berated by your staff. My boyfriend finally arrives in town, much, much later. He comes to the hotel, but there's no one at the front desk to let him in. He stands outside for 15 minutes with a few other people trying desperately to gain entrance to the hotel. Finally, someone lets them in. My boyfriend is angry at them for how they have treated me, but they shrug their shoulders and send him on his way.
Thankfully, I am fairly drunk at this point off the bottle of wine that one of my friends has brought me to cheer me up, so he decides to give up on a lost cause and we both go to sleep.
Do you understand my anger? I spent well over $200 for that one night at that hotel, and I've had better customer service at a $40 room for the Holiday Inn.
Love,
Randi Harper
I got my new work laptop a day early - yay! It's a lot bigger than I expected. I feel like I'm making up for the lack of a penis by having the biggest laptop ever. It's a Dell Inspiron 9300 - a widescreen with a max resolution of 1920x1200. I made sure to get the display upgrade so I could get the nice res. It's kind of weird though; I'm not used to having a shiny laptop display. It's got an odd glass (or glass-like) coating, and the viewing angle seems much greater. The only bag I have that will hold this monster is my Independent backpack. So much for using my $300 leather laptop bag. I've only managed to use it twice in the 2 years that I've had it. I shouldn't complain - it's still as nice as it was the day I got it.
James and I are supposed to be spending the evening together tomorrow. Mike is out of town, and although the notion of spending my birthday by myself wasn't all that unappealing, hanging out with him seems like it could be a bit more fun. He's fairly entertaining - when he's not being an egotistical asshole. ( Kisses, babe. ;) ) It's been enlightening hanging out with him on a non-dating level. He's a good guy, we just have ... conflicting personalities. As in, his ego and my ego cannot fit in the same room together. He's the only person other than Mike that I'd want to spend my birthday with, though, so I'm glad he offered to take me out. I just want to be around someone familiar.
World of Warcraft just finished installing on this giant cock. On to my game.
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero
I find myself thinking about writing even more than before, although the number of posts to this blog has drastically dropped. I know my writing is still elementary at best, but the quality has definitely improved since my first post. It's certainly helped me, at least in some regards. I don't have enough direction.
Several people have suggested that I write an autobiography. While the idea does have it's appeal, I don't think it would work. Sure, I guess I've had an interesting life. The um...questionable... activities that allowed me to fund the hobbies of my youth, the nights I spent sleeping on park benches in Brooklyn, getting put on probation for Grand Theft Auto (of which I still contest, thanks Dad), the really nice pimp in Grand Central Station, "The Issue" back in Oklahoma, hopping ill-gotten hotel rooms with my sister, the not-really-marriage of my father to the psycho bitch, the car chases of which I was an unwilling passenger, getting forced to leave the state of NY by the police, and surprising everyone when I lived long enough to see 18 (and not be on the inside of a jail cell) - it's definitely got it's interesting parts. I just don't think it's a story I could write. It's easy to tell little bits of the story here and there. It's a great way to break the ice with someone new. I've always got a story to make someone laugh.
There's just no proper ending to it. My life is so normal now, compared to how it was. I couldn't write it without being incredibly biased, so I'm afraid it would be entirely inaccurate. It wouldn't be fair to the others involved, either. Although I do tend to say a bit more here than I should, I generally keep personal bits about other people out of my posts unless I have their permission. It's a hard line to walk.
I still don't know what to write. Explaining all this has made me no closer to any solution. It's no huge loss; I'm sure I need to practice more, anyways. :)
On a happy note, I have a half pound brick of white chocolate. I never, ever eat chocolate. This will last me forever. I am happy, and 5 lbs thinner than I was a week ago. Rock out.
I've got two tickets for Phantom of the Opera playing at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta for Thursday night. Mike bought them for my birthday, but he's going to be out of town and I don't want to go by myself, so I'm trying to find someone to buy them. If you're interested, poke me via email/IM.
