clickmom

crazy, right?

I'm trying to figure out how I can take sweet pea to the dog park and be safe. The problem is that I don't trust people have been as cautious as I have been and I really do not want to know if I would survive this pandemic. I want to emerge from this insanity as one of the few who never got infected. You know? One of my park friends has been asking, and I think I might meet him tomorrow. Sweet pea really needs to go back to her old stomping grounds. She just seems so sad lately. I mean, I am guessing I do too, so maybe it's just a reflection of how miserable I am trying not to be, but in the end, I can't wait forever to start hiking- we both really need some outdoors time. I am actually quite afraid that I've gone so soft from all this couch time that I will be in bad shape. I joked about needing physical therapy when this is over, but it was only half joking. 

I am thinking that if my walking partner and I stick to the trails that are least travelled we won't bump into too many other people. I have to think long hard about the risk of going versus the risk of sitting on my rear end for more time. My heart is pounding just thinking about leaving the house. My doctor thinks I should take some anti anxiety medication. I feel like that's a rabbit hole I don't want to go down, like ever, but somehow especially not in a crisis. I am so medicine adverse. One upside to conquering my fear of the outside world would be having more subject matter to photograph. I'd really like to photograph something other than the bird I can't hardly see anymore due to leaves filling out on all the trees. 

Also, it disgusts me to admit this , but one of the boys I was not fond of from my grad school days posted an interview he did with someone who asked him how he knew he was done with a series and he said when he started to take the same photos again and again and I think I might be there. Even though, I think there is something to say about the process of seeing and being present with the repetitive photos, I am pretty much at that point. And that point frustrates me. 

I hear there is a big market for foot porn and I would be completely good with secretly photographing people's feet for foot porn. It's a weird wild world out there and I am ready to capitalize on it. I should probably do some other research and see what other kind of photo smut is profitable. I am open for anything that doesn't involve me taking off my own clothes or violating another person in that way. (Foot photos are not a violation! Don't even think like that!!) 

OK. So, Now I have a completely unrelated confession to make. It's one of my stepford friend's birthday coming up and the other friends want to make a big deal out of it because it's her 60th. I am so bummed it is killing me not to be the biggest buzz kill ever. I want to scream Do you have any idea how miserable I am!?!?!? DO you have any idea what a victory it is for me to even get out of bed every day!?!?!?!  They bounced around the idea of a social distanced party in her yard. What??? They've decided on a formal dress zoom call. I'm supposed to have cocktails and party food on my own end for myself. What??  I'm not freaking getting dressed up. They're lucky if I put a bra on!! And then on top of everything, they decided to get her a tree or something and want us each to pitch in $50. What?!?!?!  My husband hasn't had a fucking job in almost 5 years! Every pair of pants I own is threadbare on the inner thighs.

Also, not to be a big cry baby or anything, but these women have hurt my feelings consistently for the longest time. No one worries about my birthday- I share it with another friend and her son tragically died the day before our shared birthday so I GET THAT but they could reach out to me privately.  They don't. And also, they have made exactly ONE effort to meet me half way since I moved to new town and that was almost 9 years ago. One time in 9 years they came half way to me. Every other time I've seen them I've gone back to stepford. I am not feeling any love from them. But they are all so caught up in their own lives no one would even imagine I'm sitting here feeling as bad I do. Mostly because no one freaking asks me. They get together without inviting me. I hear about it afterwards. Now, chances are excellent I wouldn't be able to show up, but an invitation would be nice. I don't get one. I don't expect them to work around my schedule or anything ridiculous like that, I would just like someone to pick up the phone and say "Hey, are you free a week from Tuesday? We want to do something."  That would literally be enough. I'd say NO but at least I'd get the invitation. I get bubkas. Story of my life, right?  They seem to have no memory that for the first 5 years I was the glue that held this group together. The husbands thought of me as the ring leader.  But, do I say anything? Of course not. I rant into the void, to a blog that no one reads. Maybe one day, long after I've gone someone will mine through this and ask "Did you read the story about that woman's blog? She blogged for 20/25/30 years even though no one ever read it. Her kids discovered it after she died when they were going through her credit card charges because she paid for it all those years. Crazy, right?" Yeah, crazy.

 

this entire post is a sidetrack

Despite the fact that I think of my myself as a fairly observant person (I am one, I just have my specialities, like human behavior) I now recognize that I have literally never even touched on observing birds before. 

Now, before I go on, I want you to know, dear reader, (singular, hahaha, so much truth that) that I am resisting getting a bird feeder to attract birds. I think there are multiple reasons why and the first and foremost reason is that I do not want to create a situation where any living being is dependent on me for anything and I am under the impression that once you start feeding the birds you need to be consistent about it. The other reason is CHEATING. I haven't cheated on anything since high school (remind me to tell you the story of some regent exam, I think it was a social studies class) and cheating is just not my way. I'm the fool who gets handed extra change and gives the cashier a math lesson while returning it. Also, when did this country stop learning basic math skills? I remember my mother's favorite cashier at the grocery store and she was a freaking computer. I loved her and her blonde cray 70's fro hair.  Remember when people with curly hair let the curls happen? Those were the good old days. 

Anyways, as I was saying, I realize I never spent a second noticing birds, other than, have you ever noticed that you really don't see dead pigeons almost ever? I grew up in NYC and I always wondered how they weren't getting hit by cars and what happened to their bird bodies after they died because you'd think there would be pigeon carcasses lying all over the place. Speaking of pigeons, when I was growing up we lived on the 19th floor and our apartment overlooked some buildings that were probably only 6 or 7 stories high so we saw their roofs (OMG I saw someone spell that rooves the other day and my head almost exploded) and on one of the roofs was a pigeon coop. Every once in a blue moon I'd spot the guy who took care of the pigeons let them out and he would have this big white flag that he would sway back and forth and the pigeons would fly in this big bird cloud back and forth along with the flag. It was magical. If I could turn back time I'd sit there with my camera.

Anyways, I am noticing that different birds in my backyard behave differently and I am embarrassed that I never even considered that before even though it makes total sense.  The birds I see most often are robins and sparrows and I really like them both. They tolerate me very well. I feel the robins give me a show, sometimes almost modeling for the lens. I am tempted to jokingly say creepy photographer things, like Oh baby, show me a little more shoulder, that''s right, look at daddy, good girl, now pout. But, you know, someone might hear, and thats the last thing I need in my life. I do however say things like Turn around or Look to the left and naturally, I greet them in the beginning, but like a normal greeting and not a creepy one. I also thank them when they fly away because I want them to know how grateful I am for their cooperation.

The sparrows I think are most bonded with me (I am NOT crazy) because they have begun to check me out while I am checking them out. Just today I was standing by a small evergreen where I suspect they have a nest, but looking up into the oak leaves of the tree 10 feet away when one of my sparrow friends popped out and stood on a branch just looking right at me. He wasn't more than 4 feet away. In that little moment I knew that he wasn't afraid of me and that just made me so happy. I also noticed that they have been flying past me so close that if I had lightening quick reflexes I could reach to and grab them as they passed. Just imagining that is hilarious. It'll never happen. So, now that I am super hard thinking about this either the sparrows are my new besties or you're gonna find my corpse laying in the backyard clutching a camera with a really long lens on it and pecked to death. I'd say it's 50/50 odds right now.

Anyways, about the cheating on the Regents exam.... For those of you who didn't get lucky enough to grow up in New York State, we got these standardized exams called Regents at the end of the school year in most of our academic classes. One time I was heading in to school for a one of the Regents and some kids ran by with a stolen copy of the test. My friend and I hid with those kids and we all scribbled what we collectively thought were the answers in the smallest pieces of paper we could find. I used the wrapper to a piece of trident gum. However, not really being that kind of cheater I almost had a heart attack when I sat down in the room to take the exam and managed to get the teacher to allow me to got to the bathroom in the last seconds before the test officially started and I flushed the elicit gum wrapper down the toilet. I ended up getting better grade than my friend who used all the answers the collective group had come up with. Moral of the story: Don't cheat with the kids who didn't study enough, cheat off the brainy kids or don't cheat at all.

 

couldn't do it

So, it has often happened that when I say something nice my kids stop and wait for me to follow it up with something else before they react. I get that Where exactly are you going with this? stare from them and I have always assumed that they for some reason think I'm kind of mean. I don't think I am mean, what I think I do is use sarcasm as a tool to avoid saying my own painful truth. I shared some photos I took yesterday with my friend the poet and she sent me back this reaction: "Stunning. I can't wait to write the blurb for the back of your book." Which is a very nice and caring way to respond. 

So, I can't just say Thank You!!!  I'm so excited with this project!! like a normal person, I have to answer in a way that is sarcastically funny and dark in a harsh reality borderline mean way. I tell her: 

If you want to start writing poems about a woman who is emotionally estranged from her demented husband and is forced to stay within the confines of her own yard in between preparing his meals and cleaning his house/laundry/dishes and starts to go all Snow White with the yard birds because they’re her only in-person friends and spends her quarantine days wandering back and forth on her property waiting for her new bird friends to show up so she can take a photo you can go ahead and get a head start. I feel like your poetry with my photos would be very successful.

Which is all true. Especially that last sentence. My friend can really write, she is the kind of person who can create an entire world in 6 lines, and I feel like if we can get this right together (she really gets me, I really get her) we can market the book to both the photo world and the poetry world, but I don't come out and say that to her, instead I write that last paragraph, which I'm not sure how I'd take it if that was someone else's response to me. 

Oh, who am I kidding? I somehow ended up with he world's thickest skin. I am thinking in particular about the guy in grad school who approached me after almost all of my critiques and offered apologies in case he had "offended me" with whatever it was he said during my critique. Except he is the kind of guy who talks in gibberish that just sounds intellectual so I couldn't even recall a single thing he had said because I thought he was such a total loser (also, he had absolutely rancid B.O. which made me hate him) that I didn't even listen because in my mind there were never going to be any gems of wisdom coming from his ugly pie hole.

Ooops. There I go again.

But in the end, I will not let my cruel sense of black humor stop me from getting what I want and I will send a normal person's text to my poetically gifted find. I will compose it right now... Let's see how about....

Hey Girlfriend!! I could barely sleep last night just imagining your poetry alongside my photos in a beautiful handcrafted volume that will turn poets into photography fans and photographers to poetry fans. Seriously, all kidding aside, I think that once I get this artist statement down you're going to really understand it in that special way that we get each other (I mean, you obviously already do, you'll just be able to read about it, you know what I'm saying?)  thanks to our shared experiences and empathetic natures, and I am really truly fantasizing about your words with my images. I know you already get the gist of being lonelier than lonely when trapped with someone who doesn't respect or honor you, and the need to seek out comfort, and how this pandemic is panicking me, etc... So, think about this seriously.  I want to collaborate. Seriously. If I am going to possibly publish a photo book anyways, I feel like it would be incomplete without your words. I once published a College Yearbook without any writing in it because no english majors would volunteer to be on the yearbook committee. It's true. Fabulous photography, but not a single piece of writing. I feel like my photo book without your poems would be as sad as that yearbook was. Love you. I am going to bug you about this. Writing poetry is better for your soul than drawing cartoons from youtube tutorials. I tried to be honest and real without making jokes.  Can't do it. 

 

 

working

It feels like this quarantine might last forever.

I have never felt so unsafe- and this is coming from someone who was molested by her biological father as a child. So that's saying something. Except when it came to my bio molester I was afraid of being hurt not of being killed. Knowing that trump couldn't care less and even conceivably is happy about so many americans dying from this virus is mind blowing for me.  That people are still supporting him is mind blowing to me. How did this country get so stupid and so angry? I want to leave. I really do. I want to pack it up, and head somewhere safe. My goodness. Look what we have come to, the indoctrination has been thorough and a good chunk of the population is no longer capable of independent thought. 

Never could I have imagined feeling as trapped as I do right now. Trapped with a sick spouse and trapped by a virus. Without the government establishing clear rules to follow we are going to be in this virus hell for such a long freaking time. It makes me want to give up, it really does. Except I am kind of psyched about the work Ive been making in captivity. I feel like this work is so very meaningful for me. I'm not sure someone else wouldn't look at it and think how fabulous it would look in their bathroom, but for me, this work is truly ground breaking. (Ha ha pun intended)  I am literally photographing skies. It's everything I railed against for so long, and its the only way I am doing it. (Doing it being: Making images- Taking pictures-Being creative)  photographing the sky went from my never and only in extenuating circumstances (and even then only a little negligible slice) to my everything in one swift pandemic. Of course the sky has trees and a bird or two in it, but it's sky, the one thing I could not bring myself to do. I'm just fascinated over my about face. 

I shared some work (well received) with my critique group and it went over well. One friend talked about my process and in doing so I realized that in that very instant she was understanding me and what my motivation was more than I understood myself. She coaches people and I already told her I need to hire her to help me get myself out there where I belong. I know I'm making interesting work and that I am hardworking enough to join the ranks, I just have to show the world and she is going to advise me and help me get to that place. But not until June. (boo hoo) I'm living in a world where next week seems like some distant hazy concept, so you can imagine that June, a mere 10 days away feels like another lifetime away. Like seriously, I hope I live until June. You never know!

I am not sure if I gave much thought back in March to how long this was going to last for. It just seemed like something we needed to do immediately for immediate safety and we went into quarantine. I'm sitting here 10 or so weeks later thinking ahead for the first-ish time. How long am I going to have to do this for? Years, you say? Masks, gloves, and face shields for as far as the imagination can travel? Forever? It's a bit harsh. I think knowing (impossible request) when it will be over would make it less intolerable.  Also, not seeing freaking insane weapon toting KKK ammosexuals on national television terrorizing lawmakers would be nice. Just saying. If ever someone wanted to mow a crowd down.... that would be an awesome way to follow through, don't ya think? Why go to a school or church when you can mow down full grown locked and loaded folks. Is there even a challenge if the victims are defenseless? I think not. Real men plan your killing sprees accordingly. I say anyone planning a mass shooting has a great opportunity to man up here. Just saying. I'm going to sit outside and work on my tan. 

Maybe, I'll decide that 10 weeks of binging needs to be followed by an equal or greater amount of time of health conscious eating. It would be nice to emerge from this in better shape than when it began. I don't know any other way to stuff my emotions back inside though. Must work on that too.

simply

I'm just so cranky today. Really really cranky.  The kind of cranky that doesn't want to accept any attempt at squashing the cranky. If by some magic there was a person in this room who actually cared enough about me to put their hand on my shoulder in an attempt to offer comfort and sympathy I'd probably swat it away while simultaneously reacting as if I had been touched by scalding water.

I am starting to desperately feel the need for some freedom. Like, I want to get in the car and drive as far away as I can drive. I live this crazy life of wanting to run away almost all of the time and never acting on it. I'm thinking about Kramer VS Kramer. I want to Meryl Streep out of here and come back when I have found myself again. Or maybe not, since I won't be returning to an adorable kid, I'd be returning to an aged decrepit emotionally distant (at best) husband and children who don't appreciate me or believe that I am of any value, so what the fuck? Why stay? Oh yeah, because it's a pandemic and there isn't anywhere safe to go. As if I'd actually leave!  

I don't know where I got this over the top burdensome sense of responsibility from. I hope I don't get it in my next life. I hereby officially put in a request to return to this earth as a completely unburdened fun loving light as day fun person who knows how to put their own needs on top of the priority list. Also, don't give me a bad back and sore knees the next time around. These things totally suck.

I don't know for how much longer I'll be able to continue with my current photo project of photographing birds on tree limbs. Most of the trees have leafed out and I can't even see the birds when they're behind curtains of leaves. It makes me sad. I might try to do something with that, maybe partially obscured birds showing but I don't know. I hate the color of summer- that medium yellow green. Bleh. I'd be so tempted to go black and white with it, but no one wants to see black and white. I dunno. It makes me sad because I wasn't ready for this change. It's how I feel every winter when it snows and the last thing I want to ever photograph is the snow. B O R I  N G.  Only now I am confined mostly, to the backyard, unless I do go out to the new place with sweet pea and spend time there with my camera. I might. Just to see what there is to see.  There is one rocky cliff wall there. I'd like to be able to investigate it in theory, but in reality the area in front of the wall is rough and I don't feel having an adventure. I'm getting to the point where I fantasize about the paths in the woods being paved, so me climbing around on rocks to see a wall with my gear in my hand doesn't sound like a likely situation.

I'm just so tired all of the time and every day and all day. I am so emotionally spent that I am physically spent. Its a very strange way to feel when I know I've done nothing all day- but I am dragging myself around like I have been filled with wet sand.

Places are starting to open up and in my opinion it is all premature and even if places aren't actually opening up people don't know how to actually distance themselves. It feels like I'm the only one doing nothing and seeing no one and all these other people who aren't being isolated are fucking it all up for me because now this will drag on and on and on. I don't even know how long it's been but I think we are half way through with week 10. I'd have to look at a calendar to be sure though. All I can tell you for sure is when we started. March 13th- the day I brought Josh back from school. 

The husband chokes a lot and it comes in waves. Today he's been choking off and on all day. It's almost like background noise and I do feel a bit lame for not being more concerned but like I said, choking on and off all freaking day long. One of these days he just might end up with aspiration pneumonia. That is what happens to a lot of people with brain damage where he has brain damage. He has been enrolled into a brain study- where scientists will take his brain after his demise and tell us what it is that has done this to him. I am afraid that the study might not be able to accept samples during this pandemic so I really don't want him to choke to death until I know they can solve this mystery for us. I just don't want this to end up being something he could pass down to the kids. Thats all I want to know. I think, personally, he has poisoned himself with diet coke (aspartame). I believe it so hard that I would never even befriend someone if I thought they had the same addiction. It's nasty. I have diet coke PTSD. It was on sale the last time I went shopping and I got him 30- 2 liter bottles. I think he has about a week left on those. He drinks at least one a day. Gross. 

We got a lawn mower and I can't figure out how to operate it.  Tomorrow I will call the guy at the store for help. It's almost more than I can take- I just wanted to be able to turn it on and drive it like a car. I'm so disappointed that it isn't simple. I need everything to be simple right now. Very simple. 

more stuff I texted the past few days

First of all, with one day melting in to the next I can not even tell you what if anything Ive accomplished most days. I spend a lot of time throwing snarky comments at the television. Whether it is the news or some lame learning channel show I have something to say. And to be honest, the fact that I suspect my contributions niggle at the husband like a splinter you can't get out and have decided to ignore until your finger swells up and expels it on its own, I just can not stop.

I sent of a photo of the curtain of my hair from a 3/4 view to lil sis. I asked her Do you see this wavy nonsense?? Someone else’s hair is growing out of head. Because suddenly I have weird wavy hair, when my entire 55 year life I have had straight hair. I'm thinking it's a change of life thing, but she didn't answer my text so I didn't get to discuss it. 

This next one went out to a friend who I have been sneaking off to dog walk with. This woman's dog is sweet pea's mischief sister. My friend has been so thoughtfully concerned with my current state of bladder infection and asks me every day how I'm feeling.  I might have impressed her by needing to squat three times during a single hour long walk and possibly making (not as discreet as I would have hoped) pain sounds.  This has been most unpleasant. I finally peed into a cup yesterday and literally immediately went into the kitchen and busted open that prescription bag. I knew I saw blood when I wiped but, to put it mildly, my pee was not the right color. Yeah, you read that right. I broke down and went for the second round of antibiotics.  I'm also over dosing on pre and probiotic in hopes of staving off any other trouble. I feel better though, so I'm glad I finally took them.

This one went out to another friend. It's self explanatory. At some point I might need to run away for a while or you might see me on a show with a title like She Almost Got Away With It or Black Widows of New England  or Women Who Snapped or something like that. The husband just outlined all of the ways I’ve let the yard slip. Stupid mother fucker. Im so angry I can feel my heart beating in my throat. 

Followed by this one. Every time he opens his Fucking princess mouth my mind goes right back to that matchDOTcom profile

Then the husband knowing I could easily wrap my hands around his gross turkey neck actually slept for 2 days. I think he thought I'd get past it, if I didn't see him a lot, but you know, that dating profile is out there and I hate him now forever. For real. I did throw a couple of saws and a couple of clippers into a bag today and try to make some progress on a large tree branch that fell in the yard. It's not like the husband won that insult fest because  he wanted me to hire someone and tomorrow the neighbor kids who have a much better work ethic than my own offspring will be coming over to do some clean up and I will have to force some money on them. So, I won. Towards the end of last summer I tremendous tree branch fell off one our oaks. It’s been sitting there almost a year because I don’t want to pay a jacked up New Town premium price to have it removed. Today I went out there for two hours with various clippers and saws and removed all the smaller branches.  I feel great for having worked my butt off for two hours. I was totally in a zone and probably got off a lot of anger being so physical. Except I have blisters on all the fingers of my right hand. Didn’t even feel it until I came in. Also, my fingers are all blistered and red. I was wearing my headphones, listening to all of The Daily podcasts I missed last week and completely got lost in the mission. I got a lot done. I am going to sleep well tonight for sure.

One thing that I wanted to share that I didn't text anyone about is that next week I'll be sharing some of my work with my crit group. I hope I get a good reception. I'm thinking of entering it into one of the more prestigious photo contests. 

 

commence week 9

Its the first day of the 9th week of this lockdown. Groan.

I'm so over it and I'm really over the morons who won't stay home and stop the spread of this disease. Is it their fault? Sometimes. I don't understand why people aren't raging against the measly $1,200 stimulus check. Let's get real. That is not going to help anyone for very long. 

I think sweet pea is depressed so I met a friend and walked together with her dog, sweet pea's mischief sister.  I'm sure the dogs were so happy to see each other again. They ran off with their sides touching and then stayed side by side the whole time. We walked two days in a row. I'm not walking right now because it's crazy windy outside and I don't go in the woods in the crazy wind. The last thing I need (other than a pandemic while 1/3 of this country is out of their minds and does not possess the ability to think for themselves) is to be downed by a falling branch. We couldn't go to our usual spot, as it is closed to the public right now. We went to a different town's smaller woods. My friend and I both wore masks. The few other folks we saw walking with their dogs did not. WTF people?? I might start telling them I'm a nurse on a covid ward and they should wear masks around me. hehehe.  Fucking idiots. 

I still see people jogging up and down my street with no masks. You know, it's been 16 months since I took the keys to utopia off of my key ring and to be honest I've been so deep in the muck of my own pity party rage against my care taker reality that I just didn't have time to wallow in the sadness of giving it up. (ok, not too much) But lately, I feel like that would have been such a better place to be that here and I am really suppressing some serious freaking anger towards the husband for fucking every fucking thing up and being a financial disaster. I'm the only one who really loved that place. I could just lie down and smell the earth I loved it so much. Also, I am deeply unapologetically resentful of being his servant.  Everything feels worse in a world where I don't get to leave the house. 

I'm making work, and it's decent work, I've given some serious thought to opening an etsy store. I feel like the new stuff is more sellable in the way that it's less conceptual and more easy to appreciate in a surface way. Maybe today I'll research the best selling photographer on etsy and see what's going on on her/his site.

 

 

ups and downs

I am really not doing well. I am so filled with resentment I just don't know what to do. Without my daily walks in the woods to clear my mind and ground my spirit I am just overflowing with all sorts of disgusting feelings that I don't know how to get rid of.

The biggest feelings is resentment. I resent taking care of someone who won't admit he needs to be taken care of. I'm flashing back to that phone call where the husband pretended that living his disabled life was like a vacation every day. I suppose I'd think life was a vacation if I was served food where I sat and all of my needs were catered to. But still..... I have this river of resentment and anger running through me that I don't want and I don't know how to get rid of.

Also, I was so peaceful those few days the husband was in the hospital that it was actually ridiculous. It was actually mind blowing how relaxed I felt. I am thinking more and more that the place where he is going to end up is a nursing home and I just don't even know how that is going to go down, I mean, he isn't going to want to go that way, or cooperate about going that way, and I don't know if I can force him. I guess I will have to call a lawyer, but I'm too cheap and too mistrusting to seek help. 

Mistrusting, you say? Why, yes. I am mistrusting. The story of my life goes like this..I say something, the person I am talking to tells me

a. it isn't so

b. it shouldn't be so or

c. I need to change the unchangeable.

For example, I say to a friend "I'm not doing well, you know mentally." The friend will either respond with

 

a. You're doing better than you think.

b. You look like you're doing great from my perspective. You're a freaking super hero.  or

c. Just make a plan and do something that will make you all better. (In regards to the husband the plan is always "Can you hire someone to do the thing you're doing?" NO!!! A thousand times NO. People do not understand the NO. I don't want someone in my house on a regular day (when they weren't creepily ignoring her, they fucking stole from my 95 year old grandmother!) and I'm not letting anyone in here during a fucking pandemic. I've already wondered if we can make through the summer once the AC breaks because that is my kind of luck.)

 

I just want to be freaking heard and freaking validated. And maybe a hug. I think if I actually got a real hug right now I'd turn into a puddle on the floor. Thats how bad I feel. Thats how desperately I need to change my circumstance. 

Yes, this life has been unfair to you since the day you were born it's been curve ball after curve ball. You deserve a break. I understand why you feel that way and why it feels like it'll never be over. And the biggest thing I want from this world is someone who will just jump right on my bandwagon and detest the people who are not doing right by me. 

There was a story on TV this morning about celebrity couples who had been married forever, and it just freaking ripped my heart out. Those long married people seemed so happy and they're in these mutually fulfilling relationships. I wouldn't recognize one if it screamed I'm a mutually fulfilling relationship in my face. Can I ever have a relationship where it goes both ways? I wonder. I just want to know if its just me being broken from a bad childhood or if its written in stone somewhere or if this is something that I could have control over if only I knew how to change it. 

I've been photographing birds in the backyard for a few weeks. It felt great, I got some awesome results, but at the end of the day I am ready to move on and I can't. I can't just grab my camera and go somewhere else. I'm stuck here. With a demented husband and a less than grateful teenager who literally chooses to see the dark side of everything. Maybe he gets it from me. Maybe I just come from a long like of fucked up people so I can help being fucked up. Maybe it doesnt matter if you've been molested and neglected and completely unloved. maybe this is just my programming. Maybe despite the fact that I showed my kids through  my actions and my words that they were wanted and loved and I protected my kids as best I could from their father, who I almost divorced for being such a neglectful father, but stayed with because I didn't want him having unsupervised access to my kids. He used to say the weirdest shit to them. Things you would say if you were trying to mess someone up and create the person I feel like right now, so I stayed with him because I wanted to be right there to say "Your Dad is wrong."

So many regrets. So hard to see a bright future. I don't want to die from this virus and I think we are in for years of virus ups and downs. So maybe my next spot to land will be somewhere isolated so I can hide. I hate not being able to plan. I'd like to be able to draw a map and follow it.