My Beautiful Laundrette

Double whammy of crappiness! I went to bed early last night (well, midnight – early for me) so I would get up early and have time to do all of my annoying Sunday chores. I did indeed wake up early, only to find that I’d started my period and that I was having trouble breathing. I do have asthma, and allergies, but when I have asthma symptoms in the morning it can usually only mean one thing – mould spores! I checked a pollen count website and, sure enough, mould is high. Can someone please tell me how it is possible for there to be mould spores in the middle of a fucking State-wide drought? Doesn’t all the heat and sun get rid of those wee fuckers?!

Ugh. I felt so tired and crappy that I actually went back to bed for a while, and only felt well enough to get out of bed around  noon. So much for “carpe diem” and making the most of my Sunday. In a short while, I will force myself to go for a run (no small feat give that it’s 104 degrees Fahrenheit – 40 degrees Celsius, my European friends) and then there will be the highlight of my Sunday – doing the laundry and replacing the litter in the cat litter boxes.

We don’t have a washing machine, so I am forced to go a local laundromat or laundrette, as we call them back in the motherland.

I know that laundromats are a necessary evil, but it seems to me like they have been invented to make me even more depressed about my life.  The only “normal” people in laundromats are students; everybody else is just plain weird and creepy. When I was nineteen, and on a “gap year” in New York State, a black guy even sat down beside me in one, and started masturbating. It was quite depressing that I saw my first black penis under such circumstances!

It wouldn’t actually have been so bad if he had just marched up, whipped it out, and started going at it. That would have been disturbing, yes, but at least I would have had a choice to leave. What really happened was that I sat down, read a book for a while, and was only vaguely aware of someone sitting next to me. Gradually, I sensed that something wasn’t quite right, and when I looked to my left, I saw a guy with his cock in his hand. It wasn’t really the cock that disturbed me, though; it was the creepy, sleazy smile he gave me that grossed me out, and the thought that I had unwittingly been dragged into his little perverse fantasy. Ugh!

Never been a big fan of laundromats since. They do seem to attract an undesirable male element. Makes sense in a way: you’ve got a captive female audience.

On another note, I’ve signed up again to write every day in August as part of NaBloPoMo

I wasn’t going to at first, as I know I have a terrible tendency to take too much on – and writing every day is such a terrible commitment for a perfectionist like me – but I miss blogging, and I think it’s good for me to do it more often. Sometimes it just seems so terribly self-indulgent to write about my little life and my little problems, though. It makes me feel that I’m some little self-obsessed teenager who can’t look beyond herself. Who could possibly be interested in me and my boring life?

From time to time, I’ll read blogs like Bella Caledonia and I’ll come away from them thinking that I, too, should write about more “worthwhile” stuff. I care about all of the issues discussed on that blog, but, if I’m truly honest with myself, I’d much rather read a blog like the Cat Girl Speaks. True, Cat doesn’t write about anything of earth-shattering “importance”, and sometimes I don’t care to read about what dress or make-up she’s bought, but her writing is compelling, and I always want to know what’s going to happen next. Will she find love?! Will her mum stop being a bitch?! It’s a very personal blog, but I can relate to it on so many levels as a woman. It goes beyond the personal, then, and if that ain’t political, then I don’t know what is.

I guess this is just my way of saying that I’m going to try to post every day – or as much as I can- because it’s good for me, and I’m going to try not to give a fuck what anyone thinks of me.

Where are you, baby?

Somewhere deep in the Netherlands lives a mild-mannered, slightly misanthropic but quick-witted and interesting blog reader named Arekino. Some of you may know him, as he’s been a regular commenter on this and also my previous blog.

However, I have it on good authority that he is currently AWOL. Nobody has heard from him. Where are you, Arekino? I suspect you’re just being a moody bastard. If this is the case, get your arse over to this blog right now, and start commenting before I jump on the first plane back to Europe to give your cheek a loud, resounding “thwack”!

(Ooh ooh ooh) I can’t believe you’ve left me
Don’t know that you’ve upset me
You just want to forget me, why don’t you come and get me
And boy, I really miss you and all I wanna do is kiss you
I’ve used up all my tissues ’cause there’s more serious of issues
I don’t even know the reason you were playin’ and you were teasin’
Did they tell me you were leavin’
Those good looks are deceivin’ (ooh ooh ooh)

(CHORUS:)
Where are you, Baby, we used to have so much fun
You drive me crazy, somebody tell me where he’s gone
Where are you, Baby, we used to have so much fun
You drive me crazy (ooh ooh ooh)

Divorce Cake

These days I can really relate to people who kill their spouses. Why go through all the hassle, pain and drama of getting divorced when you can just take care of the problem with one swift axe blow to the head? Admittedly, you would have to dispose of the body (inconvenient!), and appear suitably tearful and bereft at the memorial service (stressful!), but I can see how murder, dismemberment and deceit might actually be better than spending one more second in a crappy relationship.

Oh, don’t worry – I’m not going to end up on “America’s Most Wanted” any time soon. I’m not really the type for premeditated murder. I spend most of the time wishing that my husband, MM, would just evaporate into thin air, never to be seen again.

I am fond of this person. I certainly don’t want anything bad to happen to him, but I don’t love him. I recently read Ahdaf Soueif’s “The Map of Love”, and the following passage pained me because it highlighted just how much is missing in my relationship:

“And in the daytime, when I watch him climb out of the sea under the blazing sun, with Nur on his shoulders and Ahmad and Mahrous on either side, the love I feel for each inch of his body is an exquisite ache in my heart” (pp 461-462).

Far from feeling an “exquisite ache”, my heart is more likely to sink whenever I see my husband! But I want to feel that “exquisite ache”, and yet, like so many other people, I tell myself that such feelings are only the stuff of novels and movies, or that if there is such a thing, then it will soon be snuffed out by the humdrum nature of daily life together.

In his defence, my husband does not have it easy. I am a very difficult person to be around. It’s easy for me to be emotionally and verbally abusive because that’s what I grew up with, so it doesn’t take much for me to resort to that when I’m stressed or defensive. I have taken too much from him, and I haven’t given much back. He complains about that, and it’s true.

However, I honestly don’t care anymore about trying to be a better, kinder and less hurtful person. I’ve been worn down by my husband telling me over and over again how bad I am, and how selfish. It doesn’t matter how tired, drunk or hungry I am, he will just rant over and over again about it. Sometimes he’s kept me up until 3:00 a.m. just yelling about how bad I am. I don’t know about you, but I find that quite abusive, which is ironic because I’m supposed to be the abusive one. I also find it has hurt my self-esteem, and makes me question myself constantly. Whenever I have a disagreement with somebody at work, or wherever, I’m very quick to fall into  a black pit of self-recrimination about what a bad person I am even if it’s their fault.

I’m also resentful that there is so much focus on my “craziness” in this relationship. All too often I’ve seen how my bad behaviour allows other people to justify their terrible actions. According to MM, I consciously “choose” to be mean and abusive whereas anything he does was because he was an innocent victim who was “provoked”.I just don’t buy it.

At this point in my life, the only incentive I can see for not losing control of my temper and tongue is not because I want to become a better, more spiritual person. No,it’s because emotional, out-of-control women will always be blamed for everything no matter what anybody else does wrong.

Nobody sees the things MM does wrong because he just can sweep them all under the carpet while everybody focuses on me being “crazy”.

I used to be the kind of person who looked down on people who stayed in unhappy, boring marriages. How terribly weak, I thought, to stay when you’re miserable. Now I have become exactly that kind of person. I don’t want to be in this relationship but I don’t particularly want to be out of it either. I don’t try to make things work because my heart’s just not in it. I don’t enjoy having sex with him at all, and I practically flinch when he touches me. This is something I do feel bad about because I know that he needs a lot of physical affection. But what can I do? I can’t fake something that’s not there.

If I’m honest, I think he’s a weak, passive loser. I hate the fact that he’s thirty-four years old, and that he says he’s an “artist”. He spends a lot of time “perfecting” a graphic novel which he will apparently never finish. Now he wants to be a concept artist, and he’s borrowed $1000 from his mother to take some class that will supposedly help him fulfil this goal. I’m very sceptical.

I question why I have such a visceral reaction to his failed artistic endeavours. Did I marry him because he was unthreatening because I, too, am a frustrated type? If I’d married somebody successful maybe it would have been too painful for me to be with him while I struggled with perfectionism?

I once had an acquaintance who was a rich doctor who made some disparaging comment about my dating impoverished artists (he was probably annoyed I had no interest in dating him). He smirked and said that I’d soon get tired of that when I realized how awful it was to be broke all the time. I was insulted, but I also remember feeling smug that I didn’t consider dating or marriage as some kind of mediaeval financial transaction like some American women do. I know I’m betraying feminism for saying this, but sometimes I do now wish that I was married to someone with money, and who was successful. It would make life easier.

Despite my brilliant undergraduate degree, my Master’s degree and my fluency in three languages, I am far worse off than my grandparents ever were, and my life is much more stressful. A combination of bad decisions, and poor self-esteem mean that I live from pay cheque to pay cheque.

I am thirty-three years old, and even though I’m not ready to have kids any time soon, there would be no chance of my doing so if I were. MM would never be able to help support a family. In some weird, primeval way, this makes me fucking mad inside.

Money is really the root of all the troubles in this relationship. Over the years, MM has bailed me out when I didn’t have a green card and couldn’t legally work. I would feel grateful for this, but I have to hear again about what a bad, selfish person I am for spending this money. Apparently I’m a spendthrift! Althought I spent it on surviving…on rent, food, bills…whatever I needed to stay afloat.

MM just called me, and I know that I won’t leave this relationship. I’m too gutless. I’ll just stick my head in the sand and pretend that everything’s OK. When I imagine being single again, I realize just how socially isolated I am. I don’t really have any good friends here. Being married acts as a buffer against the world, and makes a crazy cat lady like me socially acceptable.

What a huge disappointment life has been. I am everything I once used to despise.

Cubicle work is the opium of the masses

If Karl Max was alive today he’d have to revise his opinion about religion. We no longer need the promise of a golden afterlife to placate grey-faced, factory worker grunts. For most of us in the West, life has become a lot more comfortable and, for those of us who are still living in abject poverty and misery, consumerism has replaced religion as our insidious balm of choice. Who needs God when you can replace Him with things, or the heady dream that you’ll soon have those things?

In the grand scheme of things, my life is OK. I’m not exactly happy, and I do live from pay cheque to pay cheque, but I have food, clothes and a roof over my head. Life is a struggle, but it’s not the same soul-crushing, spirit-sapping struggle it was for people like me when Marx was alive.

But there is huge problem – I no longer think, or care about all the really important issues I should care about. And why is this? It’s because I spend 40 hours of my week, sitting on my arse in a cubicle. Sometimes I do get to interact with my colleagues in a normal human way (face-to-face!) but the vast majority of my daily interactions take place in online work chat rooms because I need to sit at my computer and get good “stats”.

The most “meaningful” work relationship I have (and I’m truly stretching the definition of the word “meaningful”) is with “T.”, a married, self-professed piece of white trash from some shitty Republican town deep in the heart of the state. I like him because he’s irreverent, very funny and is a Socialist, but I’ve barely exchanged more than a few sentences with him in person. All of our work relationship takes place via chat.

When I get home at night, I’m too tired to do anything except fall on the sofa, and watch episodes of “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men” on TV, glass of red wine in hand. I barely read any more, and if I do, it’s usually 30 minutes snatched here and there in my lunch hour. I try to read “The New York Times” as much as I can (I’m old-fashioned…I get the paper version delivered every morning) but it worries me that I just absorb all the things I read there, without really thinking about them. I just go back to my online work chat room, and laugh at whatever new nyah nyah cat or Rebecca Black meme people have sent around.

I know it’s arrogant to think this like this, but ten years ago, when I had just graduated from university, I never thought my life would be this way. I thought I was destined for great things. Ha! I know I’m a good writer and singer, but there’s now so little time to get things done. Combine the lack of time, with my unfocused brain, crippling perfectionism and fear of failure, and it’s no wonder I never do anything creative.

I don’t know where to start, to be honest. I’m thirty-three years old, and I haven’t done anything much with my life. I can never seem to make the changes I should to be “successful”.

Is this it then? Am I destined to spend the rest of my life in a fucking cubicle, becoming more brain dead by the second?