I think it takes me about two hours to wake up. And I can't be at work on time to save my life... I've created my own schedule, my hours are listed as 9-5 but I have been coming in for a year or so at 9:30. I consider that my time to be here, and no one has challenged me... they are all too enmeshed in whatever dramas they have going on. Anyway, the past few months I've been coming in even later... between 9:30 and 10:00... I'd say that's getting pretty serious. They say that happens when you hate your job.

I did apply for a new job, which is actually pretty close to here, so it would be basically the same commute... however I'm sure I'd have to be on time, and I'm wondering if I could actually do that. Damn this working for other people... err... on the other hand, I might actually find the other job challenging and fun, and feel good about going there (?Is that possible?).

Whatever. Wish I had something really interesting to say, on this the last day of the year. I'm not one to make New Year's Resolutions. But maybe I could sum up something about this year, if I had any kind of memory...

Let's see... I guess I could go for the relational stuff, me and Frank, I mean. We celebrated our one year anniversary in May. I think things were rolling along quite nicely, and then I hit a rough spot, because I realized I had been in the one-year period of psychosis that occurs when you just meet someone... you know, you're in love with the idea of being in love, and it's like you and the other person are both under some kind of spell. And then, after a year, you kind of wake up, and you might realize this person is not who you thought they were, or that you don't know what the hell you are doing, or everybody has more issues than you originally thought. So you make the hard decisions. Do you still love this person? Is it worth it to be with them, warts and all?

What happened for me, was that I realized I had been focusing so much on the relationship, that the rest of my life hadn't moved forward at all. I was still working in two jobs I hated, and living with a mentally ill roommate. Extremely depressing. I wanted to change and didn't really know how, so I started going to therapy. I went to three therapists before finding one that I liked, someone who seemed to "get me". That was good. She's very cool and right away could see I wanted to change. So I began to do the work...

But the big part of the summer was this struggle with my second job, realizing, after the upteenth abusive line was said to me, or I was passed over for any type of appreciation, that I had to leave. But I couldn't quite figure out when. I had a lot of concerns about money, and jeopardizing my connections. I talked a lot about this in therapy. It all went back to my mother, and how this boss was very similar in a lot of ways... not seeing me, and I'm waiting for her to see me-- defining me from the outside, and everything being all about her and her needs... this woman (my ex-boss) is the most self-centered, greedy, nasty person I have ever met in my life... examples:

1) she believes everyone copies her style of dress... regardless that it's in fashion, and does not consider the possibility that someone might like a pattern because they like it... she really thinks she is the trendsetter of this whole city!

2) I've never heard her say a good thing about anyone behind their back, even though she puts on the big nurture smily mask on when dealing with people.

3) she cheated me out of last year's Xmas bonus, as well as cutting $ here and there... sometimes $5... the woman is crazy about money.

Well, I digress. Obviously I'm still angry. The summer was bad, bad, bad. I never felt like I got any rest or vacation. When I did go away for 5 days,I had dreams that this horrible woman was calling me on the phone. That's how bad it was.

Meanwhile things with Frank were declining severely. It's like he left... went somewhere else. Like his body was here, but the rest of him was in outer space. He wasn't interested in sex at all... (my friends suggested he might be having an affair, but it's not like he was doing anything unusual... he was spending the same time with me, which wouldn't leave him much time for an affair-- he insisted he wasn't attracted to anyone, not even me-- ouch). That was a very lonely period. Maybe it was part of his mid-life crisis. Maybe it was because I was so stuck... he expressed frustration that I would complain about my job, my roommate, etc... he said he'd been feeling that way for months but was just telling me now. That pissed me off, because why was he holding onto it so long?

The point is I had to leave that job and I did, and it took a long time. I also managed to move into my own apartment, so yay for me. That's two amazing accomplishments for this year. Well, let's make it three, because I also stopped eating processed sugar, which was a huge huge huge thing that I had been trying to give up for many years. Well let's make it four because I did have a medical consultation with a doctor, and that was a big step for me too.

Things with Frank are better. He came back to this planet in the last couple of months. Maybe it's because I made those changes, and he felt he could relate to me more as a woman than a whiney little girl. But what I started to notice about him, after the year of psychosis was over, is that he is so afraid. So afraid of intimacy, so afraid of doing anything wrong, so afraid of death.

I don't really think I am afraid of death. I am more afraid of living a terrible, maimed existence than death. I am more afraid of the loss of appreciation of beauty than death. I guess I'm afraid of doing things wrong or making mistakes. I must be afraid of intimacy, because I keep choosing men who can be afraid of it for me.

Sometimes my question is, can I be with someone who is so afraid? Sometimes Frank tells me he fears that his heart is permanently broken, that it actually doesn't work... that he won't be able to love me as deeply as we would both like, because it is impossible.

Those are the times I don't believe him. I say, he is just afraid, and wounded; and these things take time. If we stay together, trust and love will build, and our hearts can open.

(Magical thinking? or Wise Woman's thinking?)

So I don't know if I am fooling myself. But I can look back on this year and know that I have made a lot of shifts. I have claimed myself in many new ways... claimed a space, claimed my body, and claimed my soul, refusing to be abused, unappreciated, or unseen as who I am.

The question of relationship still lingers... what will it be, what can we create... will we walk through the fear?

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