Nothing to report**.so many of you have so kindly been in touch with me since i told you about this.you ask me what has happened, what have i done, how am i doing.nothing.i've done nothing.i've asking 'leading' questions. i feel i've given him opportunities to say something. he's been very (even more than usual) distant.he's going on a residential course all next week. with four other people from work. i didn't ask who.i've tried to think about practical things. If i really push things, and precipitate the split, am I in a secure enough place, financially and otherwise, to be able to live somewhere else, have good enough childcare to be able to continue my job, to be able to increase my hours/income?where would i base myself? what would involve minimum disruption for P?to stay here, far from my office so more expensive and time consuming to get to work, but where P has here friends and network, near to her father and dog etc. to move back to the city - less transport issue but everything more expensive and poorer quality childcare. but again nearer to my old friends and support.
its exhausting.
i don't want to think about it.
I know he knows I know.
people i trust who've known him longer than I have said to shed myself of the delusion that he'll grow a spine, and that if i want anything aired i'll have to drive the initiation bus. as usual.
but i can't. it's too hard. not again. i'm supposed to be a co-pilot.
there remains a string of texts from her. intimate - not sexually intimate necessarily - -but a deeper kind of intimacy. the kind that shows someone is at the front of your mind a lot. the kind where you just whip off random messages about things that are happening in your day. soggy chinese food. paper cuts. rainy sunday afternoons.
**oh. so. there's been a development. only have a sec to update this but look here:
BEFORE (he took dog for walk, i looked in the bag he'd beed getting ready for the 'residential course' he leaves for on monday)
AFTER (that's one of P's paper flowers attached with safety pin)
STITCH IN TIME( several stitched together in middle that I found added to the washbag. i know these weren't there a yesterday because I unpacked it after our camping trip)
Counsel me.When work started to reach a peak of demandy workiness in the last month or so, I found it increasingly difficult to make my appointments with the 'couch.' the appointments are first thing on a Thursday. I work monday thru wednesday and originally chose that slot for my sessions so that they were over and done with and I could spend all thursday doing stuff with P. The first thing to throw a spanner in the works was that the young woman, an employee at P's nursery, developed a complication in her pregnancy which required her to attend clinic on thursday mornings. SO then it was a case of asking around my friends to see who could have her, getting her there and then getting to my apopintment for 9. this was awful as, apart from hating the idea that people think I would take them for granted that hour or so each week, it became hard work to remember to organise it. then i was involved in a biggish product launch and was working longer hours and increased days, so maybe wasn't even home on a thursday, or was too exhausted to contemplate getting the pair of us up and washed and dressed and to our respective destinations.so i missed three sessions in a row - it wasn't that i cancelled at the last minute, but it was generally the night before, so i don't mind that i still have to pay.simultaneously with this, when I had my 'funny turn' which resulted in my haivng all these tests lately (next one is one wednesday) and was about to have my first appointment with the neurologist, i was wondering whether he would ask me if i had/had ever had mental health problems - on account of the fact that my 'funny turn' problem is reckoned to be of the brain chemistry variety. I wasn't sure whether I should just volunteer the information because in my experience even people in the medical profession can be prejudiced and dismissive. So I asked her what she thought about that. She wouldn't answer me. Because of course they never answer questions. about anything. no reactions. enigmatic not quite smile. the acknowledging guttural 'hmmm' s. stifling the occasional laugh I illicit from her. blank canvass etc etc. and I'm sure they do this for a reason. She's been at it a long time and comes highly regarded and highly recommended.this annoyed me. like when after my first couple of sessions I asked her what she thought I could reasonably expect to achieve from these. "what would you like to achieve?" she countered. And a few weeks ago I asked "how do I measure this? what benchmarks should I employ? What do we call progress?"I got nothing.So, since it was taking an impossible amount of energy to keep going and because i wanted to take stock of the whole thing, I said I wanted to take a break, then maybe find a different time in the week.She has since texted and then written to me suggested we have one more session."so that we can discuss the question you raised about how to benchmark the counselling and what other options you have, and so that we have a proper ending to this piece of counselling work."Apart from the obvious "what's a 'proper ending' ?" question, why could she not answer the measury stuff before?I don't know how I feel about the whole thing.
So, today we got a new prime minister. sort of. the bloke next door moved in.
Anyway. see the little boy in the picture? he was born when tony blair was prime minister - the first kid of a serving leader to be born for generations. He has no idea what it's like to have a dad that's not the prime minister. How weird would that be? It may make no difference to the little chap - dad not around because he's wrangling the world from 10 downing street to dad not around because he's doing what ever comes next. it just struck me when I saw this news photo - this little boy knows nothing else.
Reality Bites.I try not to be humiliated.
I try to remember it's not personal. It's about money. I try not to be angry or bitter or snap at the young people in my team. They're so impressionable. So easy impressed. Bearing the reflection of the last person who tried to imprint something on them. not seeing a bigger, longer, broader, sturdier picture.
When a repulsive, bullying, threatening misogynist is the client. when all your work has to be channelled, puppet fashion, through a male colleague. Your ideas scribbled on a pad, secretly listening in, so he can use my words. A woman's worthless instincts and no currency counsel channelled though a neighbours testosterone lips. my recommendations cut and pasted into his emails. my calls and entreaties to third parties on their behalf redramatised with a male lead. The appearance to my wards that the case as been removed from me and given to someone more qualified. Someone with a penis. Unable to reveal to them that they shouldn't regret getting me on their rotation, that this is a tactic, because to tell them such things would compromise the integrity of our relationship with the client. Lest they inadvertently let slip. Loose lips sink ships.
My boss, supportive but unsentimental. Telling me that the guy is an animal. Agreeing with all my strategy. but no longer telling the client its my strategy for fear he'll reject it out of hand. Implying I should never tell anyone that the client had phoned me in a rage, threatening me, implying he knew things about my professional past that would get me fired unless I did exactly what he wanted, when the path he was intent on would have been crippling to his desired outcome.
I feel like that character from the salem play, the one that talks of having nothign but his name. The grads have started to look at me differently. interupt me. work less hard. listen less well. practically roll their eyes when i'm explaining something. they have started to go to my male colleague to ask questions. walking past my desk to do so.
I found myself on the verge of tears in the bathroom for crissssakes.
I tried to think bigger. Beyond. tried to remember that it was about getting money from the client. that my boss has faith in me. that I'm a few years away from two decades of experience at doing this and am regarded as being pretty good.
but I still want to whine. it's not fair. those are MY ideas and someone else is getting credit for them. even though the person giving the credit is a scumbag.
Humpf.
work is VERY heavy and no childcare. P has basically been on her own with the dog the past two days while i've been stuck to my desk. thank fuck for new box of k'nex that arrived yesterday morning and for the little ice lollies i had in the freezer and for the left over bits of easter egg in the cupboard and for the half tube of pringles, and for the fact that she knows how to use all the remotes. I'm so lucky to have a 3 year old who understand the concept of 'treats now, big reward later' and has not grouched AT ALL. I've never had to do this before, its horrible. I feel awful and the phone won't stop ringing, email's pinging . . . and no time even to turn that into a ditty!
here's a cheery headline
Woman jailed for testicle attack
Inappropriate headline of the week:Birth surge stretches midwivesThanks so much to everyone who left supportive messages on my last post. I've had my EEG, which was not a pleasant experience and took several hours to recover from (not from proceedure itself but from the various stimuli they gave me during it) but at least its done. Still waiting for appointment for
tilt test which, even in private sector are hard to come by because of their being few facilities in the country. Am feeling pretty much ok.
You guys are fabulous - just in case not enough people have told you that today already!
What Comes Next?
I should preface this post by confessing that I occasionally, sneakily, check the text messages on the mobile phone of 'the man of the house.' This is because he is notoriously poor at relaying information to me from/about his parents/siblings thus making me frequently feel very out of the loop/disinterested at family gatherings.List
1. When I came home from work the other night I found that the floors downstairs had been mopped and the upholstery vacuumed free of its cat hair coating.
2. In bed the other night, he did something completely new. A new 'trick,' if you will. Out of the blue.
3. He's recently taken up running and working out again (this is a man who, before we got together, regularly used one of those plug in stick on electro-tone type devices) after barely looking at gym equipment in nearly five years.
4. In his phone is a bunch of messages from a woman he works with, K. "take care, see you monday" "you're just no good without your running mate" "will hopefully see you then" "great to see you"
5. his phone doesn't keep all sent messages, but has an outbox which keeps them for a couple of days. He'd sent her and I the exact same message about an out of town meeting being cancelled. He'd sent her a message a couple of nights ago, at 18:36 "You have no idea how much I would rather be with you than here . . . ." And that dot dot dot? that was in the message.
