For You

For your victims, I mourn.

For your wife and children, I mourn.

For the people who depended on you, I mourn.

For the people who never knew the monster who was you, I mourn.

For you, I curse you to the fate that was judged upon you.

For you, I curse you to the guilt that shall never leave you.

For you, I curse you to the loneliness that will always be with you.

For you, I curse you to the scorn that will follow you.

You were my friend.

You were my mentor.

You were.

Now.

Now you are little more than nothing to me.

Now you are a stranger on the street.

Yet, more than a stranger.

For I know the skeletons in your closet.

And I know there are more to be found buried beneath the floor;

Beneath the foundation; beneath the bedrock;

Where you think no one shall find them.

But someone will.

For a man like you cannot forever hide in darkness.

The things you long for will drive you into the light.

You will be seen for what you truly are.

I thought I knew you.

You had me fooled.

You had everyone fooled.

Now the truth is slowly coming out.

What other truths may escape;

While you're caged and in darkness.

Six Months

Drowning

When you're drowning, you don't say “I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,” you just scream.
John Lennon

I feel like I’m drowning.  And I can’t even scream.  No one would hear me scream.  No one is here.

Somehow I’ve managed to saddle myself with three different jobs.  I can barely keep it together enough to know where I’m going when.  One job, the one I’ve had the longest, is going well.  Only one day a week is it challenging beyond the point of coping.  Just one little boy who makes me want to scream.  And I can’t even fully blame him because there is some learning disability or some mental illness that is effecting him, even if no one in his family will admit it.

At another job, similar to the first, I’m working with children.  This more or less ties with the third job for being the hardest.  This one is hard because its with children who are only separated from their mother for a few hours a month.  And, of course, during those few hours, I am the bad guy who refuses to let them to their mother.  I’m the bad guy because I refuse to open doors and let them run amuck while attempting to find their mother three doors down having a meeting of their own trying to cope with the fact that they have children who aren’t of age to go to school yet.

All the kids I work with are pretty good.  There are a few trouble makers, but I’ve been in the routine long enough to sort it out and prepare for it, mostly.  The hardest part is at both jobs we’re short staffed.  There just aren’t enough moms who want to spend their day with everyone else’s screaming children.  They’d rather have the escape from their own child for a few hours and leave us with the headaches of children they have daily.

I hate separation anxiety.

My third job, I’m working with adults.  I work at a shipping store, boxing up things and sending them across the street, across the country, or across the world.  It’s a good job, really, it’s just a lot to comprehend.  I’m getting frustrated.  I’m screwing up.  And then I’m patted on the head and told “its okay, you’re just learning” and I’m sick of it.  If I make a mistake, I want to be told, and learn from it.  I just keep repeating the same stupid ones over and over again.

I want to be able to figure out what I’m doing by now.  Yes, I’ve only worked there for two weeks, but I feel like I ought to have accomplished something in that time period.  I feel like I ought to at least be able to remember a single phrase to promote our discount of the day.  I ought to remember that, while it seems overkill, even a box of books needs styrofoam peanuts on all sides.

I’m stressed at work.  I’m stressed at each one of my jobs.  I want to just hide from people sometimes; take a moment to breathe.  I’m dashing from one job to the next, often working two, if not all three, of my jobs each day.  By the time I make it home, I’m too exhausted to have any “me” time.

I’m drowning.  And I can’t even scream.

Accountability

It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.

Moliere

I’m apparently an accountability partner.  My friend has decided this.  Apparently, this means that he will be telling me every last detail about anything.  He is likely going to drive me absolutely batty during this period while I am his accountability partner.

Being accountable for our own actions sounds like common sense.  Sharing with someone else what you’re doing sounds a little odd.  But it doesn’t sound odd at all either.  It sounds like a way to keep to your word.  When you would have to tell someone what you did, or didn’t do, that you’d feel their disappointment for what went wrong.  It would be encouragement enough to some people to stick to their word.

I’ve never had an accountability partner, nor been an accountability partner, to my knowledge; at least never with the title.  I don’t know what to expect or what this will entail.  All I can expect is that it will mean more to him than it will to me.

Habits

A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.

-Latin Proverb

Habits often appear as very strange idiosyncrasies. I discovered today that I still walk around a spot on the floor that used to be constantly covered in water due to our late dog who was too old to properly close her mouth while drinking.  Rather than walking down the hallway from the kitchen to the bedroom, I weave from one side to the other, to avoid the empty space where the dog bowls were in the kitchen, and to avoid the door that is frequently open in the bathroom.

The dog has been dead for months.  There are no longer bowls on the floor in the kitchen.  The floor is always dry.  And yet I still avoid the spot while walking down that hallway.  What a funny habit.

I have other habits too, but I’m more aware of them. I brush my teeth before breakfast.  I lock the door before bed.  These are just part of the routines I have for morning and night.  I add and take away things from these routines and eventually it becomes habit too.