Friends, I am sorry that I cause such a shit storm when I post. I post because I have no one else to talk to. My husband doesn't live with me anymore and had been even planning to get his own apartment when were supposed to be in reconciliation counseling.

Yes. I am very, very ill now. I got carted away in a police car for an involuntary commitment. Fortunately they let me go. I need people to say, "It's OK. You're OK." and all that stuff because I'm having a really hard time believing it. At the program they ask you for something to be grateful for, a goal, and an affirmation. I have none. Sometimes my kids. Sometimes I'm so out of it I have nothing to say. I've had to tell two children that their father left because they stopped loving me. I am the defect. Not them. So I'm sorry if I have self pity. I am sorry if I have no feelings of worth. I'm sorry if I should just pull myself up by my bootstraps and get my head out of my ass. I will when I can, I assure you, but right now I CANNOT. Period.

So, I will no longer use Livejournal as a place to vent or to open up what's going through my head. It's so jumbled and confused inside I can make any sense of what's going on which is why sometimes my posts seem all over the place. Thank you for those who have taken the time to give me what strength they have to spare. No thank you to those who yelled at me and told me, in one way or another (not you Rick) to get over it and move on.

ETA: Oh, and I forgot to tell you one of the reasons I can't just get over it. My husband left me on our anniversary.

It's all I can bring myself to give anyone on this normally happy holiday for me. Enjoy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21165025@N08/4016975920/in/photostream/

Yesterday was art therapy day. We were only allowed to use safety scissors in case someone wanted to hurt themselves. We also only got crayons because we might hurt ourselves with pencils. No glue (even a stick or elmers) because someone might try to huff it (even though there are no drug addicts in our groups).

Yay. Back in kindergarten. Yeah. Not humiliating at all.

Despair has its own calms.

~Jonathan Harker

(Bram Stoker's Dracula)

I formally withdrew from Field Experience Internship One.

Can't do it.

Maybe next fall. What the fuck ever.

Yet another set of pills to add to my ever growing arsenal.


"According to the National Institute of Mental Health, people with depressive illnesses do not all experience the same symptoms. How severe they are, how frequent, and how long they last will vary. It depends on the individual and his or her particular illness. Here are common symptoms people with depression experience:

* difficulty concentrating, remembering details, and making decisions
* fatigue and decreased energy
* feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and/or helplessness
* feelings of hopelessness and/or pessimism
* insomnia, early morning wakefulness, or excessive sleeping
* irritability, restlessness
* loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable, including sex
* no pleasure left in life any more
* overeating or appetite loss (loss of more than 5% body weight in a month. We're at 11%
people).
* persistent aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems that do not ease
even with treatment
* persistent sad, anxious, or "empty" feelings"

Who wants to be married to a nutcase. I can see why when trying to deal with someone with a mental illness it's much easier to just cut and run.

I have to do volunteer hours at The Adult Literacy Program and I have become very disillusioned. I can also choose to do 5 "outside" hours at a place of my choice. The nice library at Phoebe home is gorgeous but a freakin' mess. No one can find anything. No "by author." "by subject," etc...Just a mess. So I called the Volunteer office and offered to fix their library. I mentioned that I was an English Major to boot. It made them very, very happy. It's hard for residents to find books when there is no system. Kids there also like to read when they visit and they can't find anything.

So if they say yes, I'll make sure I'll go in on a day that Greg's not there (so there is no distraction) and make a day of it. It won't be done in five hours but at least it's something I can do outside of this house that is quite frankly suffocating me and that's five less hours I have to spend at the Adult Literacy Program.

Just once I'd like to catch a MOTHER FUCKING BREAK!

How the FUCK is it that I get hit in the head with a MOTHER FUCKING brick but I'm the one who has NO MOTHER FUCKING ANSWERS!!

I picked The Jets in my weekly Pick'ems.

Thanks a LOT Jets.

Miami? Seriously?

Maybe for me but others are welcome to use it.








In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy.

‑Jenny Holzer

I took my make up test today. I will be the realist I am and pray for a "C." I will be an optimist and pray for a "B."

The multiple choice section was a piece of cake. I read the works and I listed in lecture. That's all it takes. And that's half the grade.

I chose the essay comparing Idealism and Realism comparing and contrasting Poe, Franklin, and Bradstreet (A Puritan writer). Thank the gods he privately tutored me on Poe.

So we'll see. I don't think I got a "D" or an "F" and that's something.

I can't stress anymore. It's over. Thank the gods.

I only prayed Athena would guide me through.

Hail Athena!

Writing a lesson plan on The Holocaust is probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

And I have to teach it to the class.

How am I going to make it through without weeping when I can't even watch the end scene of Schindler's List (which is one of the lessons) without breaking down.

I sure picked a doozy for myself, didn't I.

Perhaps Beowulf would have been easier.

Hope this doesn't bug you guys.

The first one is kind of long so I put it under the cut. I guarantee Greg,Aaron, Rick, and Mark will appreciate it. It's also by one of my favorite authors...

( For My Husband...and Rick...and Mark...and Aaron )

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

CXX by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I have tried to write Paradise

Do not move
Let the wind speak
that is Paradise.

Let the Gods forgive what I
Have made.
Let those I love try to forgive
what I have made.

Went over Poe and Hawthorne privately.

Scheduled test for Friday morning (only time I actually don't have some sort of therapy appointment).

Finished all four of me Ethics papers (Yes. Four.)

Finished two unit plans. Not sure what she wanted because I wasn't there so I did it two different ways.

Contacted Observation teacher and am setting up a time to meet with her. Looks like every Monday afternoon and every other Friday afternoon.

It looks like I've finished what I need to but the wind is really knocked out of my sails here. I'll do the work but It'll be a long time until I enjoy it again.

Bear with me people.

In the madhouse
Wring your hands,
Press your pale forehead
against the wall
Like a face in a snowdrift

~Natalya Gobaneskaya

Hell is a place of hose who denied,
They found there what they planted
and what they dug,
A lake of spaces and a wood of nothing
And they wander there and drift
And never cease,
Wailing for substance.

~W. B. Yeats

A Christian Prayer that has actually given me a little comfort. Oh, DEAL with it! Sometimes the good Christians speak to the soul.

Lord [or whomever] make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where they is sadness, joy.

Oh Divine Master [or whomever], grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we recieve; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born into eternal life [I can do without that part, of course]

~The Prayer of St. Francis

(And no, I'm not converting...this prayer just touched me deeply.)

My professor is not a tool. He will privately go over the Poe material with me and I have to contact the Humanities department and we will set up a time before next Monday to take the exam.

Compassion must be first lesson you learn as a teacher. I'm glad he understood that lesson.

I managed to finish it. Small picture here. Detailed pictures (bigger) under the cut.
Oh, and in case anyone wants to know why I used that border...electricity and lightning plays a significant part of each novel; the animation of the monster, Nicholas Tesla and the New Transported Man, and the odd blue electrical phenomenon at the entrance to Castle Dracula.





( Three of the greatest novels ever done in this style )

I asked my English professor for a one week extension on the first exam. I missed the last class and the notes as well as having little inclination to study. Greg and I decided I should tell him the truth about what happened.

If he won't allow the extension I'll have to take the hit on a major exam. I hope I'll be able to absorb it in with the other two exams, the paper, and the quizzes.

THE CONQUEROR WORM

by Edgar Allan Poe

Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.