Re-reading what I had written when my father died I am disgusted by how I was deceived by my mother during a time when my father needed the most understanding. I will never forgive my mother and I will never forgive myself. The colossal brainwashing and her sickening behavior will haunt me for the rest of my days. 

Reminded of this man's existence when I binge watched the Inspector Alleyn mysteries a couple weeks ago.

Damn.

This guy.

    January 2020 has been really stressful. February hasn't started off well. Didn't get a good night's sleep again. At my mom's for the weekend. Last time I was over here I heard a rustling in my room or in the walls, I couldn't tell, but at 1 in the morning I was suddenly wide awake, my eyes bugging out. My blood ran cold. Early this year we discovered we have mice. There was a bag of shelled macadamia nuts in my dad's workshop downstairs. He'd been meaning to break them open by making a little cage out of nails so we could crack them open with a hammer. This was years ago and he never got to it. Fast forward to when Mom and I were doing laundry some weeks ago and we pulled up some laundry on the floor and out rolled a shelled macadamia nut. Going into Dad's workshop we discovered the empty orange plastic net bag in tatters on Dad's work bench. I neglected to mention the two dead mice I found in Dad's workshop not long after he died. And I didn't think of it again because there was no sign of mice. And then yesterday I found a tiny mouse turd on one of my t-shirts in my closet. I didn't hear any rustling noises the last couple nights of my visit but I feel so tense sleeping here now. My own apartment has made me somewhat tense as well as I'm pretty sure there's a PCP dealer across the hall from me. Not to mention the parking garage thefts and purse snatchings in the general area. So I just don't feel safe anywhere anymore. I feel itchy and gross and violated and uneasy pretty much constantly. Cleaning out the dust at mom's house has been a challenge. There's so much of it and now this added germ potential with mice is really disturbing. The mouse situation is just cruel irony as mouse is my nickname and oddly part of my entire childhood and how I made my parents laugh, not to mention how I staved off some serious abuse by being cute. I've spent so much time appeasing them all these years I don't know what I want or who I am. I was talking to someone the other day and I literally forgot who I was. Yesterday at work I was so overwhelmed I slipped between a tight space in the stacks to calm down. I was in such a foul mood when I got off work yesterday and I am NOT a moody person. I feel like I want to crawl out of my own skin. 
    I'm not exactly happy about my financial situation either. I bought a plane ticket to London in June and I still owe my friend my half of the air bnb. It's not much for the latter but still, all told this trip is gonna cost me $2000. And that also happens to be the number my tuition is approaching. My last tuition, thank christ. 19-hundred clams for not very much to be honest. I got the form to submit my project proposal yesterday and there are spaces to list readers. My advisor never said that I had to decide on who by the February 3 deadline. So last night I emailed the coordinator about it so god knows what's going to happen. I know I'm an adult but for fuck's sake I can't think of everything. I looked over the forms and info packets and it says nothing about a form or what date I need my readers selected. I am so pissed. Forgetting about me seems to be the order of the week, as one of my bosses literally forgot to put me on the schedule for the spring semester. I told her I can't make rent if she doesn't put me on the schedule more than one day per week. That was sorted out by Thursday but between 3 jobs I can't get more than 29 hours of work per week. I'm going to have to work another day. 
    This morning I was making myself breakfast and mom was out of olive oil. I've never known her to be out of it for years, as she always has eggs for breakfast and frequently nags me to eat eggs, especially when I'm "back home." So I got annoyed and then used butter in the pan but apparently not enough because both egg yokes broke and then I had to have scrambled eggs. Which was fine but then mom said sarcastically, "it's going to be a fun day." This made me even more angry because she is incredibly quick tempered, immature, and often has rages in the kitchen every time she breaks egg yokes in the pan. I can't talk to her about anything, mice, travel, or most problems I face. I haven't told her about London yet to the point where I'm not even looking forward to it. Most of my friends are heartless and don't even ask me about how I'm doing, let alone reach out to me. My asshole Catholic friend won't even say hello to my mother. Mom's friends are basically dropping her. I feel utterly lost. 

A friend of mine flew in from New York and stayed in my dinky apartment this Friday. When we went out to dinner, much later than we had originally intended, we did have a blast and she referred to my shifting persona from "sassy Sarah" to "don't want to cause you any inconvenience." I had been nursing a single Guinness all evening, bitching about everything from Brexit, to the Royals, to people's judgement. We agree on so much and really align on some deeply personal issues. But at times the uncertainty of how people feel made me insecure and I often became apologetic and overly accommodating. It's infuriating because I hate letting people see that vulnerability, not that I dislike vulnerability but it allows people to take advantage of me whether they intend to or not. I've been laughed at a lot lately. I guess I talk kinda funny but so much of this particular chuckle is just so dismissive and patronizing. It genuinely hurts my feelings. And I'm fairly adept at taking several blows to my ego a day. People treat me like crap a lot. I've been pretty brave about standing up for myself and just talking like I would if I had had a couple pints. My usual PTSD speech gaffs and misspeaks seem to amuse people. In general though, I'm changing as a person to be more gutsy and sew up the seams where all the stuffing is falling out. But man, it's a process. I feel like I falter so much. But I do have a lot to say lately. Not everyone is comfortable with it, but a lot of people appreciate my frankness. While my friend seemed a tad moody in the morning, most likely because of my small couch, I do take it to heart; it's hard not too.
    My jerk supervisor on Saturday morning really ticked me off and I actually got a little snippy with her, which I am not pleased about. I went to get the keys out of the lock box as usual and she goes, "keys?" That's it, one word. I turned round to see that she'd left them out on the desk. I responded, saying, "I'm used to other supervisors putting them back." Then she breathed down my neck while I was sorting through the morning papers and started rearranging them as I was working! I sorta looked sideways at her, baffled ad muttered "what are you doing?" or something like that and she backed off but still hovered. Like...I do this every Saturday. She's the kind of person who is extremely overanxious and repeatedly feels the need to correct everything anyone says. She pointed out to me that there was a clipboard on which record what newspapers arrived. I do this every Saturday and said "yes, I know." I said we don't get USA Today on Saturdays because we don't have a weekend edition, meaning it's not a Saturday or Sunday edition. She felt the need to correct me and say that the Friday edition serves as the weekend edition...which I guess I assumed but she was splitting hairs. You can't say anything in front of her because she'll find a way to find fault with it. She repeatedly interferes and interjects and does not allow a person to even have one second to do something without stepping in. And then I was helping a patron with a textbook we keep behind the desk. I look it up to make sure I had the correct number/identifier, I go back to get it, and this supervisor has gone back there to get it. I said, rather passive aggressively, "oh I guess you're getting the book then." Like, that's not helpful. I wasted time looking it up and she didn't tell me she was going to get the book. She's just really difficult to work with. My insecurities allow people to take advantage of me; this person's insecurities turn her into a bully. That put me in a bad mood right off the bat. 
    My mom and I went out to Barnes and Noble where we always used to sit for hours. We would take turns leaving the table to bring back magazines and books, and I used to write; it was the very place I decided I wanted to be a writer. Needless to say it was sad, as Dad wasn't with us. I stood in line for about 20 minutes just to get two cocoas. I agonized over an email to my potential advisor about my master's thesis. Wandering around Barnes just wasn't the same. The store itself wasn't the same either. Bad change. Used book section gone to the dogs. Capitalism mutated a once great bookstore. In many ways it's still the best but I long for the "old days" of the store. We sat there as a family and I decided at age 17 that I wanted to be a writer. I started my first novel there. And there we were, without Dad, 16 years later. 
    Saturday night my mom and I were watching the newly restored Local Hero from Criterion Collection. I thought to myself how I come from a different world than most people I know. I'm just a bit younger, knowing what living in the early 90s is like. I've been infused with Victorian values and Depression-era lifestyle from my grandparents. I grew up in England, a different world, a different way of speaking, communicating, thinking, feeling. I was isolated, abused, loved, inspired. As I'm being challenged, I speak and I will continue to speak, sometimes loudly, sometimes softly. If I continue to hold back I have no one to blame but myself. 

A few days ago this article was posted saying "fans shouldn't be ready to throw in the towel yet." Obviously in Uprising Jake tells the still-possessed Newt that humans "[are] comin' for" the Precursors. Leaving Newt and the human race just hanging like that suggests a sequel and I'm clinging to that. Steven S. DeKnight said he has ideas for how to work on PR3 and possibly bringing back Mako. There's another article, too, that is hopeful especially in light of the new Netflix anime series in the PR universe. So I guess we'll see. Only obstacle for Newmann is of course catering to the Chinese box office and conservative viewpoints and censors on both sides of the Pacific. 

 

When I was growing up I got a lot of exposure to classic 60s rock. The Beatles, Cream, Zed Zeppelin, but most importantly Jimi Hendrix. Mom's a huge devotee of this music and I've always loved it. When I was younger she used to blast Band of Gypsies (sorry for the slur, it's the album name) and Electric Ladyland. It's remarkable to find yourself lost in the middle of a Hendrix guitar solo, almost a religious experience.  


I used to listen to the best of album a lot after Mom got the CD in 1997. I was so blown away by his cover of All Along the Watchtower. 


He exuded cool like no one else. Few people can ever touch him when it comes to his persona and musical genius.

Reading about him today, he had a traumatic upbringing, he wasn't perfect, but he was still one in a trillion.