redemma718

Actually, apologies first. I should not have had a tantrum, espcially online where everyone can see. Bad move. And while I’ve tossed this over and over in my head and I genuinely did not intend anything “manipulative” by it, at least not consciously, I guess I can see why it might be interpreted that way. And while I still believe these things at my core, it was a childish thing to do, to post them on here like that. And I’m sorry I acted that way.

Anyway. That said, it got to a point earlier this week where I just couldn’t take it any more (again) and that I needed to do something. I’m in a therapy group with an amazing therapist-I mean, she’s the real deal. She doesn’t coddle, but she’s immensely responsive to you and where you’re at emotionally, and she makes a huge effort to work with that. And she’s wicked smart. So I met with her individually yesterday-I had been seeing another individual therapist for four years, but I recently stopped seeing her because all we did was fight, and I had not trusted her perspective for a long time, but I thought that was my fault and as such, had no business leaving her—and we decided that while leaving Shrink #1 was a good decision, I still need a lot more support than just going to this group once a week. So I’m going to be seeing the wicked smart shrink once a week from now until whenever we both feel I’m ready to taper off. And thank scrod for that, because I am just not doing at all well.

I am very scared, though. Scared of what I’m going to find out about myself, of what I’m going to find out about other people, of how other people view me, and so on. Scared of what it’s going to mean for me to do this—ways in which I’m going to have to change my life, things I may have to give up, things I may have to do instead.

But Wicked Smart Shrink is so helpful. I don’t think I’ve ever had a session with her-except perhaps at the very beginning, when I was a complete and utter train wreck-in which she hasn’t been of some real, lasting help, no matter how seemingly small. And one of the things she said to me yesterday, which she has said before, is that I swing between two contradictory positions: I’m not fucked up—it’s everyone else who’s fucked up, and I’m so fucked up, I’m so horrible, I can’t do shit, kill me now. And there’s just no middle ground there. Oh, there is, certainly, I just can’t have it, or see it, or see what that means.

I’m not totally helpless. I can pull it together in brief spurts; I’m intelligent and lucid. But I’m really incompetent in a lot of key areas. And I’m still a train wreck…it’s more like two Amtrak trains smashing together now than the Orient Express flailing itself all over the Silk Road, killing thousands, but it’s still nowhere near where I want to be. But I’m going to be 31 in exactly one month, and I’m sick of floundering so much; I’m sick of filling in the considerable silence with all sorts of self-destructive shit.

And so. I’m having my next individual session with WSS on Wednesday. I will report back.

Dad doesn’t want to let go; I’m lazy and not used to taking care of myself. There have been fights.

I really don’t get why my dad thinks certain things are his problem, like my having to reschedule the gas company’s visit till Friday because I had a job interview today. There’s no emergency, mind you—they just need to turn the stove on. In the meantime, I have a toaster oven and I can make gazpacho. It’s really no skin off his ass, but he got pissed off at me the other night for not doing what HE suggested and rescheduling my job interview. I realize he has not been on a proper job interview in something like three decades, but you’d think he’d understand that you can’t just reschedule these things. As an employer himself, I kind of doubt he’d be thrilled if someone interviewing for him rescheduled a job interview because they had to have someone turn the gas on.

And oh god, I wish like hell I could find a job…I hate charging it to Daddy. Maybe I should just move home.

So I moved into my new, lovely Brooklyn pad…what, three weeks ago now? I’m still not entirely moved out of the old place-it’s such a pain in the ass, going up to Astoria and lugging all my crap back here via car service. At least there’s no one else waiting to move in-just the wrecking ball.

Anyway. I haven’t unpacked much here, just books, and I’ve been doing that as needed. Got to get on that…

Just couldn’t do this right now. Been a busy, crazy month with moving and I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make myself do yoga. Oh well. I’ll pick it up again later.

I have a 20-minute joint-freeing asana series on one of my DVDs. Did that today. It counts.

Changed this one to 4 times a week (allowing for joint pain and other obstacles) and a seriously punishing consequence. I mean, there’s a chance I might enjoy the swingers’ club, and that would defeat the whole purpose. Heh. And also, it’s way too goddamned messy and fraught, and rather indiscreet of me…I mean, I don’t want to be bothered online with fetish requests.

There is no way in hell I can go to a goddamned swingers’ club at that point. Way, way too fraught with too much messy stuff. I regret even putting it on here.

I will be revamping this goal with a less fraught, but seriously punishing challenge, so stay tuned.

is to do yoga at least five times a week for a month. I don’t know how to edit that. I wanted to put “every day”, but I already know that ain’t gonna happen, because I’m moving next Saturday and there will be no time.

And the swingers’ club thing, well, it’s not quite the “yeah, boo hoo, what a consequence” consequence that you might think. It’s actually a bit unnerving, to say the least. And I have no idea if I would actually swing. I have this idea that if I tried, I’d be the Charles Guiteau of the night (the guy who assassinated McKinley and who lived at one point in a religious free love commune and couldn’t get laid).

Jesus, what have I done? I’m not near so punk rock as I’d like to think. Guess I’ll be spending a lot of (non-sexual) time in down dog.

That’s what Al Franken did when he decided on the title “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot”—thought it up and split for Florida. Hee. I’ll have to settle for Coney Island, which is a mere 15 minutes away from my new place! Whee!

Anyway, I’m thinking of “Puppets and Slaves,” which is how they treat kids in the super Xtian enclave in which I was “raised.” Or maybe “Peasants, Puppets, and Slaves.” Something involving puppets and slaves, clearly. Beyond that, I’m not sure.

I’m in an emotional tsunami right now anyway, and I unfurled it on my dad tonight in re the double standards I mentioned in the last entry. I didn’t call him names like I would have when I was an awful 15-year-old, but I was crying, and I told him that I was very angry with him for maintaining this double standard for so long—that it’s okay for him to be snippy and nasty with me because I “make him mad,” but the reverse doesn’t wash. He apologized, and we also talked about why, even now that I’m 30, he still wants to micromanage everything I do. As I’ve always known, I guess, it is out of genuine love…and his own neuroses. He pretty much raised me on his own without any support and a lot of judgments from my mom, his sister, and my grandmothers, who had this old-fashioned belief that a man could not possibly raise a kid right, and he still hears their voices sniping at him that he shouldn’t let me do this or that or he’s doing it all wrong, and he still thinks if he lets me try something on my own just once, something terrible will happen. I explained that that’s long outlived its usefulness, and it’s becoming particularly destructive now, because I’ve realized that I’ve just taken it for granted that he knows better and I’m an idiot (and I don’t think that’s his take on it), and I need to do what he tells me and clear it with him first, because if I don’t, well, something terrible will go wrong.

So this is not all his doing, obviously. I have my own work to do around this, and I don’t need to just up and do something or not do something because that’s the way he would do it or he doesn’t want me to do a particular thing. But I still need his support, and one way I feel he can help is to make a genuine effort to loosen the vise, and also not demand we do exactly what he wants to do all the time and not get angry with me for wanting to do something else.

I’d like to stress that my dad is genuinely a good, decent, loving person. I can always count on him for a shoulder to cry on or whatever I need. And I am very grateful for that. I don’t see his bossiness, if you will, as some kind of nasty head game like the women in my family tend to run, sitting on the sidelines and making judgy comments and then refusing to help when the chips are down, and treating me as the source of the problem and the one who has to take care of them and make them look good, and if I’d just do this differently they’d love me more, and then changing the rules mid-game. I mean, as I think I’ve said before, he’s kind of fucked up. And so am I.

...but not light as a feather, alas. (Speaking of, did anyone see the slumber party episode of “The Girls Next Door” when the girls were playing this and Holly complained that no one was taking it seriously? In my defense, my best friend was in town for the weekend and she’s the one who insisted we watch, but…oh, what the hell, I watched right along with her, so I can just shut up.)

Anyway. I’ll probably start doing this regularly only when I’ve moved into the new place, but I am going to try to practice some tomorrow.

Signed the lease and put down the $ this afternoon. I actually read the lease this time, just to make sure I wasn’t hit with any nasty surprises (like no pets). So I think I’m set, unless my dad refuses to cosign for some reason.

I guess I have to agree that this is worth doing, even though it was not something I was planning on. But I’ve always preferred Brooklyn to Queens, and I’m looking forward to getting out of this dump of a building. I don’t think I’ll miss Astoria, the way I thought I would when I first discovered I couldn’t afford an apartment here.

Signed the rental agreement and put down a deposit on Friday. Am going to sign my portion of the lease and put down the rest of the $ today. I just hope they don’t toss in a “by the way, no pets” thing on my way out the door—I mean, I did ask about that, and they told me it was fine. So.

Okay. Got a call from the broker about the Flatbush place. The owners looked over my dubious credit record et. al and are apparently just fine with my moving in. I’m going out to Brooklyn tomorrow and handing over the deposit and signing my portion of the lease (my dad is cosigning).

So. It would appear that I’ve found a new place to live. And yet, I don’t dare mark this goal completed until the ink is dry. Keep all fingers crossed.

I love my dad a great deal. I also like my dad—we’re friends, and we chat, and we share deep, abiding interests in geeky things like maps, classical music, and politics. Oh yes, and cats. My dad is kind of a goofball, too, so there’s never been any bullshit patriarchal “You must respect your elders” attitude between us. And he’s rather an anarchist, so I was spared (from him, anyway) any dicta about respecting authority or behaving like a lady.

That said, we’re definitely too close for comfort. No, not in any Oedipal way-I don’t SLEEP with him, for gourd’s sake. I’m an only child, and my dad raised me alone after my mom died when I was 13. (They were divorced for 7 years before that, and my mom was a total psycho, so it’s not like my dad was totally starting from scratch in being a single parent.) We’ve always had kind of a weird symbiotic thing happening-I’m dependent on him to do things for me and pay my bills and clean up my messes, and he’s dependent on me for companionship, since he doesn’t go out and make friends or date, and he never has. Which is okay, but it’s a big stress on me.

And even though he does it, I know it’s a big stress on my dad to have to do things for me all the time. He’s not good at showing people how to do things on their own, and I’m not good at learning how to do things. So he can do, but not teach, and I can’t do shit. And I get angry at him, and myself, and vice-versa, and I end up getting really nasty with my dad for shit that is in large part my responsibility, or should be.

I’m 30 years old. I don’t want to rely on him so much anymore. I can’t, really. He doesn’t know everything, for starters, and he’s not going to be around forever. I need to be able to support myself financially and take more of an initiative in taking care of things like cleaning up my apartment, and doing research on things like how soon can they evict you, and where’s a good neighborhood in which to live, and, well, so on and so forth.

And I need to stop yelling at the guy. I mean, I hate to admit this, since he’s been good to me, but I do have a lot of anger toward him…I guess for setting up our relationship the way he did when I was young, and then getting pissed off at me about it for continuing things the way they are. And while I know I am now an adult, and I bear responsibility, it doesn’t mean it’s okay for him to set double standards—like, I’m supposed to do what he wants without complaining, but he doesn’t have to reciprocate. Which he often does, and which isn’t fair.

So. I love my dad, again. But I need to extricate myself somewhat.

So, I found a lovely place in Flatbush yesterday, just off Prospect Park. I’m not sure if these landlords will accept my app, either—depends on how much stock they put in my craptacular credit rating. Hopefully they will consider that since my dad is paying the rent, his impeccable credit will carry just as much as, if not more weight than my abysmal one.

In the meantime, I’m checking out another place in Bushwick this evening and an insanely cheap one-bedroom basement unit in Williamsburg tomorrow. Dag—that would be hilarious if I got a place in Williamsburg! A certain friend/fellow 43 things person who shall remain nameless says he may have to mock me if that happens. I look forward to it, Nameless Friend/Fellow 43 things person. Hee.

By the way, for you non-NYC people, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is an incredibly “hip”, mostly high-rent neighborhood that starving artists took over in the ‘90s and re-gentrified. Now only well-paid hipsters can live there, unless one happens to luck into something. It’s also the setting for “A Tree Goes in Brooklyn.” The times, they have-a changed.

I also called Legal Aid and found out that just because the new landlords said we all had to be out by July 31, it doesn’t mean if we’re still here on August 1, they’re going to show up with Uzis and pit bulls and kick us to the curb, even though none of us have proper leases. They’re going to have to take us to housing court, where hopefully the judge will give us a feasible extension, like 2-3 months. So that’s a relief. It’s nice to know that someone is on the side of the proles in this increasingly fucked-up billionaires’ playground I still insist on calling home.

Landlord in Bushwick denied my application b/c of bad credit. Was in hysterics an hour ago; am calmer now. Lined up some other places to look at in same neighborhood. My dad and I are going to try begging if we can get in touch with the guy.

At any rate, this sucks.

I wasn’t going to update this until the ink was dry on the lease, but what the hell. I found an awesome two-bedroom railroad flat in Bushwick, Brooklyn for an eminently reasonable monthly rate. All that remains is a credit check (eep) and begging and promising up, down, and inside out to pay the rent on time. Which I do—I just don’t pay off my credit cards.

Anyway, I’m waiting to hear from the owner. Will update as soon as I hear the news.

Since I’m going to be moving soon, there’s no real point in “cleaning” this place, per se. It’s more like “throw out all the junk I’ve accumulated over the past 6 years,” but I’m not going to be using any cleaning products or anything. So.

I found out last night that my godawful landlady sold the house (without telling any of us-a neighbor figured it out on his own) and the new owners are giving us till July 31 to get out. Ain’t gonna happen-that’s why we have housing court.

So, there’s a possibility that we might get a two or three month extension, which isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing. But I still have to find a new place to live ASAP, and I don’t trust these new owners to not pull shit like cut off our hot water and so forth.

Sigh. I hope I don’t have to leave Astoria, but rents are going up. I’m going to miss this dump. The poor stray cats in the backyard are so screwed.

On the bright side, at least I don’t have to clean this place up for the next tenants, since the new owners are either going to gut it or tear it down. If they want to get rid of all my junk, they can damn well do it themselves, the fuckers.