I know I'm abrasive.  I know it's a flaw.  I have the ability to be very diplomatic, I can talk fancy and sugar coat any damn thing. Around people I'm close with, I drop the pretense and diplomacy, and just say things straight, efficient, with no prose.  Apparently, this makes me abrasive.  Alright, I'll take that.

Let's not mistake that for mean, or irrational, or dramatic.  In fact, it's the opposite of those things.  Any of those other things add elements, like emotion or intent.  My abrasiveness removes all of that. Sometimes, yeah, it's not nice.  You could be very enthusiastic about something, and trying to convey that, and if I'm not at all on the same page, I'll say so.  It's ok to disagree.

Just because your ego is hypersensitive doesn't always mean that I'm the badguy.

My currency

So, Irv threw away my Nick Cave tickets, because he was being careless.  Nick Cave never tours, this was to be a once in a lifetime opportunity.  I've been bottling up my feelings about this for weeks, but it's given me stress, when I think about it. When he first admitted that he thought he chucked the envelope, he was sure to tell me at lunch in the center of a very small and crowded restaurant   I had an asthma attack because I was trying to stifle the tears that immediately came.  I didn't want to embarrass myself.

Today, it came up in discussion, because I tried to see if I could call about it, and basically in the confirmation email, it was pretty much stated that if lost, destroyed, whatever, they can't replace them.  Devastating. I've loved Nick Cave pretty much my whole adult life.  It became apparent, when I've been casting about among my myriad playlists to find something to put on and just have playing, that there are very few without Nick Cave.  I've been avoiding listening to him because it's depressing, and the gods know I don't need any more depressing shit right now.

Anyway, today, I broke down because the show is a week away, and there's no way to fix things.  I launched into a full on sob, fully inconsolable.  Irv tried to blame Alden maybe he picked them up, or maybe it was my fault for leaving them too near his desk, or..the cat, or sun spots, or aliens.  I was like "fuck you, and just apologize."  He's very bad at apologizing.  At first, he said "we can fix this, it'll be ok." I refuse to be pacified. It will very definitely not be ok.  10th row.  $200 for these fucking tickets.  Count Basie Theater. He was going to take me to Drew's, for dinner, then on to the city.  Once in a lifetime.  So, I'm angry.  I'm sad.  I married a Walling, the kind of guy who will sweep every paper off a surface, and shred them because one or two in the pile were garbage.  Which in light of all the bullshit that's been going on, is becoming some kind of fucking curse.  A Walling.  I'm crying a little about it right now. I ask for so little, you know?  I have a knot in my stomach.  This was my big Christmas present, and through all the heinous bullshit, this concert was to be the whole light of my spring.

This Walling also broke my netbook a few months ago, and refused to admit that or apologize, too.  He accidentally dumped a full, 12 oz. cup of tea with honey into the keyboard, right in front of me.  I let him use it after the flood, because he was too lazy to put his own computer back together.  The poor 'book still lives, but you can't type on it. To make the keypad work, one must literally slam the hell out of it.  I alluded to "saving up for a replacement".  And that's all that was said on the matter.  It hurt, because I work part time. I make a hundred bucks a week. I have no money, yet, I saved for months to buy this netbook, just two years ago. I loved that thing.  I took it whenever we went on vacation, and it lived upstairs in my room, on my hobby table.  I let him use it, he destroys it, moves on- no apologies...

So, today he wanted to go shopping, like spontaneously after my huge cry-fest over the tickets.  He finally decided to replace Alden's computer which died in the flood, too.  While we were at the store, he also bought me a new netbook, a really exceptionally nice one, top of the line, way better than the one he demolished.

Luiz was shopping with us, and he commented out of Irv's earshot "you know, this is a patch, this is his way of apologizing."  The tears, the anguish over the tickets is so real, so real, I'm *still* crying, even now.  This is not a demonstration, this is not a show.  I can't talk about it without choking up. I can't listen to my favorite artist without choking up all over again.  This is genuine pain.  And for my pain, I get a shiny new computer. I hate that.  I'm being bought.

I hate it, but I am fine taking it.  I'm conditioned to it.  My mother can't apologize either. She can't admit wrongdoing.  She used to beat the shit out of me, or let Earl beat the shit out of me, but...my god, I had the hottest suede boots in all of Memorial School.  Both my mother and Irv just, literally throw money at problems.  And you know what?  I will fucking take it.  I have to take something.  I am not too proud to accept this netbook.  No, I will never forget the Nick Cave tickets.  I will not be bought.  No, it does not make things better.  But, I will take it, because, I get so little.  Last year, I needed clothes so bad, my pants were dry rotting...and I had to beg, actually beg, for Irv to get me a few new pairs of leggings.  I will not feel like a heel for accepting material objects to pacify me, because I am NOT pacified.  You can throw money at me, I'll catch it, and I am still fucking angry.  It's just a currency I am used to dealing in.  It's shitty.  I'm struggling with not feeling horrible.  I'm also still crying.

I get why people "go postal" now.  I get why people strap themselves with bombs and run into giant corporate headquarter type buildings.  I understand why mothers just up and leave and never come back.  I get why a person could do that, or how.  When I was a kid working at 7-11, a co-worker, Tanya did that. A mother of two, in what looked like a fine marriage to a nice guy.  She just...told the kids she was going grocery shopping and never came back.  Called the family three days later from Iowa.  We were shocked, appalled.

I get it now.


I just fought down myriad urges like that, a while ago.  I stood up from my chair, sobbing furiously, looking for something heavy I could use to start tearing the walls down in this house. I want to kill this house. I want to destroy it.  I want to bomb it. I want to run away from it and everything about it.  I've been fighting tooth and nail to get this house fixed from all the Sandy damage.  We're looking at $70,000.00 damage.  Another $30,000.00 to lift the house four feet, out of the danger zone, as per town specifications.  We have $520.00 in the bank.  And we're living in this busted-ass house.  We've been fighting with our insurance company for four and a half months, and nothing.  Everything is a dead end.  I've never felt hopeless in my life. Really genuinely hopeless.  Today, I learned that.  One more letter, this time from the state, rejecting our claim, saying that it's not their jurisdiction, and they can't do anything about it.

The house has been fucked up and busted since October 29.  We've done the best we could to fix it and live here, but it's horrible. I feel like I'm suffocating. It's killing me, and sometimes I think- literally.  I spend most of my life thinking about it, doing paperwork, talking to countless nameless anonymous people, trying to get the insurance money that we're owed, that we've paid into all these years.  I don't want the moon. I just want my house fixed.  Not better than before. Just. Fixed.

One beacon of hope in this mess is through FEMA. We were approved for a $70,000.00 low interest (1%!!) loan through the Small Business Administration.  The payments will be $247.00 a month. Even I can swing that. It's less than we spend on beer, a month.

Here's why I want to run away forever, and not look back.  The Wallings are crazy.  Every Walling going back to Irv's great grandfather has been, and I am not kidding...committed for insanity.  His grandfather died in a mental hospital and buried in a pauper's grave.  His father was committed for months in the mental ward at Riverview.  Irv is following right in their footsteps.  Due to a long history of bad decisions, illiteracy, and general bad business sense, they've lost money, land, their lives to alcoholism...I could go on and on.  What I'm left with is Irv, who is showing signs of mental disorders.

Here's our loan, which I slaved for a month and a half to get, and get approved for. When I say, "we're losing the fight with the insurance company. I'll continue to fight, but right now, let's take this loan and get the house fixed."  He says, verbatim "The government is just looking for a new way to come take our house from us. That's all they want, is to take the house."  Which echoes through the generations. His father said that almost every day. His grandmother. His grandfather who died in the mental hospital.  That's his family mantra.  Meanwhile, I'm living in, literally, a house of shit, buried under this level of crazy.  I work my ass off, like a full time job, to get money anywhere I can, and I hit a brick wall of irrationality.

I can't obviously leave.  I did feel that so overwhelmingly, before, like I wanted to put on my shoes, hop in my car, and drive across the US to some anonymous location, and start a new life.  I went upstairs and cried myself to sleep, instead.  I haven't exactly stopped crying, for the past eight hours.