The absence was due to stress and illness invoking their unholy reciprocal relationship with each other upon my life once more. I very nearly fell apart around Christmastime. I feel like I still might. I find myself thin-skinned and snapping at all the people I care about. I want to go home but sometimes I feel like I wonder where that is. This isn't about grad school. This is about me.
I had a run of what most people would call "bad luck" back in December. I was assaulted after leaving work by an extremely mentally ill person. It's ironic because I had just left the Institute, where all the 'crazy people' should have been safely locked up unable to do themselves or others harm. But I was accosted on the street about 30 seconds away from where I would have boarded transit. This could be a whole post on its own. Maybe one day it will be. A few days later, a friend took me to a spa to relax and unwind. During my massage, I was sexually assualted by the RMT. I'm furious about it now, but at the time, I was paralyzed with... sigh, I guess most people say "fear," but it wasn't fear. It was uncertainty. I kept telling mself that what was happening wasn't assault, and that I was just overreacting because I had been accosted by that man a few days ago. But when I left the massage room, I immediately started crying. Yeah, it was wrong, what happened in there. I'm following up on both of these ordeals, but really wish I could just sweep them under the rug and forget them. I have new profound respect for women who deal with stuff that is so much more serious than this. What I went through was peanuts compared to some, but I'm still all nerves and shakey transference reactions becuase of it.
We spent 5 days over Christmas is one of the worst states in America with Mr. Husband's dad. The "vacation" involved a semi-automatic weapon and being awoken Christmas morning by drunken/high tennants, and more than one call to the police department. FIL remains blissfully deaf and ignorant that we had a shitty time. I remain astonished that it took him a little over a year to ask his son how he was doing since his mom died FOR THE FIRST TIME. Did I mention that about ten minutes before my plane took off that Mummer called my cellphone to tell me that my dad has been diagnosed with frontal lobe syndrome/dysexecutive sydrome and that it is very advanced and started crying at me? There were no Christmas gifts in the states because FIL declared it what HE wanted. I also had to go out and buy all of my own food because he didn't bother to get any gluten-or-dairy-free groceries in the condo. So yeah, very merry indeed.
When we got back home, we hosted Christmas dinner for my family. It was very hard to see my father so far gone and... well, he's not really *there* that much anymore. It's like having dinner with a ghost image. He's regressing quite a bit as well, so there is drooling and incontenence and other not-s0-fun things for the family to deal with. Despite that, I have to admit that this might have been the best Christmas I have EVER had with my family becuase no one fought the entire day. No one really tried to get under each other's skin or push each others' buttons. It was like we were all just too tired for that. So yeah, a Christmas dinner where absolutely no one yelled or cried in my family. A first. So that's something...
I returned to work slowly, I went to do my research day at The Org. and get this: I got called into the HR Lady's office to talk. Apparently, someone put in an HR complaint because they were offended by something I said in one of my research presenations to staff. While discussing the concept of schaddenfreude, the fear of which can prevent people in high SES groups from seeking help for mental health issues, I joked, "Let it to [us] Germans to invent a word that means 'taking delight in the misfortune of others." I thought it was a fairly benign joke, and being of German heritage myself thought that I could get away with it in the same way that many cultural groups and commedians are allowed to make fun of themselves. What an HR lecture I got! At one point, I wanted to say to the HR Lady, "Uh, you know I don't work here anymore right? Like, The Org. does not pay me or employ me." But I bit my tongue and responded in the prescribed way remarking that I understood that it doesn't matter what my intentions are, it's how my comment was experienced by someone else. Later, I found out, that the person who made the complaint actually didn't care at all about what I said, but only did it to get back at someone in management for getting them in trouble for calling another staff member a Nazi. I can guess, but I'm not certain who it was. But I'm dying to know... for I would love to have a word with this individual about not using me as a pawn in their childish game of Fuck-People-Over-At-Work Chess.
Of course, I got sick again the day that my family came over for dinner and have had a cold/sinus infection ever since. I am tired. I am grouchy. I am soooo think-skinned and whiny and wah wah wah I feel all alone and misunderstood pathetic right now, that it is really really very sad. And now work is starting to pile up and I feel like my shoulder muscles are made from cast iron. I can't seem to start anything. I can't seem to get anything going that I need to. I'm arguing and fighting with my husband.
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