Take the Cross

30 January, 2006

I'm back in school again. I'm taking four classes. They're going okay, but they're a lot of work! I have to turn in a seventy-five page novel excerpt for my novel writing class, as like, all of my grade. Vei is doing alright. She can identify numbers! She can sing simple songs. I treasure her. But, it's like...so much pressure. My parents were pretty descent, but i'm still angry at them and hold them responsible for screwing me up.

Jos' family is pretty colourful. He lived with his dad until he was sixteen and his dad went to jail for molesting his stepdaughter. After that Jos lived in "flop-houses"--apartments full of vagrants, usually misfits with little income whom I suppose all chip in for rent and drugs. Someone got killed in the house he was at once. He said he knew a raustepharian named Phasika with actual braids and a crocheted rainbow scarf. Jos also lived in his car for awhile. When he was seventeen he shacked up with this forty-something chick.

Christmas was okay I guess, but since all I asked for was money for college, and it was gone immediately, I feel like I didn't get anything. I bought Jos some movies. He didn't get me anything. He says, "I feel bad because I couldn't get you anything". But he could have, if he had used some of the money he spends on movies. Jos has gotten to where he wants stuff--usually movies--and spends excessively. He actually said that the movies I had bought him for Christmas I had bought for myself simply because I had bought movies I'd be willing to watch with him (he has excrable taste in film). The other day I said I wanted him to buy me a soda and he was like, "We don't have any money. I'm trying to scrape up enough money for a pack of cigarettes". He bought me the soda, the fags, and a candy bar for himself. I'm sure he feels I should be earning money. But we get by. And he spends over a hundred dollars a month on cigarettes and grass! I don't use those. Once I suggested that if he was going to do that every month he should give me some spending money. He was like, "I don't complain about the cost of your medications."

When I worked at The Iron Door, everyone bought body sprays from Victoria's Secret, but I always thought they were too sweet. I liked the Bath and Body Works stuff.

My mom watches ER with some devotion ever since she decided to go to medical school. I can't watch it anymore. It makes me too sad. I saw one where this woman went into preterm labour and was like, "No! I don't want a premature baby." When he was born, he was so very tiny, and she wouldn't look at him, wouldn't hold him...

I hope I never have to work again. My last job was a disaster. It's like that year-and-a-half I worked in the bakery at the comissary, crying, getting yelled at, slicing my wrist open and staying an extra two hours an night without pay was working against me, rather than having strengthened my character.

I'm happy to be back in church again, and a Baptiste church at that! I'm always challenging what they say, but it's the closest I've found to what makes sense. It's not always easy to accept, though. Today we talked about sexual immorality. It made me...sad. A little angry, but, probably, mostly, at myself. I want to teach Vei to 'wait'. Would that make me an hypocrite? I will be honest with her. I will teall her I'm not happy with the choices I made. That they were made because I was unhappy...that she can do better. She's worth more. I worry about her, because I've been so unhappy in life. It wasn't my choice to be born, but it was my choice to have her, and that was selfishness. I will try to make life as pleasant as I can for her. You know something awful? Sometimes, on those days when I have brief, overwhelming suicidal impulses, I think, I can't do that. I can't leave my Vei alone. And just occasionally, I think, she must go with me. Isn't that sick? Is that why all those moms kill their children? To spare them?...

Jos has been sick over six months now. They've ruled out gaulbladder and stomach cancer and they're thinking ulcer, which I guess isn't so bad, relatively. Once in a while I think about what I would do if he died. I wish I didn't sometimes think trite things, like, I could sell all his movies. I guess I'd move into a smaller place. I could stay with my grandparents a while...if I was a better woman, I wouldn't think these things, I think. Worse, I think, maybe I think these things because I'm not entirely as happy as I'd thought I'd be. Does a part of me wish for freedom? Would that part, that would never consider leaving him, think a suitable alternative would be if he were to die? For many years, when I had thoughts that weighed heavily on me, I would always talk to Jos. But I haven't had anyone to talk to for about a year now. It got to just be pointless. He listens patiently. But he doesn't understand anything about me. We have absolutely nothing in common. We live completely parallel lives. I wish I had someone to talk to. I don't think I could tell someone these things, in the flesh. My life has been such a mess. I don't really hold it against myself that I made bad choices. I had little to work with. But I still have to live with them. I won't say I regret marrying Jason. We do love one another, and what we have is very close. But I'm redeaming the things I believed when I was young. I'm going to church. Learning there are rules, and that they're not negotiable. I'm learning that it's okay that life is so miserable, because that's what we're here for. It's not about me. It's not supposed to be easy, glamourous, or even make sense. I know I should be willing to die for my faith. I guess the toil of life, it's futility, benignly paying bills, washing dishes...is the least I can do. "Deny thyself, and take the cross."But it is hard to let go of things. When I decided against killing myself when I was forteen, it was because I had hope that it would be worth it to stick around. I doubt if I'd ever have had the nerve. But I'm glad I didn't know then what my life would be. I thought I'd at least be thin, in a clean house, and happy. I had imagined romantic love, and it was so wonderful...I sometimes think my disappointment in life was because I had created such an elaborate and impossible fantasy life. Now I have a difficult time living in and accepting realities. (I'm an 'escapist'.) But what was I supposed to do? I thought I was doing everything God had asked of me. All I wanted was to love and to be loved. To be happy. I wanted to "wait for marriage". I wanted us to go church together, share beliefs. Have Christian children--raise them to know God. I never understood why that wasn't good enough for Him. Why, when Mag was off screwing guys, did not so much as one guy even be polite to me? I remember when I went to that Dawson McAllister thing with my church youth group. I dropped my pen on the floor and couldn't reach it, and this guy picked it up for me. I f* still remember that! How good it felt. He went to a different school. He didn't know any better.

I had wanted, what I believed was, "God's Plan". But I wasn't really willing to let God direct it anymore. I'd been hospitalized and put out of school while I waited for His plan to unfold. I was so lonely. Eventually I strayed. And then I had friends, and guys were at least interested in screwing me. I became a totally differeent person. If it had just worked--living life as God wanted--none of this other stuff would have happened.

I'm not unhappy with Jos, but I regret that the person I love and with whom I shall spend my life isn't of the same faith as me. It did matter to me when we got together. I had understood from him that he had been saved, etc. Shortly before we got married he told me he didn't have any real beliefs--wasn't even sure he believed in God. We almost broke up over it. But we were getting married. We lived together. I'd met his parents. His children. He was the only person I'd slept with.

I was prettty unsure about spirituality back then, but i knew the consequences of marrying someone outside of God's will. I knew I would return to the faith eventually, and I knew I couldn't live with the fear of what would happen to his soul if he died. I've talked to Jason about God, about being saved, about at least searching, thinking about it, talking to my pastor. If possible I think I've pushed him further away. How can someone not care about this?

I'm taking diet pills. They seem to be doing okay, but they make me a raging lunatic.

My cousin Li lives with us. The other day he got drunk and told me that he and my brother "played around with each other" when they were like, ten. I had heard something about this way back then, but just that they'd like, I don't know, compared themselves. Whoa! I feel so bad for them. What they must have gone thru after that! It may be part of why Tuc is so avoidant and unfriendly...he and Li don't really seem to have much to do with one another anymore.