Hurricane Jill

You, sir, are no sparkly vampire

You have to admit, a title like that demands a post, even if I had nothing apropos to discuss. But it turns out I do.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the breakup. Not in an emotional sense–I’m actually totally fine in that respect. It’s just that nothing about his behavior made much sense, from an external perspective, nor could I imagine any scenario that would at least make it internally consistent. One week he would be all in, and the next he’d be talking about how he didn’t deserve me and how I deserved so much better and he wanted to break up. Seriously, WTF? In his defense, his mom had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and that would certainly be a heavy burden for anyone to bear. But if I were in his position, I’d want more support around me, not less. Frankly, it all sounded like an elaborate version of, “it’s not you, it’s me.” And it’s not my policy to argue with men who say they don’t deserve me, and that I’d be better off without them. My policy is to agree, and get out of there ASAP. But I hesitated because of the situation with his mom. Finally I told him that I didn’t care what he thought either of us deserved, or should do. I said to tell me what he wanted, and we’d go from there. And he said he didn’t want to be in a relationship, and that was that. Very self-destructive. It made me sad.

That was all well before I decided to move here, so if the move turns out to be a poor decision, I have no one to blame but myself. And correspondingly, the theme of these last few weeks seems to be, “what the hell was I thinking?”

Working at the county jail at first sounded like a novel and interesting experience. And before I started, I was toying with the idea of just staying there for the rest of the year. But now, I think not. I’m happy to get them caught up with their backlog of orders, but come January 1st, I hope to God there’s a better option for employment. Seriously, the pharmacy there is just a chain-link-fenced area of concrete sub-basement with mood lighting, no windows and no bathroom. And razor wire along the top, like frosting on a cake. I mean, we always joke about how the pharmacy is a dungeon. But this one really IS a dungeon.

The jail staff call the cavernous sub-basement where it’s located the “superdome.” I can’t decide whether that’s inappropriate-but-funny, or just totally inappropriate.

And a few weekends ago I got a random text from a guy friend, who somehow always manages to convey a more than casual interest, without saying anything that’s actually inappropriate. And I keep verbally pushing him away for extremely good reasons I won’t discuss here. Anyway, a few days later I realized it was CNS week. It’s just as well, because another conference-full of longing stares across a hotel lobby is really the last thing I need right now.