Ugh, it's Monday

* I feel like I should say something about Veteran's Day but other people have said it better and the few real veterans I knew in my life have all passed away over the past five or six years. I know it's selfish of me to say this but: mainly today is a day without even the consolation of mail for me. (It's been a bad day)

* Unless the weather gets MUCH worse (it is cold and rainy now, could get cold and icy later), I have Bell Choir AND CWF tonight. Not super enthused, would rather go home but as I'm kind of essential in Bell Choir (two of the bass bells) and I somehow got conned into being the president of CWF again for this year, I have to be there.

I would be whatever the opposite of heartbroken is if that (bad weather causing cancellations) happened.

* This was not a good day. I made a couple of small petty mistakes but I got angry at myself (not outwardly, though I did rage a little at myself alone in my office). They don't really affect anyone greatly - and one MIGHT have been Print Shop's mistake rather than mine. But I'm unhappy and tired and this has not been a good day.

* I am trying to grade some stuff and people have really....well, one person got the pages of the thing out of order and made me have to hunt for the answers to things, and I'm too nice to do the Severus Snape thing of just giving a zero because I couldn't easily find the answer. The same person also just entirely skipped one part which wasn't that hard but was worth a fair number of points.

* And of course now my self-doubt comes back up when I see some of the errors my students made - did I teach the thing wrong? (then again: some people got it correct). And I discovered people were using an online source for information which, while I didn't explicitly FORBID it, maybe I should have, as it contradicts our textbook. (I never thought they would use that source but I guess a lot of people don't buy the texbook to save money, and even though I made an open offer of "if you don't have the textbook come to my office hours and I will temporarily loan you mine" they didn't). And, in the words of a fellow ITFFer who is going through some hard times, I feel very small and futile and I don't like feeling like that.

* I tried talking with a colleague about my concerns but you know? Forget it. After about thirty seconds they cut me off to share some kind of random news story with me. This is someone who wants us all to praise them and bask in their every small success, but when another colleague is struggling....well. One thing I have learned this year is the sheer asymmetry of most emotional things and that a lot of people I thought gave a crap really don't.

* I have grief counseling tomorrow but I have nothing to really talk about? Like, it's a little better but it's just still hard? And I'm mad at some of the people around me for seeming inaccessible when I need a little comfort, and yet, I'm still expected to manage the emotions of other people (like: I can't do the Severus Snape thing with some of the really terrible student papers).

the counsellor tells me to extend to myself the grace I extend to other people but that's part of the problem: I use it all up on other people and I have none left for me, but on the other hand I'm boiling over with vitriol at the sheer stupidity of some things in this world so I just turn it on myself when I do something like write a formula wrong on the board.

And I genuinely don't know if I'm being too needy by expecting the people around me to listen to me for like five minutes when I'm just having a hard day, or if they're just really self-centered/busy/emotionally inaccessible/whatever.

I don't know whether to continue with the counsellor. I mean, I know what I need to work on and there's not that much she can do, what I really need to do is walk around with a rubberband on  my wrist and snap it when I start doing stuff like getting down on myself but on the other hand, if I have literally no one I feel like I can talk to about stuff....and on the third hand, I ask myself, "how big of a loser are you that you have to PAY someone to listen to you? Are you really that bad at making friends?"

* My mom said in the Saturday-evening call she was going to talk with the minister Sunday after church about planning the memorial service and I have not received a "hey would you write up and read maybe 500 words of a memory" and I am really hoping that means I won't get the call. I mean, I will do it if asked/told because it's easier to do it to keep the peace and all (and not have Other Relatives asking 'why did she not?'*) but I really don't want to. I don't mind public speaking but this is where I feel like I want to draw the line because I know I'll cry if I do and I hate crying in front of people so much. Even if it's 100% justified and everyone would understand, I still hate it.

(*I will do it if asked because I do not want to make anything more difficult for my mother and I KNOW there is someone who would pointedly ask her why I didn't get up and say something if other people did. And yes: I do privilege making other people's lives easier over making mine easier, but I think in this case it is 100% justified)


* But yes. I very much want to just put my pajamas on and go to bed with a book and not interact with other people for a while.

* And ugh, I expressed a strong opinion elsewhere and now am like "what if this loses me friends" and WHYY am I like that? Except I know why: I have never had enough friends in my life, and I had a few people when I was younger that I thought were my friends but who did the emotional-blackmail "I won't be friends with you any more if..." (if I liked such-and-such band, or if I told some boy they liked that I liked him, or didn't give them my little dog-shaped eraser, or whatever). And sadly, yes, I am often easily-enough manipulated by people like that. And I read something today about "friendship isn't supposed to be transactional" and I admit I kind of did the confused-dog head-tilt because there have been enough times in my life where it seemed like it WAS that it's a hard pattern to break for me.

(And I wonder, I wonder if that's related to my bewilderment about "sometimes people just give me presents because" because maybe deep down I feel like I have to "earn" my friends' love? I don't know)

I do know one thing I struggle mightily with is the idea of "earning" my place in the world - am I doing enough? Am I good enough? Do I deserve to be here? Sometimes I feel like if I could just get past that I could be happier but it's a hard idea to break.

ADDED:

* I found out why I felt uncomfortable and "chokey" all day. I had my (turtleneck knit) dress on backwards all day long. I only figured it out when I felt the tag in the front :(

That's pretty much a metaphor for today though. (And no, no sign of bell choir or CWF being cancelled)