And more realizations

(My entire evening, except for the weekly phone call from my mother, was spent grading exams. I hate this. But there was no way around it; I give an exam today and another one tomorrow and if I am not to burn out on grading I need to space it out. But no downtime is bad for me)

I realized this morning I still have a lot of bad old scripts running in  my head. Call them....is "legacy code" the term programmers use? Stuff that might be outmoded but hangs around?

(And this is what stays my hand on going to do counseling once the grief sessions run out and I am paying on my own - it seems I can figure a lot of this stuff out on my own, though doing something about it is harder. Though I'm not sure a counselor could help a whole lot there beyond the "don't think that way" suggestion)

One of the problems is that some of them sometimes get reinforced.

One of them being: When You Need Help, There Will Be None Forthcoming.

I know my parents wanted me to be independent. And my teachers wanted me to be independent. But I think there were times in my childhood when they went a little far with that desire. (And also, as the later paragraphs will show: not always having friends who were really my friends). And so this folds itself into my fears of being abandoned (I think every oldest child has those, going back to when that mewling bundle came home from the hospital and all of a sudden you were a Big Girl and were expected to understand why you got considerably less attention and often had to wait longer for things...) and also the fears of rejection a lot of kids develop.

But anyway. it was kind of reinforced last night.

One of my neighbors called me after my mom called. Long story short, but she is current housebound (injury) and ANOTHER neighbor of ours who is suffering with insomnia and is up a lot at night called *her* (because she does not have my number, I presume) to tell her that she saw someone, late last night, walking down the street and opening people's mailboxes (including Mary Ann - the neighbor's - and mine) and looking in. I presume it's checking to see if there was anything worth stealing in there, though it could also have been someone with a compulsion, though it's hard to know. (And a few mornings I've come out and found the door to my mailbox open, and thought it was maybe the wind, but maybe it wasn't).

Now. I don't leave mail in the mailbox overnight; if I pay bills either I put them out when I leave in the morning or these days, more commonly, drop them in a community mailbox (the big blue ones). And I almost always pick up my mail as soon as I get home for the day (exception being the rare times I am gone overnight, and it's not long enough for me to be able to have my mail held - I don't know ANY of my neighbors well enough to impose on them to collect my mail for me, like people in my mom's neighborhood do for each other). And I have "informed delivery," where I am e-mailed a scan of (most) mailpieces each morning so I can know what to expect (and if I don't get any mail on a certain day, and yet it showed I had some, I know something is up)

But still: that's creepy. And it is a Federal offense, still, to take something out of someone else's mailbox. So I thought: someone needs to know.

So I texted the DA, who I go to church with, and asked her: should I call the postmaster tomorrow, or call the police non-emergency number?

She texted back - call the police, they need to know about this.

So I did, I called the non emergency number.

And wow, was the person dismissive: "There's nothing we can do. Yeah, we'll keep this on record so if mail does start to go missing, maybe we can look into it" But I was thinking maybe they'd say "We'll patrol a little more in your neighborhood at night" but maybe they're stretched too thin? (I know when we were having some vandalism issues at church, we got increased patrols, but then again, it was the DA who asked the police to do that, so I guess she has more pull than some random citizen.)

But yeah. So now that just tells me: get home as early as you can to get your mail when it arrives, and NEVER put anything that goes out that is anything of value (even a greeting card) in your mailbox, go to the public box that is locked and just has a slot....

Yes, the post office has rental boxes that are secure but (a) that costs money and (b) it's a PITA to get down to the post office here; it's inconveniently located.

And yes, once again: modern life and its inability to trust anyone serves up more inconveniences to the honest person who is trying to do her best.

Another bad old script I realized this morning:

Several people with whom I regularly interact on Twitter have been less active of late, or at least haven't interacted with me. And while my first thought was, "Oh, they must be busy" my second thought was "I violated some Secret Twitter Rule and got shadowbannned, if that's even a thing" and my third thought - because I don't check follower numbers, for me, that would be like weighing myself every day*


(*The closest I came to disordered eating was in college when I started doing that, and also writing down everything I ate, in an attempt to lose weight. I realized one day when i was hungry and wondered if I could "afford" a hard-boiled egg that I was going too far and gave away the scale and threw out my calorie notebook)

Anyway, then I thought: Oh, maybe I said something that offended a bunch of my followers and they just dropped me and decided it wasn't worth telling me I had offended them.

And yes: that's not fair to my friends (and at least a few of my followers on Twitter are friends) but I have had people in my past that pulled that kind of thing.

On the one hand: the "secret rules" that you're never told, but you're ostracized for violating them. And sometimes the rules change randomly. And while I am not *truly* neurodivergent, I am close enough to being so that I either can't always suss out "secret rules" from context, or I feel like those rules are stupid and why should I have to play by them? (the kind of "On Wednesdays, we wear pink" sort of rules that are about some person exerting their arbitrary control over others. Not actual "rules" of manners that involve you doing stuff to make someone else feel comfortable - I am good with those rules). I've run up against that. (I suspect most every person who was ever a schoolgirl did, unless they were the Queen Hen who was making the rules)

And also, I realized this morning: some of the people I thought of as my friends as a kid weren't really my friends. Or they weren't GOOD friends. Because someone who will randomly drop your friendship over some small slight, without them confronting you and giving you a chance to apologize, explain, and make amends - in fact, sometimes dropping you without even telling you what your infraction was - isn't a good friend and probably wasn't ever really your friend.

But of course that makes me sad because that means I had even fewer real friends as a kid. (My usual "explanation to myself" in the past was "well, they were going through a lot of stupid stuff too, just like you were, and they didn't behave in a compassionate way, but that was OK" but you know? It really WASN'T OK, not to me it wasn't. Oh, I've long since forgiven them and moved on, but it did teach me not to be THAT friend and if one of my friends offends me I will quietly go to them and say "I don't know if you realize this but..." and explain how what they did/said/didn't do made me feel, and see what their response is. And probably 98% of the time, regardless of what they said in response, even if it was brushing off my concerns, I'd forgive them and keep them as a friend - partly because I am stupid-loyal and partly because I am desperate enough for friends that I am willing to forgive a lot).

And yeah, all of that, along with the lack of interactions, along with spending my few "free" hours last night grading, all wound themselves up into a Ball Of Emotional Suck this morning where I actually found myself sitting at the piano (while trying to practice a little) and going "okay, fine. Maybe I don't get to have friends. Maybe I never DESERVED friends. Maybe this just means I go it on my own; I don't need anyone else" which is of course all a lie, but I really wish the "I don't need anyone else" part was true, that I could go back to being happy alone (like I was in my early 20s) and not feel like I want friends around me, because the way my life shook out, I don't have any nearby family (who are forced to interact with me) and the friends I do have, are busy people and I am in just one of the many circles they run in, and I am *afraid* of disturbing them too much (eg., calling them up and asking to do something) because again the bad old scripts in my head say "ask for too much and they will drop you" and of course I feel like I need to 'save' asking for help for those times when I am desperate for help.....

***

I don't know. Again, I am just tired. More and more, the weeks just use me up. Two days on the weekend is not enough to recuperate in, especially not when part of that time is spent cleaning house or doing laundry or running errands I must run but that do not spark joy.

And I LIKE going out and doing stuff - like, I have low-level plans to sew up a quilt back either tonight or tomorrow, and get one of my unfinished tops ready to take to Home A La Mode, but that means I give up most of the day (because everything is an hour's round trip from me, and I will "batch" other errands on to it to cut down on wasted gas) and that means I don't have that time to knit or sew on my own projects. (I thought of trying to do it as a quick trip tomorrow afternoon - they should be open - but I will have exams to grade and also I will be tired, and Friday traffic is the worst).

And yeah, I am still low-level hurting from some negative interactions this week, including the student who implied I wasn't a very good teacher because they weren't doing better in my class. (And you know? Maybe I'm NOT, right now. I'm dealing with a lot of heavy stuff and maybe I just kind of suck at teaching this semester. And there's nothing to be done for that and I feel bad I haven't been more present but sometimes we don't control what happens in our lives. And also: sometimes I wish I had the compassion extended to me that I am asked to extend to others.)

I also feel bad because I came back into town after field lab yesterday, and a notification popped up on my phone: "Gen Ed Council Meeting at 3!" and I was like WAIT WHAT and I didn't remember one being scheduled and hadn't seen any notification, and I was in the middle of returning the van (you do not cross Motor Pool Lady) and so I knew I was going to be late but at that point I was torn between raging over "if I am expected to be in two places at once, too many things are being expected of me" and "what a loser idiot you are and your brain is full of holes, you can't even remember the ONE committee you are currently on and you deserve to fail post-tenure review this year." So I ran over there (after sending a hasty "I am going to be late, and I am very sorry" e-mail to the chair).

Got to the room. NOBODY. It was 20 minutes past 3, so I figured: okay, it was a short meeting and I missed it. Oh well.

I still felt bad about it. (No one needs to criticize me about dropping one of the too-many balls I am trying to juggle; I already do it to myself).

Got home, got a new notification from the chair: "gee, sorry that went out, there was no meeting today." Now I vaguely remember "we'll schedule one but I'll only e-mail you about it with an agenda if it needs to happen" and apparently there was no business to conduct, so no meeting, but crikey. I wish that notification had been wiped from the calendar (I didn't set it; apparently the meeting chair did).

So yeah, I am just kind of worn out and low-level sad. Nothing is so very terrible but it's more tiredness than anything. (Memory: as a child, not a very old child - maybe five or six - one day I was crying for some inexplicable reason and I told them, "Oh, I'm just tired" which is a startling mature thing for a child that age to say, but now I wonder if I heard my parents say it to other people as an explanation for my periodic crying/crankiness. I was also a seriously colicky baby, according to my mom....I always thought "colic" was a stomach complaint in babies (like colic in horses) but apparently it's often used for "just cries for no clear reason")

I also suspect the answer to "Why did my high school French teacher whistle and swing his briefcase on his way to work and I don't" could be as simple as "the difference between a sanguine and a melancholic temperament" and yes, I know the old "humors" theory is long-debunked, but I do think as personality types, there is something to the idea that some people are more naturally cheerful, and others are more naturally, well....melancholic ("sad" isn't quite the right word here), and others more prone to anger, and others more stoic.

But I need to do more things to cheer myself up, even if that cheer is temporary and I tend to revert to my norm of being slightly melancholic after a while. And maybe getting a quilt in the queue to be quilted would help, and maybe having an excuse to go to the good barbecue place for lunch ("I'm already down here, might as well") would be another.

So I don't know. I'll have to think about it more. Part of me is already worrying about projects I am making for other people, if I will finish them by the deadlines. (Oh, I know, with my mom's socks: if I don't finish the last pair I can put the stitches on a holder and wrap them up with a promise I will finish them after Christmas; she has done stuff like that for me in the past, and I KNOW she would 100% understand).