28 June 2004

So I wake up this morning to the sound of whining and drama, and it just seems like an act of Congress to change that tone into something more pleasant...

Came to school to check my email, and this guy had sent me this long, whining, rambly, accusatory bitch-fest about what a horrible person I am for never emailing him back. Only, I had emailed him back. He'd asked if I wanted to have coffee sometime, because he's going to Iraq soon and wanted to meet up and hang out. This was a couple of months ago. So, I replied and said, "sure, why not? Except, I'm REALLY busy with schoolwork and my job, so I'm not sure when I'll be available." He claims he never got that email, and decided to send me a NINE-K email about how I was a liar, and if I could come up to Seattle all the time, why the hell couldn't I bother spending a little time with him, and all this other bullshit.

The cherry on top was that, yeah, he's going to Iraq soon. And they behead people there.

Well, no, they don't. ONE guy got beheaded in Iraq. And I'm sure this fellow, Fletcher by name, isn't going to be next. And if he is, well, then, that's really very sad. But it still doesn't obligate me to have coffee with him just because he might get beheaded. And I'm SURELY not going to have coffee with somebody who whines and gripes and calls me a LIAR before he's even met me face-to-face.

It should be mentioned that this man is married with a kid and that he's carrying on like I'm some sort of love-interest who's rejecting him. Fucking hell, I said I'd have coffee with him SOMETIME. I didn't say WHEN. As a matter of fact, I said I didn't know when. And THAT warrants a fucking novel of an email accusing me of all sorts of rude, nasty things. Shit, even Jake waited until we were officially dating to start that paranoid accusatory bullshit... What Fletcher's problem is, is heaven's own private mystery.

Maybe he needs a good shrink.

Sorry, Fletcher, but you're a fuckwad. I don't wish any beheadings on you or anything, but you're a fuckwad.

And anyway, about your favorite band, Rail? Yeah, I heard that they really suck. And the person who told me they suck played part of one of their songs for me. And it did suck.

Whatever. Fuck off, Fletcher.

* * * * * * * * * * *

So I had an appointment today with this social worker woman.

She said: "You don't LOOK very pregnant."

She said: "Do you have any problems with foot or dieting? Have you ever had an eating disorder?"

She said: "THIS office wouldn't do such a thing. You're just making that up."

She said: "You need to eat more. You don't look good."

She said: "I'm going to recommend you for the ALTERNATIVE birthing classes, since I don't know about putting you in with married people who are settled down."

She said: "I'm a little confused about why you're here... What's the problem, exactly?"

She said a lot of things.

She can fuck off and go to hell.

I really think I hate all social workers. I've never met one who could be trusted, unless you count my mom, or Angela. Then again, I was never their client.

These people just seem to think they fucking know better than me. This woman today sat across from me telling me she thought I might be depressed. Why? Because I'd made the mistake of telling her that I often wake up in the middle of the night (to PEE, for crying out loud...), and have trouble getting back to sleep. She said it's a sign of depression. Great. Break out the motherfucking fluoxetine hydrochloride -- Helena gets up to pee in the middle of the night! Oh yeah, and did she mention that I'm too thin and I'm not gaining enough weight? Have I ever considered voluntarily puking after meals?

FUCK THAT SHIT.

Do you want to know about my eating disorder? Let me tell it to you... The following are my "problems with food":

* it is really hard to cook bacon whenever the urge strikes you, particularly when you're on public transportation.

* everybody else always gets to the strawberry yogurt and the chocolate pudding before I do.

* people look at me funny when I eat Campbell's Cream of Broccoli soup for breakfast. Ditto, mashed potatoes with gravy and hot chocolate.

* I don't like tomatoes or anything that looks like tomatoes, including red peppers. And green peppers, for that matter. Salsa really doesn't stand a chance with me unless you mix it in REALLY really well... And they don't make good tacos anywhere that don't come with salsa.

* I refuse to eat at Jack-in-the-Box because the one I used to live near got written up in the paper because the cooks never washed their hands or wore gloves. That's nasty. I now have an obsessive dislike for all Jack-in-the-Boxes, and refuse to even drink soda there.

* I don't do the following:
-caffeine (makes me approximately as hyper as cocaine makes normal people, and gives me a stomach-ache...)
-tomatoes and the like, including peppers, mandarin oranges, and apricots. And any cooked vegetable that looks better raw. Like spinach.
-nuts, eggs, things with lots of soy in them (because I'm allergic...), or coconuts because it's got the word "nut" in it, which sort of freaks me out.
-MSG (because it makes me throw up on the Tacoma bus the next day)

* Food costs a lot of money and I don't have enough to buy the really delicious stuff all the time, so sometimes I have to eat crap. Like Beef-a-Roni instead of homemade lasagna.

Do you see where I'm going with this? I DO NOT HAVE A FUCKING PROBLEM!!!

This fucking social worker bitch is a SOCIAL WORKER, not a doctor. If she wanted to see my medical records, she could have looked at those, but she took one look atme and decided I'm anorexic and need her fucking help to eat.

AND she told me I'm a liar. She said that her office would not have done something that it DID DO. I have PROOF that her office did exactly what I told her it did. She said that wasn't true, because if it were true, somebody would get fired. Well then get the pink slips out, lady, because somebody in your office did something VERY illegal and rather unethical.

And then... then to give me this line about how I wouldn't fit in with a bunch of "settled down" married people having babies? To tell me that I ought to consider the ALTERNATIVE program, for teen mothers and low-income women and "non-traditional" families? I'm NOT a teen mother, and although I am low-income, why the fuck does that mean I'm going to be screaming any differently in the delivery room than some rich housewife bitch? And what the hell does "non-traditional family" mean? And why the fuck is she assuming I'm non-traditional? I didn't say a THING about the make-up of my family.

(....Admittedly, if I had, she probably would have gotten me a prescription for something really, really strong...)

FUCK THIS STUPID CUNTRAG!!!

FUCK ALL SOCIAL WORKERS EVERYWHERE WHO TREAT PEOPLE LIKE CRAP. Especially ones who treat their clients like they're morons. Especially the ones who want to pass judgment after judgment about things that have NO bearing on what I came in to discuss.

I hope her car breaks down and she has to take the bus like all us "low-income" women. I hope she's waiting at the bus stop and gets harassed by the Olympia Police for loitering. I hope they think she's a meth-head and frisk her. I hope there's a special afterlife for bad social workers: a sort of hellish place where you get reincarnated as, like, an abused child in a crackhouse or something.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Wow, that was meaner than I've been in a LONG time... I feel bad for saying that, actually. But it's sort of poetic, so I'm going to leave it there.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Fletcher sent me another email. This one sort of sounds like an apology. But it's not, really. Really, it's just further whining. WHY don't these people ever give up?

Fuck, Fletcher, you're a real brat, you know that? I still don't wish you'd be beheaded, but I do sort of hope you disappear from my inbox forever.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I'm going to Seattle tomorrow. I get to see Neil. I love Neil. Gahd, that thought almost takes away all of the stress and anger and bitchiness of this whole day.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The Mountain is out today. A long time ago, when I was dating Jürgen, I used to go up on the rooftop of my apartment building, all by myself, and watch the sunset on the Mountain. I used to think that maybe Neil was still within sight distance of that Mountain. Damn near EVERYTHING in Western Washington is within sight distance of Rainier.

There used to be this song I liked when I was a kid -- one of the songs from "An American Tail," that movie about the little immigrant mice? One of the lines in the song was something like "...it helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky..." But the sky in Washington is VERY big. Not quite the size of the Montana sky, or the New Mexico sky, but too big for comfort. And I've always known how many people are under that sky... And how hard it is to find just one person out of ALL of those people... And how it's so easy to pass by people without getting a good glimpse, without being able to tell if that was somebody you know... That cutesy little song lyric was never a comfort. But the Mountain always was. I thought that if Neil was still alive, the Mountain would know where he was. The Mountain would take care of him. It would take care of both of us until we found each other.

I used to watch it in the sunsets... I watched it today from this park on the same hill, in broad daylight. I love the Mountain.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Had some pizza downtown with my last five-dollar bill. After all, I have an EATING PROBLEM, so I need to eat more.

I had four ones left in my wallet. And some change. I have two dollars in gold post-office coins, in my pockets somewhere, but I'm not sure where. It's two-twenty-five to get to Seattle, and three-fifty to get back. You do the math...

I raced up to campus. I had just remembered that I had two checks to pick up: replacements for the ones I lost when Jake and his family threw me out.

I got to campus just before the office closed. And the amounts on the checks don't seem right to me. I think they accidentally gave me back the money they'd taken out for social security and all that crap. It's only a few dollars extra, but it's sort of exciting anyway. I don't like to keep money I haven't earned though, so tomorrow I will have to find that girl with the "Dreaming of a Big Mac" cardboard sign, and buy her a Big Mac. A week ago, all I could give her was a rose I'd picked out of somebody's garden...

Gahd I love not being completely broke. I'm still mostly broke, and I still generally have no prospects and so forth, but I'm going to be fine for now.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Somebody near me just uttered the words, "...he was having diarrhea and then the hair loss started."

Gahd, what a weird world this is.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Going to go eat now... I have an eating problem, you know...

~Helena*