I either have forgotten how to pull through or now there is just too much stacked against my abilities to do so. 

"voyager ft I can't keep going"

tell me how - loryn taggert

"We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human being." ~Louise Erdrich

I'm grading. As trouble mounted, more and more I let go the assigned learning outcomes, along with deadlines that I barely ever invoked anyway. I assigned them everything and anything that had kept me alive or that was keeping me alive. I told them all the expected things an English professor would, who the authors were/are, why the world thinks they're important, all that. But assignment-wise, there really is only one: find something that helps you, in some way, if you can, TRY TO just do that. The A they get for still being on this side of the grass and still TRYING. 

As a result, I have a BUZZILION last minute things to grade, and MOST are returning to me what I gave them in the first place, tried to. Comfort in words.

I'm slinging A's. Go to your summer, little students. Go be alive. While you still can. 

years - sierra ferrel

If I really, and I mean REALLY, do not want ANYTHING (I don't!), and I scold Nebraska and the dean who cooked up the bait and switch on the chair job, not for jerking ME around but for leaving that poor priest to hold it all together while throwing whoever at jobs he needs done, in this case a whoever who is 100% self interested and could care less about healthcare providers humanistic needs really, and block all their numbers but the priest's, then everything changes AGAIN. 

The magic of No, who knew?

I shouldn't laugh, but talk about bait and switch 🤣. When's the last time anybody asked that priest what HE needs? Well hmm since he works with Nebraska et al, I'd have to guess that unless the priest wants flowers from Wegmans once in a while and/or cunnilingus, he's shit out of luck. And I'd be correct. 

And boy, he really wants his basket back now. And if he gets it, I'll be working directly for him, since I couldn't work for the chair in the conflict of interest mess Nebraska made of that. 

I have to remember how to log in to my email, where apparently there is a FLURRY of contract demands for me that I'm being cc'd on and that I'm not even reading 🤦🏻‍♀️. 

Of course, given how many rounds there have been to get me to Phoenix SOMEHOW, I'm not counting on a job out of this. In my little way, I'm throwing love back at Priest. It really is true that he's getting jerked around as much as I am, by the same people I am, even though he's supposedly in charge. Responsible, but not empowered enough to meet those responsibilities, then up all night wondering how to not let anyone down - BEEN THERE more times than I can count. It sucks. And if I happen to throw some Fassbender fantasies his way, welp I know also what it is like to deserve way more sugar (like NOW, I deserve WAY more), so what's the harm of saying that following a priest into a desert is so old testament (add small giggle here). I haven't even told him yet that I memorized the book of Ruth when I was eight years old - early erotica, I was precocious 💃

I gotta stop seducing the priest in my head. 🤣 Poor guy is probably gay AND overworked, with a hornet-like woman dive-bombing heads around him from NY. 

And I gotta drag ass to WI again to help move Tbone into assisted living, a very fancy one that my sister is arranging, while he's an ASSHOLE to her. It's nearly 6k/month, which she paid the deposit on (12k), and he doesn't have it in him to thank her for any of it. Again, yes he tried to kill me and nearly killed himself in the process, but my sister is holding it all up now.

🤔 

That gives me an idea 🤔 - maybe silence isn't kindest? I already talk to you here, so seems like asking if YOU'RE ok would be overkill. But maybe not 🤷🏻‍♀️

card of the day, AGAIN

sweetest things just for you - valerie june

just in case - morgan wallen 

In the mix of feelings, there is relief. And in the relief, "just in case" is alleviated. I don't have to keep maintaining that tiny forcefield anymore. And I won't make the mistake again of letting anyone put hands on me who can't break through it in the first place. 

Queen of Swords

The Priest. He was the only man on my schedule. I gotta weird Priest fetish 🤷🏻‍♀️. I know, like as an historical fact, that priests are mostly terrible people. But some of them are great. And I love that they're not trying to fuck me. I love it so much, it makes me feel like fucking them, which I can just feel like doing without having to actually do it. Indefinitely. It's almost perfect.

But, the reality remains, Nebraska took my chair job. He just can't help himself. He's a natural born taker. It's actually quite a skill, he gets almost everything he wants ultimately, but it makes him an asshole. My NO might be the best thing that ever happened to him, first time he has ever heard it.

So, I took the horoscope to heart. Meeting with Prirst about 'where that leaves me'. The zoom opened to Priest's always smiling face, and because I DO get it, I said "you must be really tired of this". His whole body language changed, exhaaaaaale, yeah what the hell am I doing here? That's the nuclear option, I take a leave if I can't bring you here, he says. Ok well I don't care about the chair thing, I reply, what I'd like you to do is think about what would help you the most, help you not want to give up, and I'll do that for you. He's going to try to get me a contract to do that. I don't know what the job is, and neither of us knows if he will get anything more than Nebraska, not IDEAL as a sole resource, for either me or Priest. We just left it on the table like that, said at least.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). It takes one to know one. To recognize something in someone else because you share that same quality or have been around it, studied it or just have a strong intuitive inclination toward it, brings on a rush of emotion today.

if it be your will - noah derksen

end of my rope - pokey lafarge 

"Every witch I’ve ever met has experienced a shock from which she never recovered, a loss that is ongoing—We survived a blast that opened a door." The Antidote, Karen Russel

I can see/feel it now. How something essentially cuddly is turned mean. I'm not going to keep that up. My soul is also ALL MINE, and I'm not relinquishing it to hate. No. But I can throw punches as well as I can pull triggers, and imma gonna today. Starting with his cock cage curse shall remain.

repost, brimming with venom

From your skin, everywhere I touched, every inch of you, will come the sticky scent of a snake, reppelent to all but its own kind, and only larger stronger more dangerous snakes will come closer to you, so that you will be ever surrounded only by vipers that you cannot best or beat or outrun, for the rest of your life and the next, and anything you do to hurt or manipulate me further, where I can see it or where I cannot, will feed this spell to tighten and thicken, until your reek is as loud as a rattle. Until a cowboy shows up to put you out of your misery, so mote it be

Listing my house, little realtor boy is sending over a contract today - I'm giving the new guy a shot, he looks like Eggs. If he fails I will get it done anyway, Right Fucking Now. If it sells and I have nowhere to go, I'm subletting a friend's carriage apartment here through next winter. Anywhich way, by the time I talk to Priest on Saturday, I will tell him I listed my house while that man exploited my dying parent situation into personal gain - you decide, Father, who the real mother is. Which would slice a baby? 🤔

All my devices are unlocked, it was just a "mistake" but I am not sorry I punched the university issued pc in the keyboard, over and over until my knuckles hurt.

Update: the dude who would allow no such 'mistake' was fired a couple days ago.  

Since I still have this job (til the place flops belly up dead af in a min), I'm headed to campus in my meanest dress and most arresting knee boots as soon as my hair dries into Medusa coils. Gonna hear the guest speaker that my stolen grant is paying for (at least I approve of her). 

The World is card of the day. A Whitman quote is on mine. 

in this deck, it means 'everything you need is already inside'

 "the world belongs to those who dare to take it" ~ walt whitman

Home.

Everything hurts. My skull hurts. 

I'm trying to conjure Michael Fassbender because I have a brain injury, spiritually. I hurt everywhere.

One of the last punches he threw, my dad asked me (invoking dementia he doesn't have) to name my childhood dogs in order. But actually, he wanted to ledger how he had murdered them. I halted after entry 1. He was mad that my sister was on a work call outside, "doesn't she ever get sick of hearing herself talk?", so he just randomly threw ninja at me for no better reason than I was standing there.

And. 

While I was distracted with dying parents, Nebraska took that chair job for himself.

Honestly, I'd rather the raw authenticity of killing my puppy. 

Wow. Just pain. Like marrow flu. Sick.

It's hard to even compute

how these men could dismantle me and think nothing much of it. I didn't even love the 'partner' and he broke my heart somehow anyway. 

He made the mistake of texting my sister again. "Play with your food," Sis. Bat him around into shame corners just for kicks, like cats stalk centipedes.

So much time spent on hold, it begins to feel like a running bit. I had to hand it off to Sis after the Dr. appt - to be clear, his Dr., who has known him for 15 years and likes him (oxymoron), helped arrange the rehab. He was as 🤦🏻‍♀️ as I was, mad at my dad, did the memory/thinking test right in front of us. Tbone PLAYS brain impairment when it suits him. My parents are both murderers, as in they'll get away with it if they can, ALWAYS. 

So it was a choice. His. When I wasn't looking, he tanked the whole plan with the medical coder, and he went home by Uber of his own choosing, then acted like he was clueless, then laughed about it to the doctor, who did not find it funny. Bemused at best. "You're going to live a long time, Tony, and I don't think you can put these women (us) through this behavior for a decade." Then he signed medical power attorney over to my sister. And oh did Tbone get MEAN. But he IS mean, so that was a return to HIMSELF. He did fall, and did fracture his lumbar, the rest was all pure MEAN AND MANIPULATIVE. ie he's FINE. And likes tamadol. 🤨

Driving "home". Music LOUD. 

"clean inside" (status update)

 

Every morning that I wake up here, I enter and exit that same tunnel of facts. ~ The Antidote, Karen Russel. 

I am in hell. 

Well, people in Gaza are in HELL. So I guess I'm just in hot heck. 

There is nothing new I've learned about the healthcare system through this. 

This is not a safe place for me to be, my proximity brings out the worst in/for my father, where I grew up will never be home - I learned nothing new in any of that. 

I learned this is not a place to which I could even safely retreat for a while, either. "Not even good for that" seems to be the upshot whenever I turn my face west. 

WI, NE, AZ; NO. 

Nobody knows what I know about the university at home getting shut down. I'm compartmentalizing it. And I am carrying it alone while being treated like I'm just not trying hard enough or everything would be fine. 

So I learned that HERE is where I was trained to take that on, and to take the punishments for failing to perform MAGIC.  

Jelly Roll is more ok

After all that, with rehab set up for weeks out, everything arranged, finally this hell can get better, then he/they just decide he's good enough to go back home. Wait, what? I go apoplectic, I'm not taking him home, then everyone's yelling at me because I'm refusing to get the guy who can barely move in/out of my jeep alone. The guy you told me you'd have to keep for days, but now the night before Easter, everything closed, you'd rather just NOT? Hey, dad what year is this? He has no idea, out of his mind. I refuse to drive him. If I hadn't been here he would still be sitting in shit in that chair probably dead by now. And I could not, cannot move him. But despite anything I say, regardless of my crying that I weigh HALF what he does, I can't provide his care, they shove him in a taxi and just dump him in front of the house. He could walk (shuffle) in, high as a kite on oxy, right back into the shit chair. The pain med script didn't even get filled because the dr phoned it on an out of state lisence - Tbone's got 2016 hydros from knee surgery, so 'no problem'. 

And now I'm stuck here scheduled to TAKE HIM TO THE DOCTOR omfg I just took him to the god damn hospital HE'S 100% FUCKED, what part of that needs its cholesterol checked? And how am I getting him in/out of a car? AND WHY BOTHER?? He can drive himself, he screams at me, from the chair he's not moving out of til Tuesday, until I try to move him, call 911 if I can't...or a taxi?....

Nebraska was texting incessantly throughout, not about this hell I'm trying to navigate, just about taking him back. Finally I give him a quick update on the grim details I've got going on here, and he says "my Amazon packages got stolen off my porch", and if he had been kidding that would be soooo funny, just the joke I needed. I blocked his number. Giving up on "amicable".

One by one by one by one. I try one last time. One last skinny gasp of effort. To break the insane cycle of Tbone killing Tbone, in this case. But the answer is always the same, in every category: LET GO. Stop trying. Give up.

I woke up already crying under a crushing weight of complete, total, all encompassing resignation. At some point, I'll have to go downstairs and see why it's so quiet. I'm not afraid of nor hoping for his death.