I took a whole bunch of people off of my friends list. This isn’t about you, you, you, or you. This is about me needing to be more private.
for the record
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Author Archives: Krissy Gibbs
Stop the train.
The train to fantasy land that is. The last few days have been a roller coaster ride that I really want to get off. I am mixing my metaphors! Can I just leave the amusement park instead? Ok. To get into reality…
I don’t know what is happening. We are talking and talking and trying to figure out what is good and what is bad about our relationship, whether it is actually a good fit for us. In the past few days we both wrote our concerns about the relationship and the pieces that make us happy. This morning we talked for a few hours about the whole situation.
We aren’t broken up and I am not moving. Does that mean that we will actually end up together? I don’t know. It is really hard to know what the “best” decision is. I love him. He loves me. There are things that we have in common and there are things that are difficult, but that is always true. I am not willing to walk away from what we have.
In the first rush of thinking it was over I talked to a lot of people about it. I heard some interesting things that people had not been willing to tell me up to then about their opinions about the relationship. I sat there and agreed because I was so angry and some of them are still true.
I have compromised for this relationship in ways that would be complete dealbreakers for many of my friends. I stopped being poly, I am not playing with other people, and I don’t spend much time at sex parties anymore. I don’t actually think I miss any of these things though. I am not sad about not having sex or playing with anyone else. Puppy stressed repeatedly that if I wanted to play with anyone at Folsom I just had to let him know–I even had people ask. I didn’t want to. I wasn’t even super thrilled with playing in public. We did so briefly on Friday night and I skipped the experience on Saturday because I felt very icki about it.
The past five years or so have been remarkable for me. I have been through so many changes. It is interesting now to look back at the “growing up” process and I wonder what is going to happen in the next five years. Hopefully the rate of change slows down some cause this has been dizzy making. I’ve been aware for a while that there are things that I want that necessitate giving up things that have been big parts of my life. I think I am at a place where those choices need to start happening.
I have had a number of people ask me out in the past week. People that have been in my life and people who are somewhat new to me and I find it remarkable that they all popped out of the woodwork just now. It gave me the ability to take note of the fact that I am incredibly unlikely to be lonely, even if things don’t work out with Puppy. I don’t care. I want him and I want only him. I’m scared and nervous and struggling to find my path. I hope things get easier sometime soon.
Once again: thanks Chris. Your words are in my brain and I am working on processing them.
not good
It is 7am and my thought is: why isn’t today over yet? I have to teach a rather intensive lesson on grammar with my juniors. (They are going to be thrilled to learn about verb types.) At least the seniors are no effort today. (Thank god for movie days.)
I have trouble going more than a few minutes without crying. Puppy said last night that I know this has to end because he and I both want to get married and have kids and it wouldn’t work for us to do together. Not long after that he initiated sex and through the whole event I was sitting there thinking, “You are already looking forward to doing this with someone else.”
I have my ticket to fantasy land. Let’s see if I can actually get on the train.
I made him cry at dinner. I told him very quietly, after he thanked me for bringing him to the restaurant, “I told you that I wanted to bring you to places like this. Now I have to hurry or I won’t get the chance to.” Tears appeared and he had trouble holding it together. This is so hard. On one hand I want to find a way to make him see that I really am worth the effort, but on the other hand I want to just walk away because if he doesn’t want me I deserve more.
This fucking hurts.
The next book I am teaching is called Man’s Search for Meaning and it is a philosophy book speculating on what is the purpose of life and such. The person who wrote it was a psychiatrist who practiced before and after surviving Auschwitz. The first question he asks his depressive patients is: why don’t you commit suicide? After spending quite a while talking about this book with my master teacher on Friday this question has been in the back of my mind all weekend. I can’t come up with a good answer though. (This does not mean I am suicidal.) But… why don’t I? I don’t know. I just don’t. Because people have told me not to? It’s not even that people that I love, who love me, have told me not to. Just people. I do as I am told. It doesn’t matter who tells me. I kind of shared this thought process with Puppy because it came up and now he is freaked out and worried. He has spent a bunch of time telling me how upset he would be if I did. Uhm… so what? I won’t be affected by that so why should I let that upset direct whether or not I do something? He really didn’t like that response. heh
Disclaimer: No. I am not contemplating suicide. I am, however, not seeing much of a point to me or to my life. There is a vast gulf between that and killing myself so I better not start getting fucking phone calls trying to talk me down. If I suspect that is the motivation for a phone call I will hang up on you.
The dirty details.
I pick fantasy land.
Ok, fine. So the relationship isn’t “forever” and I can’t have you for the rest of my life even though it hurts so much to think of losing you that I can’t breathe. You don’t understand the depth of my feelings for you. You just don’t seem to know at all. Let me tell you: I have given up numerous things that are on some level important to me because I would do just about anything at all to make you happy. I have given them up willingly and almost happily just for the possibility of pleasing you. I love your smile, your kiss, your hugs, your voice, your eyes, you….. Yes, there are so many things that drive me absolutely crazy–but I expect that as part of the boy/girl dynamic and don’t really let it bother me that much.
I don’t want to lose you. I don’t feel like this relationship has run its course yet. I know it is selfish and immature and self-absorbed, but I have not had enough time with you yet. Please don’t leave me. Ok, so I can’t have you for the rest of my life. Can I have you for the next few months? I know you are leaving. I know you don’t want me the way I want you. Can we pretend? Can I please not have to deal with the horror of losing you yet? I just can’t handle it right now.
I know that I am too broken for things to work with us forever. I can and will cheerfully bury all of my brokenness for a period of a few months if it will let me be happy with you for just a little while longer. I know it is pathetic to beg. But, please. Please don’t leave me yet.
numb
it’s over
why
Why do people that I live with prefer masturbation to sex with me within 6 months?
Why do people that I choose as long term partners feel that I am simply too much to deal with?
Why do people that I fall in love with appreciate how physically affectionate I am in the first few months and then complain that I am too clingy?
Why am I apprently such a drain on people’s resources that they simply cannot abide my presense?
Why do I date?
Why do I keep wanting a relationship?
Why fucking bother.
suck
So, uhm. A girl that I have known since birth is getting married.
Hm. I don’t want to think about how I feel about that.
life and stuff
I’m not going to go into depth about school because I am still pissed off at my district. My kids are great and I am really starting to find my groove.
In totally vain news: I stepped on the scale today and it said 154.5. I am now within my doctors recommended range for me. Doing WW a couple years ago I got down to 157, but I never managed to get to 155. The only thing I’m doing right now is moving a lot more than usual (I am now teaching and running around campus all day) and I am not eating as much or as often because I have serious time contraints and stress.
I’m mostly happy and feeling relatively stable today. *breathe*
fragile
I have been having some seriously gnarly bad dreams for the past two nights. I wake up sad enough to cry. I feel vulnerable and fragile and extremely broken. I feel incompetent and lonely and overwhelmed.
I really hate feeling like this.
Dear God
I want this day to be over. I am exhausted. This weekend was a mixed bag of good and bad–though mostly good. I am *exhausted* and I just want to fall down. I don’t have class until 7 though. 🙁 I’m being a stupid baby and feeling sad that Puppy makes plans to have dinner with other people but never manages to come home when I can be there. (It’s cause we have the crappiest schedules ever. I have class Mondays and Wednesdays and he has class or group meeting Tuesday and Thursday.)
This weekend was psycho busy. We played a bit and had fun together. I mostly avoided the people I don’t like. The psycho ex was not a problem at all. Though she did set up camp and watch us play on Friday. That was slightly creepy.
I feel utterly without energy. I don’t have the energy to input grades or contact parents or… I don’t fucking care.
Ok. Yeah. End of me whining for today now.
school schtuff
So! Today I was observed by my university supervisor and she ripped my ego into tiny little pieces. I don’t like this woman at all. Then I went and talked to the VP and to one of the advisors (this cool old guy who has worked for schools for almost 40 years–very smart mouth and all) and they went over her criticism and helped me to see them in ways that do not just amount to “You suck and you shouldn’t ruin children’s lives by being a teacher.” Thank god they are both so supportive and wonderful.
Then I had back to school night. It went great! I didn’t have a huge turn-out, only the parents of six kids out of thirty… However, the ones that showed up are obviously the ones who are really into their kids and care a lot about what is going on at the school. They were all very thrilled as I went through my policies and class requirements and they have all vowed to ask their kids at least once a week what book they are reading. {insert little happy hearts here} I was nervous, but it was totally smooth and awesome. I got to meet the parents of two of my biggest talkers and that was a lot of fun. Both sets of parents were delighted that I actually like their sassy, smart-mouth, exhuberent boys. Of course I like them! They are so much fun. Of course they require a lot of reminding about what task they should be working on… but that’s no big deal. 🙂
All in all it was awesome. Now I need to finish my lesson plan for tomorrow (make the handout) and pack for Folsom Fringe. Dear God I am tired and the very long and busy con weekend is just about to start…. AHHHHHHHHHH (Thank God Monday is going to be a total slide day for me in class.)
duh
| You are a Social Liberal (70% permissive) and an… Economic Conservative (78% permissive) You are best described as a: You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness. loc: (74, 105)
|
suck
I have been asleep for the past three hours. I am sick. I have a fairly high fever and my throat hurts a lot.
I am so glad that I don’t have to teach tomorrow.
Pissy
The next hippy-bitch who tells me that I should relish my period because it connects me with the flow of life?
Yeah. I’m going to break your fucking nose you god damn moron.
Fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
I hate my body today. And I hate that my uterus is trying to climb through my gut.
{Therapy filter}
I didn’t get around to navel gazing on what I thought I wanted to bring up. That is probably good, it meant I was more ok with the topic wandering around a lot.
Some things looked at:
Relationships within my family
How I handle verbal boundaries with friends
My birthday
The touching thing that has been happening lately and the resultant near agoraphobia
Follow up on the moving thing with Puppy
That was a lot to cover in 55 minutes and I feel a little overwhelmed by it. I still feel like she and I are getting up to speed with one another and that means we are doing a lot of very surface-level discussion of things.
In mulling over the touching thing after therapy by myself a couple of things occured to me. At this point in time I am no longer comfortable with allowing anyone to treat my body as if it is something they have a right to touch. This is manifesting in a few ways. The vast majority of my friends are people whom I have given explicit permission to and I am not upset with my friends. However, the fact that my friends touch me so casually and so constantly means that people who do not have permission to touch me feel that it is simply an ok thing to do. I have been trying and trying and trying to figure out how to deal with this. My reaction of just not going out where there might be people who don’t have permission isn’t really working out. It means I am missing chances to see my friends and that is hurting me.
For a while I think I need to revoke all standing permission. In no way is this a criticism of anyone who has standing permission or an implication that you do/have done anything wrong. For whatever reason, at this point in time I need to have a lot more control over access to my body than I have had for a while. I really need to have everyone try to be conscious enough to ask me specifically and verbally if it is ok to touch me right now. I’m going to do my level best to be gentle in reminding people if they forget, because it isn’t a normal part of most peoples’ interactions with me. I don’t know how long this will last. I just can’t deal with constantly feeling out of control anymore. I can’t handle the fact that my feeling at this point in time is that I am better off not going to anyones’ event because I will have to be defensive of my body and potentially hostile. And by defensive of my body, I do mean my shoulder, my head, my arm… I’m not just talking about the sexual parts of my body.
I explained to her that at this point when someone touches me without permission (someone I don’t really know, I’m not referencing friends) my response is to get rather hostile. I told her how very upset it makes me that I get hostile because it is surely over the top. She said it is perfectly ok and she is really happy that I am defending the boundary for myself, however I need to do it. This was my first almost-crying moment with her. I have been feeling so very bad lately that I get so upset about something that other people seem to shrug off. Having so many people tell me to just get over it has made it even worse. I talked to Puppy about it last night too and he said he agrees with her. I am going to make a hugely judgmental statement now and say: Thank god that for once it isn’t me that is broken in an exchange. The people who are telling me that I am wrong for having boundaries are not perfectly ok. It’s stupid and awful that I need other people to tell me this. It isn’t that I think that it is wrong for other people to not have boundaries for themselves, but they are wrong in telling me to get over what I need for myself. [attempt to be funny]I had suspected this.[/attempt to be funny]
I really like this therapist. I think this is going to work out.
School stuff
I will write the school update though. Cause yeah… I just will. 🙂
I had a gnarly situation this week with a student that lead to considerable angst. For the first several days in class he announced loudly that he wasn’t going to read and he didn’t care what I said about it. I tried calling his mom after class on Monday but she wasn’t home and he took a message. I called back on Tuesday… she hadn’t gotten the message. Turns out his mom is a wacko and before I could explain to her why I was calling she started yelling at him and I listened to a screaming match between them. I felt awful. He wasn’t actually in trouble with me. I was calling to ask him mom if she could please check with him in the evenings to see if he had reading homework and ask him to please do it. That was all I wanted to get across.
Wednesday and Thursday in class was a nightmare. The kid was willfully defiant and rude and just plain awful to me. He made a huge point out of letting everyone in the room know that he hated me and he wasn’t going to do the work. Friday started out even worse. He asked me a question in a nasty tone of voice and I let my temper get the better of me and I wasn’t very helpful in response. I had sent in a referal to the student/family center (our counseling center) the day before because I didn’t want to give him a referal for detention and just as he called me a bitch for not being helpful with his question in came a TA with a pass for him to leave class to talk to the student/family center. I gratefully handed him the pass and sent him out of class. Multiple students told me that he didn’t have the right to treat me that way and that he was not adequately provoked for that kind of behavior.
He came back into class with about 15 minutes left obviously with a huge chip still on his shoulder. The class was working silently on writing so I pulled him out of class. The first words out of my mouth were an apology. I told him at length why I called his mom, what my intentions were, and why I now know that it was a horrible idea and I feel really bad. He was visibly shocked. We talked for a few minutes about the mistakes I have made with him and I apologized again. He apologized for his behavior and explained why he was lashing out at me (his mom really is pretty crazy) and we agreed to start over with one another on Monday. I gave him permission to stay in at break any time something comes up that he is upset about. He was really surprised that when I do something that is messed up he can call me on it. I think things will be ok now. He really is a nice kid and I had been looking forward to working with him.
In other news:
My unit plan for short stories is basically done and I have figured out almost everything that I am doing for every other unit other than poetry. Poetry isn’t my thing and I am having a bitch of a time figuring out that unit. I also took over the senior class Friday. AHH!! For the next three weeks I am doing exactly what my master teacher wants done because I don’t want to change approaches with the kids mid-way through a book. That wouldn’t be fair. Then I take over and have them on my own for 12 weeks. 🙂 That is… if my school doesn’t add on another English class… and it looks like they will. oy. All of the senior Enligh classes have 34-37 kids in them and the teaching contract says 33 kids. This is a problem.
I started writers workshop this week and I am really blown away by how personal a lot of the writing was! I thought it was weird that I volunteered so much personal information with people I didn’t know well. Yeah right! I’m apparently normal. It is really cool to get to know the kids and I think this year is going to be so much fun!
This weekend my goal is to get all of the assignments and rubrics done for this unit so that I can make all of my overheads and copies on Tuesday when I will have extra time on campus. Then I won’t have to be so worried about arriving as early in the mornings. 🙂
Good grief.
Ok, the problem with filters is, I want to write about school. That means school filter. I want to write about my upcoming therapy appointment today. That means therapy filter. I want to talk about some of my insecurity filter stuff.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHH Fine. I will either write three posts or none at all. Guess we’ll see.
Oh! New icons. Much awesome stuff. Much love to Noah for letting me have these in the first place. 🙂 (Though I have now paid for my own thankyouverymuch)
Quoteable from the classroom.
“Miss A, do you think you could turn down the spaz a bit?”
“S–that would be like me asking you to be less S-like. I’m a spaz. That’s just how it is.”
*sigh* “I suppose I will have to learn to deal with that.”
I love my students.
uhm, uhm uhm…
Well… I finished my lesson for tomorrow and read the book for the other class and all that mess…
So now I am sitting here twiddling my thumbs. It is 8:30 on a Thursday night and I feel like I want someone to pay attention to me. Puppy is still at work and will be for a while longer (TA duties). I am noticing that teaching means putting a great deal of time and focus outside of me and onto other people. When I finished the reading tonight I stopped and considered the fact that other than eating, the need for sleep, and bathing I haven’t paid attention to myself in the last 48-ish hours. That is a long time for me to not have any personal thoughts! I tried hitting a social event last night for a bit but I was so wrapped up in what I needed to accomplish in planning that I got snappy and impatient immediately and just came home. It’s a weird feeling. I want attention, and yet I know that I have no energy to give to anyone at this point so I’m not seriously thinking about doing anything with anyone else. I feel totally selfish and self-absorbed. I hate that I feel bad for that. I need to be asleep in about an hour and a half and I haven’t noticed myself in more than two days and I feel guilty for wanting to focus on me for what time I have until I sleep? I really am weird.
Or maybe I’m not. Do other people feel guilty when they want to only pay attention to themself? (I’m sure my self-absorbtion of the moment is also related to my speedy reading of Siddhartha tonight.)
I think I should put on a cheesy kids movie, make myself some comfort food that I won’t feel guilty about, and crawl into bed.
I can’t even bring myself to seriously look at what has happened on lj since this weekend. My brain considered it and discarded it out of laziness. I do love you all; I’m just fried.
Drowning
Wow this week has been brutal!
I haven’t read lj really. I tried skimming… but my brain is fried and there is a novel I have to read tonight because I take over teaching the class tomorrow.
I may still end up teaching another section. Oy. I want them to decide already.
My class is going fairly well. I have next week planned entirely and I am putting finishing touches on the following two weeks. YAY!
I love my Puppy. He has been stepping up in a number of ways that really impress me. I feel very lucky to have him even though having him means I have an evil commute.
I had dinner with a cool guy from school on Tuesday. That was a highlight of the week. 🙂
Still running a defecit on sleep and sex. DAMNIT!!!