Regina Noctis

I know I was told it’s okay, when I let the cat out of the proverbial bag last night.

My stomach’s tying itself in knots now anyway, since I’m heading back tonight.

Fortunately, I have convinced to go along. Immoral support, and all.

8:30 in the morning, and still awake.

Ahhhh, the combination of nerves and fascinating friends. I could do this all day if I let myself.

Voltaire: Almost Human

What did I ever do to You, that You should treat Me this way?
Is it really such a crime for an Angel to speak His mind?
In time I’ll try to shed some light
If I were a big boy, I wouldn’t cry
But since I’m not a big boy, I have to cry

What did I ever do so wrong that You should cast Me from Grace?
Though I love to rule from Hell, here
How I miss the taste of Heaven
Its soft and cool embrace
If I were a big boy I wouldn’t cry
But since I’m not a big boy

I’ll have to close My eyes and picture what it’s like
I’m just like you, made by He
Despised by they, I’m almost Me
I’m nearly human
Look at Me, I’m almost a human being
I’m just like you, made by He
Despised by they, I’m almost Me
I’m nearly human
Pity Me, I’m almost a human being

I still remember Your light
And it was streaming down and burning out My eyes
If I were a big boy I wouldn’t cry
But since I’m not a big boy
I’ll have to close My eyes and picture what it’s like

I’m just like you, made by He
Despised by they, I’m almost Me
I’m nearly human
Look at Me, I’m almost a human being

These tears are real
I’m jealousy, I’m spite and hate
To the core I’m mean
I’m nearly human
Look at Me, I’m almost a human being
I’m just like you, better than He
To Hell with they, I’m almost Me
I’m nearly human
Pity Me, I’m almost a human being

Don’t touch Me
Oh, I couldn’t bear the thought of it now
Don’t touch Me
Oh I couldn’t bear the strain
Don’t touch Me
Oh, I couldn’t bear the thought of it now
Touch Me, touch Me, touch Me
Don’t touch Me, touch Me, touch Me

I said it.

Serious talk to be had sometime after WorldCon.

Sometimes, the compulsion toward honesty and not hiding things sucks.

is my hero.

An hour late for his shift at WorldCon when I got hold of him, and he still took my sister in to his work and got her an interview tonight.

What a really, truly wonderful thing to do.

My hero. :)

CALL ME!

Something has come up and I need to talk to you. I have about half an hour before I have to leave for work. It’s urgent.

With a life like this, who needs to watch soaps?

Anger has been locked down and kept under control, so it won’t burst out all over the people who have to deal with me. I may be all emotion and little rationality by nature, but I have at least learned to control much of it. Well, most of the time. I’m not going to take my feelings out on people who don’t deserve it.

But oh, the ones who do…

Watch out.

…but less then I was last night.

I’ll be so glad when this week is over.

The good news is that I don’t feel so needy now. I always desperately want to be cuddled and taken care of when I’m sick or truly tired. Once I’m feeling better, I get over it. Of course, I may wind up right back there tonight. This will be the busiest night of Hell Week. Fortunately, the assistant manager has continued to let us skip the last two steps this week. I’d have had 12 hour (or more) shifts every night but one so far this week if she wasn’t doing that.

My cow-orker managed to make more huge mistakes last night. She forgot to change the date on her computer, so she had to redo several files. And unlike the one and only time I’ve ever done it, she didn’t catch it. It wasn’t until the file went to proofing and Javier caught it that she realized that she’d fucked up a number of files. Javier and I had to stay while she re-did the letters on those files, so the files could be proofed. They were all sales, the only files that we have to complete from start to finish these days.

On top of that, she made a fuckup in FAST that meant the FAST consultant we have for this week and she had to spend two hours fixing it. She knows, she knows, that we have to transfer fees separately from printing checks, and we have to do it before printing checks. She’s been doing FAST for as long as I have. A little longer, actually. And in FAST, it’s not like we could just void out the checks that were printed instead of the fees transferring, and then transfer them as fees. It took the consultant quite some time to first get the permission to go that deep into the file, and then to turn the fees into fee transfers instead of checks.

This is the second time in a month that she’s seriously fucked a file. The last time, she completely wiped out all the information in the file. Every bit of it. The EO had to reprogram everything, and then close the file herself, the next day.

I know it’s human to make mistakes. I’ve even been known to make a few at work, despite the perfectionist tendencies that kick in when I’m at there. But none of us make the kinds of colossal errors that she does. The kind of errors that either seriously screw the EOs or make us work two hours past the time we could have been done while she fixes whatever she did.

Between that and the attempts to control us, the fights she picks, her general bitchiness, and the moments when she just snaps and goes psycho, you’d think that she’d be too much of a liability. But still, they keep her on.

Psychosis is more acceptable at work than taking six sick days in a year. I get threatened with a firing because I take six sick days (which is how many they give us per year, the bastards) and she gets a memo on her record saying that she was obnoxious.

They need to just hire to take ’s place on the funding crew, and toss the psycho bitch out on her ass and hire to replace her. That’s what they need to do. Or vice versa, that would work too.

And, in other news, I just got a phone call a moment ago. And while I’m not naming names here… OMG what a fucking selfish, self-centered, insensitive, inconsiderate, ungrateful, mean-spirited bitch. I can’t believe she’d do that to a friend. Well, yes I could. I should remember what she did to me. But this is so much worse than what she did to me almost a year and a half ago that I’m just in disbelief.

She’s not the person she was when we were first friends, and I don’t like who she’s become. I’m glad that I realized what she was last year and distanced myself from her. This just so completely outclasses all the shit she pulled then.

I want to beat some sense into her. Or just beat her. I’m not sure which.

And goddamn it, I want to come charging to the rescue. The phone call I just got, with someone I love a lot in tears, makes me wish I had the ability to do something. But I don’t. I hate feeling helpless to give someone I love the hand they need. And thanks to this pretty-much-former friend of mine, someone I really care about is having some serious problems.

If it comes down to it, and the person I care about has the threat become reality, my former friend is going to find out exactly what the word malice means. I forgave, at least enough to be civil, the things that were done to me. But this is too fucking much. Too fucking much.

Well, now I’m too angry to be tired, at least.

So, after much worry, and then much winding down post-worry in order to even start to feel tired, I got nearly no sleep, and then worked another night of OT, followed by dinner at the Mini with everyone who got to go dancing while I was at work.

At the end, I kind of rushed people out. I feel bad about that. I didn’t mean that everyone had to leave. Only that I needed to. But everyone I was sitting with left when I did. I was only hoping for company while I smoked a cigarette to try and wake up enough to be safe behind the wheel. I knew that I was just tired enough that it was a strong possibility I wouldn’t be the safest at driving. I was so exhausted that the world was spinning and making me dizzy and ill.

I should be in bed now, but I had the need to journal. Not about anything in particular. Just needed to ramble.

I’m really not happy that is leaving work. She’s been one of the few reasons I’ve had to stick at the job. I always have looked forward to going to work and talking with her and and . I know that she’s happy and relieved to be getting the hell out of EPIC, and I can’t say I blame her there. I’m even happy for her to be getting out of there. EPIC grinds people into the ground. I completely support her decision to leave. It just also makes me sad that I won’t have her to talk to, even if it is only a few minutes a day.

God I’m tired. Completely worn out. But I can feel that my mind isn’t willing to just shut the fuck up right now. I’m hoping that babbling here will make it quiet down so I can sleep. There are just too many things, totally unconnected, all clamoring for attention at once. Figbash giving her two week notice is just one of those things.

Another is dread of the coming month. My cousin will be released from prison. His sentence will be up. And I know that my grandmother will move him back into the house, and he will be okay for a short time. But then he’ll start going crazy again, and my mother will bear the brunt of his psychosis. I can’t convince my grandmother that sometimes, no matter how much you may care for someone and how much it may hurt, you just have to walk away. You have to stop enabling. Nor can I convince my mother that, even if my grandmother is rational about everything else, she’s not rational about this. No matter how well she can take care of things in other areas, in this one arena my grandmother truly is incompetent, and this one arena outweighs all the rest. My family’s sanity, health, and even lives are at risk because of my grandmother’s stubborn insistence on coddling and protecting John from the consequences of his own actions. But my mother is equally stubborn, and will not take the steps necessary to keep John away from there. She won’t step on her mother’s rights to make her own decisions, in spite of the fact that, at best, it makes them both so miserable that they’re constantly ill and my grandmother has constant heart problems that will end her life that much more quickly. And, of course, both my mom and I are damn certain that John will eventually kill my mother, and possibly my grandmother. We won’t even need to wait for the final, fatal heart attack that the stress John brings will give my grandmother. I’m so far away from them, and so bound by their insistence. I’ve tried talking with police to see if there is any legal recourse, and the only advice I’m able to get is to just keep waiting, keep reporting every violation he does, and eventually he will be put away. And every day that he’s there, reaching that eventually with the rest of the family intact becomes a more remote possibility. More and more, I feel like the only paths open to me are to things that could land me in prison for the rest of my life. I’m still fighting, still struggling to find some other solution. But the doors keep closing, or won’t open to begin with.

There has to be something that can be done about the situation. There has to be. Before time runs out for my mother and grandmother.

Fighting. I’m so tired of it. Seems like I’ve fought something, or someone, or myself, or my emotions, for most of my life. I want to reach a space where I can stop fighting for or because of everything, even if it’s only for a little while. A breather, time to rest. Especially when so many things seem to be losing battles before I even start. I know I could just choose to accept the consequences if I do stop fighting and struggling, but I’m not convinced that the hurt that would happen is worth a chance to rest. My hurt, and others’ hurt. Sometimes only one of those, sometimes both at once.

I’ve only come to realize recently that I’ve lost one of these battles, despite the struggle. I’ve been convincing myself otherwise to a large degree, but under it all I already knew I’d lost. Of course, that just means a new fight, as I try to keep the fallout from being too bad. Damage control, what fun.

The closest I come to moments when I feel like I can stop fighting and just rest, enjoy what’s there without worrying about consequences for tomorrow or next week or next month, is when I’m spending some time with . Kind of ironic, really, since I’ve had to fight even harder in the past, after those quiet happy moments.

And right this moment (and all night, really) I’ve been fighting off the very intense desire to be able to fall asleep with someone’s arms around me. To just be held while I drift off. I’ve been the kind of person I am, and held rather than be held, stayed awake to be sure that the time to wake up for someone else was kept. In general, been the kind of caretaker I often am.

Right now I just want to be held and cuddled and coddled. This will probably pass by tomorrow. These things tend to be short-lived, and then I go back to being the kind of person I normally am. I used to see these moments as selfish, once upon a time. Like I was never supposed to have wants or desires or needs of my own, but only cater to those of the people I care about. I couldn’t even admit it very easily, when this need came on me. But it’s most certainly there, full force, right now.

Okay, mind slowing down a bit. Eyes getting blurry, and caught myself nodding at the keyboard. I never do that. Bedtime, I think.

*falls over*

Originally a private post

So, I have to admit it to myself here, even if I never admit it to anyone or anywhere else.

I’ve fallen.

I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. Heh.

I’ve been trying to fight it off, but it was a losing battle from the beginning. I knew that, and I made sure that Lynx knew that I wasn’t likely to win this fight.

All that’s left is damage control. I’ve done enough acting, on and off the stage. I’ve even utterly fooled the people who knew me best in the past. I can do this. He doesn’t have to know that something he’d rather not have happened anyway. Though I’ll never lie to him about it, if he asks me directly. And I won’t pretend by putting up a facade here on LJ either. No posting false entries about the frustrations of trying to fight this off. That’d be lying. I suppose, in some ways, acting as if it hasn’t happened is lying, too. But something little like that, to keep from making someone I care so much about from becoming unhappy, I can convince my personal ethics that is okay. My outward behaviour just won’t change in any visible way.

I’ve known, really, for a week, though I wouldn’t admit it to myself for most of that time. Not consciously. But once in a while, as I was drifting to sleep, the thought got past my internal censors. I knew. I just fooled myself for a little longer that I had some hope in the matter.

How typically me. In love with someone who doesn’t and never will feel the same.

I called him nuts for shorting himself on sleep. I’m the one who’s nuts.

*sigh*

I am so fucked.

That’s all the sleep he got. The man is nuts. He went out dancing with and Barry, and finally got here at close to 6 in the morning.

He’ll be back on his lunch, for an hour nap.

And I know he won’t sleep tonight. Of course not. Deviation is tonight.

Sometimes, I worry about him. But it’s him who has to live with the consequences of his decisions. I wouldn’t presume to make his decisions for him. So, I’ll just worry a little, and give him opportunities to get a little more sleep on his lunch, when he needs it.

Nuts. That’s for damn sure.

And even at 6 in the morning, asleep, he still has the power to get me over my rotten mood.

Things were pretty bad last week. Not just in the amount of work we had, but also in our resident psycho having her moments. She made work miserable for all of us last week. She was bitchy and controlling and got in the way of us getting our work done. Some of the arguments that she started and then prolonged brought the entire closing crew to a grinding halt. And it happened night after night.

Monday, she apologized to me for acting the way she did. She was crying when she did it.

She seems to think that means she can start up all over again now. She did tonight. I’m about ready to strangle her. I know everyone else feels the same.

It started off with her hotsheeting me for an error on checks. I’d typed in the check number wrong. Thing is, SHE is the one that read that number off to me. I normally double check this, but it’s always been right before, and I decided to just take her at her word.

Then she handed me the binder with the check log for that branch in it, and the number she gave me was correct, based on the number her entry left off.

She’d entered the number wrong for her checks. She’d added an extra three on the log also.

When I tried to point this out to her, she denied it in her bitchiest tone of voice. And then proceeded to tell me that I either needed to get a hearing aid, or see someone about my delusions, because she never said that and never wrote the number down wrong. Even when I had the evidence right there in front of me at the end of the night.

I did the checks… they needed to be redone anyway… and ended the argument with her still insisting that I was hearing things wrong. It wasn’t worth it to me to have that one error taken off my record in order to prove I was right. It would have made the night drag on longer than it did.

Since she didn’t get her fill of arguing with me, she started in on Javier about half an hour later. He tried to argue the point with her, because she was claiming that our lead had told her something different from the standard procedure when dealing with the particular document type that they were arguing about. Eventually he just flatly refused to do the unnecessary rework she was giving him. By then, our entire side of the office was angry at her.

As I was finishing up my rework, she tried to start in on me again. She asked me if it’d been a while since I had a cigarette. I said, “Well, the last one was at 10:30 when we walked Mary to her car, so not that long. 2 1/2 hours. No big deal. Why?” She told me that I was noticeably irritable and grouchy for no reason at all. Like she was just an innocent victim of my bad temper. I restrained the first thousand or so things I wanted to say to her and just said, “Well, I’m rather tired.” She nodded knowingly at that, and told me that she was too, but I had to learn, like she did, that I shouldn’t take it out on my co-workers.

I was boiling by the time I got out of there. I tore out of the parking lot before most people were even in their cars. I drove like a maniac on the highway, looking forward to seeing because he’s always so good at soothing me out of a bad mood. He doesn’t even have to try, just his presence does it. I can’t help but be all smiles when I’m with him.

And no Lynx when I got home. And still no Lynx, hours later.

Which, of course, is adding to the rotten mood that my cow-orker Psycho started. I don’t like being stood up, and I feel like that’s what happened.

I want to throw something. Preferably at someone.

Hell with this shit. I’m going to bed. At least when I’m asleep, I’m not tempted to throw a tantrum, cause I’m real close to one right now.

Got home, no man.

Two hours later now, still no man.

The alarm is set to go off in 3 1/2 hours, so he can get to work.

I’m done waiting. I’m hungry. He’s got a key, he knows where the bed is. If he shows up, he can find his way to what tiny amount of sleep he’s giving himself.

I’m thinking that, at this point, that’s a mighty big “if.”

Oh well. Off to feed. And then probably settle into bed alone and read until I fall asleep.

When I get home from work, there’ll be a beautiful man curled up on my bed, asleep. Woohoo!

When I called around for the count of the number of files the branches would be sending us, it was 86. That was less than happy news. Katie calls it job security. I call it more work than I wanna deal with at this point.

Fortunately, at night, Dionne the assistant manager turns into Shaquila, and Shaquila told us that we didn’t have to do the final two steps on any of the files except for the sales. Otherwise, I’d probably still be at work.

I love Dionne, whether she’s answering to Dionne or Shaquila at the moment.

After we got done for the night, I headed over to see and for a little while. had called while I was at work, but I knew we were going to be getting out late, and she has to work opening in the morning. So, though I’d have loved to be able to go out to dinner with her, I knew it was going to be an impossibility. I hope that things die down soon that I can actually be home early enough to have the occasional dinner with my roommate.

Lynx wasn’t there when I got there, so I sat and talked with Sniffles while she typed away madly and fed snacks to snakes.

When Lynx did show, we spent thirty minutes riding around in his car. There was some good Industrial on the radio, and we drove around some of the side streets near our final destination until the end of the show. At one point, Lynx drove into the parking lot of a church. There was a handicapped ramp from the parking lot onto the road-wide walkway around the church, so Lynx drove onto that. He decided to see how far around the church he could drive on the walkway. We actually got more than halfway around before the thing narrowed too much for Midnight to fit through. It was a fun little adventure.

Yeah, so I’m sometimes easily amused. Sosumi.

We grabbed some dinner from there. I paid, and Lynx didn’t try to argue me out of it this time. That was nice. I like buying for my friends, when I can. I often get arguments over this, and people feel indebted, but it’s all so unnecessary. I gain a lot of pleasure from doing something for the people I care about, and to me the money I spend is well worth it. So, when I didn’t get an argument about covering the bill tonight, and there was no guilt, that was a good thing. I got to do something for someone I care a lot about, and the good feelings of that weren’t dimmed by the necessity of arguing them into it. And the whole feeling-bad-cause-I-made-them-feel-guilty-when-I-wanted-to-make-them-happy issue didn’t come up at all. Not then.

Instead, when I bought Lynx his pack of cloves, I got his “you’re evil” look and he felt guilty about me buying those. It’s not like he wasn’t going to pay. He was actually going through his wallet to get the cash out to do so. But I was quicker on the draw, and feeling mischievous as well as wanting to do something nice for him. I knew the likely reaction to whipping out the plastic while he was still in hunt of his cash, but this time it was okay since I was prepared for it. It was just a different form of teasing him, this time, as well as a chance to do something nice for him.

Back at the park, we settled on the bench to smoke, talk, and cuddle. The Sniffles joined us for a little while, but she’d been typing her fingers off (and I know how that feels, since I was doing letters all night and my fingers were still tingling a little by the time I got to the mobile home.) So, after a short time with us, she headed back in the house.

I’ve come to love that bench next to the small park across from Sniffles and Lynx’s place. There’s been many a time cuddled up next to Lynx there, sharing the night, talking about everything and anything. We’ve talked the sun up and the world awake a few times.

I just wish that there wasn’t this element of risk to spending so much time with him. I don’t want to stop, or even cut back on the time I spend talking with him. But the more time I spend with him, the more I have to fight myself. I’m tired of fighting, but it’s a necessary part of things. He knows all of this, since I’m very open and honest about all of it. I’ve warned him that this is how I am, and he’s willing to accept that as a part of the package if we’re friends with benefits. He also knows that I’d never push, never pressure, even if I lose my little internal struggle. It’s as much for me as it is for him that I do continue to push back when my feelings push me. I’ve had enough of falling for someone who doesn’t and probably never will feel the same for me. So I’ll go on fighting, despite the way that the more I get to know him, the more difficult the fight is. He appeals to me, physically and as a person, in very deep and strong ways. It’s come to feel like this is likely a losing battle, even though I’m giving it all I’ve got.

But on the other hand, maybe all the time I’ve spent fighting against my feelings will teach me to control them better. I’ve always been more at the mercy of my emotions than able to control them. It might be easier to control them now if I’d manage to not get tired of the struggle. I let myself coast for a while, until I feel that I’m in immanent again, and then fight like crazy to regain some of the ground I’ve lost. I’m sure there are more efficient ways to deal with this. Maybe I’ll learn ‘em eventually.

There’s something I keep very firmly in mind. Well, a couple these days. They’re very similar things, just two different people involved. One is the girl he was seeing before our little arrangement, and still sees or talks to on the phone every night, or close to it. He’s talked to me about her a bit, and even if he hadn’t said it, I’d have known how he feels about her from the way he talks about her. I know he’d love to date her, if she’d accept more than friendship from him. I know she comes before me, and probably always will. I knew all this from the beginning. If she changed her mind, I’m quite sure that Lynx and I would be back to being just friends in a hot second.

The other is his latest crush. She doesn’t know, and he’s generally too subtle for his own good, so she may never know. I don’t know whether she’d reciprocate if she did know. But again, I’ve the distinct feeling that, if the opportunity arose, he’d take it and what there is now for me will be over.

I was never meant, when things first began, to be something that went on. I was never a crush that happened to develop into something more. I was supposed to be just a fling. It was actually a compliment when he told me this, because the rest of what he told me was that I grew to mean too much to him to be a fling. That made me feel good, on many levels. It still does. And he’s told me many times that he likes me a lot more than I think he does. That wouldn’t surprise me. I tend to underestimate these things.

So it’s for the best that I fight off any stronger feelings. I know that. It’s for my own protection, as much as his. I’m not jealous of either of those women. Jealousy is not something I often feel. It’s more like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop than some kind of possessiveness or jealousy.

In spite of all of that, in spite of the fighting and the waiting for things to blow up in my face, I’m still happy. Especially when I’m spending time with him. And the necessity of fighting with my unruly feelings and the waiting for everything to suddenly go south don’t outweigh that. Sure, I’m afraid of hurt. There’s been plenty of it in the past, so that makes me more afraid of feeling emotional pain again than it would if I’d never had so many lessons in hurt and loss. But the kind of deep joy I feel when we’re even just sitting on the bench and talking makes the risk of being hurt acceptable.

Of course, I have the occasional wish that things might have been different. And I sometimes get the urge to rail at the universe in general that they aren’t. Or ramble in my lj, the online equivalent to railing at the universe.

I read back over all of this, and I know that someone reading it without knowing all the stuff that I’m not putting in here would think that I was sad over all of this. But really, I’m not. There’s a kind of expectation of sadness to come somewhere in the back of my head, I guess. And a desire to avoid it, so I fight the tendency of my feelings to become stronger than they should given the situation. More than anything, these long-winded rambles are a way of thinking out loud about the situation. It gives the rational, analytical side a chance to examine everything and put some structure in place. If I don’t bounce things off of someone, or journal about them, I tend to get too caught up in what I’m feeling to be able to think clearly about the things I’m getting emotional about.

And I do have my pride. I know I’m not first in his affections. And I won’t be just settled for, just because I’m willing, and one isn’t and the other doesn’t know. No matter whether I succeed or fail at fighting off stronger feelings than where I currently am, I won’t accept being accepted simply because I’m there and the others aren’t or can’t be. I made that decision at the same time I decided that I was no longer going to settle for someone simply because they asked. That led to my first few boyfriends. I’ve had enough of that.

And now, off to bed. So many closings to process, so little mind.

There’s so much I want to say about the weekend, and what’s going on inside my head. But I’ve only got a couple minutes before it’s off to work.

This is the first day of Hell Week. And we’ve been working ourselves into the ground already this month. All shifts have been. It makes me fear what this week is going to bring in the way of work. There was one day that I didn’t wind up working overtime last week. Between overtime carried over from the previous time card and overtime worked last week, I have something around 99 hours logged for the first week of the current pay period. There was even one night last week when most of the crew worked until about 5 in the morning. We two full-timers didn’t. Katie knew that Virginia and I were the ones who stayed on after everything else was done, night after night, to do the final things that needed doing, and the boys all ran as soon as the proofing was done. So that one night, Katie informed all of us that, as soon as we were finished with the tasks we were working on right then, Virginia and I were to go home and get some sleep, and come in late the next day. Katie recognized the extreme and rapidly growing signs of burnout in both Virginia and me. So Virginia and I only worked until 3:30 that night, and the part-timers until 5. (Heh. Only something like last week would make me say “only” about a 12-hour shift.)

Well, tonight is not only the first day of our busiest week of the month, it’s also one of the busiest days of the week for us. We always get hit hardest on Mondays. The second day we got hit hard used to be Thursdays, but for the past month and a half or so, it’s been Wednesdays and Thursdays.

I have a sneaking suspicion that we won’t be getting out of there until the sun is coming up, or already up. And then we’ll have to come back that afternoon and do it all over again.

Knowing what was coming, I decided that I was going to go to sleep early last night, so I’d be rested and ready for tonight. But that didn’t happen. Sometimes, and last night was one of those times, being with someone is far more important than sleep. So now I’m very tired, before my shift even starts, but I don’t regret it. I’d do it again in the same situation.

Well, it’s about that time. Off to the sweat shop.

I got my cookies.

(And didn’t actually break the rules. Though it was barely within ‘em.)

Three times now. Three times the same person has just hung up on me, and I’ve about had it. It happens to be one of my buttons. I understand that the situation is less than ideal, and that she’s angry because of the situation. But that doesn’t mean that I deserve to have it taken out on me.

I forgave it without a word the first two times, yesterday. I’m forgiving it, with some bitching here because it’ll keep me from going off when I see her in person. Again, and that will be it. I’ve already forgiven this more for her than I would for just about anyone else.

I understand that it’s an inconvenience. It’s not exactly convenient for me either. Since circumstances have caused this inconvenience to be, I’d think that, as friends, we should be commiserating about it, rather than sniping at each other, yelling, and hanging up after a sarcastic “Thanks.”

I did not cause the situation. I’m the one attempting to resolve the situation. Don’t treat me as if I’m to blame, and don’t take your anger out on me when I’m doing my job. Don’t hang up on me and cut me off every time we’ve talked on the phone. It’s what friends do for each other.

Please don’t make me regret the night at BayCon that I spent two hours sitting on the floor with my back aching because someone needed a friend. If I reach the point where I am actively regretting being the kind of friend that was needed then, it will get ugly.