Ugh.

You guys.

I just gchatted with The Chef. I still have no idea what's going on - I don't think she's come to any final decision, but I'm not entirely sure - but I have to ask a very serious question:

Is there anything more infuriating than someone you desperately want to be angry at being nothing but respectful and reasonable at you?

I mean this. I always thought I wanted someone who thought about my feelings and listened to me and went out of her way to be careful of me. Turns out what I really want is the exact opposite, because now I'm getting the thoughtful, caring bullshit and it's making me want to kick puppies.

I can't handle it at all. I know how to deal with screaming fights and wounded feelings and storming-offs. I know what to do when someone shuts me out completely or punishes me with silence or acts in a way that is entirely inappropriate to the situation and to our relationship. The script for any scene that ends with me sobbing so hard I get sick? I know it by heart. But this whole thing she's pulling on me here is breaking my mind. How dare she be honest? How dare she be gentle, and think before she speaks, and weigh her words carefully? And worst of all, how dare she listen to what I say I want, and then give it to me?!

Because then I have nothing to be angry or sad about, except the fact that she ended up ditching me and that was not how the story was supposed to go. And I feel hurt, and disappointed, and foolish, and I have nowhere to turn any of that except on myself.

XOXO

A short play about American mobile phone service.

Me: Did you just send me a test text?

Caitlin: Yes. My phone has stopped receiving texts again. So infuriating. They promised me this would not happen again. Did you reply?

Me: No, because I'm on the phone with Verizon because I have stopped receiving texts as well.

Caitlin: Awesome. Although it seems you got mine?

Me: Yes, but I missed several from Colleen all day. And I still can't work out if Liz can send to/receive from me. $60/month! Oh, I replied, by the way.

Caitlin: Yeah, I didn't get it. Fuck.

Me: I find it more than a little ridiculous that they thanked me for joining Verizon at the end of a call consisting almost entirely of my ranting about how I should never have joined Verizon.

Caitlin: Good stuff.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

You guys.

For the last two days I've been having run-ins with the American taxation and health care systems. They are... like, I don't even have the words. I don't know how to say all the things that are wrong or how astoundingly wrong those things are. I don't know how it is that either of these systems could be so completely broken and yet still be the civic equivalent of required reading.

I am not stupid. I am not lazy. I am not trying to do anything illegal, immoral, or even remotely out-of-the-ordinary. And yet I have, on three separate occasions over the last 24 hours, been reduced to tears by the incomprehensible garbage that governs my ability to comply with (not break, not stretch, not find-a-loophole-out-of, but comply with) federal and state law, and to access and pay for (not abuse, not cheat, not rort, but access and pay for) basic health care when I need it. And along the way I have talked to people who are kind but lack the knowledge or ability to help me; or who are unkind and uncooperative and lack the desire to help me; or who just plain need a punch in the mouth and make me want to move to Abu Dhabi tomorrow rather than deal with their bullshit one fucking second more; who are all employed to (at least in theory) help me and millions of other people do exactly what I am trying to do. None of this, none of the system that has grown up to support hundreds of millions of people, makes any fucking sense.

In Last Chance to See, Douglas Adams wrote an awesome bit about how hard it was for him to discuss two obnoxious German students he had met in Africa because everything about them was such a stereotype. Writers, he said, should be in the business of destroying stereotypes, not enforcing them. He eventually decides to deal with the problem by making them Latvians instead, which made all of their annoying qualities interesting instead of cliched, and also allowed him to use the line, 'a smile played across his thin Latvian lips' - an excellent result all around. Unfortunately, I do not have that luxury. My recent experiences are so horribly, stereotypically, fundamentally American that to assign them to any other country would rob them of their power (and be unnecessarily cruel to whatever nation I'd picked on). But the flip side of this is that because everyone already knows that our health care system sucks ass and our tax codes were written by day patients, I cannot communicate how truly heinous it is to have to deal with these things in real life: if I rant about it, I sound whingy; if I joke about it, I sound like a hack (amirite, ladies?); and if I try to give you the information straight, I still sound like I'm exaggerating because unless you've been through it personally you would not believe that it could be this fucking ridiculous. So this is where I'll end. I'll shake it off and get on with my day, because that's all I can do, because somehow I've ended up back in a country where these systems are the systems.

It all comes back to South African cigarette butts.

Second Verse, Same as the First: A Play in One Scene.

[Two women. One old conversation that is new again.]

[And by new, I stress new. As in, of recent weeks. Because you'll all have heard this fucking refrain before.]

me: WHY WHY WHY DOES SHE SUCK SO BADLY, AND WHY WHY WHY DO I CARE?

Caitlin: I think you care because you are an inveterate romantic.

me: Oh fuck, don't go wishing that on me.

Caitlin: You deserve better. No judgment on her as a person (although you know which way my suspicions lean there), but you deserve to be treated better than she has treated you.

me: Thank you. Again. I think so too, but it's just... sometimes they get under your skin, and then it's hard to dig them out. And I swear I've got an innate sensor that's gone wrong and lets the wrong ones in.

Caitlin: I know. That's why you have people like me! To remind you of the stuff you're willing to put aside.

me: Every time I think I've got it sussed, that I've finally found someone who's Got It Together, she turns out to be just like all the others. And then I start sounding like That Girl and I hate myself a little more.

Caitlin: Dude, everyone has been there. Making excuses for someone because they have gotten under their skin, making allowances for them, letting yourself accept less than you deserve.

me: I wonder what it is. What causes that. Because I feel like we're all smarter than that.

Caitlin: It's at those times you need friends to remind you that you are awesome, and deserve someone who is going to treat you right and make you a priority... of course, maybe you shouldn't listen to me on that, as I will probably die alone due to my stubborn determination to settle for nothing less than true love. I'm a sucker.

me: It's not stubborn. It's Homeric.

Caitlin: Hubristic?

me: Heh. No, that's what my friend Anthony told me right before I left Sydney. That my life would always be a quest because I'm always going to be looking for the right job, the right girl, the right home. Not just whatever's there. Not settling. Except that it ended up sounding a bit dire, and I wasn't really consoled.

Caitlin: I keep looking for jobs, and every once in a while, it occurs to me that many people-probably most people-get that they may not like their job and are OK with that, and maybe I should just look for anything, instead of just things I want to do. But I am the way I am. I want to do work that I care about doing. Etc.

me: It's all the same, really. And it's wise, and true. But it's a real bitch.

Caitlin: Yeah, no comfort there. But I don't feel inclined to compromise on those things. Much as that might end me up alone and miserable.

me: You're right not to.

Caitlin: Well, of course you're going to say that. You're as bull-headed as I am!

me: Natch. But if I don't support you in making that right choice - and it is the right one - I'll never have a hope of supporting myself in making it.

Caitlin: Moral of the story: Confuso would be a compromise. And she's mean.

me: SHE IS MEAN! Like, that was a really mean thing to do, right? Fuck her and all her noise.

Caitlin: Yeah. She can suck it.

me: Damn RIGHT she can. Besides, I have a date with a lawyer on Saturday. Who's cute and funny and thinks my sarcasm is AWESOME.

Caitlin: That's the spirit!

me: YEAH. And I'm going to sword-dance the FUCK out of some Röyksopp this weekend, just to piss her off.

me: (Okay, I'm not sure how it would piss her off, seeing as she won't know about it, but the hell with logic. I'm ANGRY.)

Caitlin: That's quite a sentence! Picture that out of context. It would be like your overheard thing.

me: Oh my god, it would! The Ultimate Stompie!

Caitlin: Yes! That!

me: I feel much better now. Thank you.

Caitlin: Any time.

me: I will try not to bore you with stories of her anymore.

Caitlin: Hey, if you need to, you go ahead. That way, I can remind you that she is MEAN.

me: Yeah she is. Evil Dr Confuso. Meanie.

Having been through therapy once or twice (fuck off, I'm a Gen X American and as such it is my birthright), I have been led to the idea that a turning point in any break-up is when you look back at the erstwhile object of your affection and say, 'I miss you, but I don't want you back, not the way things were.' I got hit with this tonight. I've been having a teary day for no particular reason - I suspect PMS is involved, but god knows I've still got a few tears to shed over recent events, so it happens - and I was talking a bit with one of the clinicians at my temp job. After she left, I was getting back to work when the thought came to me unbidden: I don't want my life in Sydney back, not the way it was. I miss so much about it, about all of you, and when I think about those things I feel like a part of me has died. But you guys, it was so hard not knowing anything about my future. It was exhausting worrying all the time. It was breaking me down way worse even than I realised, I think. And that's the only life I could have down there, at least as things are now and would be in the foreseeable future.

To wit: fuck all that.

Don't mistake this for a miracle cure. As a lovely person I don't really know yet recently said to me, transition is not a linear process. There are good days and bad days, and the whole mess will go on for a long time. A long, long time. But it took me by such surprise, that thought, that I wanted to write it down mostly to remind myself of it later.

XOXO