Misunderstood

I haven't posted in over a week, and I hate to come back with a downer, but today is just not working out for me. Everything is crooked or backwards or isn't coming out right. Even the weather is confused--it's 40 degrees with melting snow outside. In late April. I guess it goes along with my mood.

The weekend was wierd, for one. It was a rare situation, but an unpleasant one anyway--one of those times when everybody has a place to go or a visitor or a set of plans that doesn't include me. It's bound to happen from time to time; there are things to do, homes to visit, old friends to bond with. Sometimes we need a break from the everyday crowd. And it's nobody's fault that I chose to move so far away from home that I don't have a real backup plan for times when my friends are otherwise occupied. In a way it was an opportunity...I caught up on sleep, did a lot of reading, cleaned my apartment, watched Sex and the City, cooked...all the while telling myself that this is what a single woman with no weekend plans does. I kept repeating to myself: It's not pathetic to have nothing better to do on a Saturday night than watch a four-hour documentary on FDR on the History Channel. I mean, I'm a single professional woman, not a college sophomore! But at some point on Sunday afternoon it dawned on me that I hadn't interacted with another human being in over 48 hours. Had I fallen and knocked myself unconcious, days would have passed before anybody found me. It's one of the bummers about living alone, one that I'm willing to live with, but it sucks all the while.

So I'm feeling a little reflective, a little grumpy, and a little alone in the world, and then comes Monday. There's this big incident going on in my building right now that I'm trying to puzzle out, and it seems to have taken on a life of it's own, and people are really starting to misinterpret what I'm trying to do. I'm sick in the pit of my stomach, knowing that someone thinks what I'm doing simply by virtue of the fact that it's my job and I care about the safety of my students is in some way meant to hurt or oppress them. The worst is that I can't do anything about it! I can't sit the student or students down and explain what's going on, because they won't come to me directly. I can't solve the problem that this whole thing stemmed from, because the investigation is out of my hands. I'm feeling so frustrated and so defeated. I know that I'll draw some wisdom out of this mess when it's all over, and that's the only consolation I really have. That and the realization that I'm probably being overdramatic and making work way too personal, yet again. One day I'll develop one of those "teflon" personalities--nothing sticks, it all just rolls off while I go with the flow without reading so much into everything.

The upside of all of this complaining (all I do is complain, I know, I'm sorry, faithful reading public) is that at least nothing majorly horrible is happening in what I sadly try to pass off as my love life. Nothing really good, but again, nothing bad. And I know why I'm alone right now. I'm so busy trying to do my job and adjust and be happy and bury the ghosts of old relationships that I don't have the emotional stamina to pour into making somebody else happy, too. I guess I'm all set to recieve, but I don't have enough in me to give at present. I need to deal with my own crap first.

So I wish I had happier things to blog about, and I promise to keep an eye out for them--so I'll post more often and be less depressing. That's the goal. Hold me to it!
-pg