See, now that I have quiet and I've spent the last hour or so uploading pictures to the internet, the writing I started out with left me. Maybe I'll fish around and see what's still in there.
What has happened since the last time I documented....
THE ASSAULT
I got assaulted by a crazy homeless woman at the shop. It was a Saturday morning and I was there at 6:45, doing my opening stuff. The sun was rising over downtown, and it was the first sunny day we'd had in a while. I unlocked the door and opened it to take my outside tables and chairs out, and set up our sidewalk area. I stopped to snap this picture and chat with the staff of the Mt. Bakery, who were also out on the sidewalk, appreciating the day. We all stood with cups of coffee and sun on our faces, commenting on how much we love our fair city.
Somehow, when I was distracted, a woman snuck into my shop and hid in the bathroom I'd unlocked earlier that morning. When I was getting ready to put the last small table down, I heard a door slam inside and came running in to investigate it with the table still in my hands. There was a skinny and weathered looking woman, wearing a black trenchcoat and fedora that had seen better days wandering out of the bathroom and agitatedly picking things up from my condiment bar. She had stiff, short blond hair peeking out from under her hat, and all her clothing was covered in a matte layer of grime. I asked her what she was doing in my shop when my sign clearly said closed, and she began to yell at me in almost complete gibberish that she worked for the FBI deep undercover, that she owned the building, that she was going to haul me in for questioning, that she was looking for the "stupidest cunt in Bellingham" and appeared to have found me, and on and on. Her front teeth were all missing, so everything she yelled seemed to come out with a sharp whistle on each "s". I slowly circled around her, keeping the table held in front of me like a lion tamer would hold a chair. I got between her and the rest of the shop, slowly advancing and repeating over and over "get out of my shop, GET out of my SHOP, GET OUT OF MY SHOP" and moving towards the door so she had no choice but to back up. She continued to scream gibberish and obscenities at me, and then realized I was effectively pushing her out. That's when she started swinging at me, kicking at me, grabbing at my arms, and screaming. I extended the table in front of me to ward her off, and began screaming "HELP" and "GET OUT OF MY SHOP" while I tried my best to keep her away from me without actually touching her. I finally got her out the door and quickly slammed it shut, locking it with the keys that were still hanging from the inside lock panel.
Unfortunately, when I slammed the door closed, the woman was still trying to push in, and her dirty trenchcoat had been caught in the hinge of the door. When she realized her coat was stuck, she became even more violent, pounding on the glass of the window and door, swearing sulphurously, screaming at me to open the door again.
There was no way in HELL I was opening that door again.
About then, Vince, the owner of the Mt. Bakery, had heard the commotion and came around the corner to see what the trouble was. The woman saw someone else approaching and quickly pulled back from the door, leaving a chunk from her coat in the door jamb. She ran backwards down the street, still screaming and swearing, threatening me. Vince insisted I call the police to make a report, so I called 911 and waited for the police to show.
In a few minutes, an officer from the BPD showed up and took my information, as well as my detailed description of the woman. The officer responded to a crackle on his shoulder radio, and asked if I would ride along with him to identify a woman they had accosted that they thought might be my assailant. I got in the back of the car and rode to ID her. Imagine my surprise when the woman they pointed out to me was NOT a skinny white woman in a black trench coat and fedora, but a LARGE AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN in a puffy blue jacket. I told the officer politely that not only was that not the woman who had assaulted me but that her description didn't even remotely match the description given and restated that my assailant had been a SKINNY, weathered looking and tanned WHITE WOMAN with BLOND hair wearing a BLACK TRENCHCOAT that was now missing a chunk approximately a foot square, and that I had GIVEN THE PIECE OF THE COAT to him not 10 minutes before that time. Seeing as how she was ON FOOT and had disappeared from sight, screaming, less than 5 minutes before the officer arrived on scene, I didn't quite understand how they were having issues finding her. The officer dropped me back off at my shop for me to continue the opening shift that I was now 45 minutes behind schedule on.
They eventually found her, and she told them that her supervisor at the FBI had ordered a hit on me, personally.
I'm not sure what I did to the FBI, but I'm not a hard person to find, so I'm reasonably sure that if the Government actually wanted me dead, they could easily make that happen.
NEW GROWNUP STUFF
John and I got some good news, finally. The VA approved his increase in disability, and backpaid the amount since the beginning of the claim. Combined with his financial aid for school, we were actually able to do lots and lots of things that responsible adults do. We paid off the loan we took out for our wedding. We paid off every single creditor from my credit report, with the exception of Alliance One, who we are making payments to. We paid off all but one of our credit cards. We paid ahead on our insurance. We put a huge chunk of money in savings....
and then we finally bought the furniture I've been wanting to get for going on 3 years.
We bought a new mattress and bed. The last mattress we had was the one my parents bought for ERIC and I when we moved into our first apartment together, when I was 19 or 20. I slept for 11 or 12 years on that mattress. It was totally time for a new one. We got a great deal and got it delivered, set it up, and now we're sleeping on a brand new bed like real grownups. I can't believe how much less my back hurts.
We also finally bought a new couch. This is my very first big-time-grownup-never-before-used couch. We picked it out. We rented a U-Haul to get it home. We rearranged our living room and set it up like a real house that grownups live in.
I'm still getting used to it.
CRAWFISH FEED FOR MARDI GRAS
My favorite restaurant in Town, Bayou on Bay, did a huge crawfish boil on Fat Tuesday! Katy, Ry, John and I went, and had the best time, ever. So much crawfish, so much work for so little meat, and so many drinks! I just about annihilated myself with booze that night, but OMG so much fun. The first picture just for scale. I mean, these things were HUGE. Like TOTALLY HUGE.
SCHOOL
I was in the middle of a fiasco with Western for the quarter. I don't want to type the whole thing about again, but the down and dirty version is that I did what they asked me to do so that I could contest the loss of my financial aid, and to take a one quarter hiatus, and it resulted in me getting charged $1,205 in tuition for Winter quarter, which I did not attend. I have been fighting them on this since January, and I recently got a letter basically telling me it wasn't resolved. I finally got the chance to go to campus and try one last time to fix things before I gave up on school altogether. I traveled up there, wearing my bitch face, and ended up leaving with the charge refunded, registered for full time classes during Spring quarter. I'm so excited to be back in school. I'm nervous about the time commitment, and I'm a little worried that I'm going to end up making myself crazy, but I have felt so horribly out of place this quarter while I've been gone that I can't wait to sit in Chemistry lecture again and soak up science. I also am starting my Biology series this quarter, so I have an entire class about evolution. I'm totally stoked.
VACATION
John and I got to take a romantic mini vacation to the coast. The only other time we went away together, we went to a cabin in Birch Bay. As Jilly says, "If you go somewhere you can still get home in 15 minutes to check to see if the oven is on, you're not really on vacation." John has somehow mainly grown up in Washington and has never really seen the Olympic Peninsula. How is that even possible? So we went to the Quileute Oceanside Resort for a 3 night, 4 day stay.
This picture was the view from my deck on the morning we left. I sat in my PJ's, watching the waves, drinking Sulawesi Kalossi coffee that Alexarc roasted at Maniac. Perfect. I didn't want to come home.
We got a storm watcher package, which made it really affordable, and we spent 4 blissful days with no phones, no internet, no TV, and no cell reception unless we drove into Forks. It was amazing. We talked, and hiked, and ate fancy cheese, and spent time reconnecting. There was also the huge earthquake in Chile while we were there, so we had a Tsunami warning, which made for some pretty interesting wave action on the beaches with lots of deserted trail space for us to hike. (The sheriff we ran into who was posting the signs told us not to be worried, that there hadn't been anything recorded that could make trouble for us.)
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
I had a not so pleasant experience this week, involving unexpectedly running into some family members of an ex. I don't know quite how to explain it, other than that I was totally unprepared to encounter anything that had to do with him, ever again. I actually really liked his family while we were dating, so it wasn't necessarily the people I ran into that were the source of my discomfort. They told me he is getting married next weekend, which, while a surprise, wasn't a shock. I figured if he stayed with that girl long enough, it would be inevitable. I couldn't put a name to what exactly was causing the source of my discomfort about the whole interaction. I fretted about it for most of the evening while Chase and I cooked and sang Justin Timberlake and danced in the kitchen, waiting for John to get home. I fretted about why it had upset me for hours and hours, on into when I should have been sleeping. And then I couldn't sleep. More than any other I have ever had, that relationship embodied pain, loneliness, a sense of worthlessness, and overwhelming, gut wrenching heartache. It was so stark, so overarching, that when I think about that relationship, I can't pick out a single happy memory in the almost 3 years we were involved that isn't some way attached to a memory or moment that left me with a huge aching hole in my chest. Up until John, I had loved that man more than I thought I could ever love anyone, and he returned it in small, intense doses that he would snatch back from me when the rest of his life felt out of his control. He taught me that anyone who said they loved me could instantly decide I was not worth a phone call, that anyone who said they loved me could write me out of their heart without a second thought. He taught me I didn't deserve security, safety, or home. He taught me I couldn't trust plans for the future made with the man I wanted to spend my life with. He taught me I didn't even deserve a phone call when he got a new girlfriend. I am not blaming that relationship for the physically abusive one that followed it and almost got me killed, but the lack of value I learned from that love opened the door for the woman I became when Mark found me.
The lessons of distrust I had emotionally hammered into me, over and over, are ones that John fights against every day. Every time we argue, he tells me, even when he is angry, that he loves me, and isn't going anywhere, because he knows the next words out of my mouth will be "Do you? Do you really love me?" John taught me I didn't have to need someone to love them, that I could learn to be complete on my own and then share that complete person with another person to make something stronger than myself. John is constantly reminding me that I can learn to find my own value. (He even charges me a dollar when I say something bad about myself, which has contributed to the purchase of many a video game he has coveted.)
So, the night of that encounter, I couldn't sleep. And when I did, I had horrible dreams. I had the dream that I ended up moving away from Bellingham for that relationship, and that he left me once I got there and started dating all my friends. In the dream, I knew instinctively that I actually had someone who loved me, that I was treasured, that I was valued, that I was essential to someone. But there was no John. There was no evidence there had ever been John, and it was all in my head. It was soul crushing. I couldn't even cry, it hurt that much. It was the same as I remembered it, humiliating and helpless, hopeless and heavy, and it sat on my chest like a piano. And then I woke up. And John was there. I was so relieved I started bawling, and he stared at me, very confused, through our morning shower, while I apologized over and over for being weepy and clingy. He held me and smoothed my hair and kissed my cheeks, and then asked me if this Stephanie was going to go away soon and bring back Kick-Ass Stephanie, because he needed her to come back and put her bitchface on to fight the people at the college so she could go to school.
I do not wish my ex ill. I actually hope that the years have steadied him, that he has grown into himself and learned to use his intensity to his advantage. I hope that his marriage is one of contentment and happiness, and that it brings him everything a marriage should. I just don't really want to ever encounter any other proof that he exists anywhere in my sphere of influence. I want him to be blissful and peaceful and prosperous, and to do it over there.
I am happy, really truly completely happy, and more in love with the ridiculous man I married than I ever thought I could love anyone. Every time I see John, even out of the corner of my eye, even when he is driving me absolutely berserk, I can breathe easier, my heart thumps and then slows, and I feel more peaceful. These are never things I thought I would have, me of the too intense variety who up until I met my husband was bizarrely endowed with the power to make every man I loved find the absolute worst in himself. This is not what I thought love would be, and what I am thankful that love actually is for me.
I guess I could say the good that came out of it is that I once again am realizing how thankful I am that my marriage, right now, is exactly what I wanted it to be. John and I are both doing school, and working together at the business I own, and planning our family. (We actually talked about how to turn the craft room into a nursery... and both got excited about it. I'm pretty sure that we're getting to point where we're going to start picking dates to aim for. I'm not gonna lie, I'm ecstatic and scared shitless about it.)
Aaaaand with that, it's time for me to sign off. It's almost 10 on date night, and John got stuck at work for a long time tonight while he got some more espresso training with Ryan. He's over caffeinated with jiggly eyeballs, and neither of us have eaten since breakfast. (Oh, how time flies when you work all 'effing Saturday.)
I'm sure I'll make another update in a couple of weeks, just before school starts. Or, at least, I'll try, diary. We both know that I'm really not great at remembering to tell you the important things when they happen. Forgive me?
Until next time.
2 comments:
I love you. Just so you know.
Me too :)
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