sometimes ya just wanna cry

but just from wonder... or sadness or both...

lots of things have happened this week. i was feeling quite bored and lonely after having come back from tobago. work on tuesday was anti-climactic after the great weekend in tobago and the high fashion outfit on monday (lol)

[side bar: my stinkin phone line is miraculously working. aunty pearl called and said gran took a fall this week. but she got nothing more than bruises. thank goodness]

i had an attack of the sleeps on wednesday. after sweating it up in the sweatbox known as the chaguaramas military museum while watching my high energy bunch, i was exhausted. plus, i hadn't eaten lunch. i came home, had a shower, made a massive salad, and lay down 'for a few minutes' at four o'clock. that turned into a few hours. i was pretty much knocked out in my living room til 1245.
then i got up, brushed my teeth and went to bed. still hadn't eaten anything. got up the next morning at minutes to 6 and baked a chicken and made pasta while getting ready for work. i'm weird.

thursday - good/exasperating day. took care of some car stuff. made the realization that a) lots of guys i know who were fit in 99 are now fat and b) just cus i'm thin on the outside, doesn't mean that i dont have visceral fat building up around my organs leading to type 2 diabetes and heart disease. good times =|

friday - another trip to the sweatbox with history class #2. this time, we got a tour guide who told the kids that burma is in africa. =| of the 3 tour guides i've seen there, she was definitely not the best.
stayed at school til 445 doing yearbook stuff. this is after guarding a door that one of my 10s put his arm through because he was stressed. he'll be more stressed on monday when he gets the bill for the glass. i think we deserved props for how that was handled. i watched the door so more curious monkeys couldn't cut themselves, michelle got the first aid kit. another teacher escorted him and another teacher took out the massive glass sheet that was hanging on by a thread. literally.
yearbook was interesting because i discovered that despite the illusion of lots of work happening, there was still lots of work remaining to be done. and i got to be useful for the first time in months of pretending not to be bored.

get home and inadvertently piss off my bf. after discovering the phone was disconnected [tstt is stupid], he tries to cheer me up by describing his evening plans. i piss him off by refusing to answer a question. on the grounds that he has refused to answer my questions in the past, so it shouldn't be a big deal. i'm not entirely sure i've pissed him off, but i'm pretty sure. i'm not the least bit upset though cus now i'm more interested in the principle of the thing. unfortunately, it looks like i'm hiding something [just as it does when he refuses to answer something]. i'm trying to figure out why it's such a big deal when i do it.

then i turn on oprah and she has a woman who was in a relationship wtih a man for 24 years. married to him for 14 years. beaten by him for the last 2 years of her marriage. he also encouraged their 3 kids to call her names and help with the abuse... and film it too.

watching this stuff always makes me a little upset. its a little too close to home. and i think, how could they be like that? then i remember people i know who have been regularly beaten for 10 years, 25 years and realize/remember that its a different mentality that exists for the victim and her children. (yes i know it happens with men too, but primarily the victim is the wife)

when she says that the control and emotional abuse started right from the beginning, i think of a time when i dealt with that. and they're right. its like global warming. it happens so gradually, so subtly, you can't see the forest for the twigs. but i DO know that i know better, so i could put the brakes on earlier.

and you emerge as a fighter, forever changed. this knowledge, that people can treat other humans this way, that this treatment has a ripple effect on all relationships with the victim and any thereafter, shapes who you are later on.

then i have to think, shouldnt i be grateful for someone who i disagree with twice in a year? someone with whom i can count on one hand the times we've butt heads? someone who hasn't had this same damaged model to follow?

but then i think, why should i be grateful for someone who behaves "like human beings"? not saying i'm an ungrateful wretch, but just wondering when 'grateful' turns into pitiable. there's such a fine line. then it seems like i should owe him something for behaving as a person should.

domestic abuse is a great example of how the holocaust worked. in many ways it is the macro example of domestic abuse. you dont realize you're on a slippery slope until its too late.

and oprah didn't even get into the super loaded race stuff happening in that relationship. she just treated it like something between a husband and a wife. she didn't try to look at the particular abuses tied to the fact that this was a BLACK husband and a WHITE wife. the kids had to call her "white ho slut" at his command, and she had to call him "master". this is not just an oprah episode - this is a dissertation on american interracial relationships.