too mad to cuss

[dragonlady7]

bleagh.

two episodes follow, during which I am stupid and hurt myself.
And I totally fail to sum it up in an amusing and pithy fashion, thereby demonstrating that I am retarded*.

#1: accidental; cause: I am stupid

sat down in the papasan chair.
leaned back.
fell over backwards
landed on wrist.
why? chair was overbalanced

#2: apparently deliberate; cause: I am stupid

smacked hand violently against door
hurt my hand and pinky is numb
why?
because i have spent the whole fucking summer mentally trapped in a catch-22 that if i didn't have a car i couldn't find a job but if i didn't have a job i couldn't afford a car. finally i bit the bullet and got the car, so i could get the job.
now the car doesn't fucking WORK.

the way my brain works, I don't really handle reality very well. it took me an extremely long time to collect myself enough to actually leave my house and take care of all the things i needed to do to get that car. It was pretty much a goddamned miracle that i got it all taken care of. OK, you all think that's stupid, but I am retarded, don't forget it. Retarded, like my mom looked at me my senior year of high school and said, "you know, I should've gotten you diagnosed with something when you were in kindergarten and then we could've gotten some state funding for you, because you aren't really okay." I made it through high school, yes, and I graduated Honors with a 3.5 GPA to get my BA, but she's right, I'm not really okay. I don't know what the hell is wrong with me. But i have a lot of trouble coping with daily-life issues.
And this stupid fucking car thing.
Oh my god. This stupid. Fucking. Car. Thing.

Mom's suggesting I get an auto loan, to get a new car, and Jesus Lord I already owe more money than I'll ever make in a year in my life in my stupid student loans, and it's not like I could get a job with that degree, though I probably could if I weren't retarded. And I don't even WANT a fucking car. I just have to get places.

I am just the kind of person who has to make things as simple as they can possibly be before I can do them. I can't make life-altering decisions unless I am in the right zone, and to get in that zone takes more waffling and obsessive preparation than i can possibly explain.
So having something like this go wrong is extremely upsetting and I can't cope. I think I have become less able to cope over the last what, eight months now, since ADL fired me and I became convinced I couldn't hold down a real career-type job Out There in the scary, nonsensical, malignant real world. The real world where people make you "fix the website" and don't give you any html-editing software or the password to the server. the real world where people eat peanut butter from the jar as they tell you they're on the Atkins diet, and then take you aside to tell you you're in danger of being fired from your job as a technical writer because your fashion sense is dubious. The real world where grown men throw jumping-up-and-down tantrums because We Never Do Things My Way.
God!
All i want to do is pull pints and sling whiskey! I don't want to ever see a cubicle again!
But I can't get my shit together long enough to get a fucking job!
Because my fucking car won't pass inspection!
And I am totally freaking out and losing my shit because I cannot COPE. I am not competent to handle existence at a time like this. I am about the least competent human in the world. There are inbred toothless illiterate people in this world who have managed to both get (and keep) jobs AND get (and keep) cars, and I am going to have to fact the fact that stupid people are more competent than I am.

I don't want a goddamn car!
But I cannot handle the challenge of determining what bus routes I am on, that would get me to what areas, and so I should look in those areas for jobs. I just can't break it down into manageable chunks and do it. It was just about my limit to go through and make a list of all the places in reasonable driving range, which i was going to go through tomorrow with my newly-ok car. That took me like a month to get myself up to doing.

I have spent the last eight months curled into a little ball, not spending money, not really earning money, not doing anything, and hardly leaving the house. And I've been something approaching happy that way-- at least, contented. I don't have health insurance, i don't have anything, but I'm not spending money so I dont' have to earn it (and thus don't have to face the real world where you're tied to a clock and people are cruel to you on purpose-- which is something I noticed in both my retail and office jobs: i thought once I was out of range of customers, there wouldn't be so much malice, but your coworkers are THE SAME PEOPLE as those customers were and are just as happy to savage you in a cubicle as behind a counter).
I finally made the step toward spending money-- the car-- so I'd have to earn money-- the job-- and now what do I do?

I don't know. Stupid fucking world.

A final, stupid example of how staggeringly incompetent I am:
I mixed up a batch of cookies today. They're molasses crinkles. The dough was sticky, so I put it in the fridge to chill. Then I found out about the car. The dough is still in the fridge. i didn't cover it properly. It's drying out. If I don't make it into cookies tonight, I'll have to throw it away. The odds that I'll make it into cookies are very small. The odds that I'll leave it in the fridge for another week, in denial that it's ruined, are very high. That right there is a portrait of my RETARDED psyche.

* And I have probably offended a number of people through my overuse of the word "retarded". Which is justified. As a teenager at a private school, I had to ride the bus with other district children being bused outside for various educational purposes. That included the district's severely retarded children. They were brave and fascinating people. I had tremendous respect for them. But nowadays they're not called retarded. Which is why I feel justified in appropriating their old title. Actual mentally handicapped people aren't called 'retarded' anymore, so I can call myself that. Because I am.

Comments

this is from kat

[(Anonymous)]

Here's my suggestion: get a job now and bike there. Deal with the car by winter, either a) by saving up the money from the job, or b) scrapping the car and getting a new one, which you will pay for with the job, or c) deciding that you like biking so much that you don't want a car (doubtful, but I suppose it is an option).
That way you can still feel successful and at the same time put off the spending-loads-of-money things.