It's a Living

I used to love it.

When I first started teaching, my hand shook as I wrote on the chalkboard. I used to write out everything I was going to say in class beforehand, and then I practiced saying it in front of the mirror. 

I was still in my twenties back then. I taught my first class when I was a student in the master's program. I paid my graduate school tuition by working as a teaching assistant in the M.A. program through the Ph.D.; I taught almost every semester in exchange for a tuition waiver and a small monthly stipend. The stipend was not enough to live on, which is why I took on extra jobs by teaching part-time at other colleges and also by resisting the urge to bitch-slap rude customers who threw tantrums about expired coupons at my retail jobs (I wish those rude customers a lifetime of being stuck in long lines behind customers who acted exactly like they did).

"You'll never make it as a teacher," my mother told me. "You don't have the personality for it. All your students will dislike you." She pressured me to pursue a career in the lucrative field that the majority of my relatives worked in. She was furious when I defied her and majored in English instead of the major she tried to force me into. It was the first real decision I ever made, and to this day, she loves to emphasize how much my sibling earns in that lucrative field. When I answered her inquiry about how much I earn as a teacher, she said, "That's it? That's not enough. I told you so. You chose this career, and look how you ended up."

I wanted to prove her wrong, which is one of the reasons I worked so hard in graduate school. My former therapist told me that the children of abusive parents often become overachievers with Type A personalities. They want their parents' approval, which is constantly withheld from them because their parents make them feel bad about themselves instead. "She'll never approve of what you do," my therapist said. "Then she would have to admit that she was wrong about you." 

I didn't want the career my parents wanted for me. I remember seeing a professor at my college who always had an extra bounce in his step when he walked to class. He was cheerful when he taught because he truly enjoyed his job. He wasn't like so many other workers I'd observed at the internships I did before I committed to graduate school, the ones who dreaded Mondays and were only in a good mood on Fridays.

When I first started teaching, I thought it would be like an inspirational teacher movie, where the students are disrespectful at first, but eventually they warm up to the teacher because of the latter's inspirational teaching methods. In the movie Dead Poets Society, the students jump up on their desks and recite poetry as their teacher walks out of the classroom for the last time. In the movie Stand and Deliver, the students go from struggling in school to receiving high scores on their AP calculus test, including one student who didn't even know what calculus was before taking the teacher's class. 

I thought that I could be like the English teachers who inspired me, the ones who encouraged my love of reading and writing and introduced me to new authors. I actually only ever took one class on college teaching before I started teaching because college teachers do not have the same intensive training for teaching as high school and grade school teachers do. The focus is supposed to be on their research, not their teaching, which is why there are many college professors who are brilliant scholars but terrible teachers. 

I wanted to be the exception. I wanted to be like the college professors I'd had who were both good scholars AND good teachers. And for a long time, I was truly passionate about teaching. Many of my students wrote in their evaluations, "She's really enthusiastic. She seems really happy when she's teaching." And I was. I always felt a rush when I stood at the front of the classroom or even when I walked into class each day. I refused to give up on my graduate studies, despite all the problems I had with my dissertation and my advisor, partly because I didn't want to give up teaching, the job that I loved. 

But over the years, I started to love it less and less. It didn't happen overnight. It was gradual, the accumulation of many things that kept happening over the years.

There was the student who refused to sit down during their appointment and literally loomed over me and screamed in my face for several minutes because they earned a B. 

There was the student who berated me for telling another student not to nap in my class. "You're hurting his self-esteem," the student said. 

There was the student who argued about every single grade she received in my class, and she insisted, "You're wrong! I should have gotten an A." When I finally told her that I wasn't going to debate her grades with her anymore and that she couldn't talk to me like that, she literally threw a tantrum in my office, stomping her feet, and screaming and crying in front of my colleagues I shared an office with and their students. I managed to calm the student down, but inside I was seething. She was allowed to explode, but as the teacher I never could because I had to be the mature adult. 

There was the student who stopped showing up to class for more than two months, ignored my emails, and then when they received an F, sent me one of the nastiest emails I'd ever received, full of insults and obscenities.

There were the students who sat in the back every day, didn't look up from their cell phones during the entire class session, would simply say, "I don't know. I didn't do the reading," when I asked them a question, and then go back to turning themselves into cats on Snapchat or whatever the hell they did on those phones. These were the same students who often skipped class and showed up late, turned in their work late or not at all, and then blamed ME when they didn't get the good grades they thought they deserved. "If I get a bad grade, it's YOUR fault because you're a bad teacher," more than one of them told me to my face.

I didn't tolerate that crap, though. I told the students to put their phones away and docked them class participation points if they kept taking their phones out. I sternly and firmly told the students who accused me of being a bad teacher that their mistakes and poor work ethic caused them to earn low grades, and that I would not tolerate such blatant disrespect from them ever again. Every semester, I grew tougher and less tolerant of b.s. because there was always at least one or two disrespectful students like that. 

"All it takes is one nasty student," one of my colleagues told me. "The rest of the class can be good, hard-working students, but that one nasty student is often enough to poison your memory of the class."

I didn't even entirely blame the students for their bad behavior. I blamed the parents who raised them, the ones who used to slam into each other in mosh pits at concerts thirty years ago and became helicopter or snowplow parents who sent me angry emails, insulting or guilting me when I dared to penalize their precious children for breaking my rules. One mother sent me an email that stated, "It's not my son's fault that he kept showing up late. It's my fault because I didn't wake him up in time." The class was at noon. The student was nineteen. 

I blamed some of the other teachers and administrators who enabled them, like one of my former bosses, who would not let me defend myself to the student who sent me that nasty email. Instead, my boss told me to apologize to the student for upsetting them, but at least I didn't have to change the student's grade. 

Not all the students were like this, thank God. Some students came into my office with detailed notes or outlines of the papers they were working on because they were willing to work hard and wanted to learn. Other students excitedly told me about how they started reading other books by the authors I'd introduced them to in my literature classes, and they said that they didn't even like to read before they took my class. Several students shyly confided in me during my office hours about their hopes for the future, such as the student who wanted to become a filmmaker and showed me her YouTube channel but was being pressured by her mother to become an accountant. The students like them motivated me to keep teaching.

But in recent years, I find myself dreading Mondays. Burnout is common among teachers. I read somewhere that a significant percentage of teachers don't even last five years. Many teachers suffer from mental health problems, and the low pay obviously doesn't make up for it. 

I've been teaching for more than a dozen years. I didn't quit. But there have been times where I've wanted to. It's gotten to the point where sometimes I just want to throw down the chalk and scream, "JUST FIGURE IT OUT!" when students ask me the same questions again and again because they weren't listening the first time I told them.

One of my students told me at the end of this past semester that I was her favorite teacher and that she liked that I was different from the other teachers. What she said made my day, and it helped soften the blow inflicted by another student, who wrote in his evaluation, "We all make fun of her in the group chat." I couldn't help feeling awful about that because I'd worked so hard to make the online classes good for the students during the pandemic, and that student's vicious insult made me feel like I'd done everything wrong. My colleagues assured me that most likely only a few of the students made fun of me, and that that particular student was probably retaliating because he was getting a low grade in my class. 

I don't regret not pursuing the career my parents wanted for me. But sometimes, I can't help thinking what my life would have been like if I had chosen something other than teaching. Over the years, I lost my passion for teaching.

I went from being an enthusiastic, naive young teacher in my twenties who wanted to inspire students to love writing and literature to a burned out, disillusioned teacher in my forties who just wants to inspire students to put down their freaking cell phones during class. I no longer love my job. I haven't loved it in years. But I haven't quit, partly because I don't know what else to do, and partly because I especially need the health insurance now that I have a life-threatening disease for which there is no cure. Also, I obviously still need to get paid, so that I'll have money for the necessities, like food, rent, and Taylor Swift albums. 

The comedian Drew Carey once said, "Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say that? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar."

In the 90s movie Office Space, the main character, played by Ron Livingston, also hates his job. His love interest, played by Jennifer Aniston, tells him at the end of the movie that a lot of people don't like their jobs, but that it was okay, as long as they found other ways to be happy.

I think she was right. I believed that I could only have a good life if I truly loved my job. But now I know that it's okay if I don't because there is more to life than work (and as a workaholic, it took me a long time to realize that). As long as I don't take out my frustrations with the job on my students, and as long as I continue to do a good job, I can keep teaching, at least for now. And I do have other things in my life that make me happy, like good books, writing, and the hope that some day, those entitled students who disrespected me will one day have children who will be exactly like they were at that age because then they'll get a taste of their own medicine. I know that's petty of me, but blame it on the hundreds of students who were like that and who overshadowed the students who weren't. But what gives me satisfaction is that despite those students' horrible treatment of me, I didn't let it stop me. I kept teaching, and I actually became a better teacher as a result. And that's something, even if my students aren't jumping up on their desks to recite poetry for me.

What about you? Have you ever felt burned out at your job? 

A Life-changing Diagnosis

 Last winter, I went to the doctor for a regular check-up. I ended up in the emergency room that same day. 

When the nurse took my blood pressure, she said it was too high. The doctor took it again to make sure, and she said it was dangerously high. She said that I had to go the ER right away or I might have a stroke. 

I ended up staying in the emergency room for more than ten hours. At first, they put me on a gurney and hooked me up to an IV and an EKG. They gave me blood pressure medication and took my blood pressure every fifteen minutes because they were trying to get it back down. The blood pressure cuff hurt because it kept squeezing my arm. The gurney was left in the hallway so I had to just sit there while nurses and doctors bustled about. 

After a couple hours, they finally put me into a room where several other patients were, but our beds were separated by curtains. I heard an old lady across the room who kept complaining about her bowel movements, and she literally kept yelling, "POOP! POOP! POOP!" over and over again. One of the nurses' cell phones had the Batman theme song as its ringtone, and it kept going off again and again, to the point that if I wasn't still hooked up to the IV and EKG I would have jumped out of bed and thrown the cell phone down the hall, shrieking, "MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!"

I was scared. I didn't know what was happening. It made me think of the time I ended up in the emergency room six years ago, when I was diagnosed with a neurological disorder and I almost went blind. I have recovered from that, but I suffered from permanent hearing loss in my right ear as a result. I can hear a little bit out of that ear, but I mainly rely on my left one now. I can't watch TV without subtitles (why does everyone on TV sound like they're WHISPERING these days?), and I often ask my students to repeat themselves when I'm teaching. 

The doctor and nurses couldn't tell me what was wrong with me, but they told me to go to another doctor the next day. After more than ten hours, one of the nurses told me, "OK! You can go home now!" 

I stood up, but I felt really dizzy and disoriented after lying down that whole time. The nurse looked concerned and asked me, "Are you OK?" 

"Oh, I'm fine. I'm fiiinnne," I mumbled, before I literally passed out on top of her. It was like that scene in the movie Elf, where Will Ferrell fainted on top of a shrieking elf. 

Then the nurse helped me up and said, "Uh, I'm going to put you back in bed for a while." She gave me some graham crackers and apple juice because I hadn't eaten since breakfast. After another hour, I finally got to go home, and fortunately, I didn't faint on top of any other nurses.

Since then, I have been back to the hospital fifteen times. I've had an echocardiogram, a renal artery duplex, and a kidney ultrasound. I have to go back to the hospital several times this summer. I am currently being treated by a team of doctors at the local hospital in College Town, including a cardiologist, a nephrologist, and a primary care provider. 

It turns out that I have polycystic kidney disease, which I inherited from my mother. She had a kidney transplant when she was in her late forties. My nephrologist said that I will most likely need a kidney transplant by the time I'm in my late forties or early fifties (I'm 40 now). But the wait list for a kidney is at least 5-7 years, sometimes more. My kidney function is already low, but when it gets dangerously low, I will have to be on dialysis for years while I wait for a kidney. If I don't get one, I could die before I turn sixty.

I also have to stay on medication for the rest of my life. I am currently taking two different medications to control my blood pressure, and I have to monitor it by taking my blood pressure with a digital monitor twice a day (which is why my arm is perpetually sore now). One of the medications made me cough incessantly, to the point that I kept having to buy cough drops. I couldn't drink cough syrup because it didn't work well with my blood pressure medication. 

The doctor finally took me off the one that made me cough and prescribed a different one, which fortunately does not make me cough. The medication I'm taking causes birth defects, meaning if I get pregnant, my baby will be born with birth defects or it will be born dead. So, I will never be a mother. I don't have the money to hire a surrogate, and no adoption agency is going to give a kid to someone who may die before the age of sixty without a new kidney. I wasn't planning to become a mother, but I sometimes think about what it would be like to have a child. It makes me sad when I see parents leading their small children by the hand because I know that that is a path in life that has now been closed off to me forever. 

The nephrologist recommended Jynarque (have any of you ever heard of this, and if so, do you know anyone who's taken it?) to protect my kidneys. But it can cause liver damage, so I'm like, NO!

I lost my temper with my doctors and nurses because they kept insisting that I come back to the hospital for more treatment or yet another medical procedure. I couldn't afford to take time off from work because of the mounting medical bills (which I had to use my stimulus checks to pay), so I had to stay up late every night to get my work done. The doctor even prescribed me a new blood pressure medication that cost more than sixty dollars for a 30-day prescription, which I couldn't afford, and he only backed down after I proved to him that it kept making my blood pressure shoot way up after several weeks of taking it. I hate my nephrologist because he's been a jerk about this whole thing, but there are only two other nephrologists in College Town, so I don't have a lot of options.

I made the mistake of telling my father about this, and he has not been helpful at all. The other day we got into an argument over the phone because he told me not once but six times not to get so worked up about my health. Then he called back and told me six more times. I should have known better than to think that he would be there for me.

I still haven't told my mother. She screamed at me over the phone and blamed me for my health problems when I ended up in the emergency room six years ago (so did my father), and she always makes everything about herself. She will call to cry, rant and rave every day if I tell her. So, despite pressure from my father, I've refused to tell her unless I get worse.

I just feel really angry, sad, and scared. I've tried to be a good person my entire life, and yet I feel like I'm being punished somehow. Other people like the Model and his girlfriend literally scammed the entire country (which is another post in itself, and I will write about that later), and they not only got away with it but got everything they want. But I never did anything like that, and I'm the one who ended up in the hospital. It's scary because now I know how I will die. I will most likely die of kidney failure. Even if I get a transplant, the new kidney won't last forever. I will most likely not live a long life because of this disease.

I confided in one of my friends about my fear of not living a long life, and they said, "Well, if this is God's plan, you just have to live out the time that you have left." That did not make me feel better; it made me angry. I haven't been very religious in a long time, and I don't want to believe that God's plan is for me to have a short life. 

I don't want someone else's kidney. I don't want to have surgery. I don't want to go on dialysis. I don't want to keep going back to the hospital again and again for the rest of my life. I don't want to die. But none of that is up to me. All I can do now, according to my doctors, is maintain my health so that I can hopefully put off the transplant. I've been exercising 5-6 times a week, and I rarely drink soda anymore. If I buy coffee I get decaf. I rarely eat fast food, except for the sandwiches at Starbucks because they're a lot healthier than burgers at Wendy's or McDonald's. I've lost ten pounds, and my blood pressure has gone down. So I still have hope. Maybe I'll be one of the select few who doesn't have to get a kidney transplant. 

Sorry about the depressing post. This whole situation is partly why I haven't blogged in a long time. 

But this whole situation has made me have a different outlook on life, and it's made me more determined to make some changes. I'm going to write about those too, so stay tuned. 

What I Learned from Ice-T, Or, Why My Ex Threatened Me

The Model moved out West. He wrote a book. And he threatened me.

He's written a book that he's self-publishing on lulu.com (have any of you heard of that site?), and he most likely will sell thousands of copies due to his large following on Instagram.

I made it through several months without looking at either his Instagram page or his girlfriend's page. But one night, I was thinking about him and curious to see what he was up to, so I checked out his page. It showed that he'd taken off on a road trip without her, leaving her to take care of his cat no less, and decided on a whim to make a permanent move out West...without her. He once told me that  several companies and apps pay him to promote their products on Instagram, due to his large following. Therefore, his "job" does not keep him in the Midwest because he can technically do it anywhere. And yet, even though he left her, she did not break up with him. I checked out her page, and although she hasn't posted any new pictures of them together since September, she did post several pictures of the western state he'd moved to during Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I knew that she must have gone to visit him during the holidays.

During Christmas, I had a rough time while I was visiting my parents for my biannual week-long visit. My mother went off on one of her rampages, screaming and crying at me while one of her acquaintances was in the next room. My father and sibling blamed me, as usual, even though I literally did not say or do anything to provoke her; she was just in one of her moods, and I am her favorite emotional dumping ground. Sibling was unsympathetic, as usual, and said that it was my bad personality that provoked her. While I was getting into the car to run an errand, my father came out to the driveway and screamed at me in front of the neighbors, shaking his finger at me and saying that it was all my fault that she was like that and that I needed to change the way I acted.

Therefore, I wasn't in a good mood either. At that moment, it infuriated me that I was working two jobs, seven days a week, with no days off for months at a time, while the Model earned more money in one day than I did in a week just from his Instagram posts. I still felt angry that he got away with using me to cheat on his girlfriend, and she was more than happy to keep her head stuck in the sand.

One night while I was still visiting my parents, I was in the drive-thru at Chick-Fil-A. I drafted a text to the Model where I finally wrote out everything I'd been wanting to say to him for months. I wrote  how the way he betrayed both her and me was cruel and wrong, and that it wasn't okay for him to treat people like this, especially because his Instagram followers constantly sent him adoring messages, which he often posts online to show how much people adore him. They think that he's this "nice guy" and thank him for "inspiring" them because he posts inspirational quotes from self-help books and talks about his own "struggles". I think they're inspired not by what he quotes/writes but by the way his butt looks in his pictures (he likes to pose for selfies in his underwear), but I digress. I also think they send him those messages thanking him for inspiring them not because they're actually inspired by what he wrote but because they want an excuse to talk to him.

I didn't mean to send it to him. I was just venting to myself. But I was holding my phone when a restaurant employee approached my car to take my order, and I accidentally hit send on the text I'd drafted.

I didn't think the Model would answer, especially since he ignored my messages last summer when I texted to say that I'd found out he'd used me to cheat on his live-in girlfriend two weeks before he took her to Mexico for her birthday. But he did text back this time. Instead of responding with an apology, he responded by threatening me. He said that he would send my messages to the department heads at my job. He said he would also post them on his Instagram story; my guess is that he would have started an online hate campaign against me and encourage his followers to cyber bully me. I know he would have done it because he's done it before to a couple other people he's had a beef with, and his deluded followers who literally beg him for his attention on all of his posts are more than happy to do whatever he wants. He wrote, "Don't start a war you can't finish."

At that moment, any lingering romantic feelings I had for him were replaced with hate. His nasty threats made me see him for the vicious, vindictive sociopath he really is. I thought he really would send my messages to my bosses, although to be honest, I don't think that would have gotten me in trouble with them. After all, I only confronted him over how much he hurt me, and although it would have been embarrassing for my bosses to know about what happened, it's not the kind of thing that would have cost me my job. I spoke to a few other professors that I'm friendly with in the department, and they assured me that my bosses wouldn't even care. But he knows how important my work is to me. I gave up almost everything else in my life that mattered for my work, and I'll be damned if I let him take away the one thing I have left. If he ever did try to destroy my career and reputation like he threatened to do, I'd fight back in full force because I'm stronger than he ever gave me credit for.

I felt tempted to send a DM to his girlfriend on Instagram and tell her what he did, but he blocked me from both her page and his own before I could. I used to feel guilty that I never told her the truth. But now I think it wouldn't have made a difference. If she's foolish enough to stay with him even after he moved out of her apartment and into a new one thousands of miles away from her just because he felt like it, then she most likely would not leave him even after finding out that he cheated on her. I think that one reason he chose her over me is that she lets him walk all over her. I stood up to him, and she never will. I don't understand why any woman would do that, but then again I did let him treat me badly during the time that I was with him.

I think that the Model is selfish. That's why he cheated on his girlfriend with me, and that's why he doesn't care that he hurt me. That's why he took off on a road trip without her and moved thousands of miles away from her. By living that far away, he's able to do whatever (and possibly whomever) he wants more easily, without her finding out. He often writes on his page about the importance of "putting yourself first", and I think it shows that he doesn't care how his actions affect anyone else.

I read something that the actor and musician Ice-T wrote on Twitter (and pardon the language, but I think it really relates to what I've gone through), and it made me feel better: "Sometimes, it doesn't work out with someone because they're a piece of shit, who deserves a piece of shit, and you're not a piece of shit."

What about you? Have you ever confronted an ex?

P.S. You might say that I should cut ties with my parents and sibling. But it's complicated. For one thing, look at Meghan Markle. She does not talk to her half-brother, half-sister, or father, and they have responded by selling hateful stories and lies about her to every sleazy tabloid that will pay them while claiming that THEY are the victims (insert puking sounds here). She wants to move on with her life and enjoy it with her husband, and they are all determined to spoil her happiness. But at the very least, I only make brief visits to my parents twice a year, and I do not talk to Sibling unless I have to, which is rare.

P.P.S. Don't worry. I won't contact the Model again, and it's not just because he blocked me. It really is time for me to move on with my life. I don't want to be like his girlfriend, who lets him get away with everything, nor do I want to be like his adoring followers, who only see what they want to see when it comes to him. I want to be better than that. I want to be better than all of them. And I'm sorry for the dark nature of this post. I've written a more lighthearted one on online dating for next week, and it'll be back to regularly scheduled programming.

How I Became a Neurotic Workaholic

Two years before I left Chicago, I suffered a nervous breakdown and went into therapy. There were several reasons why I sought counseling, but the catalyst was that my best friend of more than fifteen years had ghosted me a year before. The last time we hung out, Former Friend told me that "it's not very attractive" to complain about work so much, even though they had vented about their job many times. After that, every time I suggested getting together to have coffee or lunch, Former Friend had an excuse for why they were too busy. It took me months to realize that they no longer wanted me in their life, which crushed me, because they were one of the only friends I had left.

In high school, I used to hide in my bedroom and shovel handfuls of peanut M&Ms into my mouth when dealing with my parents and sibling was too much for me. I gained thirty pounds in one year and struggled to lose the weight for years after that. I eventually lost weight by working out regularly and cooking healthier meals.

But after Former Friend ghosted me, I started binge eating and gaining weight again. I knew I needed help when I opened my refrigerator one day and realized that I'd filled all the shelves with large bags of peanut M&Ms. I was still in grad school at the time, so I went to the counseling center at my university, and they gave me a list of referrals to therapists who offered low-cost counseling.

At first, I felt ashamed and sad that I felt so alone that I had to pay a stranger to listen to me. But over the course of the next two years in therapy, I learned that there is no shame in seeking help when you need it, and I learned a lot of valuable things.

My therapist said that I suffered from depression and anxiety, including social anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. My anxiety was connected to my workaholism, she said, because I always felt like I couldn't relax unless I got all my work done. But due to my graduate studies and multiple jobs, I always had a lot of work to do. My social anxiety was shown through my hyper-awareness of things most people took for granted. When I interacted with my students or with other people, afterwards I would berate myself for something I said or did wrong, and I thought that was all those other people remembered about me. I'd always known that I was neurotic and had low self-esteem, but it wasn't until I was in therapy that I realized how and why I became that way.

My therapist said something that struck a chord with me: "You are an amazing young woman. You're attractive, highly intelligent, and kind and compassionate to others. You've earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree; you're a Ph.D. candidate; you balance multiple jobs, and you're a good teacher. But you can't see anything good about yourself or recognize any of your accomplishments. All you see is what you think is bad about yourself because your family, especially your mother, has conditioned you to think that way."

When students approached me at the end of each term to tell me how much they enjoyed my class and that I was their favorite teacher, I used to think that they were just being polite. I thought the same thing when people complimented me on my writing. My therapist was right: I had internalized the verbal abuse that my parents and sibling had inflicted on me to the point that I couldn't recognize any compliments directed at me as being genuine. Although I hadn't lived with my parents and sibling for years, their voices were still in my head every day, pointing out everything I did wrong so that I was constantly obsessing about it.

I thought of the times my sibling and I fought and how they claimed that their screaming insults were justified because they were merely "responding" to my bad behavior. Sibling did not escape our parents' house unscathed, but is now in denial about the way they've treated us. Also, I always received the worst of it, like the time my father and sibling went out for ice cream, while I had to stay behind because my mother was angry at me; they knew that she would scream at me for hours while they were gone, which she did, but they left anyway. Both my father and Sibling are more willing than I am to tiptoe around my mother. Sibling says that stuff like that is my fault for "provoking" our parents because I talk back to them (my father and mother say the same thing). Sibling also says that I'm being too melodramatic about how they treat me.

I thought of my father, who is not usually as bad-tempered as my mother but who never protected me from her either. He has also made his share of cutting remarks, such as the time I was hired to teach at the college in Small Town and he said that it was good that I was "finally going to start working." I pointed out that I had been working multiple jobs for years, but he said they didn't count because none of those jobs were full-time and didn't come with health insurance or benefits.

Most of all, I thought of my mother, who has always criticized everything about me: my weight, my hair, my clothes, the way I walk, etc. Years ago, when she was visiting and I was out on an errand, she read through some of my course evaluations that my former students had filled out. Although most of the evaluations were highly positive, my mother honed in on the few that weren't. To this day, she reminds me of the bad things that my students said about me, to show that I made the wrong choice when I pursued a career in education, rather than the more lucrative career she and my father pressured me to pursue. Sibling caved in to my parents' demands and chose that career, which is partly why they favor Sibling over me.

I think that's one reason why I've spent all these years working so hard: I wanted to prove that my mother was wrong when she said that I wouldn't last five years as a teacher. But my therapist helped me realize that I shouldn't work so hard to get my parents' approval because they were toxic and nothing would ever be good enough for them.

Therapy also helped me realize how isolated I had become and that I needed something in my life outside of work. When I moved to Small Town, I accepted the invitation of Small Town Guy, who also worked at the college that hired me, to join his trivia team that met at a local bar every week. He introduced me to his other friends. They were kind to me and welcomed me into their group, and for the first time in years, I had an active social life.

I've been thinking about all of this as I've continued writing my book, Obsessions of a Workaholic. I also wondered why I let the Model push me around and why I blamed myself for everything that happened. My therapist might have said that I'd been conditioned to believe that the problem was solely within me, not in the people who treated me badly. But I don't put all the blame on my relatives for why I fell for the Model.

When he first messaged me on Tinder, I had just recently moved to College Town. I was lonely for the friends I left behind in Small Town. I wasn't attracted to the other guys I'd met on Tinder or Bumble. I'd been rejected by most of the guys I'd had crushes on in the past. The Model was exactly the kind of guy I've always been attracted to but who never even noticed me before. The fact that he not only noticed me but wanted to be with me was flattering and thrilling, like a fantasy come true. And despite the awful way he treated me, he did have a few good qualities.

For one brief, desperate moment after I found out that he had used me to cheat on his girlfriend, I actually considered pretending that I didn't know about her, because the thought of never being with him again hurt even more. But in the end, I couldn't do it. I knew in my heart that he saw her as girlfriend material, and me as a friend with benefits. There was no way that I could keep being with him, not only because it was wrong to hook up with someone else's boyfriend but also because I'd be cheating myself out of everything else I wanted with him.

Whatever I had with him was a fantasy. It wasn't real, even though I wanted it to be, especially after years of bad first dates and failed relationships. I had fallen back into the pattern of allowing myself to be treated like crap in the vain hope of one day having my efforts be validated with love. As my therapist told me, I needed to recognize the good in myself again, instead of only focusing on what was bad, and to remember that I deserved better.

Some days, it's still hard to do that, especially because my parents and sibling have no remorse for the way they've treated me and still make me feel bad about myself. I haven't completely cut them out of my life for complicated reasons that would make this post even longer, but my therapist taught me strategies for dealing with them. She said that I should severely limit the time I talk to them on the phone and spend less time with them, and I've followed her advice. She told me that I needed to put my foot down with all of them more often, and I have, much to their displeasure, though I still have a long way to go.

I had to put my foot down with the Model too. I never again want to let anyone, whether it be the Model or my relatives, make me feel like I'm someone whose feelings don't matter and who is worthless. Now, I take pride in my academic and professional accomplishments, even though my mother doesn't and my father says I still need to do more. Now, I know that I'm not a loser just because I'm still single at 37, even though my sibling tells me otherwise. I've also lost twenty-five pounds since May, and that makes me feel good too.

"You're stronger than you think," my therapist once told me. "You could have continued obeying your parents and done everything they wanted, but you stayed the course and focused on making your own dream come true instead."

I'm not sharing all of this to make you feel sorry for me. But I wanted to explain why I obsess over things that some people think are not a big deal, and why I regressed into a depressive spiral after I found out what kind of person the Model really was. If it hadn't been for what I learned from those two years in therapy, I might have spiraled even further. I thought maybe this post was TMI, which is why I almost didn't post it. But writing my book-length memoir, Obsessions of a Workaholic, has made me contemplate how and why I became a neurotic workaholic and also includes TMI about my parents and sibling (I do not refer to them as my family and never will). That's why I will have to edit some of it once I finish the rough draft.

What about you? Have you ever been ghosted by a friend? Do you ever worry about including too much information in your own blog posts or manuscripts?

Friends with Kids

Ever since I turned thirty-seven, I've been thinking a lot about the fact that I will most likely never have children. Richard Gere can father a child at age sixty-eight, but women can't do that. I know that a lot of women do get pregnant in their forties, but that usually happens with the help of fertility treatments or surrogates, which I, an underpaid English teacher with two jobs and thousands of dollars in student loan debt, cannot afford. Not to mention I do not have a husband or a boyfriend, and I'm on the pill, so I'd say my chances of getting pregnant are slim to none.

When I lived in Small Town, several of my friends there had young children, which affected their social lives. That is, unlike my college-aged neighbors, who regularly woke me up at 2 A.M. with their loud parties that made them sound like they were drunk wolves howling at the moon, my thirtysomething friends often had to leave our get-togethers by nine or ten P.M. to get home in time to pay the babysitter or tuck in their children.

When they hosted parties at their homes, they often invited their other friends to bring their kids along, and they would have kid-friendly activities available, like a crafts table, a swing set and plenty of toys, etc. The kids would work on their art projects or run around, playing, while their parents kept one eye on them while conversing with the rest of us. I would sit with the parents, suddenly feeling so much younger than them, despite the closeness in our ages, because I did not have any children of my own. Unlike my friends with kids, I never had to say things like, "Annie, be careful with your soda. You're going to spill it," or "No, you can't have any more soda. If you drink any more you're going to be up all night and then I'll be up all night and you know how cranky Mommy gets when she gets tired," or "Oh, my God! Do not eat that worm! That's not food! I am so sorry, everyone. He's just curious. My son doesn't normally eat worms or anything else that's still moving, haha!"

I didn't really know what to say to them sometimes. It's not like I could relate to their stories about being up all night with a crying baby or how difficult it was to handle life with a toddler. So I'd usually say things like, "So, I, uh, hear that it's hard to get kids into kindergarten these days! What is up with that?"

Here in College Town, I've joined a Meetup group made up of women, most of whom are close to my age, who go out for dinner to various restaurants in the area. At a Thai restaurant one night a few weeks ago, we were talking about motherhood. I said I was ambivalent about having kids, and one of the women, who had a child of her own, said, "If you're not a hundred percent sure that you want to be a mother, you shouldn't do it."

And I knew she was right. My father is still holding out hope that I'll be married with at least one child within the next few years. My mother tells me about all her friends' daughters, most of whom are younger than me, who are already married with children. She has called me an old maid on more than one occasion, including my birthday one year, where instead of giving me birthday wishes she commented on the fact that I was now an old maid in my thirties. I haven't told either of them that it is very unlikely I'll be a mother. But then again, they still think that I'm a Republican, like they are, and I have to bite my tongue from shrieking like a banshee when my mother quotes Sean Hannity and says that Donald Trump is a "good man". I learned a long time ago that the less they know about my life, the better, because we fight enough about the little they do know as it is.

My parents are partly why I am ambivalent about having children. My mother is a verbally abusive, controlling pessimist who is always convinced that the worst-case scenario will happen, which is why she predicted that I wouldn't last five years as a teacher. (I've been teaching for more than a decade now, but she keeps reminding me that I'm untenured and not secure in my job, in order to emphasize that I made the wrong decision.) My father is a verbally abusive, controlling cock-eyed optimist who stubbornly holds on to his view of the world even when everything is falling to pieces around him. My sibling is their golden child, who is not treated half as badly by them as I am, and gets angry when I get upset with our parents because my sibling agrees with both of them that I am the one with the problem.

I only see my parents twice a year for a few days each time, and I call them once a week out of obligation. I talk to my sibling less often. Therefore, I've always viewed time with family as time to dread and be endured, not time to look forward to or to cherish. It's hard for me to picture myself with a happy family because I never got to have one, and part of me is afraid that I'll turn out to be like my mother or my father if I had my own kids. And I know that although they would love to have grandchildren, eventually their cruel streak would surface and they would lash out at my kids. And then I'd fight back as hard as I could because I'll be damned if I let them hurt my kids like they hurt me.

I think that parents have the toughest, most stressful, most heartbreaking, and most rewarding job in the world. It's a job that they can't ever quit, and I have to admit, the idea of having my own son or daughter who may even look like me, someone who I would love unconditionally, is appealing.

But I've always viewed motherhood as akin to winning the lottery. It'd be an amazing life-changer, but it's okay if it never happens. And I haven't gone out of my way to buy lottery tickets. And although my job status as an untenured college professor is insecure, I like that if I were to get a good job offer at some school halfway across the country, I have the freedom to just pack up my stuff and go.

Here in College Town and the other small Midwestern towns that surround it, people typically marry their high school or college sweethearts before they turn twenty-five and have several kids before they turn thirty. That's why most of the single guys my age are divorced with children, including two of the guys I dated, the Artist and the Musician. I know that it's slightly unrealistic to prefer to date a guy close to my age without kids, but...

Sometimes I feel guilty about the fact that I'm not thrilled at the prospect of becoming a mother or stepmother. I feel like society pressures women to view marriage and motherhood as not only a happy ending but the only happy ending. And if a woman chooses to create a different kind of happy ending for herself, she's considered "weird."

On the other hand, I'd rather be "weird" than to be living a life that I don't really want.

What about you? Do you have kids? If you do, how did you know that you wanted to be a parent? If you don't have kids, how do you feel about parenthood?

The Worst Day

I haven't blogged in a while because I've been dealing with a lot of problems, one of which included calling 911 for help.

One day I decided to get takeout after several days of my own cooking. It was raining hard when I went out, but I'd driven through thunderstorms before and thought it would be okay. I was wrong.

When I drove out onto the main road, it quickly became flooded, to the point that it was like driving through a river. I tried to pull into a parking lot, but all of a sudden my car stalled. Then my car started filling up with water. I tried to open a door, but even more water rushed in.

Meanwhile, the car kept weaving back and forth in the water. I was afraid that other cars might hit it. I kept thinking of those movies where the main character is trapped in some kind of container and the water keeps rising. I got so scared that I called 911 for help. A cop showed up a few minutes later, and she and another guy literally had to pull me out the window and help me across the street.

Once the water levels decreased, a tow truck driver brought my car to the dealership. I had to call my insurance company, who sent an adjuster out to look at the car. He said that the car was totaled and I would have to get a new one.

I spoke to my mother on the phone several times, and she kept berating me. She said that this was karma for the fact that I was a bad person.

My father was not as angry, but now he tries to micromanage my driving. For example, I have to drive out to their state (a nearly ten hour round trip) for the second time this summer to take care of their dogs while they travel. He keeps calling to tell me when and where I should drive, even though the last time I followed his instructions, the trip took two hours longer than it should have.

He said that I didn't have a right to be upset over driving there again. My father claimed that the fact that I have had to go to their state several times a year to take care of their dogs, give up my school breaks, take unpaid time off from my jobs (and lose a lot of money in the process) was nothing compared to the sacrifices that he and my mother made over the years.

A few days after I got a new car (the same kind, only a newer model), I was backing out of a parking space at the bank and accidentally hit a car that was driving out. (If I was in a cartoon, that would have been the moment I took out a sledgehammer and hit myself over the head with it.) The other driver was nice about it (but let's see how nice she is if and when she files an insurance claim), but she ended up with a small dent in her door and I got a small scratch on my bumper.

To make matters worse, someone apparently took pictures and a video of me being pulled out of my car window during the flood. They not only posted it on Facebook but it ended up in the local paper, so that random people in Small Town keep asking me, "Was that you?"

I have, however, learned several things from this. One is to always check the forecast and make sure there are no flash flood warnings. Two is to always be careful in parking lots and when driving in general. And three is to accept the fact that although they did help me with the down payment for my new car (which I appreciate, and which I will repay), I cannot rely on my parents for emotional support. They reacted the same way when I was hospitalized two years ago: they berated me, blamed me (my doctors said it wasn't my fault), and tried to micromanage my treatment (if I'd followed their advice and not my doctors', I would have needed brain surgery and possibly gone blind).

I am an adult and will not allow them to control me, though that doesn't stop them from trying. My mother keeps reminding me about how the Bible says that children should honor their parents. But I think that I deserve respect too, and I refuse to bow down to either of them.

What about you? Have you ever gotten in a car accident or had to call 911?

If I Ever Have Children

1. I won't try to set them up on dates with people who look exactly like my spouse and then fail to understand why that's fifty shades of creepy.

2. And they become overweight, I'll show them how to cook healthy food and go for bike rides with them, not constantly berate them for being fat and point out all the young people their age who are so much thinner.

3. And one of them is a daughter who comes home from her first school dance in tears, I'll comfort her with ice cream and stories about my own unrequited crushes. I won't tell her, "No wonder no one wanted to dance with you."

4. I will encourage them to pursue careers that they are passionate about, not pressure them to pursue the career that I want for them and then become smug when they struggle to succeed in their chosen careers.

5. I won't criticize their hair, their clothes, or the way they walk, so that they'll never feel the urge to go on Jerry Springer's show just so they can yell at me.

6. I won't insult them for being unmarried. I'll tell them about how I was single too, and how at the very least it gave me something to write about.

7. I'll welcome them home with homemade cookies and questions about the good things in their lives, not complaints about how they don't visit more often.

8. I'll encourage them to become independent, not become furious when they make decisions without consulting me first and then constantly try to make them feel guilty as a result.

9. I will protect them if my spouse berates them, not blame them for provoking my spouse or accuse them of being the ones with bad personalities.

10. I will never allow my mother or father to treat my children the way they treat me.

I've never been a mother, so I have no experience or any real idea of how difficult it is to raise children. So it's easy to say that I won't be like my parents.

If I ever do have children, I will do everything in my power to treat them better than the way I am treated. Many other people my age have traveled all over the world. I've barely gone anywhere, except for a trip to New York that I kept secret because my parents would not have approved. I have even had to take a leave of absence from my jobs and give up vacation time on more than one occasion so that I can take care of my parents' dogs while they travel.

This summer, I have to give up two weeks of my vacation so that my mother can take two separate vacations. A couple years ago I had to give up my spring break so that she could travel. Next week I have to visit my parents (which I am dreading so much that I literally broke out in hives); if I don't go, they will show up at my apartment, which would be even worse. They don't care that I want to take my own vacation or have other things to do.

One reason I'm so neurotic and obsessive is because of how I was raised. I took a personality test in high school, and my teacher said that my innate personality was actually easygoing and laid-back. But he said because of my upbringing, I grew up to become a Type A personality instead. He said this soon after he met my mother.

What about you? If you don't have children, what kind of parent would you want to be? If you do have children, did you ever make any resolutions about parenting before they were born?

All Grown Up

If you looked up the word "controlling" in the dictionary, you'd find full-page pictures of my parents.

A few nights ago, I went to the gym, which has a policy against the use of cell phones. That's why I often leave my phone in my locker or in my car. I engaged in a longer workout than usual, because I was lifting weights in addition to my cardio exercises.

It takes longer to lift weights, because some muscleheads at the gym (there are jerks like this at every gym) hog all the machines. They use several machines at the same time, meaning they'll work in reps, alternating among the different machines. If you dare to sit down at one of the machines in between one of their reps, they'll be on you in a heartbeat, insisting that they're "still using" it, even though they're also using three others. If you ever see a story about a woman in a small Southern town who got kicked out of her gym for "accidentally" dropping barbells on obnoxious lunkheads, that just might describe me someday.

Anyway, when I got back to my car, I found not one, not two, but more than half a dozen missed calls and irate messages from my parents. I was worried at first that something was wrong, like maybe one of them was in the hospital or one of their dogs had gotten hurt. But once I called them and they started yelling at me, I soon realized that they were worried that something was wrong with me.

Why, you might ask? Because I didn't answer my phone at 9:30 at night.

Although I am thirty-four years old, have a full-time job (and a part-time job), have three degrees, and have not lived with my parents since I was eighteen years old, they still act like I don't know what the hell I'm doing with anything, so they believe that they still call the shots on my life.

My mother and father actually called the police in Small Town twice, because they wanted the cops to go to my apartment and make sure I was okay. The police declined to do so, and they told my mother (I kid you not), "Ma'am, I'm sure she's all right. She's probably at Walmart or the gym, because those are pretty much the only places that are open right now." (They were right, seeing as how I was at the gym.)

I was (and still am) angry that they called the police just because they couldn't reach me for more than an hour. They think that I shouldn't go out at all at night, because "it's not safe."  If I can survive Chicago, I can survive in a small town.

I live in an apartment building full of students, including some of my own students. What if they had seen the cops show up at my door? This is a small town, and everyone knows how quickly gossip travels in a small town. Even if I tried to clear things up later with the truth, some people might still hold on to their false speculations.

I could just see my face plastered all over the local evening news, and the news anchor saying something like, "A local college teacher was questioned by police and will most likely NEVER TEACH AGAIN! In other news, there are no news! And now, on to the weather!" I'm still relatively new here, and I'm anxious to make a good impression on my employers, especially because I want them to renew my contract. I can't have gossip about the cops showing up at my door spreading all over the school where I teach. I mean, seriously!

My parents have always been controlling, but ever since I turned eighteen, I started standing up to them more and more. I first rebelled by choosing a major and career that I wanted, not the ones they wanted for me. To this day, if I dare to talk about a problem I'm facing as a teacher, my mother will say, "Well, you chose that career, so..."

I didn't back down to my parents when they got mad at me this time, either. I told them that they couldn't expect me to be at their beck and call, and that I had a right to go out whenever I wanted.  I know that they truly believe that they were just looking out for me. But why are they so worried now, yet they didn't show me any sympathy when I was in the EMERGENCY ROOM last year, and acted like it was my fault that I suffered from serious health problems (which I still haven't fully recovered from)?

I'm all grown up now. I'm not going to follow their "rules" for my life. After all, what are they going to do if I refuse to obey them? Ground me and make me go to bed early without any dessert?

But one thing I'm still learning to accept is that they will never change. I heard or read somewhere that the only thing that I can change about people like them is the way I respond to them. So it's one thing if they keep trying to control my life every chance they get. That doesn't mean I have to let them. And I never will.

What about you? Have you ever struggled for control over your life, your work, or something else?

A Difficult Dilemma

I finally found a job, though it's not at the local school that I was hoping for. I'm going to teach full-time at a school in Small Town, Tennessee. Based on the online research I've done so far, the town is a lot like my Midwestern hometown, which I spent eighteen years wanting to escape from.

I wanted to stay in Chicago for at least one more year and teach at one of the local colleges. I also planned to spend more time on my academic research and try to get at least one article published and make one presentation at an academic conference.

But recently a school down South called and offered me a job that I had applied for a while ago. I applied to teach at schools all over the country and was rejected by most of them. Apparently, hundreds of positive evaluations from my students and several years of teaching experience do not matter nearly as much as published articles that might as well be titled "How to Make Yourself Sound Like a Pompous Know-It-All in 500 Words Or Less." But I digress.

I had to make a decision about the job right away, because the fall term is starting next month. I wanted to hold out for the local school, but they couldn't give me an answer yet. So what was I supposed to do: accept a job in an unfamiliar town halfway across the country or hold out for a job that I wanted but might not even get?

My professors were unanimous in their advice. "Go to Tennessee," they said. "It's time for you to move on. Teaching there for a year or two will show other schools that you have experience teaching at urban schools and rural ones and that you're willing to move. This will make it easier for you to get another job."

My parents, of course, were thrilled. They've been pressuring me to leave Chicago for years. They know that I love it here, but that doesn't matter because it's not the place that they want me to live in. Small Town, Tennessee is within driving distance of their home (though not in the same state), which means that they can see me more often. One phone call from them is enough to stress me out for the rest of the day, so I'm not happy at the prospect of moving closer to them.

They've also informed me that they will come with me to Small Town to "help" me move, which means dictating what kind of car I should get, what kind of furniture I should buy (even though I'm paying for this), which stores I should go to, etc., etc. I told them that I can handle it myself, but they're coming anyway. But I will NOT let them control all (or ANY) of the decisions I make.

I took a walk down Michigan Avenue recently. There was a guy marching up and down the sidewalk carrying a sign that said, "REPENT SINNERS" and yelling that everyone was going to hell. I nearly bumped into someone playing a ukulele and singing "Paparazzi" by Lady Gaga. Another guy looked at my chest and said, "Hi, boobies."

Sirens blared, horns honked, and people called out to each other across the street in several different languages. I looked at everything and thought, This is home. This is the one place in the world that I've always loved. This is where I want to be. 

But I don't have a choice. I owe thousands of dollars in student loans. I only have enough money to pay my rent through August. I knew that I would have to leave Chicago eventually, because with a Ph.D. in English, I have to go where the work is. I just didn't think I would have to leave so soon.

What about you? Have you ever made a difficult choice regarding your employment? Have you ever made a cross-country move?

Side note: I might not be able to respond to everyone's comments until later this week, due to issues with moving, but I promise I'll respond!

Beyond My Control

Every few weeks, I meet with my doctors to continue my medical treatment for my neurological disorder. I have to meet with more than one doctor, due to the fact that I am suffering from various symptoms. Every time I go, I feel scared.

Whenever I visit the clinics and the hospital, I feel very small. I see blind people wearing sunglasses and walking with canes, and I see others being led by Seeing Eye dogs. There are patients being pushed in wheelchairs, which always gives me a flashback to the night I spent in the emergency room, and orderlies pushed me around the hospital in a wheelchair to get me from one unit to the next. At the hospital, I catch glimpses of people lying in bed, hooked up to machines.

I feel sorry for them, and I wish that I could heal all of them. However, a small, selfish part of me hates seeing them, because I can't help thinking, Am I going to end up like them? Is that my future? 

Since September, I have been to more doctors and undergone more medical procedures than I can count. At first, I got worse, and the neurologist who was treating me increased my medication. She told me that if the medication didn't work, I would have to get brain surgery. If that didn't help, I would go permanently blind.

I've always hated that medication. It made me feel tired all the time, and I lost weight because I barely had the energy to finish a sandwich. It also made me sick on a regular basis. I hated that I was dependent on that medication and on my doctors. One of the things about being a Type A personality is that I am a control freak. The fact that my health is beyond my control frightens me.

When I go in for my treatment, I try to focus on getting better. I try not to think about how my life (and my work) will change completely if I get even worse. The problem with a neurological disorder is that if something goes really wrong, that's it. It's not like I can get a brain transplant.

I try not to think about going blind, but I can't help that either. If I went blind, I wouldn't be able to see Lake Michigan, the Chicago skyline, or Grant Park anymore. I wouldn't be able to just go into a bookstore and browse, unless they had books available in Braille. I wouldn't even be able to see the words on my computer or in my journal, which would change my writing process.

I also try not to think about the anger I still feel at my parents for blaming me for getting sick, even though my doctors said they were wrong. I say nothing to my parents about the fact that they haven't asked about my health in months.

I do think about how grateful I am to all of you, for leaving positive, encouraging comments on my blog when I wrote about my diagnosis. I am grateful to those of you who sent me nice e-mails to let me know that you supported me. When I went to the emergency room the first time, I felt so alone, lost, and scared. Reading what you all wrote made me feel better, and it helped me cope with the anger I felt at all the people in my life who weren't there for me.

My doctors say that I am finally getting better, though I still have to stay on the medication (a reduced dosage, at least) and come in for regular medical treatment. They say that what I have is chronic and can't be cured; it could always come back, and then I really might go blind the next time. That's why it's imperative that I find a full-time job with good health insurance that would cover more medical treatment.

I don't know what's going to happen in the future. I hope that I will continue to get better. Thank you to all of you who have been so kind to me. I really appreciate it.

What about you? Have you ever felt like something was beyond your control? How did you deal with it?

Hello Is Not an Invitation

Almost every time I talk to my mother on the phone, she wants to know, "Do you have a boyfriend yet?" When I tell her no, she often reminds me that I am getting older; I am an old maid; her friends' daughters (many of whom are younger than me) are now married with children.

I never told her about He-Who-I-Shall-Not-Name-Without-Spitting-on-The-Ground-and-Cursing. I haven't told her about most of the other guys I've dated, who are the reasons that chastity belts should make a comeback.

Recently, there was a controversy over a video that was made of a woman walking around and that featured all the men calling out to her. A lot of people criticized the video, because some of the men were "only" saying hello and therefore the woman should feel flattered, not upset. In all the years I've lived in Chicago, guys have tried to come on to me in public on a regular basis. It doesn't make me feel flattered, attractive or special. It makes me feel wary, annoyed, and scared.

Last week, I was walking home from the train station when I saw a guy walking towards me. I tried to step out of his way, but he blocked my path and jumped at me, arms outstretched, as he yelled something nonsensical at me. I stepped away again and he kept lunging at me, before walking off and saying, "Dumb bitch." I yelled after him something that rhymes with "Buck shoe." Maybe I shouldn't have, but I was angry that he thought it was okay to attack a stranger who hadn't even done anything to him.

One day I was on my way to a bookstore and a guy said, "Hello." I made the mistake of saying hello back, and he took that as an invitation to follow me down the street. When I ignored him, he started screaming at me and calling me a racist. (FYI: I am NOT a racist. I ignored him not because his ethnicity was different but because he was way too aggressive, which turned me off.)

That's happened to me before. When I reject or ignore creeps like that, they accuse me of being a racist, an idiot, a lesbian, a bitch, etc. It infuriates me that jerks think it's okay to harass women and then insult them when the women try to walk away. How would they feel if women did that to them? These losers just don't understand how scary and intimidating it can be when you're a woman walking alone, no matter what time of day it is, when you are well aware of what can happen (especially in a city like Chicago, which unfortunately is well-known for its violence).

I've seen women do it too, though to a lesser extent. Once I saw a woman trying to strike up a conversation with a guy who was at least fifteen years younger than her. He was polite but clearly not interested, and she clearly didn't get it. He finally told her that he just wanted to be left alone, and she walked away.

Sometimes, the guys aren't creepy so much as just clueless. I was studying in a coffee shop and one of the old men who are omnipresent in coffee shops (they're usually playing chess, reading the paper, or chatting with baristas) struck up a conversation with me. He invited me to have dinner with him sometime, and I politely declined, though I wanted to say, "If you weren't old enough to be my grandfather, I might say yes. But you are, so NO!"

I don't tell my parents about this. They'd just see it as more evidence of why I need to leave Chicago, because they want me to live in the same city as them, where they can control where I live, where I work, and even what kinds of groceries I should buy. I'd rather stay in a city that I chose, even if it means dealing with creeps on a regular basis.

I'm not saying it's never okay for men to approach women. It's just that there's a time and a place for everything. And if a woman makes it clear that she's not interested, then the guy should BACK OFF and not insult her.

The last guy I liked, who liked me back, wasn't someone I met online. He was someone who struck up a conversation with me one day, and we just kept talking. Unlike all those other guys I mentioned, he wasn't violent, insulting, creepy, or old enough to be my father (or grandfather). He seemed like a genuinely nice guy. He didn't show his true colors until much later. 

What about you? Do you ever get harassed or approached by guys who think that hello or even just eye contact is an invitation? How do you deal with it?

(Not) The Marrying Kind

Recently I read an article that said, "If you care about your happiness, you should avoid marrying a neurotic person."

The author, Drake Baer, wrote, "Neurotic people are more likely to detect threats in their environments, which can lead to mood swings and obsessive thinking about what could go wrong. They have been found to be more easily distracted, less self confident, and to have lower salaries than their more emotionally stable peers."

Almost everything he wrote describes me, because this entire blog is proof of the fact that I obsess over almost everything; (hence my screenname, Neurotic Workaholic, and my blog title, "Obsessions of a Workaholic"). I've come up with some other reasons why I fit Drake Baer's description of neuroticism to a T:

1. One of my guy friends told me that I put off an "unapproachable vibe." When I'm out in public, I discreetly grip my keys in a certain way, so that if any guy tries to attack me I can use the keys as a weapon and stab him in the eye and/or the crotch. After years of being harassed, groped, followed down the street, and in one terrifying case, nearly abducted by random creeps in Chicago (I screamed and fought back, which apparently scared off the abductor), I've cultivated a "back the hell off or I will CUT you vibe."

2. Most of the guys I've dated thought it was weird that with the exception of the hello/goodbye kiss, I didn't like to kiss in public (especially if his version of kissing meant "I'm going to touch your tonsils with my tongue" or I didn't like the guy, in which case I was all "back the hell off or I will CUT you"). I've never even been comfortable with holding hands or letting the guy put his arm around me in public. I've never liked public displays of affection, because I think that there is a time and a place for everything, and so basically anywhere that has people in it who are not too drunk to notice IS NOT THE TIME NOR THE PLACE.

The last time a guy held my hand, I spent 50% of the time thinking about how long I had to hold his hand before I could wipe off my sweaty hand on my pants without looking rude, and wondering if I could ask him to wipe off the sweat on his hand, and maybe put some hand sanitizer on as well, because I also spent the other 50% of the time on our date thinking of the germs on his hand that could potentially infect me with the flu because he coughed two hours before. (If there was any doubt in your minds that I am completely neurotic, I'd say this paragraph pretty much proves it.)

3. Since I don't even like to hold hands in public, I would definitely not be charmed by a public proposal, where the guy gets down on one knee in front of a restaurant full of other customers, or in a park filled with a singing/dancing flash mob that he organized. Then I'd just be all, "Are you asking me to marry you, or are you asking me to make you famous on Youtube?" I also think that public proposals put way too much pressure on the person to say yes.

Note: If you are married and your spouse proposed to you in public, I hope you don't think that I am saying that public proposals are unromantic or wrong, because I'm NOT; I'm saying that if I ever did get engaged, that's not how I would want it. As an introvert, I'd prefer to have that moment be something that's just between me and the man I love, not me, the man I love, and dozens of people who are filming us and will post the video on Youtube.

4. Recently, over the past few months, I became closer to a guy I liked, who I did not describe on this blog for various reasons. He was much more laid-back than I am. I eventually realized that he needs to be with someone who actually means it when she says, "I'm fine," and I need someone who understands when I'm not fine and will listen patiently, say the right things, and talk me out of stress eating peanut M&Ms (and of course, I would do the same for him).

5. If I ever got married, my parents would want to throw a huge church wedding and invite all their friends, including the friends who keep asking why I'm in my thirties and still single, and especially the friends who think I'm a lesbian because I'm in my thirties and still single. Planning a wedding is stressful enough, but planning that kind of wedding with two Type A personalities like my parents (two guesses where I got my personality from) just might push me over the edge.

I've attended weddings that cost six figures. If I had that much money, I would use it to buy a home or start a college fund for my future children, not blow it all on a party that lasts one freakin' day or one weekend. My "dream wedding" would go one of two ways: either I'd get married in City Hall and then go out for a nice lunch with my husband and some close friends (like Carrie and Mr. Big did in Sex and the City) or I'd get married in a community garden and have a small reception in a nice restaurant, like Miranda and Steve did on SATC.

Although I am a big fan of Sex and the City, I am not Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, or Miranda. I'm the female George Costanza, because I wear glasses and I'm usually pissed off at somebody. Basically, if you marry someone as neurotic as I am, be prepared to marry the entire cast of Seinfeld. That means that the majority of your conversations (til' death do you part) will be like the obsessive, nitpicky conversations that George, Jerry, Kramer, and Elaine had in the coffee shop every day. It's one thing if you are also neurotic, but it could be very stressful or hard for you to understand or relate to your partner if you are not also overly self-conscious and over-analytical. However, although I have those "George is getting upset!" tantrums on a regular basis, I know that I am capable of making someone feel happy and loved.

I don't know if I'll ever get married, and there is a part of me that thinks that my neurotic personality and workaholic nature will decrease my chances. I also know that it is important to make compromises and address my own flaws in order to make a relationship with someone work, though I don't think I'll ever be able to completely change who I am (and I wouldn't want to anyway).

I've also started to realize that there are worse things in life than being single, such as marrying the wrong person just so I can have kids, won't be alone, or can finally prove to my parents and their friends that I am not in fact a lesbian ("not that there's anything wrong with that!" as Jerry would say)

I will also add that some of the best writers I've ever read and some of the guys I thought were the most attractive were also the most obsessive, neurotic people I've ever encountered. Actually, my ideal husband would have Jerry Seinfeld's personality (and Chris Hemsworth's looks and Channing Tatum's dancing ability, if I'm going to be completely honest).

What do you think? What kinds of personality traits do you think are important for a happy, loving relationship, and what kinds of personality traits do you think could make a relationship fall apart?

All I Want for Christmas

1. Is for my parents to stop insisting that only they know where I should work and live and to recognize the fact that I have the right to decide where I will work and live, because as a thirty-three-year-old adult, I no longer need their permission to do anything anymore. (But on the other hand, if I keep waiting for them to recognize that fact, not only will I wait forever, it'll be like I'm still waiting for their permission.)

2. Is for my neighbors to stop waking me up at 2 A.M. with "WHOOOO!! Who needs sleep when we can PAR-TAY? HAHAHAHA!", to which I shriek from my window, "When the zombie apocalypse happens, I'm going to send the zombies after YOU!"

3. Is to receive at least one offer letter by the end of this school year from a good college with students who will be willing to put their cell phones down long enough to learn how to read, appreciate, and write about fine literature.

4. Is for my parents to stop telling me that I'm an old maid and a spinster (and yes, they have called me both) because I'm in my thirties, unmarried, and childless, and for them to stop acting as if that's a crime and a tragedy.

5. Is to successfully defend my dissertation this spring and also be able to resist the temptation to yell at all the other grad students, "I am finally free of ALL of you! YAAAAYYYY!!!" and to also resist the temptation to set off firecrackers and dance across campus after saying that.

6. Is to FINALLY complete my Ph.D. this spring and find one teaching job with a salary that pays enough to cover all my expenses and leaves me with some money left over to put in a savings account, so that I never have to work two or three jobs again.

7. Is to be able to walk into any store or cafe without wanting to scream, "ENOUGH with the Christmas carols! Isn't it bad enough that we all have to deal with long lines, crowded stores, and customers who will elbow us in the face to get the last product being featured in the holiday sale?"

8. Is to meet a nice guy by next Christmas who actually makes an effort to show me that he cares about me, not another guy who just isn't that into me and takes several hours to text back "k".

9. Is to eat Christmas cookies without cursing myself on the treadmill afterwards.

10. Is for all the people who are alone, poor, or hungry on Christmas to find the help that they need from kind friends or generous strangers, not like the heartless monster I saw recently who yelled at a homeless man who was standing on a street corner and begging for spare change. She told him to "get a job" and that he should be ashamed of himself. I stepped between that bitch (pardon my language) and that homeless man, glared at that woman (who apparently is the spawn of Satan), and gave that guy some money while telling him to ignore jerks like that. (The heartless monster, by the way, said nothing more after I stepped in. Apparently she has the nerve to berate a homeless person but not someone whose economic status is not that much different from hers. As I stated on Twitter, I hope that people like her get a giant box of karma for Christmas.) I wished I could have done more to help him.

What about you? What's on your Christmas wish list?

My Next Move

I wish I could participate in NaNoWriMo, but instead I'm working on my job applications. The application process in academia takes months. I've applied to more than a dozen schools so far, but I'll be lucky if I get one interview this year. The professors told the graduate students that the job search for tenure-track positions can take years.

And some people never find a tenure-track position. I seriously fear that I will be one of those people. But I will NOT go back to working in retail, because instead of telling people to "have a nice day," I'll say, "Have a nice day...in hell! Hahahahahaha!" before the retail supervisors drag me away and punish me by making me fold a never-ending stack of sweaters and constantly criticizing "my folding skills."

Most of the schools I am applying to are not in Chicago; they're not even in Illinois. So far, I've applied to schools in California, New York, Indiana, Maryland, and Florida, among others. The thing about my field is that I can't pick and choose where to live and work. Instead, I have to go wherever the work is. That means that eventually, I'm probably going to have to leave Chicago, sooner rather than later.

My parents want me to live near them. They offered to help me get an apartment and a car. I told them no. I think it is better if I live on my own. Besides, I do NOT want to take money from my parents. I spent years grinding my teeth at nasty customers who threw hissy fits over the fact that I wasn't ringing up their purchases fast enough. Two people (who I think of as Satan's spawn) demanded that I refold their clothes three times (and kept insulting me) before they were finally satisfied and let me put the clothes in their shopping bag. It took all the strength that I had not to fling the clothes at them or to chase after them with a clothes hanger (though not in the Joan Crawford Mommy Dearest sense).

I spent years working as an adjunct faculty member at various colleges around the city, where the word "adjunct" basically means "those whom we do not have to pay a living wage, HAHAHAHA, now let's go and enjoy our country club memberships and houses in the suburbs, DAH-LING" (But I digress.) I dealt with way too many undergrads who waltzed into class forty minutes late, missed half a dozen (or more) classes in a row, turned in their assignments late (or not at all) and then blamed ME when they didn't get As. (If my life was a cartoon, that would have been the moment where my face would have turned into an erupting volcano.)

I put up with all of that and worked multiple jobs for the majority of my twenties and well into my thirties, specifically so that I would not have to ask my parents for money. Even all those jobs were not enough, to the point that I finally had to break down and accept the fact that even I couldn't keep working seven days a week (because it got to the point where I was so stressed that I kept shrieking at drivers who apparently think that if they stop staring at their phones, even long enough to keep their eyes on the road, they will burst into flames).

So for my last two years in graduate school, I went against my earlier conviction of never accumulating any student debt and took out a couple small loans. I'll have a sizable debt when I complete my degree, but at least it still won't be half as big as the debt that my fellow graduate students have, since they took out loans every year or relied on family members and did not work additional jobs like I did.

Financial independence is important to me, because it allows me to live my life on my own terms rather than someone else's. My parents have been talking to several of their friends who work in academia. My father even contacted a few faculty members at a couple schools in the state where he and my mother live and told them that I was looking for a job, which is why I received some bemused but kind e-mails from those faculty members who explained that I should send a formal application to their search committees. I was so embarrassed, and I told my father never to do that again (though he insists he knows more about this than I do, even though he's never worked in academia). He may have meant well, but his attempt to take charge of the situation only served to reflect badly on me and made me look like I didn't know anything about the application process.

I'd like to find a job in an interesting big city or a nice college town that's close enough to a big city that I could visit at least once a month or even every other month. I hope that wherever I do live has some good restaurants  (partly because everything I touch in the kitchen turns into fire, and I mean that literally, because I keep burning everything) and cafes that I can write in. It'd be good if there was at least one bookstore with a decent selection of books, as well as a well-stocked public library. It would also be nice to live near a Catholic church, since I am Catholic and I still attend Mass. I want to live some place safe, where I don't have to worry about creeps who try to grope me or think that following me down the street or yelling lewd things at me is going to make me run into their arms (instead, it makes me run in the opposite direction or throw things at them). I want to live in a place where I won't be made to feel like a freak just because I'm different, because I was treated like a freak for the first eighteen years of my life in the small town that I grew up in. If I could find a school in a town that fits most of that criteria, I think I could be happy (and of course, as long as the school was a good school with disciplined, polite, and hard-working students).

What about you? If you could pick and choose where you got to live and work (or if you already have), what kinds of factors would affect your decision?

Friday Night at the ER

It started with a whooshing sound in my right ear. It sounded like my heartbeat or like what you would hear during a sonogram. I heard it constantly, even when I was trying to sleep (which is why I hardly slept for weeks). When I sat next to other grad students at lectures, I was convinced that they could hear it, though they gave no signs that they did.

I went to the general practitioner that I normally go to. "It's just ear wax," he said. He cleaned out my ears, which was very painful. "The sound will go away in a few hours." It didn't.

He referred me to an ear doctor, who said that my eustachian tubes were stuffed up due to a minor cold I'd had. She made incisions in my ears to clear up the tubes (a procedure that was also very painful), and then my ears were in pain for several days afterwards. She said the sound would go away in a few weeks. It didn't.

Then my vision became impaired. It became a strain to watch TV, even if I was just sitting across the room. It was difficult sometimes to see everything outside without squinting. I thought it was the sunlight and that I needed to wear sunglasses. But one night I was walking around outside and I realized that the lights were blurry even then.

I also had headaches every day. I realized that it was time to see another doctor. This time I went to an optometrist at Lenscrafters for an eye exam. "This is what your eyes looked like last year," she said, showing me the pictures. "This is what your eyes look like now. You need to see a specialist right away."

That same day I went to a specialist who wasn't covered by my insurance. He charged me two hundred dollars for a ten minute consultation. He said that I needed to go to the emergency room right away, because there was something seriously wrong with my eyes. That was when I got scared.

That day I spent more than ten hours in the emergency room. I went there at 2:30 in the afternoon and didn't come out until almost one in the morning. I didn't get to eat lunch OR dinner. A kind nurse felt sorry for me and offered me some graham crackers and juice, but the doctors wouldn't let me have any; they said I had to keep my stomach empty in case I had to undergo more procedures and take more medication.

There was a lot of waiting (and freaking out, on my part) at the ER. I was freaking out because at first I couldn't get a straight answer from the many doctors that I talked to on what was wrong with me. They did another eye exam. Then they did an MRI, because at first they thought I had a brain tumor. For the MRI, they put my body in a noisy machine, where I wasn't allowed to move for an hour. I lay there the whole time, terrified.

It turns out I don't have a brain tumor, but I do have a neurological disorder. I'd rather not say what it is, but I will say that it is the cause of the whooshing sound in my ear, the impaired vision, and the headaches. It's also not a psychological problem; it's physical. The doctors did a spinal tap, meaning they put a large needle in my spine and drained fluid out of me; it was very painful (I now think of September 2014 as the Month of Painful Medical Procedures).

They prescribed me some medication, which comes with several side effects. One side effect is that my feet feel like they're falling asleep all the time. Another side effect is that soda is tasteless to me now (which SUCKS, because I love Coke). Another side effect is that it makes me tired all the time, which means I can't get a lot of work done (did I mention I have to make a huge presentation to my department next month, and my job applications are due soon)?

I left a message for one friend that I had to go to the hospital. This "friend" never responded. I left another message for another friend, who didn't respond until several days later because she was "busy" with her other friends. I managed to text a third friend, who disappeared for a long time in the middle of our conversation and then immediately changed the subject of my health to something else. With friends like these, who needs enemies? I won't be calling them again. Ever.

I even Tweeted about what was happening to me. No one Tweeted a response. Celebrities can Tweet one word, like "Uh" or "What" and get a hundred responses from fans. I Tweeted about being in the ER and being sick, and no one asked if I was okay.

My father said that I brought my neurological disorder on myself and that I am to blame  because I am so neurotic (which contradicts everything the doctors said. They said that my disorder is very rare and happens to otherwise young, healthy women.). He said I must have worked myself up into a frenzy and that's why there's something wrong with my brain now. He argued with the ER doctors over the phone and forbade me from getting a spinal tap because of the risks involved. I told him that I am a thirty-three year old adult and that my decisions are MINE, not his.

My mother was very upset with me too, and she called several times to let me know how angry she was at me. The only people who showed me any compassion were two of my professors, who I had to tell because I wasn't able to meet all of their deadlines due to the fact that I was seeing more than a dozen doctors and was in and out of the hospital for more than a month.

Right now I'm feeling sad, scared, alone, and lost. The doctors are optimistic that the medication will work. BUT if it doesn't, I may need brain surgery. If THAT doesn't work, I may go permanently blind. If I wasn't neurotic BEFORE...

What about you? Have you ever dealt with something like this? How did you deal with it?

Turning into Our Parents

Every once in a while, I think I can hear my mother's voice when I talk. It makes me wonder what I'll be like when I'm her age. I recently read about a survey that said that we start turning into our parents when we turn thirty-two, which is how old I am now. It also makes me reflect on some of the advice that my parents gave me as I grew up.

If you keep scowling like that, your face is going to stay that way. 
I scowl like that a lot, especially when my neighbors decide to have a party on the sidewalk in front of our building and leave red cups all over the grass, or when I accidentally flip the channel to an episode of Storage Wars, or when someone tells me that I should stop drinking Coke (they should probably wait to say that until AFTER my caffeine high ends and after I stop bouncing off the walls).  And yet my face hasn't stayed "that way" permanently, and I can still make other facial expressions, like when I look at my students disapprovingly for coming in to class thirty minutes late, or when my face lights up at the sight of a Coca-Cola delivery truck.

Don't stay up too late. You're not a vampire.
When I was a kid, I thought it would be cool to stay up as late as I wanted. But now that I'm an adult, I find myself falling asleep before midnight. It's partly because I automatically wake up early almost every morning, since I'm still used to getting up for 8 AM shifts for my retail jobs or early classes that I have to teach. Now when I wake up at 3 AM because my neighbors are having another one of their "Who needs sleep when we can get drunk?" parties, I'm the one telling them to be quiet and go to bed. (Except I don't exactly use those words when I'm yelling from my window.)

You should spend less time reading novels and more time studying your textbooks.
When I was a kid, I used to hide under my covers or in my closet and read novels with a flashlight. I was an A student, so I figured that I earned the right to read fiction for fun. Reading gave me the chance to escape to different worlds and meet new people. When I read those books, I could forget about all the kids who made fun of me at school, the pressure to excel in all my classes, and the fact that I was overweight, wore thick glasses, and had hair that looked like I should have been in one of those "before" pictures for a shampoo ad. Reading made me happy in a way that few other things did, and I never gave it up. (And I never will.)

You can never be too careful.
Recently I had a "disagreement" with some of my neighbors. Apparently they think it's too much effort to reach into their pockets, take out their key to the front door of the building, and unlock it. So they leave it propped open. I tried to close it, and I told them that it was because I didn't want to let strangers in. They insisted on leaving it open, though, and I figured that if I went all Karate Kid on them, I'd probably get arrested. I know that real life isn't exactly like an episode of Criminal Minds or CSI, but I've encountered (and been harassed and robbed by) more than one scary creep since I moved to Chicago. I'd just feel a lot safer knowing that the door was kept locked and the scary people are kept out. The only time I let people I don't know into the building is if they're delivering mail or pizza (because anyone who delivers pizza is okay in my book).

Even though I can now understand why my parents gave me that advice, I don't think I'll ever be completely like them. The fact that I chose to live in Chicago, pursue teaching and writing, and that I still scowl on a regular basis is proof that I have grown up to be someone very different from them.

I don't think it's a bad thing to become similar to your parents, though I know a lot of people worry about that. What do you think? Do you ever feel like you're turning into your parents, or have you tried to distinguish yourself from them?