October 2nd

October 2nd is a really hard day for me now. It was my parents' wedding anniversary. Incidentally, one month from today will be my dad's anniversary with his new wife. They church-eloped, and I only knew a few days before it was happening and didn't attend. So, the only reason I even remember it is because my dad just so happened to get married one month after my parents' anniversary.

I try so hard not to be resentful of my stepmother just for being married to my dad. It is harder than I would like it to be. Our personalities clash, and part of me feels like she's stolen my sense of home entirely. My dad says that as long as he has a home, I have a home if I need it. However, the reality of that might be a lot worse with her being the one with more money in their relationship. Of course, I wouldn't even want to stay indefinitely, but it hurts.

My parents were great for the most part and certainly better than many stories I've heard. However, I think everyone's parents screw them up in some ways. Mine did by making me very cared for in an insular environment. When I was growing up, they hardly ever pushed me to make peer friends, because there simply weren't many in our church or social life, and I did see peer cousins from time to time, and I guess they thought that was enough, even when I was an outsider even among them. Then, when I did go to kindergarten, other kids didn't like me much. It became a vicious cycle. I kept getting hurt anytime I was exposed to peers more. Then, my parents would reflexively try to protect me. Plus, my mom had this attitude that I didn't need some big social life as a teenager. That I would get one later. Pfff. The only people I'm still friends with are people I met online in my mid or late teens who have stuck around. But yeah, even into my adulthood, I kept ending up back with my parents at home. Even though my dad and I would clash about just how bossy he gets to be if I'm an adult living at home, those times were some of the only times I ever felt safe.

My parents got into being homeowners with a shoebox of a house in the 1970s and were able to use that equity to keep owning a home. My dad still owns the home he and my mom bought in 2009, but he's currently trying to get it ready to sell, as it takes almost all of his income to keep the payment made and the maintenance utilities paid while living in his new house with my stepmother. But the thing is, no matter where they lived, it was relatively clean. We usually had a dog. I was able to use a kitchen when and how I wanted. I had somewhere to park my car.

All luxuries that I've never been able to have since I got out of my college dorm, outside of living at home.

I hate to be envious, but one reason I came to Japan was the ability to have an apartment of my own. I hate Japanese kitchens, but it's better than having no kitchen to use at all or to have to very awkwardly tiptoe around using it. But the reality is, I still only use it a couple of times a week. I'm exhausted no matter where I work.

I came here, also, because I thought that a predictable schedule with little to no overtime would help me to recover in some ways. But the thing is, having 10 or 11 20-30 minute classes a day actually is a lot harder than having 4-6 nearly-hour-long classes a day that all cover the same material or have much more discrete material to cover. I feel so stupid for coming here, in some ways. But on the other hand, I know that if I had endured into another late-spring and late-summer cycle with my last landlord, I might have lost my fucking mind. See previous post about the heat.

Even as it was, I felt sick all the time for months here. At least air conditioning was, in fact, used, but I had this blister on the side of my nose BELOW the nosepad (not under) of my glasses that wouldn't/couldn't heal, because it seemed to be the result of indirect friction from the salt on my skin from sweat. I have to wear my glasses to function, and the pad itself wasn't constantly rubbing it, but it would gather up sweat, which would bead, and then it would slowly dry on my face or I would rub it away. In either case, sometimes it felt like I was wiping sand off my nose from the amount of sweat that would have pooled and dried.

I know that I am blessed to have not been directly kicked in the face by climate crisis fallout. Parts of my home region of Appalachia are or were underwater and are now ruined after Hurricane Helene. No one ever expected it could hurt that much that far inland, and, of course, the region wasn't prepared for it.

But still, I do feel like summer personally has a beef with me every single year. It literally makes me sick, and I was born and raised in hot, sticky summers.

I'm sure that my emotions of missing my mom and the status quo I used to have with my parents is bleeding into everything. Plus, Wednesday has taken the title of busiest stupid fucking day at work. It's not as bad as when it was Monday, thankfully, but it's because most of my students are one-on-one and there's no hostility toward me from any of them. It's still a lot.

But yeah, I have just felt like I've wasted the first third of my life, if I'm "lucky" to live that long, but that the rest of it is just... arduous and long and for what?

I wish my faith would provide me more solace about it, too, but I just keep thinking about how not everyone who gets protected by God gets much joy out of it. I feel, sometimes, like I was just born to serve others without any balm of getting much back out of it. I love teaching, but the emotional labor of it is killing me.

And no matter where I look, I'm not seeing much opportunity to find the space to do anything to get myself out of the trap.

A week from Sunday, I'm going to have an absolutely hellishly long day. I have to get the very earliest train I can to Tokyo so I can meet people who want me for a second interview and then leave that and go to a four hour long training that my boss wants me to go to but is also attending so I have to be sneaky and not travel WITH her because I can't have her know I'm interviewing for another job. Otherwise I could've had the travel comped. Sucks.

If something doesn't come out of that interview, though, I think I need to get my ducks in a row to go home. I don't know what would even come after that. And if I don't get a job starting next spring, there's probably no reason I can't just tell my boss that I'm very tired and weary and just feel homesick and like I want to go home and leave after the completion of one year instead of two.

But if that doesn't happen... what am I going to do?

I don't have a house. I don't really want an empty house. In fact, I don't really want the extra room that I have in this apartment. (I don't really use the bedroom except as a closet after the first couple weeks living here.) I don't even decorate my apartment because I know it's very impermanent no matter how you slice it. I could buy cheap decorations at Daiso, but I know I'd throw them out when I moved, and I feel plagued by the waste issues in society.

Everything feels like I waste. I feel like a waste in a capitalist society.

Most of my family is dead. I don't have friends I can turn to for help. Most of them are in countries other than Aemrica, and none of them are really in a position to give me a crash landing spot. And while I think I could crash land and dad's for a little while, I'd need a plan for what the fuck to do next. And I don't have one.

I love teaching, but it's killing me by drops. I give so much love and effort to it, and I just... don't get to be loved back by anything, most of the time, it seems.

I can't have a pet for the same reason I can't have decorations. I feel like there's no point to anything I'm doing. I'm not building toward anything.

It seems to me that everyone who has anything is either very STEM brained or married/partnered. I don't have that.

If any of you know the most non-STEM STEM job I could get or have any hope to offer, I would appreciate it.