Eredien's Journal

I am definitely moving back in with my family. Over the weekend of Nov. 18th and 19th, I will be moving from my current place in MA back to NY.

I've personally been struggling, since spring 2010, to banish as paranoia (as I and others characterized it) the feeling that my loved ones and roommates can't really decide if they want to have my physical presence, much less welcome my physical presence, in the spaces they've said they want to share with me--only to have it turn out that my presence was decidedly unwelcome after all, no matter how regrettable that was, and I needed to be the one to fix the awkward situation by leaving.

This is mostly because, as I realized in the summer of 2010 when my parents weren't there for me in the hospital, that my parents' attitude toward living with me (whether as an adult or as a child), that they want me in their presence when they want me, as a kind of command performance, and want me and the reminders of me out of their presence the rest of the time, that makes me so aware and so hurt when others express ambivalence about having me in their lives, physically, sharing space with them.

I realized this, last summer, and realized that the fix was trying to express that I needed the people who lived with me to express non-ambivalence and actively embrace my presence in their space and in their lives, but my partner at the time was unable to do that, even though I believe she may have wanted to, so the uncertainties built up in my mind.

Of course, that contributed to the problem until my worst fears, the ones I was encouraged by others to think of as impossibly paranoid--and, more importantly, had taught myself to believe in (correctly, still, I think), as impossibly paranoid, because after all I believed I was someone worth living a life together with, or else I would not have taken the leap of faith to move and trust even when things looked hard, and change careers and start admitting my deep desire to further my own self through my own creative work as a job--came true. No wonder I was a wreck. No wonder parts of me still are.

I don't think this will be good for me as a whole experience, but it may lead me to confront the issue at the source, which I think will be good for me. I can only hope. And I will hopefully emerge stronger, able to afford things like the carpentry program I want to persue, able to afford my own damn apartment without being screwed over by a succession of passive-aggressive roommates, able to take love and care from people and give it back without being so needy as to rely on their love and care in a way that terrifies them or makes them resentful of my otherwise awesome, even nee4ded, presence in their life.

Next week at Porter Square Books I hope to come in from work in time to catch the tail end of the Naked City anthology reading at 7 pm on July 14th. It looks like it's a fantastic anthology, with stories by some of my favorite writers, like crowleycrow and greygirlbeast . Please come and join me there--even though I'll be a bit late!
Posted via LjBeetle

Yesterday I was coming home late and tired from my job, and at the top of the escalator at Porter there was a guy in his mid-20's, I guess, with a huge military-style olive green backpack, holding his cellphone and crying absolutely silently, so hard his body shook, with his head in his hands. Obviously he had just recieved some kind of bad news. I kept thinking about just, you know, doing the city thing and leaving, and then thought about being a small woman in a city approaching a strange, tall, and obviously upset man, and then found myself going over anyway and asking him if he was ok. He looked up at me and shook his head, and I said, "ok, well, I'm sorry. I hope you feel better soon," and then confused at myself, I walked away. I didn't know what else to do. Maybe I should have just left the poor guy alone. But he was crying in the train station! I've done that, and it sucks.

I don't even know why I felt the need to write up this thing. I just had to, though.

So, a while back I used Secure Data Recovery of Boston to get estimates for recovery of two hard drives of mine that had failed: a 1 TB Mac backup hard disk in its own enclosure, and a Linux laptop with a hard drive with a bad partition and several other good partitions.

They offer free quotes--basically, they examine your drives and tell you how much it will be to fix them. If it's too much, they just send your computer back. They looked legit, and were endorsed by a bunch of well-known people as well as local companies.

How to get an estimate:
It was trivially easy to fill out the form on their website (1 for each hard drive), and there was a nice automated response the next day followed up with a personal email from E., the technician. But it was all downhill from there.

The process of dropping off the drives:
I didn't mind going on the train to a swanky office building in Boston to drop off my laptop and my hard drive. I thought it was somewhat funny that I was mistaken by the first-floor security folks for a bike messenger dropping off some big company's computers and asked to go around back and up the service entrance, but looking back on how my case was subsequently handled I think that maybe that was just a symptom of a larger problem.

The process of getting a firm estimate of how much my HD recovery would cost:
I got an email on 9/20 telling me an estimate was ready, and I should call E. the technician. I called him, and he told me that the estimate wasn't quit ready yet. Two days after I spoke to E. on the phone, I followed up with another email, on a Thursday. I got a reply email on Monday with one customer ID number and one price--but the next morning, early, I got a cost breakdown. Unfortunately, it was too expensive, so I asked them to send the computers back to me.

The process of getting the hard drives back:
The 1 TB hard drive was mailed back to me in a relatively straightforward fashion. Since I had my mac mini set up and didn't want to risk further damage to the laptop's HD and the backup mac drive was basically unbootable, the drives sat in storage until the middle of December, when I opened up the box and found--my 1 TB HD, its enclosure and power source, and no laptop. (I freely admit not checking the box was an error on my part, but it was not a high priority task).

I sent E. an email with my case number from the estimate, and didn't hear back. I sent E. another email a week later, after calling and speaking with T. from Customer Service, who said E. was on holiday for Christmas, but had folks checking the storeroom for my laptop. I emailed E. again in early Jan., and got a reply from him the next day stating they were still looking for my laptop. I was worried--they had my case number from their ticketing system; they knew I'd had two computers; what was there to look for? Several days later, I sent another email to E., with identifiying details of my laptop just in case. He replied back, "What is the make and model?" I rather panicked--surely they should have that information in their system, and if they didn't know the make and model of my computer, how the heck would they have known what they were supposed to be have been looking for all this time? I sent E. an email with the information he requested, and 2 days later got the following: "They are still looking for it. Based on the tech notes we only have an
external enclosure for this case. I will keep you updated." External enclosure? Case? It's a laptop; you already sent the one with the enclosure back!

At the end of January, I sent another email noting that I was getting angry and grumpy. A day later, the reply came: "They are still looking for the notebook. We will have the final answer for you today." I didn't hear a thing. I sent another email the next day. I waited. I sent another email two days later.

I got a call from Eric, who was very polite, and also said they couldn't really find my laptop in their system per se, and transferred me to someone in the sales department. I happened to mention to the salesperson that when I originally sent in the estimates, I sent in one estimate per computer, and surely those estimates were trackable in their system, even if the ticket numbers they had for me appeared to indicate that I only dropped off one computer? I heard a little typing. Salesperson asked if he could call me back within 15 m. He called me back within 5 minutes, and said they'd found my laptop, said it had a different tracking/case number that had been misfiled, and apologized and said they'd send it back.

Unboxing: I got the laptop in the mail today. I opened it up (learning from my earlier mistake) and took the hard drive mounting screw off the bottom where it had been taped, screwed it back into the laptop case, and booted it right up. I got a really low-level error basically saying, "where the heck is your hard drive? Reconnect the cable; there's no OS here." I opened up the hard drive enclosure, and found out that while my laptop had been returned to me, it was returned without the hard drive.

So, I am still not done dealing with the inconvenience this company has caused me by their incompetence and forgetfulness and lack of attention to detail; timewise, I would actually have been better off had I not taken my drives to be checked at all.

I have a dump of all the data on my hard drive, but there's so much and it's so raw that it's basically useless. I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to afford to get back some of the stuff on that borked partition, but it'd be nice to at least have the opportunity to get some stuff off the non-borked partition.

Summary: Though everyone I spoke with was unfailingly polite, it was ridiculous that I was strung along for so long and now have another problem to deal with because they forgot to check my computer had everything it came in with. If I do ever get the bags of money needed to recover my hard drive, I won't be bringing it to Secure Data Recovery of Boston, because even if they were to competently fix my hard drives, I wouldn't ever be sure of getting them back in a timely fashion.

A friend expressed surprise that I am not planning to stay in Boston. I'm not. I have wanted to be in a home in Indiana since I first visited there in March; I want to go do my masters' in food studies and a PhD in landscape design to build sustainable, food-producing, noninvasive, artistic gardens. I want to do tai chi. I want to birdwatch. I want to start my art company. I want to live somewhere quieter, and greener, and cheaper than Boston, and had been even before I left Boston, as much as I love all my friends here.

It was already time for a change for me before I moved--hence quitting the job and doing an art internship for a month. I was certainly making more progress with my art and cooking and gardening and martial arts and boundaries with my parents--all things that make me happy in and of themselves--in Indiana than I had in Boston in years, despite the fact I was also trying to set up a house and also got quite sick a lot this summer.

In Indiana, I:
Made new kinds of bread and food
Made a great deal of headway on trimming/pruning a neglected garden
Made and submitted a tshirt design for a weekly contest
Wrote four book reviews
Wrote two complete longform poems, and started in again on a work I hadn't looked at since 2007
Took up tai chi again
Deliberately exercised as often as possible to feel good about my own body
Cooked often to be creative, to feel healthy, and to positively take charge of my own diet issues and concerns
Started roughing out applications essays for the food studies program at IU
Learned how to play board and computer games for relaxation with and without friends, without calling myself lazy or feeling guily and without beating myself up when I lost
Wrote text and designed banners for my web store
Began to learn css for my design portfolio
Learned how to use the newest version of iMovie
Started on a webdesign project for my father for my portfolio that I hadn't touched in three months
Started laying aside papers to be scanned or placed into my portfolio/website
Created several sets of notecards with a hand-made stamp of my own design
Designed and sewed a Nintendo DS case
Designed several cellphone charms to sell in my web store
Organized a great deal of my personal paperwork
Found a therapist
Started setting serious boundaries in my relationship with my parents
Started making friends
Decided on a career path and was embarking on creating an income stream from work I genuinely enjoyed
Enjoyed the process of reassessing what I needed from my romantic relationships with both of my partners, and enjoying their own reassessment, though one of those ended abruptly and badly

I think I was able to do all this because I finally felt I had a home, a solid place, physically and in my heart, to reach out from. It turns out that neither those physical or emotional places can be my home anymore now, but that does not mean that I can not and should not make my own--in fact, it is probably the only thing I can and should do right now. In time there will be other physical and emotional places, or maybe some of the old ones differently, with the passage of time and life.

I am planning to use the next few months to find a job in Indiana, and make a portfolio, and write, and apply for grad school at IU, and do martial arts, and finish my basilisk mask, and go to therapy and get meds, and hang out with people when I want, since that is what I was planning on doing anyway. It has been going slowly due to mourning and computer issues, but I am working on those as best I can.

I was not planning on looking for an apartment and packing and moving, and I am not looking forward to doing those things so soon after having just done them--especially since I wanted a vacation this year and both of my vacations were effectively cancelled due to first dire sickness and then breakup, and I did not take a vacation last year either due to cancellation--but if I have to do those unpleasant things in order to do the other things where I want, I think I can forego a vacation.

I am moving back to Boston. Probably in August but prossibly earlier.

Q: Why Boston?
A: I am moving back to Boston, rather than elsewhere, because I already have people I care about there, and activities I care about and can get back into. I also have a therapist who I was already working with. These were the main reasons I chose Boston; it wasn't for the cheap rent. I had hoped to go elsewhere, and was thinking about it (I had been excited about leaving for somewhere else I'd never been to remake my life), but once I realized I wouldn't have to go through the work of finding a therapist I trusted again, Boston was the clear best choice. People in Boston: I hope to see more of you all soon. I expect that our relationships will be somewhat the same as a month ago, and somewhat different.

Q: Why Moving?
A: rax wasn't sure if she wanted me to move to Bloomington in the first place, but I didn't find that out until two days before the move, largely because that was when she realized it. We decided to move anyway, partly because I had plans here of my own and partly because of the dismal timing of her announcement, and mostly because we decided that if what I was having problems with was "working and having a relationship at the same time," it would not make sense to just concentrate on one or the other; what I needed was both, and time. We agreed that we would try and work on our relationship together after we moved.

Things have been vastly better for me personally since moving here and getting a little time to breathe, and getting out of some of the patterns and roles I had accidentally put myself in, but they have not gotten better enough for her to feel comfortable living here with me. Besides not knowing if she wanted to move, rax realized two weeks after moving here that she doesn't know if she wants to marry me, and doesn't know if she wants to marry anyone in particular, ever. So she is also under a lot of introspection and stress, and the fact that I am trying to work through our relationship now as-is with all my issues isn't helping her make up her mind about anything else she has been thinking about.

We are currently still engaged and currently still interested in remaining in a relationship.

Q: Why August?
A: rax and I were planning on being in Boston at that time anyway for some mutual friends' weddings. I may go earlier, I may go later.

Q: What happened to your relationship?
A: I am trying hard to recover from abuse in my past--and that's good--but the way in which I am doing that has been actively damaging to me and to her. I have been using her to try and heal from something that she can't heal me from. It has hurt me, and hurt her, and I have been using our relationship to hurt myself emotionally (which is, of course, also hurting her). So I need to get some space and fix my head.

Q: What is going to happen to your relationship?
A: We are going to continue to have a relationship and try to be together long-distance. We don't know if it's going to work out, but we are hoping it will. The plan is to visit a few times, and talk on the phone and try and figure out how things are going. Eventually, if it is getting better, then we are going to try living together in Indiana again at some point in the future. I am scared about having a long-distance relationship--my last serious long-distance relationship left too much room for me to misunderstand the other person and too much room for me to misunderstand myself and my commitment--but I think I have learned something since then.

Q: Is anyone else moving?
A: I am taking my gecko back to Boston, but leaving Oolong here with Rachel. The move was stressful enough on the cats last time, and we both think that separating them again is going to do more harm than good. It will also be vastly easier for me to find an apartment if the only pet I have lives in a tank.

Q: Can I help you or Rachel?
A: If anyone has any job or pet-friendly apartment leads in the Boston area, hopefully in reach of public transport since I will not have a car, please let me know.

Q: What now?
A: Now I am going to bed because I was up until 4 last night, worrying that something like this might happen. In two weeks I am going to visit lotusbiosm, seishonagon, thespooniest, angstnokami, and B. in Virginia.

Q: Is this what you want?
A: No. I want to stay in Indiana and try and work this out. I just unpacked my office last week. I spent 3 hours hanging up the awesome new projector system for the Wii. I was looking forward to hanging a feeder for hummingbirds in July and August.

Q: Do you think it is a good idea for you to stay in Indiana?
A: Not at this time, if rax and I want to save our relationship, which we do.

Q: How are you feeling?
A:
...Discouraged.
...Like I can't believe I have to pack again.
...Confused.
...Frustrated that I cannot just go live with previous housemates.
...Like I am not looking forward to that drive.
...Worried about money.
...Guilty.
...Slow to change in a meaningful way.
...Hoping that therapy will actually do something this time.
...Terrified.
...Sad
...I miss my cat already.
...Boston is probably going to seem noisier and more dirty than normal to me this summer.
...Worried that the friendships I have in Boston are going to crumble under the stress I will be coming back into them with.
...Excited that there is something concrete I can do to try and fix my and rax's relationship instead of trying to throw myself at things to see what sticks.
...Hopeful that rax, once she has some breathing room, also finds that there is something she can do to fix our relationship.
...Thrilled that I might have the ability to try going on medications for the first time ever.
...Happy about being able to intern at the maskmaking workshop again in my spare time.
...Excited that there may come a time when rax and I want to be in the same room together again.
.................Generally exhausted.

Sympathy is ok, although arguably of limited utility at this juncture; sniping will be discouraged.

Things to do before moving back to Boston:

Find apartment/roommates
Find job
Get bedframe + mattress
Packing
Pack Truck
Laundry
get warmpacks for Tokai
Send out email/LJ announcement with new address
Change of Address
Go to Bank
Charge Phone, iPod, computer
Water plants
Go to pet store to buy gecko food for first week in house

Things to do after moving:

Bring boxes into house
Return moving truck
Set up gecko area
Setup bed
Sleep
Eat
Finish last part of rushthatspeaks' origami mobile
Call parents/email friends to let them know I am alive
Water plants
Find new vet for Tokai, transfer records
Change voter registration back again
Change addresses for companies, gov't. again
Unpack
Transfer old computer to new computer
Changes of Address for memberships, college again, email flyers, amazon, etc.
Reregister for Boston museum email newsletters
403(b) paperwork
Bryn Mawr Boston Membership Cards
Redo resume
Put 5 layers of paper mache on basilisk mask so I can release mold & give back underlying layer to E.
Do business cards
Setup my website with resume, portfolio of artworks/design
Setup dad's website
Paint mask
Return mask head to E.
Start doing taichi in the morning
Setup appointment with old therapist
Find new church
Visit bike mechanic
Get haircut if I can afford it
Finish last part of rushthatspeaks' origami mobile