Another Day

A new day.  Still the same old shit.  I’ve spent the last 3 days feeling nauseous and crying off and on.  My sleep habits are once again out of whack.  I’m not sure what time I fell asleep on Saturday night; I don’t think it was too terribly early.  Nonetheless I woke up at 4:15 on Sunday morning.  Couldn’t go back to sleep.  I didn’t go to bed until after midnight last night and I was up around 5:15.

I’ve been trying to be proactive and looking up potential schools in the new area.  It is turning around and biting me in the ass, along with depressing me.  My first choice is the school that most people are flocking to.  Unfortunately, when I went to look at enrollment forms they clearly stated that they were no longer taking out of district students.  We would be out of district.  Strike one.  My second choice is my old high school which now offers an IB program.  I found out that there are only 75 slots for the entire school district and they are picked by lottery.  I am fairly certain that there are no more slots available since it is the end of the school year and this would have been done earlier in the year.  Strike two.  The third potential was a private Catholic high school.  My mom suggested that one since they take school vouchers.  Yeah, I don’t really qualify because even though my old high school seems to be a fairly shitty school now unless you’re in the IB program, it’s not rated F.  So, no voucher and the financial aid forms were all due by February 28th.  Strike three.  My daughter is going from a rural 3A school where she’s a very big fish in a fairly small pond to, what is described as, an inner-city school with a student body population of 1800.  Current high school?  Just under 1100.  Probably future high school has a math proficiency rating of 33 or 37%.  English proficiency rate is 51%.  Hey, who needs a good foundation in math and english, right?  Current high school?  Both are low 90s.  That sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?  I researched the public high school closest to where we would be living and it’s even worse.  Hey, who needs a decent education, right?

I told my brother CF managed to kill her gymnastics scholarship hopes.  Now he was going to kill her cheerleading scholarship hopes.  Why doesn’t he just give her a traumatic brain injury and kill any chance for an academic scholarship as well, I wondered.  Looks like the brain injury isn’t needed!  He will settle for a subpar education instead.

As an added bonus, cheerleading tryouts have already been held for fall sideline cheer.  Even better, there are summer reading lists for any of the honors classes there and she already has a summer project for AP history class here.

I saw a comment a few months ago that said something like this:  You can’t look at your marriage as a waste of all of those years.  It was a chapter in your life- a long chapter, but a chapter nonetheless.  I try very hard to look at it that way.  That I didn’t waste 21 years with an asshole.  These past few days have made that extremely difficult.

I suppose part of that is because I don’t see a happy ending in my future.  I don’t look ahead two or three years and think, “Oh, maybe I’ll be with the love of my life and this was just the journey I had to take to get there.  I’ll have a fantastic, fulfilling, well-paying job and my kids will be deliriously happy and believe that moving yet again was the best thing that ever happened!”  No, I look at my life in two to three years and I see myself alone, living with my mother, not even having a bedroom of my own.  I’m working one, probably two, menial paying jobs and STILL I have nothing because that piece of shit I married is circling the drain and contributes nothing.  My daughter is miserable.  She’ll end up on drugs because she has no life and no friends at her new school  She can’t afford to go to college (plus she’s on drugs).  With the shit school I’m going to be forced to send her to she may not even graduate from high school! And even if she does all the colleges will say, “Oh, we don’t take diplomas from that place; we know what a shithole it is.”  At least I have higher hopes for Picasso.  He doesn’t really like it here although as I’ve said before he is starting to fit in more and become more involved finally.  So glad I pushed him into that!  Now he has something to lose, too.

Years ago when we were still moving about every 2 and a half years or so a man I met told me he was given advice from his boss when he, too, was moving around a lot.  He said, “Lay down roots wherever you are and however long you’ll be there.”  I followed that advice and now I have to wonder, “What’s the point?”  It just makes it hurt that much more when you are forced to leave.  I don’t give a shit about this town.  I have very few friends here.  That’s not to say that people aren’t nice to me.  I go to coffee with two different people every now and then.  I go to church with another person and we often interact because our daughters are friends.  But I doubt there’s anyone here that I will stay in touch with when we leave.  No, I don’t want to leave because I know how much it’s going to affect my child.

She has a whole new set of friends after being forced to leave behind, what was to her, her lifelong friends and teammates.  She has a whole new life that she is going to be forced to leave behind and there is no way to pick it back up when we move in with my mom.  It’s just over.  She won’t be involved at school any longer- cheer tryouts are over and there is no gymnastics team.  No one will know her name.  She won’t know the teachers and what to expect.  There won’t be friends.  She’s going to have to start all over- again.  I’m about at the point where I’m not even going to bother with having her go to a regular high school.  Just take online school, kid, because the way the last four years of your schooling is going something’s going to happen next year, too.  May as well not even bother.  Year 1 of the last 4- we move 2000 miles away from everyone she really remembers and force her to start all over, leaving behind competitive gymnastics and her long time teammates.  All for the fake promise of a new and better life.  Year 2 of the last 4- her father fucks around on me and she finds out we’re getting a divorce; at the time I tell her I have no idea what’s going to happen with school and moving.  Year 3 of the last 4- her douchebag dad loses his job and tells me no more money is coming my way.  Chances are excellent I will be pulling her once again and forcing her to leave behind her new life to start all over- again.  In a shitty school.  With shitty students.  And a shitty mom working a shitty job and having a shitty attitude because I can’t afford fucking name brand peanut butter for my kids.

I thought making friends when you were new in high school might be tough.  These other kids  had 9 years together.  Relationships were formed and solid.  It’s hard for newcomers to break through.  I also kept in mind she was transferring to a small school which meant they probably didn’t get a lot of new students.  That could (and did) work in her favor.  Plus, with the school being relatively small it was easy to get involved.  If you try out for a team you generally make it unless you’re awful.  I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like trying to break into a new group of friends when you’re coming in for the last two years.  I honestly don’t see her getting involved.  Even here she refused to try out for the soccer or volleyball teams.  The soccer coach has been begging her to join but she’s never played before, and she knew the volleyball team was very good so she didn’t think she would have any chance of making it.  She’s not tall enough for basketball and she doesn’t like to run so that eliminates track.  She could possibly do swimming and diving, but again, here she had no interest and I highly doubt she’s going to be interested after I make her move 600 miles away.  There is a golf team and a tennis team but I don’t see her making the cut when she’s trying out for the first time as a junior and has never played.

My mother likes to say, “Our family friend told me once that if you’re popular at one school, you’ll be popular at another.”  I don’t buy that.  Oh, don’t get me wrong.  I’ll lie my ass off and blow sunshine up my kid’s ass to make her think everything is going to be peachy keen!  The reality is that girl my mom likes to refer to, who transferred in as a senior and was named Homecoming Queen a few months later, transferred into a small school.  I don’t think it had even 200 students total.  She became a big fish in a small pond.  That’s not what my daughter is going into.  She’s a small fish going into a big pond that’s filled with shit after coming from a clean, small pond where she was among the most beautiful of the koi fish.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I know.  I have to do what’s best for ME.  Gosh, I sound like her dad now.  I can’t go broke trying to keep us here just because she’s having a great high school experience.  If a shitty high school experience is what keeps us afloat then, oh well.  Sorry kid!  I could possibly wait out a foreclosure and buy her an extra year, but that’s not for certain.  And then she’s moving her senior year.

Again, I know that high school should not be the pinnacle of your life.  It should be fun, though.  My poor kid just keeps getting shit on from every direction.  No stability.  Changing schools every two years after a life of relative ease and privilege.  She thought she had rebuilt a life for herself.  I suppose she did; however, it is once again going to be dismantled and I don’t think she’s going to be able to build it back up again.

She’s off to church camp with her youth group and groups from several other area churches.  Her bff and former teammate flew out and surprised her last Monday.  She’s going back home today but last night several of Rock Star’s friends came over to hang with her friend.  She was going through old videos to show them what Rock Star used to do in competition and they were talking about how they wanted to go to the meets next year so they could watch Rock Star.  One of them said, “I’ve heard she’s exceptionally good.”  I wanted to cry because the reality is she’s probably not going to be here.  She was supposed to be team captain and they are losing her.  She will be devastated.

While they were scrolling through videos I was looking, too.  I went through my timeline and saw all the various pictures of her- smiling and cheering at games, at cheer competitions, pictures and videos of high school gymnastics, awards ceremonies, Powder Puff, dressing up for Halloween, Homecoming…  It’s all so sad.

There is a debate going on once again about infidelity on the board that I talked about a few days ago.  The question is whether or not you would end a friendship.  So many of them, even those who have been cheated on, say it’s between two consenting adults.  Yeah, tell that to my kids who will have been uprooted twice now, in two years.  Tell that to my kids who are once again losing everything and will have to start over.  Tell that to my kids who have been promised the world and are now finding out their dad is reneging on that promise. Tell that to my kids who have watched their father walk away, move out of state, and never say a word to them.  Tell that to my kids who know their father is playing Daddy of the Year to the whore’s kids while abandoning his own.  Two consenting adults, my ass.  It may begin with those two deceitful, lying cheaters but I assure you, they end up involving a whole hell of a lot more people in their mess.