Love, Justine

WOMEN’S CENTER

April 23rd, 2018

Monday

Day 294

8am

I go to both of my therapists today–one in Smethport and one in Wellsboro. Five hours in the car–yay. On the bright side, I do get out of the Center for a while–most of the day. Sometimes it’s exhausting to be here. It makes me just want to sleep–which is not allowed except sometimes on the weekend when Big isn’t here. 

It’s nice and sunshiney out today–I wonder if it will warm up. Yesterday was beautiful. I even wore a dress. I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here, eve if it is to go on house arrest. 

I can’t fucking wait.

The two new women seem to be adjusting well. Loreen has been asking to apply for senior resident, but Big hasn’t given her an application. I have to ask him what’s going to happen to me if I don’t get early release–will I go to rehab?

I asked–he said no, I would just stay here until July. 

Fucking great.

So then I asked him if I could call the Courthouse and he said I’d have to ask the Big Boss, who is never, ever around. Yesterday my Dad asked me how the college thing was going, and I had to tell him that no one ever got back to me about sponsorship for my scholarship–not even the Presbyterian Church.

11:30am

Therapy over.

We talked about my feelings of self-worth (or worthlessness, really) related to Mr. Big. He just strikes a negative chord with me and I can’t seem to shake it. I’ve had a very hard month. I need to tell myself that I AM important, and I’m not small with a meaningless life.

I’m just sad.

Depressed, even.

I think I’m going to change into a dress when I get back to the Center–maybe that will help me feel better. It’s artificial and shallow, but sometimes it helps to look nice.
Great. 

We’re going into Roulette.

That always makes me sad because it’s where Tiger lives with her Dad. 

We picked up a guy that probably weighs 400lbs. With him and the driver and me, it probably adds over 800lbs to this van. 

Of course. 

We drove right by Dubya’s house.

Now Joan Osbourne is crooning, “What if God Was One of Us?” on the radio.

Where we stopped to let him out, they had a sign in the garden that said, “GROW, Dammit.”

Funny.

Every time I look at Dubya’s house I think of Lilly saying, “Daddy and Macy don’t like each other, but they got married anyway.”

God. 

Now on the radio is, “Heaven is a Place On Earth.”

I sure hope not.

I told Big the other day that I didn’t believe in Heaven and an afterlife for my children, I would put a bullet in my head.

No joke.

I have to believe that I’ll see my babies again. 

Have to.

Maybe I won’t have time to change. It’s already noon and we’re not even in Coudersport.

When I think about Dubya sometimes, I think about how crazy in love we were. We loved each other so much that it ruined him when I left.

I couldn’t stay any longer.

He became the cynical, nasty, judgmental person that he is today. 

Now on the radio is, “It must have been love, but it’s over now…”

God, are you stalking me again?

Now we’re in Coudersport. The river is beautiful and sparkly reflecting the sun. Now we get to pass the road my other two kids live on. 

God. 

I’m so sad.

Two more months at the Center. 

I don’t know if I can do it.

I guess I don’t have a choice.

I was so hopeful about getting early release.

Now, nothing.

No hope left.

I figured if they let Pink out early, they would do it for anybody. But this is me we’re talking about. Me with the worst reputation and luck ever. 

Great.

Now a cop car is following us. The driver just yelled, “I am not in the mood for it today!” at the cop.

Oh, good. He turned. It was probably Copperhead Collins, the guy who arrested me. 

Fucking douchebag snake anyway.

Anyway, they probably wouldn’t let me out early anyway because I’m on Restriction. Of course Pink got FIRED and they didn’t put her on Restriction. I just quit. Fuck them anyway. I have to stop thinking about it or I’ll get super pissed.

I matter. 

I am important, no matter how people treat me.

 I matter. 

I have to learn how to be good to myself. That’s what my therapist says, anyway. I wonder what my other therapist will say this afternoon. 

We just passed a flag flying at half-mast. I wonder what that’s for. All I know that’s special about today is that it’s one of my former best friends’ birthday, and it’s National Picnic Day. 

Kind of muddy and soggy for a picnic. Now we’re in Gold. I’m nauseated from writing in the back seat. 

Tomorrow I get to go to Pittsburgh and relive all of those memories from The Glory Days of my life. It’ll probably make me even sadder. 

God. 

Will my life ever get better?

Must stop writing or I’m going to puke cinnamon flavored coffee all over this van.

12:20pm

Almost there.

The CDC just warned everybody to avoid all Romaine lettuce because it might be contaminated with E. Coli. 

Ew.

One of my favorite songs is on the radio: “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down” by Fallout Boy. 

We’re here. 

Finally.

It smells like farts in here.

1:30pm

Now Tori and I are off to Wellsboro. Tori says she has a stretch mark on her vagina. How do you gain weight in your vagina? She also says she has butt stretch marks from her butthole out like rays of sunshine.

Super funny.

2pm

Huh.

Putting on a dress and talking to Tori really helped my mood. She’s hilarious in a self-deprecating way, which I appreciate. She makes people feel comfortable and forget their woes for a while. I love her. She really is a wonderful person, brilliant and generous, kind and funny. I don’t know about romantic love for her, though.

10pm

Hm.

Hard, long day. Will have to write about it tomorrow because it’s lights out. Called my ex-brother-in-law and found out my sister is having a bipolar depressive episode right now. I prayed for her. I don’t know what else to do. By the sounds of it she needs to be hospitalized. 

Hm.

More tomorrow.

1:40am

Can’t sleep. Worried about Justme. I guess I’ll clean my room.

Well, that didn’t work. I found an Inc. magazine that grabbed my attention. Its cover says “Rising Stars, Overachieving and Under 30.”

Well, that’s a must-read.

I don’t have any idea how I started getting this magazine, but I like it. Me time. 

WTF. 

Pittsburgh was the No. 1 city in the U.S. for job openings in 2017. 

It’s no wonder I love that city so much.

“You need to know your most passionate, best employees who are going to come up with new ideas for your company, because those extremers in your business are the ones who live it, breathe it, can’t stop thinking about it, who are going to find the next realm of where you should be going.”

–Sarah Robb O’Hagan, CEO of Flywheel

This is how I was when I lived in Pittsburgh. Always throwing myself into the work, work, work, work, because I knew I was making a difference in the lives of animals and their owners every day. I was a technician, an educator, a manager, I did everything. And I did it to the very best of my ability. That was me 15 years ago. And that’s what Big reminds me of.

Wow–new word I didn’t know: Permanxiety (noun): “A near constant state” of unease, travelers feel from “terrorism, security, neo-isolationism, racial tension, Trumpism…the widening economic gap, culture wars, climate change”

–Source: Skift

OMG and here’s an adjective for you:

“Too Big To Tax,” which means: “Various tax credits and tax breaks” meant Amazon made $5.6 billion in 2017 but paid no federal tax. 

Unbelievable.

Unrelated: 

Jeff Bezos became the first human worth more than $100 billion. 

Source: The New Republic.

Sickening.

Blech.

In other news:

Martha Stewart only sleeps four hours per night. Jeff Bezos sleeps eight. A survey by the authors of the upcoming book “My Morning Routine,” Benjamin Spall and Michael Xander, found that 85% of business founders slept more than seven hours per night.

Hm.

Wow. This 25 year old woman, Leigh-Kathryn Bonner, in N.C. founded a company called Bee Downtown, where they install honeybee hives on companies’ property. 

Cool.

She says that bees are a gateway “to get people excited about agriculture and sustainability.”

COOL.

And way to go, her!

What an idea!

Nice. 

The next business in their “Rising Stars” article is No Cow by Daniel Katz, which sells low-sugar and dairy-free protein bars, cookies, and nut butters.

Omg. 

Thinking sustainably is catching on. My mind is blown.

Wow.

This next one, by Adelle Archer, 27–I have to copy the entire thing.

It says:

ETERNEVA–Remembering Loved Ones

More Americans are opting for cremation in 2015, for the first time cremations outnumbered burials. With Eterneva, Adelle Archer turns those ashes into diamonds. Human remains contain carbon; Eterneva takes some of those ashes and, along with an industrial diamond lab in Amsterdam and cutters in Antwerp, turns them into jewelry. Customers choose design, color, and weight to commemorate their loved one; a 0.5-carat diamond costs about $7,000. The company stays in close contact with the families during the eight-month production process and, whenever possible, hand delivers the finished product. Archer conceived the idea after her mentor died in 2015. She seeks to change our relationship with loss–and help eternalize loved ones. “A diamond lasts more than a single generation,” Archer says. “An urn of ashes won’t.” –Kevin J. Ryan

Super awesome.

The next company creates personalized skin care regimens. Called Helloava By Siqi Mou, 28

The next one is called Naturall Club and was founded by Muhga Eltigani, 26. She makes all natural hair care products. 

Next up, a statistic: White men hold more than two out of every three seats on the boards of Fortune 500 companies.

Oh, cool. The next article is called Wellness Works, and is about promoting a healthy lifestyle in the office. 

This company called Drizly offers cycling, yoga, and boxing sessions both at studios and on-site, and has fresh food delivered to the office for their employees! Now THEY are onto something. They say, “We want to empower our employees to create their own fitness and health promoting activities, which helps create a culture of wellness at Drizly.” The article goes on to say that “there is plenty of data connecting wellness at work with better corporate performance.” 

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, MedPlast.

The annual cost of work-related stress in the U.S., according to the American Institute of Stress (I wonder what kind of wellness program THEIR employees get!) is $300 billion.

Keith P. Mankin, whose All Peer Consulting, in Dallas, develops wellness programs for small businesses, says “even modest perks, like a 10-minute chair massage, show that you care about employee well-being.”

Another quote: “If you’re keen on helping employees reduce stress, ongoing research increasingly demonstrates the physical and mental health benefits of meditation.”

“Thriving is about creating a culture that promotes succeeding at life as well as at work.” Renee Moorefield, Global Wellness Institute

Aw, this next article is called “Why, Grandmother, What a Cool Robot You Have.”

Stat: “Half of adults over 65 who live independently report feeling excessively lonely, and more than a third say they see only one other person in a typical week.”

That’s terribly sad.

So they came up with ElliQ, a “social robot” from Intuition Robotics, which is based in Jerusalem. ElliQ responds to voice commands, and reads its users their emails and text messages, displays new photos and videos sent by family members, and reminds them of things like doctor’s appointments and when to take medications.

Wow. Minimum wage in Massachusetts is $11/hr.

Children’s Bill of Rights

As they proceed with the process of dissolving their adult relationship, both parents recognize and acknowledge the following minimum rights of their children:

1. Right to a continuing relationship with both parents.
2. Right to be treated as an important human being with unique feelings, ideas and desires.
3. Right to continuing care and guidance from both parents.
4. Right to know and appreciate what is good in each parent without one parent degrading the other.
5. Right to express love, affection, and respect for each parent without having to suppress that love because of fear of disapproval by the other parent.
6. Right to know that the parents’ decision to live separately was not the responsibility of the child.
7. Right not to be a source of argument between the parents.
8. Right to honest answers to questions about the changing family relationships.
9. Right to be able to experience regular and consistent contact with both parents and to know the reason for cancellation of time of change of plans.
10. Right to have a relaxed, secure relationship with both parents without being placed in a position to manipulate one parent against the other.