Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

A Stranger in a Madhouse

I fucking hate getting up around this time. (You would not fucking believe how much I fucking hate getting up around this fucking time.)

My mornings aren't static, but they ARE routine. I get up, have a piss, put the kettle on, say good morning to Choney (and let her out of the cage), turn on my computer, make my tea and sit down to work for several hours. I go from "fast asleep" to "hard at work" in roughly seven steps. It's a system a decade in the making, it's a system that works.

(Aries love spontaneity, but an autistic Aries loves spontaneity carefully penciled into a trusted, familiar routine.)

My daily motions might be habitual, but WHEN I execute those habitual activities changes day to day. Look, I'm a glorified housewife, and even when I wasn't preoccupied with this Cinderella gig my career allowed me to work at home. Time, dates and days mean(t) nothing to me - I'm not obligated to keep appointments so I'm not obligated to keep a schedule. (<- At least once a week I forget what day it is, which then requires a quick computer check so I can pretend I'm part of normal human society.)

It's a strange and occasionally lonely existence (even when sharing it with a partner). There are periods in summer where I don't see any darkness for weeks, and then there are periods in winter where I don't see any light for weeks. For several weeks we'll both be up during the day, for the next several weeks we'll both be up during the night.

We aren't nocturnal, but we aren't diurnal either. Italics and I somehow slipped through the cracks and we now exist in a bizarre limbo following a strange circadian pattern I haven't yet worked out. Almost every day we stay up a few hours longer than the day before, which inevitably means we'll wake up several hours later than the previous day. And on and on it goes, like clockwork, like it has for the past twelve or so years.

There are inherent problems with a free flowing sleep cycle. The world doesn't start and stop for you, especially when you're really fucking removed from any sort of 24 hour culture. Shops in town close around 5:00 PM, restaurants take their last orders around 9:30 PM, the last movie usually begins around 9:10 PM and grocery stores close anywhere from 8-11 PM.

None of that sounds like a big deal until you've only just started your day and run out of milk, or toilet paper, or whatever and it's 1 AM. You have no choice but to wait. None of that sounds like a big deal until you're so fucking cabin fever-y that retaining any semblance of sanity requires an immediate change of scenery (OR ELSE) but there's no where to go, and nothing to do, for another twelve hours. You have no choice but to wait.

None of that sounds like a big deal until you haven't seen the sun - or even natural fucking light - for three weeks and you begin feeling like a shell of a person, a ghost haunting a fucking house it can't ever escape, forced to live the same day over and over and over again without a moment's respite. Even then, you have no choice but to wait.

(There's a lot of waiting involved when you're in nocturnal mode and live in the middle of rural Scotland where the only thing opened 24 hours is a dinky ass gas station five miles away.)

By this point in our lives our sleeping schedules are no longer a choice. The slow, but steady, constant push forward is so heavily engrained into living that we can't untangle ourselves from it. (I've tried; it just doesn't work.) It's hard during winter (really fucking hard during winter), but it's even HARDER sharing the house with people who live by hours, days, dates and time.

Maybe it'd be easier if we were offered the same courtesy we extend to them when they're sleeping/working, but I haven't had enough experience with them reciprocating the favor to make any sort of conclusion. It's just...they're loud human beings. Really, really fucking loud human beings who leave you mystified and angry as to how a pair of 50+ year old adults can be, by default, that fucking loud.

(IT'S. NOT. NATURAL.)

They stomp from room to room. They slam doors shut (even the washing machine, even the dishwasher, even the microwave). They watch TV with the volume blaring and then leave the door to the lounge open when leaving the room so the entire house fills up with noise. Mr. Awesome deliberately stomps his foot on the floor, whistles, claps and shouts for my mother-in-law to get her attention. They shout instead of talk.

I could go on and fucking on, but I won't since you probably get the idea. (I'll deliberately exclude all of the TOTALLY AWESOME SHIT they do when they know we're sleeping - like playing Gloria fucking Estefan on the CD player AS LOUD AS IT'LL FUCKING PLAY.)

(Why is Ms. Graveyard Dirt such a fucking grumpy ass bitch? MAYBE IT HAS TO DO WITH THE FACT THAT SHE GETS WOKEN UP BY THE MOTHERFUCKING CONGA SONG TWO FUCKING HOURS INTO SLEEPING AND THEN HAS TO DEAL WITH HER FATHER-IN-LAW GETTING PISSED //AT HER// FOR COMPLAINING ABOUT BEING WOKEN UP.)

The biggest problem with cohabiting with my in-laws is their inability to appreciate or understand the unique challenges Italics and I face living with them. Like I said earlier, my mornings aren't static, but they are routine. I do the same shit every day, it's just the starting point begins at different times.

Inevitably, my sleeping cycle will unfavorably coincide with my in-laws' scheduled lives which means there's one or two weeks where I get jack shit done because my mornings are their evenings, and all they want to do by that point in their day is eat, be loud, drink (which leads to them being even louder) and watch TV with the volume turned up to full blast. For obvious reasons I don't get a chance to do what I want to do (i.e., work) and by the time they pack up and drag the circus to bed I'm already several hours into my day and need to get on with running a fucking house.

Our office - the computer room - is separated from the communal lounge by a thin ass wall. (How thin ass? So thin ass that part of the wall actually got FILLED IN because, at one point, this room I'm sitting and typing in - which used to be Italics' bedroom - was once the dining room that opened into the lounge.) Everything they do, everything they say is easily heard through the superficial partition.

I hear the talking (which, by natural default, is shouting), the eating, the TV, the drinking, the stomping, the clapping, the whistling, the calling. I hear Mr. Awesome bitching about us, bitching about my mother-in-law to my mother-in-law, bitching about my mother-in-law's work, bitching about other people, bitching about any fucking thing that enters his partially inebriated mind at the time.

I can't work. I can't concentrate. All I can fucking do is feel like a caged fucking animal whose captors are simultaneous shaking and screaming into the cage they've boxed me into. What the fuck am I supposed to do when Italics is asleep (so he can't intervene on my behalf) and they have me frothing at the fucking mouth with all of their unnecessary loud fucking noise when I'm working?

(YOU WANT ME OUT OF YOUR FUCKING HOUSE? THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET ME GET ON WITH MY FUCKING CAREER.)

They aren't my parents, they aren't even blood fucking relations - what right do I have to tell them to give me a fucking break and zip it? I'm not their kid, I don't share chromosomes or DNA with them. All I am is a fucking stranger trying to concentrate in a fucking madhouse that's her home and her workplace.