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Eliza Conquers “Being Essential”

Being Essential in the Time of Covid-19

2 and a half years ago I started a new job as a receptionist for the District office for our local health departments and it turned out to be one of the most stress free jobs I’ve ever had. There wasn’t much to do some days so I was literally trying to find things to do. This job was great for my then fragile mental health. I was recovering from a year of crippling depression. 6 months ago, I decided to apply for a job as a grocery store clerk. It was a straightforward easy but labor intensive job. I had decided to get this second job as a way to pay off debts and save up money so I could save up money to separate from my husband. Up to a month ago, things were moving forward for the most part. Somehow I managed to balance living with my estranged husband, being a mom to my 3 kids, having 2 jobs, and starting a new relationship with this great guy while still seeing my on and off toxic lover. Life was unconventional but pretty normal for me.
And then the first week of March happened, the first calls from businesses, hospitals, and the general public started coming in inquiring about the Coronavirus. I had no guidance and was unprepared like everyone in my office so we literally had to make it up as we went along. Eventually each week we got better at handling the situation but it was rough as information changed hourly. For three weeks at my first job, I felt like I lived in a sea of confusion and felt completely overwhelmed. I think my greatest fear at that time was that I wouldn’t route a call to the appropriate person and that it would potentially cost someone’s life. It was a heavy burden for me, a receptionist in an administrative office.nehd1
And as this was going on, my second job at the grocery store saw an onslaught of customers on Thursday, March 12. The lines (both the register and the self checkout) were lined up to almost the back of the store. For whatever reason, people thought that toilet paper needed to be bought so that was one of the first things everyone bought and buggies were filled to the rim. It was uber panic buying meets hysteria. And around 7 oclock, things started to calm down. Cashiers and front end managers were catching their breaths, and then the governor announced that schools would be closed for a week…and here comes another rush of panic buyers. For almost 2 weeks, this is what me and my coworkers come into when we work. Trying to keep social distancing surrounded by customers while stocking up empty shelves is basically impossible. The managers and my boss have tried their best to provide support to us while they themselves are also stressed with an ever changing situation in a pandemic one was never prepared for. kro2
In the third week of April, rapid changes are still happening at both my jobs. Next week, my job responsibilities at my first job are changing. And at the second job, masks have become mandatory. This pandemic has not only changed the way everyone lives but also how all of us work. It feels like a dystopian nightmare that I will never wake up from.
As far as family life goes, I almost feel guilty for how financially beneficial this has been for all of us. As an essential worker still earning my wages and bonuses on top of it all, I’ll be so much closer to clearing my debt and saving up to separate from my husband. My children-my oldest got laid off, my middle child who is homeschools-it didn’t affect him much at all…but my little one, my social butterfly-it has affected him tremendously. I hate that I have tried my best to shelter him from trauma and then this pandemic happened. I’m sure though that I’m not the only parent feeling this way. I’ve been pretty good at not seeing any of my friends or extended family except for my toxic lover a few days ago.
This pandemic has brought up a few questions for me:
What is really worth keeping in my life after all of this ?
How do I really want my life to look like once I leave my husband?
Are any of the men in my life worthwhile or should I really strive to be a super independent and feminist woman that just uses men for pleasure after this is all over?
How many therapy sessions will my youngest kid need because of this pandemic?

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Letting Go and Moving Forward-Drunk Edition 2020

It’s really hard to be vulnerable in this space but somehow I feel safe. Maybe it’s the lack of carbs along with almost a bottle of champagne and the almost anonymity. For the first time in a long time, I’m doing pretty good in life. I’m making this busy life of working almost 80 hours a week work for me with 3 kids, a great potential partner, a soon to be ex who’s my best friend/roommate, and the best friends any gal can find. I’m not failing at both of my jobs. In fact, I’m killing it and even had some “unusual” success at my second job. The guy that’s been my in my life for almost the past 4 months, has slowly moved from friendzone to something more last month and well he’s being very patient with my skittish behavior and my busy schedule. The second date and the last time we saw each other, he looked at me like I was magic and to be honest, it scared the shit out of me. So much of me wants to run away because I’ve never encountered someone that just wanted to really know me. Usually dudes, just put up this pretense of wanting to know the “real me” because they really want to be laid by someone “exotic” like me. Even, my soon to be ex husband pulled this trick. Haha. Do I blame them? Nah, It’s human nature to want to get laid, especially for guys. But, “A”, new dude, he’s different. He checks all of my potential great partner boxes and yet, I want to run. Maybe I’m scared of happiness finding me because I know how fleeting it can be.

Which leads me as to why I’m writing this post at midnight while kind of drunk as I listen to the saddest and cheesiest pop songs ( Hello Selena Gomez, Camila Cabello, Adriana Grande and my favorite, Ariana Grande…etc-you get the point-haha). I finally said goodbye tonight to the fuckboi that has been haunting my life for almost 2 years on my own terms. To explain our story, well, you can look back on other posts and angst ridden/love poetry. Two words to describe our long term situationship, intense and toxic. It’s a cliché but I never knew I could feel such intense hate and love for someone until I met him. I was F.Scott and he was my Zelda, my muse, my long term obsession. The last time we had a falling out, he ghosted me for 3 months and you guessed it, he came back the day after I had my second date with “A”. It’s like he senses when I’m happy or almost happy and comes back to cause chaos in my life. And my masochist tendencies went to see him even though I know our story always ends up in devastation for me. And even though, I was angry with him and I hate him, somehow I still wound up in bed with him. I knew that night like I knew the first night I was with him, I love him and part of that is that when I’m with him, he makes me feel like I belong to him. I’ve never felt that with anyone. It’s intoxicating and addictive and hard to give up, obviously.
However, the sex, the chemistry, the love I feel for him will never be enough for us to make things work, for him to change into the partner I deserve. I’ve known this for a while but hung on to hope looking for signs that maybe he would change if I “stayed” long enough tolerating his narcissistic bullshit and the awful way he treated me. It’s amazing how love can make one so foolish and dumb. I recognize and am aware in my own part in this toxic mess we both ended up making for 2 years. And even though I recognize the toxicity of whatever I have/had with him, it’s still hard to let go. It’s hard to let go of the fact that maybe I won’t feel this with anyone else. But then I tell myself, I don’t want to feel like this with anyone else. It’s crazy, toxic, and makes me lose all of my common sense. So tonight after I texted him “Goodbye” for the last time, I allowed myself to drink, have a mini breakdown, and isolate myself from my friends. I’m not even grieving him or the potential of the great love story we could have been, I gave up on that idea a long time ago.

Tonight, I’m allowing myself to just really move forward from him and start a new chapter where he no longer takes up space in my universe. Tonight, I allow myself to feel that I do indeed deserve all of the success professionally I encounter. Tonight, I allow myself to acknowledge that I do deserve someone like “A’ who values me more than just a girl he can fuck. And even if things end with him, I can hold on to the hope that there is someone out there for me that really sees me and believes I am indeed magic. I’m never again settling for kinda half ass effort just because the connection/chemistry is off the charts.

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My Amazing Hero

I think that finding that bright spark in my life has been very hard for me to grasp lately. This week my oldest son D was accepted into a highly competitive academic program in the  high school he will attend in the fall. I am a very proud mama and I have a good reason to be.

D was diagnosed with high functioning Autism at the age of 5 and at the time, he was basically almost non -verbal, extremely behind on academics, and showed no interest in socializing with his peers. As soon as we found out his DX, the school placed him in a special education self contained classroom with a multitude of therapists and teachers to help him. All expectations and hopes I had for him before the DX were dashed away and I honestly just wanted one thing for him : for him to be happy. scan0022 (2)    I did mourn for a while for “the child” that I had lost and this did blind me for a while. He was now a child whose future was quite uncertain, a child who most likely would rely on me for the rest of my life, and a child who would not graduate from high and certainly not go on to college. It was an inner conflict within myself and I felt shitty enough not being the best mother to him considering I had him at the age of 17. I was overwhelmed and felt guilty for being so ignorant and young at the time all of this was happening that I also blamed myself for his DX for a long time.  I had already felt like my poor child had so many obstacles stacked against him when he was born into a family with no father and an immature single teen mom, now this, Autism. Sigh.

So how did I tackle this: I educated myself.I read a ton of books- a year before his DX and continued to read the books and articles after. I had to learn to advocate for him and keep in constant contact with his therapists and teachers. I was that mom and continue to be that mom that teachers dread with my emails about what might seem minor questions and issues. The most important thing I did was: I had to learn to believe in him and his potential. I had to believe that my little boy would one day learn how read, do simple math, verbally tell me he had to use the bathroom (instead of grunting and stomping his feet), and just really talk to me instead of giving me two word responses and phrases. At the beginning of the journey, I told myself, that if he could just do those simple things, we would be okay and if he didn’t , then I would have to accept it and love him no matter what.
So with the support and help of family, therapists, and teachers, D just really blossomed throughout the years. The first 3 years were tough. I felt like we would finally reach him and we would finally get him to a point that he was functioning well,then something would happen and he would regress. Excuse the cliche but it was truly, one small step forward, and two huge steps backward. To say that it was frustrating would be an understatement. To be honest, I wanted to give up sometimes but I didn’t.     wpid-PicsArt_1362107779516.jpg

I always remember the day that I knew I could have expectations of him having a semi-normal life and it took his special education teacher to show me. It was during an IEP meeting for third grade and it hadn’t been a particularly good year for him but she turned to me and said, “You know, one day in the near future, it will just all click for him” . And sure enough, the following year, he really blossomed. It was all about these incredibly miniscule steps that built up over time.Eventually he went from his special education classroom in Kindergarten to a co taught classroom in fourth grade to advance/regular classes in Seventh grade. He went from several therapists and resource personnel to just a case manager on a monthly consult basis. His IEP went from 30 pages long focused on basic communication/academics to just a 3 pages long that focus mainly on socialization and independence.

Getting to this point with him hasn’t been easy but it has been well worth it. IMG_0624

So while the idea of starting a new blog before seemed awesome, it quite wasn’t the case while trying to move and start a new life somewhere else with my family. Just a quick update on me:
I went from unemployed in December 2011 to employed with another state agency in March 2012. At first I was like happy, kind of smug feeling

Happy/Smugthat I had not only secured with a state agency but I was going to get paid more and actually use my B.A as a Family Independence Case Manager (AKA Food Stamp and Medicaid Caseworker). I had my own office and training was basically a breeze. However, when training ended, I found out they had other plans for me. So now, as of Feb 2013, I feel kind of like this IMG_1585 you know unhappy, kind of dreading to go to work every day, having a breakdown on a weekly kind of basis.  By the way, the model in both pics is my now 19 month old son. Figured, I would make use of his expressions to express how I feel about my job while updating everyone (all probably 2 of my readers on his looks). Getting back to my unhappy feelings about my job: Reason #1-I have been placed on the front desk as what I feel is a glorified receptionist. I basically get the brunt of all the frustrations the clients feel as well other bureaucratic bullshit the higher ups hand out to us (especially since we are going live with a new business process model-later on in March). Reason#2- Flexibility from this job is basically gone thanks again to the new business process model. Apparently, if the higher ups thought we were thoughtless robots on an assembly line before then it rings even more true now! When I first got this job, I was encouraged to create my own schedule so I was super-excited to work from 8:00am to 4:30pm. Well, this is no more an option. I now either work from 7:30am to 4:30pm or 8:00 am to 5:00pm and I am literally forced to take an hour lunch. Forget that maybe your child has an activity after school or maybe you want to take an extra 30 minutes one day during the week for a much needed counseling session. You are basically a slave to either one of those time slots and this is more so if you are at the front desk where coverage for you is basically non existent at times.

I could go and list more reasons as to why I detest job but I will leave it at that for now. Moving forward, I have decided to look for another job and concentrate more of my energy in bettering myself and family and once again really rejecting stagnation instead of letting another year of living in mediocrity pass me by.

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A new life….

So it’s official, we are now residents of Gainesville and have left Athens behind. The move was rough to say the least, especially with 3 kids, no childcare for them, and hardly any help from Big T’s family. My best friend and family helped and I was pretty damn grateful for that. Leaving Athens saddens me to a point that I feel like I am mourning the life I wanted to have there. Athens is so rich in culture and is so unique whereas Gainesville is well in my opinion-normal, ordinary. I know that there was no other way to move forward with our life. It just sucks because in Athens, I felt more like me and not some stereotypical person people think I am when they look at me in Gainesville. I know that most of it is in my head and maybe I’m allowing the ignorant and bad experiences in Gainesville rule over head and my heart at this time.

The kids are finally enrolled in school and had a great first day. D’s bus driver was the same one he had when he went to elementary school here.

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Hola/Hello

So let me introduce myself. My name is Patty Tacuri and I am a married mother of three boys ages 13, 6, and 5 months old. My world is in complete chaos right now due to a recent turn of events. To try explain it all in one blog would be exhausting for me and the reader. So post by post I will reveal a little about my world. Right now we are in the middle of packing up our stuff to move in with my parents in another city. Who says you can’t go home again at age 30?Lol. The major reason we are moving in with my parents: The weekend before Halloween ,our house was broken into while we were out of town. They had broken the glass in the carport door and also broke the kitchen door. They tossed our place looking for valuables and took all our video game consoles, my laptop, my 6-year-old son’s piggy and both of my sons’ backpacks to tote the stuff in. Those material things though aren’t as important as what they ultimately took: Sleepless nights, tranquility, security, and privacy. Every time we leave the house as a family, I get into panic mode thinking that when we come back, we’ll come back once more to broken glass. This affected our two oldest children in a dramatic way as well. My teenager is scared when my husband leaves the house because he thinks the bad guys will come back and I won’t be able to defend him. My six-year-old still has nightmares. Staying in this house is not an option at all. if I want to remain sane and help my children start to heal emotionally. So about 3 weeks ago, I did the unthinkable and quit the stable government job I have (6 days left) after my husband and I decided to move in with my parents. I’m in for the most chaotic weeks for 2011 as I prepare for a new beginning with my family.