Thursday, December 30, 2010

today is not a happy day...

I am incredibly irritable today.

There are probably a lot of reasons why.

R contacted me a few days ago.  Apparently he still loves me, and still thinks about me all of the time, and he hates himself for killing the relationship that we had, and he wishes he could prove himself to me, that we could be happy again.

I told him that there will never be a him and I again, because there will always be an H and him... and a him and every other girl.

He told me that he hates her and that she's ruining his life and that he thinks she's a dirty whore and that he wants to rid his life of her... but I've heard it all before.  He's a compulsive liar who lies to get what he wants, and she's just as bad as him.  He tried to tell me he rarely talks to her, which I know is a complete lie.

Anyways, so... there has been talking going on there, which has made me upset, and I broke down and cried for half an hour today because of it, and then ended up falling asleep for two hours.  Now I have a tummy ache.

I love napping, but I get sick from it.  I get the worst stomach aches as a result of it.

also, I just want to take a hot shower and go to bed, but, oh!  Lucky me, there's no effing hot water in my apartment, and the floor heating isn't working again.

Please, will someone make Korea work properly again, I can't handle this crap.  I live in apartment, I should have hot water and working ondol!

Please, can I just go back to my parents' house now?

Also, it is snowing.  My house is cold, I have no hot water to take a shower, R won't go away, and it is snowing.

Ugh.

I want to curl up and die.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

my korean hair chronicles...

I have changed my hair about 75 times in the past month.  Mostly because, I can't actually do interesting things with my hair here, like I would in Canada.

So, without further ado...

My hair chronicles:

Right before leaving for Korea, I had blue hair.  I miss my blue hair a lot, and it will probably be blue again at some point in time in the future.  I had to dye my hair "normal" to get a job.  I look like a mess in this picture because it was my birthday... also, I was a lot fatter than I am now.


I moved to Korea and got a bad haircut.  I then decided that I would attempt to grow out my hair.  My bangs look like a baseball cap, and my camera was shitty quality.


I cut my own bangs, it was probably a mistake.  My nerd glasses are really awesome, though!


The bowl cut incident... who wants arched bangs?  Eff...


My hair is finally long enough for pig tails!  I don't dress like this on normal occasions, this was Halloween.


I finally get a half decent haircut that doesn't look like a bowl is resting on my head.  Thank goodness.  And, despite the fact that it's in the growing out phase, my hair doesn't look so terrible.


This is my toque this winter.  For realsies.  My students love it.


One month ago.  Pre-dye job.  I cut my bangs myself... again... hahaha


The dye job that looked good, and then washed out after two days... professional job my ass.


I was resultantly left with blonde and black.  I don't feel as though I am capable of pulling off blonde in my hair.


And then it got more blonde...


So, last night, I dyed it "red."  Red my ass.  Thanks for nothing, Korean boxed dye.  I'm all blonde and black and orange.  Please excuse the next few photos, I took them today, and I'm not wearing any make-up... nor am I wearing a bra in the last two... bahaha.


My face is not red from dye, it's red from my exfoliating face scrub... but, at least my hair is more red!


Also, I am ridiculous...



So, that's it... mah year in hair.  Mostly from the past month and a half.  Yoy.

Toodles <3

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

snack time...

Today, we got snacks at my winter camp.  Yup, the education office provided us with wagon wheels (they call them choco pies here?), oranges, and juice boxes!  It felt like I was in kindergarten, I loved it!

We did drama today, and storytelling.  Apparently, I'm a good storyteller... after I finished reading the books to the kids, they all applauded me, one even shouted ENCORE!  It was kind of fun.  I then made them read the stories from our textbook in groups, and then had each group come to the front and tell us the story they chose... it worked out better than I had imagined it would.

I tried my first ever box of Korean hair dye today.  I went to E-Mart after camp, and asked the lady a bunch of questions in choppy English, accented with pointing, to try to get her to understand what I was asking.  Luckily, I ran into my friend Jeff and his daughter, both of whom can read and speak Korean.  So, Jeff's daughter helped figure out my hair dye... haha.  It looked really red on the box, so I was hoping that the blonde parts under the black in my hair would turn out red red, and the black would stay black.  the black did stay black, but the blonde turned out orange.  Also, I apparently have too much hair for just one box of dye now, so there's blonde in with my orange.  Go me.  I don't even want to imagine what the back looks like.  Maybe I'll buy another box tomorrow, and try again.  I guess it's too much to ask for the hair dye here to be anything close to the color on the box.  Damn my non-Korean hair!!!!  DAMNNNNN YOUUUUUU!!!!!!

Now, for the weather today.  I know weather is a really boring topic, but, seriously, we had it all today.

This morning, I was awoken fifteen minutes early (OHHHH CRUEL FATESSS!!!) by thunder.  Yes, thunder.  I thought it was a train crash until I realized the sound was coming from the sky.  It rained for a bit, and let up before I left for school.  Then, it was sunny, and nice, and relatively warm.  While teaching, the sky turned ominous black, and we got a huge downpour of rain.  It was then sunny but insanely windy for a few hours.  I left school and went to E-Mart, and, while I was talking to Will and Jeff and Jeff's daughter, it started flipping snowing!  Lots and lots and lots of snow, in huge flakes!  They all melted as soon as they hit the ground of course, creating a slushy mess.  The snow let up, and it was calm for a few minutes before slush started falling from the sky... and now it's dark and I don't feel like checking the weather.  Seriously, we had everything today.  Ridiculous.

Anyways, I'm tired and I have to teach art tomorrow, so I am going to head to bed.

Toodles, all! <3

Monday, December 27, 2010

the year we corrupted two korean boys...

Sooooo, In case you didn't notice, it was Christmas this past weekend.

What?!  You say, you had no idea??

Yup, it sure was, and I rented a ski pension with seven of my friends and had a magical time!

I managed to get Friday off from school... it wasn't too hard, we didn't have class.  So, I gave everyone in my office my Christmas gifts to them on Thursday--a box of Ferrero Roche, Belgian chocolate seashells, and a homemade butter tart (homemade by me!).  If you want a fun game, try getting a bunch of Koreans to say Ferrero Roche... it made me giggle every.single.time.  I'm a bad person, I know.

Speaking of school (I promise I will get to my weekend at some point in time in the near future), one of my sixth graders tried to pick me up... and I don't mean as in, lift me off of the floor.  If you recall the tale about the sixth grader who asked me to marry him, it's the same kid.  Except, this time, he offered to give me a private tour of his bedroom, in front of all of his classmates... and my co-teacher.  This is how it went down:

Student One:  Tara Teacher, where in Korea would you like to go?
Cassanova:  My house!  would you like to come to my house with me?  I will show you my bedroom!
Me:  Uhhh....
Student Two: *Things in Korean that I don't understand*
Co-teacher:  *Choosing to translate something for once*  She called him cheesy.
Me:  I want to go to Jeju Island...

How EXACTLY was I supposed to react to that?  He had been asking me for my home address in Canada for the past three weeks, as well, so that he can come and "spend time" with me in Canada.  Awkward.

Okay, so, back to Christmas!

I got up early on Friday to pile in to Annie's car with Meaghan and Zach and 103049204920 pounds of stuff piled on top of us to drive for two and a half hours to our pension in Muju--one of the most famous areas in Korea for skiing, apparently.  It was in these really beautiful mountains and our cabin was all wood... it was spectacular.  We even got snow on Christmas night!













Friday night we sat around drinking and talking and playing Scrabble, it was fun times.  I also fashioned us a Christmas Tree, as in, I freaked out our ajumma neighbours by staring at them through the blinds waiting for them to go inside--seriously, who barbeques at 11:30 at night--they didn't go back inside, so I grabbed a knife from the kitchen, with which to hack down the tree, slapped on my winter jacket, and tried to stealthily sneak across the deck.  Cutting the tree was not so easy, but, as it turns out, tree branches break really easily when they're frozen... so, I snapped one off.  Here's our ghetto tree in a wine bottle:



Saturday was a lazy day, because Meaghan made a delicious French toast breakfast, Annie made an amazing vegetarian minestrone soup for lunch, and Alex and Annie made a SPECTACULAR Christmas dinner!  We even had turkey!  Alex made it on the barbeque, and I believe we dubbed it a smurkon--smokey turkey bacon--because it tasted exactly like bacon.  Crazy!

Here is Alex, Zach, and Alex cracking walnuts for the stuffing with wine bottles... clearly it was a classy Christmas!



We skyped our families on Saturday morning and then had our secret santa gift exchange, it was so much fun!  I got some great socks with non slippy stickies on the bottom, adorable gloves that are basically stuffed animal ram heads, stickers, a wicked cool skull ring, a hair clip, and a cellphone charm!  It was great!  I also took a bath on Saturday... oh, bathtub, how I have missed you.  It was a super deep bathtub, too... it was soooo luxurious!

After Christmas dinner, we invited the super cute boys that were working at the resort over to our pension to have some desert and hang out... AKA, we invited them over to corrupt them.  Massive amounts of mulled wine were consumed, and we involved the poor kids in a game of truth or dare Jenga, which, of course, is not so PG.  Needless to say, we got them really drunk and everyone ended up changing clothes, fun times... haha.  After they left, we laid around on the floor and did Chat Roulette... luckily, there wasn't too much weenis going on.  We did ask every guy we saw to show us their boobs, however... there was plenty of nipple going on... on their part.

Here's the view of our snowy pension on Sunday as we left:



It was a great weekend, even though I ended up with a sinus cold which, coupled with the altitude changes, resulted in me going deaf in my right ear.  But!  If I tilt my head to the side for a couple of minutes, I regain my hearing!

Oh, the heating isn't working in my apartment anymore, so, I'm freezing to death... hurray!

I won a blogging award from with cherry on the freakin' top!


In honor of tradition, here are five random facts about me:

1.  I've only been to two countries in my life... Canada and Korea!  Hehehe

2.  I get nervous travelling to different cities by myself, yet I moved across the world alone.

3.  I can't eat spicy food... ever.  I'm prone to stomach ulcerations because I'm a high stress person, and spicy food will pretty much kill me.  Also, I have a low spice tolerance.

4.  I take random bus rides for fun.  I love to hop on random buses just to see where they go, and so I can see new scenery.

5.  I pretty much have no immune system.  If someone around me gets sick, I will get sick almost immediately after coming into contact with them.

So, there's five random things about me, now to pass my blog onto five other bloggers, because I look forward to each and every one of their blog posts:

Femmena Mala

Awake and Dreaming

Not Your Average Joan of Archetypal Patterns

Suburban Sweetheart

Musings of an Underestimated Youth

Hurray!  Now go read their blogs, because they make me smile when I see that they have a new blog post up!

Toodles, everyone <3

Thursday, December 23, 2010

i don't believe in resolutions (part 2)...

The police arrested him at work.  They sent me home that day, so that I didn't have to be there when it happened.  Apparently, he sat in the back of the car and cried, and told them that he had learned his lesson.  They didn't take him to the station, they supposedly told him that he seemed like a good kid, and let him go back to work.

He manipulated them as easily as he manipulated me.  He was a con artist and a liar, and he was good at it, he was able to fool so many people.

By New Years, he was already trying to mend things with me, despite the fact that he was legally not allowed to have contact with me.  He claimed that he didn't care, that he just wanted to be with me, to be able to have me in his life.  I was resistant.  I didn't trust him... he was relentless in his efforts, in his stalking, pretty much.

He wore me down, and I took him back.

Each time I took him back, I felt more and more stupid.  I KNEW he was never going to stop his affairs with the other girls.  As long as he had access to technology, he had a way to screw around on me.  He had secret e-mail addresses that he used for his constant whore, H, and for the others.  He had secret MySpace accounts, dating site accounts, Facebook accounts, Nexopia accounts... the list goes on.  Not to mention his best friend, his cellphone.  No girl was able to have a two minute conversation with him without him asking her for her number... no girl was able to accidentally send a text to his cellphone without him hitting on them.

He made plans with me one night, and I went to pick him up from work.  It was January in Edmonton, AKA colder than anything in the entire world.  I don't drive, so I took the bus, and I stood outside of his work for half an hour waiting for him.  Everyone else was filing out, they had been let out early... but not R.  He was nowhere to be found.  I later found out that he had been twenty minutes late getting out after everyone else because he had been hiding somewhere in the bathroom or the break room finishing up having phone sex with his ex-internet-girlfriend.  He left me outside in -30 Celsius weather, waiting for half an hour, because he was busy having phone sex... AT WORK.

He would flirt openly with girls in front of me, yet, when a guy flirted with me, he would freak out and be all over me.  He would get pissed when I would mention to said flirty girls that I was his girlfriend, and I didn't appreciate what they were doing.

I was always finding the most disgusting stuff... his phone sex conversations, nude pictures and videos he was sending to people, messages like "I just got out of the shower, I'm naked, wish you were here" sent to the 14 year old he was cheating on me with.  Him telling other girls about how much he wanted to fuck them, how he wanted to cum all over them, the most disgusting, sexually explicit shit I've ever seen... straight from my boyfriend and to the million other girls he cheated on me with, over and over again.

He convinced a sixteen year old girl that he loved her, and convinced her to move from wherever she lived in Ontario, to Edmonton for him.  I caught them on our two year anniversary, she was doing quizzes as notes and tagging R in them, because all of her answers were about how in love they were.  I caught them shortly before she was going to move.

People never knew about me.  He always claimed he talked about me all of the time, and told people how much he loved me... but they were always so surprised when R finally let me come out to stuff, and they found out he had a girlfriend, let alone a girlfriend of over two years.  He was always telling me that I wasn't allowed to come, because no one else brought their girlfriends or boyfriends, which was an obvious lie... and I found out it was a lie when everyone asked me why I never came out, because everyone else knew all of the other girlfriends and boyfriends so well.  He kept me a secret, like he was ashamed of me... but, really, it made it easier to be a disgusting pig if no one knew he had a girlfriend.  He was free to mess around with whomever he wanted, because no one ever knew that someone was already entirely dedicated to him and in love with him.  I didn't matter, I wasn't important... I was only there when he had an itch that needed to be scratched.

One of his school friends had a birthday party that he was so excited to go to, and I asked if I could come.  He informed me that I would be allowed to come, but as soon as people started showing up, I had to leave.  He paid me to leave, told me not to come back.  I came back later in the night, and he was entirely pissed, in two ways.  He was so drunk that he couldn't stand without being supported, and he was mad at me for coming back.  He spent the night with his head between two girls who were trying to have a conversation, and seemed incredibly annoyed by his presence, and when I told him that he should leave, that I was worried about him because of how much he had drank, he slammed me into a wall.

So, I left, and I was so mad that I walked all the way home.

I got a call an hour and a half later, while I was in bed, from him crying because he was supposedly lost, and had no cab money because he spent it all on booze.  I asked him where he was, and, of course, he wasn't lost at all, he had walked almost all the way to my house.  He then started yelling about how he would rather sleep in the river valley like a homeless person instead of sleep in the same house as me, how he hated me, and didn't want to see me... yet he was still walking towards my house.  Then he pretended to get hit by a car, and hung up the phone.  I left the house in my pajamas, incredibly pissed off, to find him lying on the front lawn of a frat house, too drunk to even stand up.

He ruined my twenty-second birthday.  He spent most of the night sulking and refusing to interact with the people that I invited.  He embarrassed me in front of my friends.  My guy friends wanted to beat the shit out of him, because he was shoving me around and dragging me around by my wrist, demanding that I talk to him, trying to separate me from my friends.  They made him leave the bar we were at, and he went to my sister's house, got in his car, and drove back to the bar, drunk.  He demanded that I drive home with him.  I refused, and my guy friends made him leave.  He called me a thousand times and sent me a million text messages.  He did it all night and all morning.  My friends took my phone away and turned it off.

He tried to even isolate me from our mutual friends.  We had mutual friends from work, but, I decided to transfer stores, because it was getting to be to much to have to deal with R at work every time we broke up.  He would watch me, but then treat me like a miserable piece of shit whenever we had contact.  Once I got my transfer, he began to feed me lies about how our mutual friends were supposedly talking shit about me, saying terrible things.  I was incredibly hurt.  I tried to talk to them about it, but he freaked out on me, got insanely pissed off, threatened me, called me stupid... and then kept feeding me the lies.  He convinced me through deliberate brainwashing that they were backstabbers.  I didn't want people like that in my life, and he seemed so compassionate and concerned about it when he told me about it, so I began to distance myself from them.  If he was so concerned and so caring about it, why would I have any reason to think he was lying, right?

I kept trying to leave him.  I knew he wasn't any good for me... but every time I tried, he would start freaking out, he would cause a scene, he would threaten to kill himself, he would threaten to kill me.  I couldn't live with that.  I was such an emotional wreck and such a broken person, that I took him back every time, I wanted to believe the bullshit and lies that he was telling me, I wanted to believe that he wanted to make those changes, that he wanted to be the person he told me he wanted to be for me.  I was also so incredibly afraid of being alone, of dying alone, like he told me I would.

He was so terrifying when we were apart.  He would call me the most horrible things, say the most terrible things to me, and he was so frighteningly cold.  His voice was bone chilling, and his laugh was so cold and malicious, it was truly terrifying.  He had the same tone and the same laugh that you hear in horror movies, when the psycho killer is stalking his prey, and he calls them on the phone or leaves them a message.  He would make up lies about me.  Before I called the police on him, I went to his parents for help... after I left, he went downstairs and told them that I was a drug addict and a liar to get out of getting in trouble for the things he had done to me.

He was so selfish, he never gave me anything or did anything for me without expecting something in return.  No matter how often I bought him stuff "just because" or did nice things for him... I always "owed" him something, he was always finding ways for me to pay him back, or asking me to pay him back.  He broke up with me before gift giving holidays and birthdays so that he wouldn't have to buy me anything, but, on the rare occasion that we were still together, he would do something incredibly selfish, like buy a CD that he wanted, burn it onto his computer, and give me the used CD as a gift.  I always put so much thought and effort and money into everything I did for him, and he was giving me used CDs that he bought for himself in the first place.  It's never about the expense of a gift, it's the thought that really matters, and he never put any thought into anything, he never cared enough to put thought into his "gifts" for me... only when he was trying to make up for some of his doucehbaggery.

Shortly before I left for Korea, the new art gallery opened in Edmonton.  I had wanted to go so badly, so R agreed to take me.  We were having a completely normal day, so I don't know why he did it, but he decided to outright insult me when we were buying the parking pass.  Offended, I decided to walk to the gallery ahead of him, and stand in line and wait for him.  Shortly after I got into the building, he came stomping in, screaming my name, yelling things at me, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me out of the gallery.  He started forcing me back to the car, but he was blocking my way as we went along and screaming at me and flailing his arms around while I cried, in the middle of downtown, on a weekend, on a sidewalk with a steady stream of people walking by.

He got me back to the car, and started screaming at me even more, and, once he was done, demanded that we go back to the gallery and see the exhibits.

There was no way in hell I was going back there with him, he had just horrifyingly embarrassed me in front of EVERYONE there.

The fact that I wouldn't go back just pissed him off even more.  He threw the car into drive, and started flying around the parking lot at high speeds--it was the middle of winter, the parking lot was full of slush, new blizzard snow, and there was a solid sheet of ice under all of it.  He then took his reckless driving to the streets, swerving in and out of traffic, screaming at me about what a bitch I was and how he was going to kill us.  He then went back to the parking lot and demanded once again that I go back to the gallery.

I tried to get out of the car, he threw the car into reverse so that he hit me with the door, and then got out of the car, and made me get back inside.  He physically prevented me from leaving him, from trying to get away from him.  And that's what the entire relationship had felt like, I was physically, mentally, and emotionally restrained, with no way to escape.

He started screaming about how I was going to leave him, and how he was going to kill himself when I did, and putting a total guilt trip on me... he always has this way of making me feel like the bad person, and making himself out to be the one who was being hurt and mistreated.

When I made the decision to move to Korea to teach for a year, he seemed okay with it. He told me that a year wasn't long, that we would make it through and be stronger than ever. He told me that when I got back, that we would start our lives together.  He would tell me all about how when I came back, that we would move to Calgary together, and start over, and he would get rid of the people in his life that were causing problems, how, once we lived together, he would never cheat again, how he would get rid of everyone... but why did it have to take us living together?  If that's what he wanted, why couldn't he stop cheating and get rid of the bad people right then and there?  Why was he allowed to be disgusting for a year before I came back?

He was so convincing about how amazing everything would be, and then, as soon as I left, he gave up all effort to keep in contact. I knew he was spending all of his time on the internet, because that's what he does, so why couldn't he make the effort to respond to my emails? To come online to talk to me? It was really confusing. So, we broke up.  It was like we weren't dating, anyways.

After a few months of fighting, we "worked it out" and got back together, and everything seemed good. We talked almost every day, we seemed happy for the most part, and then I found out about H.  That he was cheating on me with her, how he had been having a secret affair with her for almost two and a half years of our three year relationship, how he had invested more effort into a relationship with her while I was gone than he did with me, how he talked to her every day, but he couldn't bother to answer my e-mails, how, when we were on skype, he was on msn with her, having cyber sex, and, just like every other time, he lied to me about all of it. Lied to me about how they kept in contact, what they did, told me everything she said was a lie, and then made all of the huge promises to me about how he would change for me, again. And, like an idiot, I took his word for it.  He promised he would stop talking to her and remove her from his life.  He never did.

We ended up breaking up in July, five days before our three year anniversary. Essentially, I demanded more respect from him after he had a particularly vicious blowout at me because I had asked him to have the courtesy to tell me he might be late when he made plans that intersected with the plans we already had. Essentially he told me that my feelings were wrong and selfish, that I didn't deserve courtesy, that I didn't deserve respect. And that was the way he treated me for the entire time we were together, like someone who didn't deserve courtesy and respect.  I put all of my effort and love into my relationship with him, and I was always an afterthought.  His infatuation with every other girl in the world took over as soon as I was out of sight out of mind.

In terms of me calling the police on him, the case (he was charged with uttering threats) was in and out of court for over a year, and when it finally settled, right before I left for Korea, he got 15 months probation, 50 hours of community service, and he had to take a course on spousal abuse.  When I first called the police, when him and I were broken up, the police encouraged me to get an emergency restraining order.  I spent the day in the courthouse, had to write out everything he had done, and stand in front of a judge and present my case to him.  He look HORRIFIED when he read and heard what R had done to me, and he granted me the restraining order.  I never issued it, though.  R had weaseled his way back in before I could.  I should have issued it.

After R and I broke up, I sent him an e-mail to see how he was doing.  He was always particularly depressive, so I was actually worried about him, though, really, he didn't care about me, so why should I care about him.  The only thing he said to me was that he had tried to go to Seattle over the summer, and, that, upon trying to enter the US, he had been detained by the Department of Homeland Security... and that it was my fault.  I informed him that the reasons he was on probation and detained for were entirely his fault, that I didn't make him treat me the way that he did, that he made those decisions, and that he was the reason he was detained.  It was one of the first times I really actually stood up to him.

All of this still plays with my head.  I know it took moving to a foreign country to get away from him, and I know it's good that I did, but, at the same time, I feel like an entire piece of myself is missing.  Like, by losing him, I've lost everything that was supposed to happen in my life.  That, because he said he wanted to marry me and have a family with me, that I won't get that opportunity with anyone else.  That he was right when he told me that I will die alone, lonely, with no family, because he was doing me a favour by being with me, because no one else will ever want me.

It just feels like my head is so twisted around with all of the ways that he brainwashed me and manipulated me and controlled me, that it will never be right, and it bothers me that our mutual friends still think he's a good guy.  Part of me is still that girl that loved him more than anything for years and who would have done anything for him, who did everything for him, who let him get away with stripping me of my last ounce of self-worth, self-respect, self-esteem, and dignity.

I just spend my time in a state of confusion about him, and I feel so stupid when I think about everything I let him put me through... and I feel even more stupid that I let what he did still affect me to this day.  It bothers me that I get upset at the thought of him treating some other girl the way he promised he would treat me, and that he'll marry her and have the wedding and the family that he promised me... and that I'll be alone, just like he wanted.

Because no one wants someone this damaged.  He broke me so that he'll get what he wants, for me to be alone for the rest of my life, for me to not have the marriage and the family and the life that I want.  Because, right now, I feel exactly like how he wants me to feel... worthless.  Because the girl who calls him racial slurs, and who cheated on him, and who lives in Michigan while he lives in Alberta, who claims she doesn't care about him is worth more to him than the girl who did everything in her power to make him happy, who invested all of her love into him, who cared more about him than anyone else ever will.

So, he wins, he gets exactly what he wants... and I'm left alone, holding the broken pieces, and feeling stupid.

So, that's what I want to leave behind in 2010.  If you stuck with me this far, then kudos to you, my friend.

i don't believe in resolutions (part 1)...

Fair warning, this is a really long post... like, really long.  And, I don't expect many of you to actually read it... basically, I'm going to use my blog as a personal therapy session.  I've split it into two parts, because it's actually THAT LONG... and my pointer has been hovering for a long time over "Publish Post."

I may not believe in resolutions, but I do believe in trying to leave things behind... so this is what this post is about, what I want to leave behind in 2010.

For the past three years, ending in July of 2010, I have been involved in a emotionally, verbally, mentally, and physically abusive relationship... at the hands of R.

It's embarrassing, and it's hard to write about.  It makes me feel sick when I think about R and what he did to me, what he put me through, but more-so, it makes me sick that I had let myself become so brainwashed by him, that I let my self-respect and self-esteem sink so low, that I essentially let him do this stuff to me... that I was so naive, that I actually believed his lies... his promises for change.

We were friends for four years before we started dating.  We met on the internet, on the message boards for the Canadian television channel Much Music.  We met through some ridiculous stream of messages, and he messaged me and asked me for my msn (oh, msn, ahaha), and we were inseparable from the first time we started talking.  We would go online each night and talk for hours and hours and hours... often, well into the morning.

My sister always used to make fun of me and tell me that I was going to end up marrying him.

He saw me through some hard times, another rough relationship with a guy who was no good for me, a lot of drama, a lot of pain.  In my mind, he was always there for me.  He was the biggest constant in my life.

We were supposed to meet before an AFI concert.  I was going to lend him $20 so that he could go, and we would hang out together.  We never found each other in the mall, each time I looked for him, he was looking down, he claimed.  He later confided in me that he was supposedly going to ask me out that day, but that after the disappointment of us not meeting, he settled and asked out H instead.

H was good four years younger than R, and he was eighteen.  That should have told me something in the first place... 

He told me horror stories about how poorly she treated him, how she would get mad and call him a "Dirty Mexican," how when they broke up, she had cheated on him with two guys in the same night, one of which supposedly called  R with H's cellphone to tell him that H was blowing him as they talked.

R asked me out through a text message, while he was visiting family in El Salvador.  He didn't so much as ask me out, as he asked me why we hadn't "hooked up" yet.  His exact words.  "Why haven't we hooked up yet?"

Uhh... because I'm not that kind of girl?

We got his meaning straightened out, and I said yes.  I was ecstatic.  

About two days later, he told me he loved me.  I was terrified.  It was too soon, I didn't know what to say.  He got REALLY mad at me and told me that if I was hesitating to say it, that obviously I didn't feel the same way, and that he had made a mistake.  He guilted me into telling him that I loved him right then and there, after text message arguing with me for an entire day.

I should have recognized the signs from the start, even before we were dating... but, hindsight is 20/20.

Before we were dating, he would get all pissy if I were going to go out partying with my friends, and he would not talk to me for a few days afterwards.  After we started dating, he told me that when we were just friends, he considered not being my friend anymore because I went out partying with my friends all of the time, that he didn't think drinking should be necessary to be social, that he thought it was stupid.

At the time, our first year seemed amazing, our relationship seemed like everything I ever wanted.  One of my friends from high school got married, and I took R to the wedding with me as my date... at one point in time he leaned over to me and said "Next year, this will be us."  He was always telling me about how he wanted to get married and have a family with me.  My nickname for him was muffin, and his for me was cupcake... he used to call our potential family our "little bakery."

It wasn't as amazing as I gave it credit for.  He was possessive, he used to get upset when I had stuff to do, like homework, and couldn't spend as much time as he wanted with him.  That was how he set up the relationship, he made me dependent on him being around all of the time.  He would get pissed off when I would go out with friends.  I went out one night with a girl from class and her friend, and he got so incredibly pissed off at me, he called me a slut and a whore and told me I was just like his slut of an ex-girlfriend, H.  That I was good for nothing, he threatened to leave me, he demanded to know where I was going, he told me he was going to follow me around all night, he sent me a thousand messages in the span of a few hours... because I was going out to the bar with a few girl friends.

He slowly got me to phase out my friends, every time they asked me if I wanted to join them, I always said no, because I knew I woudn't be allowed to, I knew he would call me a whore and throw a fit.  He even made me feel bad for the times I stayed in and had a few drinks in my own house with my own sister.  I wasn't allowed to do anything unless he was there.  And then, when I invited him to go the bar with my friends and I, he spent the night clinging on to me... literally.  I wasn't allowed to even go to the bathroom without him waiting outside.

Yet, he would spend all of his time on his phone, texting and calling other girls.  He was so possessive of that phone, he would get so upset if I went anywhere near it, but he would ALWAYS look through my phone.  He would just grab it and look at all of my messages.  I never cared, I had nothing to hide... but it bothered me that he would get viciously angry if I went anywhere near his phone.

It would scare me when he got upset about things, he had a temper he would never admit to.  He smashed glasses when he was mad at me... when his phone seemed to quit working, he smashed it on my desk in a fit of rage until it was entirely broken.  He did this to two phones.  He would scream and turn so red... but I let it all slide because I was in love, and it didn't seem that bad... the good times were far more common than the bad.  His mom would talk about how R and I were going to get married, and she used to introduce me to people as her daughter.

Shit started to hit the fan when R started college.  He had taken some time off after high school, and then decided he wanted t go to NAIT for the radio program there.  So, I helped R with all of the applying to college stuff, applying for loans stuff, sat through him whining about how hard it was do all of this, blah blah blah... he finally got accepted and started school.

That September, everything changed.  Suddenly, after demanding that I spend all my time with him, he was pushing me away.  He wouldn't answer my texts, he wouldn't answer my calls, he always told me he was too busy for me, when he did make time for me, he made me feel bad about it.  He made me feel like crap for having night classes, he told me that that was the reason we could never see each other--I ended up dropping a life drawing night class that I had wanted to take since the semester before, to make him happy.  He made me feel like shit, all of the time, he made me cry every time he saw me... and half a month earlier he had been telling me that we would be married by next year.

We were in the mall one day, and this chick from R's class was up ahead, he started screaming her name, and waving like a mad man, he shoved me away from him (he had been walking with me by his side, with his arm around me, cuddling with me and giving me kisses before seeing her), and ran twenty feet ahead of me.  He didn't introduce me to her, he pretended I wasn't there.  And he got pissed at me for introducing myself to her.

He started drinking, a lot.  All the time, he was always going out, telling me I wasn't allowed to come; he would get entirely trashed and then sleep at other people's houses, he would get mad when I would text him when he was out.  He was constantly drinking, despite telling me that he had wanted to stop being friends with me because I drank with my friends.  Suddenly, he was throwing away everything he told me he believed in for these new people.

I decided that it was time to end things.  He wouldn't answer my calls or see me in person, opting instead to call me a worthless bitch and tell me to leave him alone, so I had no choice but to e-mail him this huge letter to tell him it was over.  I had taken an entire month of him treating me like garbage and making me cry, I had had enough.

He e-mailed me back (yes, e-mailed, didn't even bother to call me or try to see me in person) to tell me that he realized what a huge mistake he was making, how he couldn't lose me, blah blah blah... that I was his soul mate.  He begged me for a second chance.  So I have him his first of 1019495902830 second chances.

Things seemed okay.  He was suddenly able to spend time with me (oh, surprise, he actually had spare time?), he was being nice to me, he was attentive.  And he kept hinting that my birthday, which was fast approaching, was going to be big.

It was, he bought me my dream guitar... and he also bought me a ring.  It was a simple opal set in gold, and he told me that he didn't believe in promise rings, so I could basically consider it an engagement ring... then he suggested that I should buy him a ring (seriously, he told me to buy him a ring).  Which I did.  I went out and spent almost $200 on a ring for him, despite the fact that the ring he bought me was $30, at most.

Not only that, but on the day I was buying it for him, it was taking a little longer than I expected, and we were supposed to meet in the mall.  He started calling my phone over and over again, sending me a million text messages, entirely pissed that I was late for meeting up with him... the one time I was EVER late.  He was red in the face and pissed as hell when I FINALLY met up with him, fifteen minutes after I told him I would meet him.  I had sent him a bunch of texts beforehand, telling him that I would be a bit late but I was hurrying.

Anyways, that weekend I was having my birthday party... he spent the entire time texting someone on his phone.  Every time I looked at him, he was texting someone.  So, I confronted him about it the next morning, as he was STILL texting this person, but trying to be secretive about it.  When I asked him about it, he got entirely pissed off, deleted everything off of his phone, and threw it at me across the room.  Obviously, he was doing something inappropriate on his phone.

So, here's where I admit that what I did was wrong.  I waited until he slept over the next weekend, and, when he was sleeping, I looked through his phone.  There was a conversation with one girl, A, where he was telling her that he wished they could be together, how they should break up with the people they were each with, how all he ever wanted to do was kiss her, how he didn't know how much longer he was going to be with the "chick" he was with right now (aka, me), he also asked her if she had received the pictures he sent her.  There were similar conversations with another girl, K (who ended up being fourteen years old, he was almost 20), and, also, dirty texts from H (yes, ex H).  There was a conversation with a girl who had sent a text to the wrong number, where he asked her where she was from, how old she was, asked her if she had msn, told her she sounded hot, and then asked her for pictures of herself.  Digging further into his phone, I found the pictures he had been talking about.  Pictures of him nude and masturbating, accompanied by videos of him masturbating.

I felt sick.  He was sending pictures and videos of himself masturbating to other girls, and probably getting similar things in return from them.  He had given me a stupid ring, and then had told A that he didn't know how much longer he was going to be with the "chick" he was with anymore, and begging her to leave her boyfriend for him, he was messing around with H, again (I found out that he had started things up with her again, apparently mostly over the internet and through text messages, around six months after we had started dating), and he was messing around with K, a fourteen year old (and that had started up around our first Christmas together).

I got out of bed, walked to the corner of my room by my door, sat down, and started crying.  My crying woke R up, and he seemed genuinely concerned, until I told him WHY I was crying.  At that point, he became enraged.  We got into a huge fight, and that's when he pinned me to the bed and strangled me... ALMOST until I passed out.  How kind.

Then, upon realizing what he had done, he begged for my forgiveness, and threatened to kill himself if I left him.  I was in a state of shock, I had no idea what to do, so, I went to go take a shower.  Upon returning, I found him "passed out" on my bed... the drama queen had taken three of my Tylenol Migraine Reliefs, and claimed that he was overdosing.  The only thing that I could think of was that we had to be at his parents' house in like an hour and a half.  I couldn't deal with everything that was going on.

That's right, he had been cheating on me, he had strangled me, he had been lying... and I had to take care of him.  I was supposed to feel sorry for HIM... and that was what he was like for the remainder of the relationship.

He would cheat.

I would catch him.

He would strangle me.  Or threaten to kill me.  Or threaten me with kitchen knives.  Or shove me into things.  Or drag me around by my hair.  Or swing at me.  Or drive recklessly in traffic.  He would call me stupid.  Call me a bitch.  Tell me I was worthless.  Tell me I would never mean anything to anyone.  Tell me he was doing me a favour by being with me, because no man would ever love me.  Tell me I was going to die alone.  Tell me he was going to find a new girlfriend and flaunt her in my face to show me how much better she is.  Tell me he could do anything to me, because he knew I would let him come crawling back... and I did, because he wore down every last ounce of my self worth and self-esteem, until I wasn't even a person anymore.  I was a hollow shell of a person, who only lived to serve his purposes... and when I fought back, I was garbage, I was trash, I was a piece of shit, I was a selfish bitch... for wanting what everyone else is not only afforded in their relationships, but also afforded as common courtesies in day to day life.

Sometimes we would break up for a month or two months.

Sometimes his restitutions were immediate.

In the end, he did always come crawling back, saying the prettiest little lies.  Telling me he loved me, telling me it would never happen again, telling me he couldn't live without me, screaming that he would kill himself if I didn't take him back.  He would stand outside of where I was living, screaming and crying, and he would throw things at my windows, call me a thousand times back to back, send me a million text messages... until I talked to him out of embarrassment and frustration.  Then he would start making promises.  He would promise me that he would cut out all of the bad people from his life, all of his online sluts, all of his ex-girlfriends that he fucked around with, all of the people who were a bad influence on him.  He would swear he was going to devote himself to me, and that he was going to stop drinking, because it made him do stupid things.  He made so many promises, and told me that I could hold him to all of them, because I was the only person in his life that mattered, I was the only person he cared about.  I was his soul mate.

And the promises would last for about a week, then he would start acting like a disgusting, cheating, lying, dirty creep again.

And it would start all over.

I loved him, and he knew it.  I loved him with all of my heart, and I wanted to believe the things he was telling me.

Also, I was afraid.  I had been told so many times, over and over again by R that I was worthless, and that no one will love me, that I don't deserve better than him... and it got to the point where I believed it.  Where I believed it when he told me that if I left him, that I would never be able to have the family that I wanted, that I was going to die alone.  He took away every last bit of my self-esteem and self-worth, and it's still something that I struggle with.

I just tried so bloody hard.

For his twentieth birthday, at the end of November, I spent all of my time and money making birthday plans for him, doing what he claimed he wanted to do, put my whole heart into it. And, the night before, he told me he was going to spend the night with his extended family. He took the bus with me to the grocery store, then, instead of going home, he changed clothes in a bus station, and went to the birthday party he planned for himself and didn't invite me to. He spent the entire night sending me texts, telling me how much fun he was having with his family, while, in reality, he was out getting trashed with a bunch of people who didn't know I existed... while I stayed up the entire night making the preparations for his birthday the next day. He was so hungover the next day, he wouldn't eat the food I made for him, and he didn't even care that I bought lingerie for him. All he wanted to do was lay in bed and watch TV, nursing his hangover.

I bought him tickets to an Edmonton Oilers game, as well as some cologne, for his birthday.  He broke up with me shortly before Christmas, actually, about a week and a half after his birthday, as he always did... anniversaries, birthdays, Valentine's Day, Christmas... he would break up with me to get out of buying me a gift.  Anyways, the game was set for shortly after Christmas, and we were supposed to go together; I bought one ticket for myself, and one for him.  But, since he broke up with me, he refused to give me my ticket, and he started asking out girls from work to go with him, which I promptly found out about, because we work in the same place.

I was disgusted.  He was using my ticket to try and pick up other girls.

I did the most revenge-y thing I could think of.  I called Ticketmaster and reported the tickets stolen... and then I took my dad to the game, on the same day R's mom took me out for coffee and bought me Christmas gifts.  I'm not even kidding.

I did, at least, tell R that I had reported the tickets stolen.  I called him the morning that I did it.  I had been out the night before with some of the girls from work, some of whom he had asked out to go with him, and one of them had given me the idea to call them in stolen.  When I called R to tell him, he demanded to know everything I had done the night before, everything that I had said to anyone, and when I refused to tell him, he got incredibly angry and started screaming at me through the phone, telling me he was going to kill me, and that he knew how he was going to do it, he knew how to get into my apartment, and that he knew no one would care.

Yes, I did call the police... the only smart thing I did during this relationship.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

i wanna stuff your stocking...

So, my friend Zach, and I came up with the most amazing new Christmas song EVER last night!  He was drunk, I was entirely sober.  It was still awesome to me this morning, and he liked it even better sober... GO TEAM AWESOME!

You're going to thank me for sharing this with you... also, I think I have typhoid from the clam from last night, so I'm too lazy to write a real blog post... because I'm dying.  Hypochondria <3

So, first, in order to get the tune, please watch this (why, yes, that IS sexy nude Abraham Lincoln being bathed by other Abraham Lincolns):


So, clearly, our song is set to the tune of "Gay Bar" by Electric Six.

Now, for the fun part!

Here's our Christmas version, a collaborative effort of superhuman awesomeness:

Girl!
I wanna drink your eggnog,
I wanna drink your eggnog,
I wanna drink your eggnog,
eggnog, eggnog.

Let's get some rum, get some spiced rum,
For your eggnog, eggnog, eggnog.
Waah,
For your eggnog.

Now tell me, do ya, a do ya have any eggnog?
I wanna drink all your eggnog,
Drink all your eggnog, eggnog, eggnog.

I've got something for your stocking,
I've got something for your stocking,
I've got something for your stocking,
And it's eggnog, eggnog, eggnog.
Hah!

Drink all your eggnog
With my spiced rum.
Drink all your eggnog
With my spiced rum.
Drink all your eggnog
With my spiced rum.
Your eggnog.
Your, your eggnog.

Feel free to sing this to everyone you know this year.  It's perfect for office parties, especially if accompanied by inappropriate dance moves... like pelvic thrusting, and dressing like a half nude Abraham Lincoln wearing a Santa hat on top of his top hat, and a red banana hammock with white fur trim!

You're welcome! <3

P.S.  there is a mother effing mosquito in my apartment.  Yes, it is December twenty friggen second, and THERE IS A MOSQUITO IN MY APARTMENT!  GO AWAY, YOU VILE BEAST!

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

i continue to impress people...

With my willingness to eat foods outside of my Western comfort zone.

Tonight, at school dinner, I ate two things from the list of the ten deadliest foods in the world.  One of them, I didn't even know was dangerous.

Yes, that's right, that means I knowingly ate ONE deadly food.

But, it's a Korean delicacy: live octopus.

Why is it deadly?

It's still squirming around on the plate after they cut it up.  You're supposed to chew it really well before swallowing, or it could potentially sucker itself to your throat and kill you.  Really, though, it's just incredibly tough and chewy, and has a weird texture.

Just like the live sea cucumber I also ingested tonight--which is like chewing on leather--and the raw mystery animal--which was also chewy.  Both were still alive and still squirming.

The hardest part about eating these foods?  The fact that they're really hard to pick up with chopsticks.  You try using two metal sticks to pick up a slimy piece of food that is wriggling around... also, resisting the urge to just take the whole plate and poke at the wiggly bits all night.

The "deadly" food that I was not aware was deadly was the blood clam I ate tonight:

Follow this link for a picture of the blood clams (There is also a little blurb about the live octopus)

That link also has a description of why the blood clams are so dangerous.  Apparently, despite my co-teacher's inability to translate what we were eating, and my insistently asking her over and over again if it was blood that was all over the plate, and her insistence that it wasn't... it was.

Yup.

And, I ate it.

No one thought I would, and I was actually one of the few who did...

Probably because I was unaware that the food we were eating was blamed for a hepatitis outbreak in Shanghai, and resultantly made illegal.

That's enough to make me not want to eat it.  Oh, and the fact that that wasn't sauce... IT WAS BLOOD.

It was slimy, and chewy... slightly crunchy in a chewing on cartilage kind of way, and it tasted like blood and salt.  Why is this a delicacy?

So much blood...

We also had sashimi for dinner, which was not alive, just raw.

After dinner, the vice principal came around and talked to each table, when she got to our table, she looked at me sadly and said something about "Tara" and "raw fishee."  My co-teacher retorted by saying something about the blood clams, to which the VP looked incredibly shocked, and went to fetch the principal.

My co-teacher explained to me that the VP thought I hadn't eaten anything because I can't eat raw fish, which my co-teacher refuted by telling her that I did eat dinner and that I even ate a blood clam.

The VP had gone to find the principal so that she could tell him that I ate one of the blood clams.

They both returned and praised me and even applauded.

It's weird when people are impressed with your willingness to eat things that you have no idea what they are.  It's also weird when someone assumes you won't eat sashimi, because you're a foreigner, and, OBVIOUSLY, foreigners can't eat sashimi, because it's raw fish.

Anyways, here's hoping I live to blog again.

If not... typhoid or dysentery is not a fun disease, learn from my mistakes, don't eat the blood clams... it was nice getting to know you all.

Toodles <3

Monday, December 20, 2010

tension...

So, Korea is all tensiony today... because of the politics and whatnot (genuine technical political terms right there).

Here's the e-mail I received from the Canadian Embassy last Thursday:

"One-Day Military Firing Exercise/ Exercice de tir militaire d'une journée

Subject: Announcement of One-Day Military Firing Exercise in Northwest Islands off the Coast of Korea Between December 18-21, 2010

The Canadian Embassy in Seoul is transmitting the following information through the Embassy's Warden System as a public service to all Canadian citizens in the Republic of Korea. Please disseminate this message broadly to Canadian citizens.

This warden message is being issued in response to the announcement on December 16, 2010, by the Government of the Republic of Korea that it will "hold a one-day live-fire drill on Yeonpyeong Island between Dec. 18 and 21. The Embassy does not assess that there has been an increase in the threat environment in South Korea.

Given the increased tensions since the North Korean shelling of Yeonpyeong Island on November 23, 2010, it is understandable that Canadian citizens would be concerned regarding the security situation on the Korean Peninsula. However, the Embassy reminds Canadian citizens in the Republic of Korea that military training exercises are routinely conducted throughout South Korea throughout the year, to include civil defense drills normally held eight (8) times a year. Canadian citizens should stay informed through local media about upcoming military exercises and civil defense drills that sometimes occur at short notice and for which the Embassy will not routinely provide advance notification. The Embassy continues to closely monitor the current situation. Should the security situation change, the Embassy will update this warden message."

It's been put off and put off and put off because of weather and fogginess, but, apparently, they started the exercises today, amidst vows from Pyongyang to retaliate:

BBC article about the tension

Yahoo news article about the drills taking place

UPDATE: NK decides not to retaliate

And that seems to be about it.  None of my co-teachers seem too alarmed, and there's no news of the North attacking.

I'm just copying and pasting this last article, because it makes me giggle... it's from the Korea Times:

"S. Korea begins live-fire artillery drill near NK

South Korea on Monday fired artillery into waters near the western sea border with North Korea, pushing ahead with a high-tension exercise amid Pyongyang's threat to strike back if the drill goes ahead, an official said.

The drill began at around 2:30 p.m., an official at the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

"It won't last long," he said on condition of anonymity."

It's the last little quote that makes me giggle... mostly because I imagine it being said in a state of annoyance.

ON TO mostly LIGHTER NEWS!

Chocolate tree update:

It STILL has not been touched.  Maybe they're saving it as a decoration, or, maybe they don't want to eat it because the foreigner who is going away soon made it for them, and they want to keep it as a keepsake?  I dunno.

All I know is, this is what $20 worth of chocolate, paper, and tape that everyone is afraid to touch looks like:


My class with the kid who hates me got moved to today.  I took their class picture, and I just looked over it.. surprisingly, he is not flipping off the camera in the picture, though, I am pretty sure he punched one of my favorite students in the head right before the picture was taken.

I didn't get ANY sleep last night.  I am considering purchasing sleeping pills, because this is getting ridiculous. I was just tossing and turning all night because my brain wouldn't stop thinking about absolutely nothing in particular.

Also, I logged into MSN last night (do not judge meeeeee), and noticed that the evil ex, R, tried adding me back onto messenger.  Uhhh... what the ship?  I sent him an e-mail asking him why, exactly, he was trying to add me onto messenger again.  No response.  My bet, he wants to have a way to monitor me, see when I'm online or something.

So, a strange little thing happens in my office a few times a week, where sales people come in and try to get the other teachers in my office to get their credit cards or something.  I have no idea.  They always seem to be hawking credit cards, though.  I just like the reactions I get when they walk over to me.  As soon as I look up, they usually jump with surprise, or look stunned, and tell me "mianhamnida" (I'm sorry).  The lady today had the BEST REACTION EVER, though!  She went to the few people in the office, had no luck, walked over to me, and when I looked up at her, she squeaked, jumped back, and then started giggling ferociously.  Fun times.  I love when people aren't expecting me to be a wayguk (non-Korean).

I have all of one class tomorrow.  It is going to be a loooong day.  But!  I get to take the last class picture that I need... I will have class pictures of all 19 of my classes!  Yay!

Toodles <3