It just builds and builds...I suppose the downward spiral really started a year ago when I had my teaching contract non-renewed. I felt like such a failure. I never wanted to teach public school in the first place. I only did it so that I could have stable employment and still teach. I quickly discovered that teaching is a very loose interpretation of what is going on in public schools, but I kept at it because my family needed the money. I went back to part-time adjunct work at the local community college - happy teaching, but so unhappy with the way adjuncts are treated and undervalued. Now, I'm so messed up that my teaching is suffering too.

Then before Christmas, my dad and I got into another fight/argument...whatever. Long story short: He called on my b-day (Dec. 1) to say how glad he would be to see me at Christmas with the rest of the family. It's been too long, etc. THEN, he reminded me that there would be a lot of people there and he really wouldn't have a lot of time to spend with me....I would have to share with the step-family. I didn't say anything at the time, but it made me so mad. I live 9 hours away. It's a long drive and I hate making it. I don't enjoy the stepfamily in the first place, so going at all was going to be hard, but when he said that, I just couldn't face it. So, I wrote him a 3 page letter explaining that I couldn't make it because it just hurts too much. I tried to explain why it hurts. In response, I got a nasty 3 page letter from step-mom, who said that my father was in no place to deal with my "poison pen letter" and that she couldn't understand why I had to be so hurtful to him.

Since then, just down, down, down.