carly monster

I just had dinner with my family, and somehow the conversation turned to how my siblings think my time off on disability is me just not wanting to work, and God, I mean, who the hell wants to work?! so I think I'm going to set myself on fire and maybe go live with a pack of African painted dogs.

Okay, so getting the tattoos with my family really means a lot to me, so I don't want to be negative about it, but the more the swelling goes down and the more I look at my tattoo, I am really unhappy with what the artist did, i.e. what is permanently inscribed on my body.

Context and backstory: So, my brother and sister and I wanted to get the deathly hallows from Harry Potter, but we wanted to each have the particular hallow that best represented us be the primary focus of our individual tattoos. The initial inspiration had the entire symbol done in white ink, with each sibling's hallow done in black. We wanted something similar, but decided against white ink because it has a lot of problems, so we thought we'd go with a light grey instead.

So, my sister has a lot of tattoos, and she gets them all from this same guy, I guess, at our city's trendy tattoo shop, and she insisted on going to her shop and her guy. Real talk: Her place and her guy suck. Because it's trendy and they think a lot of themselves, it's way overpriced. (This time, we were charged $10 more per piece than we had been quoted, which was too much to begin with.) The shop is in a shitty old house with terrible lighting. You know where I want to get a tattoo? In a fucking surgical suite. I want it to look as clean as an operating room, and I want there to be SO MUCH LIGHT.

Anyway, my sister made an appointment with her guy, talked to him about what we wanted, etc. We show up for our appointment, and no one knew who we were. The girl at the desk was completely oblivious, and the artist wasn't there at the time we had specifically reserved. So we have to explain everything to the girl at the desk, and then of course we have to do all the standard paperwork, which is fine, but after all that we still have to wait more than half an hour for the fucking artist to show up. He was not with another client; he straight up was an hour late. When he shows up, no explanation, no apology. Oh, and the only idea he had of what we wanted is he didn't want to do it like we'd ask. He said the grey ink would fade faster than the black, which is true, but not something we'll have to worry about for like 15 years, but he straight up said he wouldn't do it. I suggested several other alternatives, and he had a problem with each one that he had to explain to me was stupid in the rudest, most condescending way. By this point, I straight up hate this guy. But Ashley and Alex don't seem to mind, and the dick with the needle says he'll just do the whole symbol in black, but he'll do the part we want emphasized thicker and darker, which I'm sure was his decision to begin with, and he wasn't going to move from it. I mean, I am aware that I am not an expert, and I want an expert's opinion, but I also want the expert to work with me on making sure the piece of art that is going to be sewn into my skin for eternity is going to be what I want.

We get tattooed. His breath smells awful, and he spends the whole time talking with the other artist in there. My brother had to have his stencil redone because it was put on in a way that seriously warped the image; the outer frame wasn't even an equilateral triangle anymore. It was fucking isosceles, and when he asked to have it redone before it was indelibly etched in his skin, the artist was super pissed. Anyway, we finished, we paid this fucking asshole $300, and we left, believing things would look better when the swelling went down.

It doesn't. On mine especially, you cannot tell at all that there's supposed to be a difference between one part of the symbol and the rest. And mine came out the best! The lines on my mom's are really thin and I'm not sure they're even (hers is still really swollen, though, so it may actually be okay.) I tried to talk to my siblings about it, but they don't really care. My brother admits his isn't perfect, and pointed out that Ashley's circle is not perfectly round, but he's pretty chill so he just said he's bummed I'm not satisfied. Ashley is kind of pissy, and is defending the artist, which… okay. I'm sorry I even brought it up with them, but I wanted their thoughts on fixing it, since I can't think of one that won't make it worse.

Every other time I've gotten a tattoo, I've been thrilled with the result and so happy to have it on my body, etc. And this time I just feel really disappointed, and I don't think it can be fixed to make me happy, and I feel even worse because I brought it up with my siblings, and probably took some of the shiny off their happies. Ugh, fuck it, I just don't know what to do.

Sibs and I are supposed to 100% going to get our Deathly Hallows tattoos this week (they swear. This is why I am in charge of scheduling and planning absolutely everything else, but Ashley insists on her lame, overpriced, hipster bs artist, so.) The base price at this guy's shop is $50, which means no matter how small your design, it costs $50 for them to take the needle out of the package. Because our tattoos are not worth that, my brother and sister are both going to have something else done or touched up while we're there. My brother is paying for my resurrection stone tattoo because he always owes me money, but for maybe $50-$60 of my money on top, I could get an o captain, my captain Robin Williams memorial tattoo. I am so cash poor for the next few months because of my trip, so I should just be responsible and skip it, but seriously, you guys, where on my body am I getting this tattoo?

My sister has been sexually harassed at work for months, and finally she got her complaint to corporate since everyone local has been doing things 100% wrong but exactly how you'd expect. The main instigator, whom the company keeps moving from branch to branch after the complaints can no longer be ignored, is black, and when corporate asked him about my sister's allegations, he told them Ashley is making everything up and picking on him because she has a problem with black people, so my little sister who has been victimized and tormented for months just had to sign an official affidavit swearing that she is not racist, AND NOW I HAVE TO KILL EVERYONE

My dad got to New York to find my aunt hadn't been moved to hospice yet, even though her condition had not improved. My uncle (her husband) told hospital staff not to move her, to keep pushing fluids and steroids to get her going again, even though she's clearly not going anywhere ever again. He just agreed today to let them put her on morphine. Somehow he took the doctors' reports as more of a forecast, not a status report. He said he thought he had at least another three or four months with her. My dad is coming home tomorrow; my aunt is still technically alive, but she's already gone. She couldn't speak at all; my dad didn't even think she understood he was there. He said that he's seen her for the last time.

Today was a Level 10 pain day. When my dad saw me in my pajamas on the couch with a heat compress on my head at five pm and asked me about it, I told him I was feeling really bad. He started interrogating me about why. Leave me alone. I don't know. After 12 years and all the tests and trials and doctors, NO ONE knows. Stop putting this on me. I am not doing this on purpose to irritate you.

The car drama continues. After extensive research and some visits to dealerships, I've found a car I want to buy. I convinced my dad to go see it with me and make sure all the mechanical stuff I don't know about is all in working order. As soon as we got on the lot, he totally changes his tune. He's excited and supportive; I've picked a great car that will be a good investment, as far as cars go; it'll be reliable for a long time, and though it is more than I wanted to pay, I can still put more than half down in cash. Let's do it. Talk to car guy about the money part. I can pay more than half up front, plus they'll give me $800 for my old car, which leaves me needing about $5000 and I'll be able to pay off the loan completely in three years at about $150 a month. Excellent.

They do not do their financing in house, so I have to take all the specs to my bank (across town, of course) to have them do all the loan paperwork. It is three pm Friday afternoon.

First we go to our local branch, but because it's apparently too much to ask for a bank to do bank stuff, they don't have anyone in who can help me with a loan. (I don't know why I bank here. Any time I need something more complex than a deposit, they are useless and make me go across town to use another branch. I'd leave them, but I bought so many checks...) So we drive to the other branch (across town in a different way, so now we're even further from the dealership), and of course it takes forever to get noticed by someone who can help us, because they're all talking amongst themselves like it's not four pm Friday afternoon and people have shit to do in the hour before the bank closes for the weekend.

We get back to this lady's office. She is not very nice to me; I can feel her judging me hard core. She goes over my financials, tells me my interest rate is going to be over 14% (which is huge, but I'm a delinquent, I guess, and should be punished for my lack of money by being locked into a system that charges me even more money than richer people) and then that even with her punishing me with her interest rate, she has to have my loan okayed by someone else. Look, my credit is not great. I've had some hard times, most of them health related, but I've been working on my credit the past few years, and it's actually improved quite a bit. You work hard, good things happen, right?

WRONG. We have to sit there waiting for twenty minutes while she and this mysterious moneybags decide I am too poor to deserve to better my life. She tells me I have too much student loan debt (which has been deferred since I left SCAD, a deferment that has been approved through 2018, and can simply be extended if I am still not in a position to pay it, and which may go away altogether if I meet certain disability requirements.) Just having the debt means I am too lousy to be trusted with five grand. I am so sorry that I took the trouble to go to grad school and then got really sick while paying off the ridiculously expensive price of education in this country; how hard that must be on YOU.

So I am, of course, crushed, less because I can't get the car than this is just another way I'm inhuman in the eyes of basically everyone, another way being sick is keeping me from living life, another way I'm worthless, a waste of human parts. But my dad's strangely chipper, and he's like, "Look, this is not a huge amount of money, I know you can pay it back, and we lent money to your brother and sister when they bought their cars, so we would be happy to lend you the five grand." This is, of course, amazing and very kind, but it makes me feel even worse, because they've already done so much for me and I am sure that however hard my illness and my current situation is on me, it's worse on them, so I told him I couldn't take their money.

Cut to me feeling like the most worthless creature who has worked hard and been good and mostly just been kicked in the face by it, which was definitely a depression breakdown, but was probably triggered by this whole car thing, so in the morning I tell my dad that if he's really sure they won't need the money, and if my mom is okay with it, yes, I would very much appreciate their help, and I have worked it into my budget that I can pay them back in two years. He said he was thinking of three, but okay, and he would get the money Monday (so he's borrowing from his 401k or something? I didn't ask.)

So, I figure this is settled, and I call the dealership to tell them that the bank wouldn't come through with the loan, but we would pay the whole thing in cash Monday or Tuesday. They can't hold the car, they say, without a deposit, so I give them $300 from my debit account, and it'll just be taken as part of the price when we pay for the car.

Everything's figured, I think, and it is so much stress off that I would be happy were I not a bipolar garbage fire right now.

Then, I'm driving back with my mom after running some errands with her, and she starts talking about how it's a good thing that I didn't get approved for the loan because I shouldn't touch the illegal CD they've set up for me and that I was going to crack open for my down payment (at a loss of 40¢ interest), and that I should just wait until I can afford the new car outright. So, contrary to what I'd been led to believe, my dad in no way addressed any of this with my mom nor made sure she was okay with it, which she is not. So, as it stands, I have no car, $300 in limbo, and ONE MILLION new stress units to add to the bipolar gumbo I've got bubbling. And I'm leaving town Thursday, so this all has to be sorted out by then, and if I have a feather's weight extra stress upon me, I may fall into catatonic stupor.