Keith didn’t sleep well last night. I’ve been house-hunting now the pressure is off for me to find a job, but to find something with as much square footage as possible for the least rent that I can afford solely with my guaranteed income is really hard, and on top of that we have to fake our income on the applications. This means we have very little time to actually PASS the applications to get accommodation BEFORE our credit ratings slump from defaulting on bills. Then we will not be able to get housed.
In addition, my salary alone will not even pay for the motel, so I will have to continue doing OnlyFans from the bath tub and making product on the turned up bed base to sell.
So Keith has been stressing, he’s now fucked up his back and sciatic nerve, groaning all the time, and I need to cut his hair and give him another body fix. He wants his pet comforts, but has come to realize he can’t have the puck of apartments or homes unless he is also earning money. It is impossible to find the kind of home he wants on my income alone, so he has reluctantly re-adjusted his searching strategy.
Years ago we were in the same dilemma. I wanted to move into communal living in Bel-Air, where we don’t rotate chores but rather allocate who will be responsible for what in the mansion. There are meetup groups that organize communal living. When I met Keith, I was in communal living. First in a dormitory on site at the studios, shared kitchen etc. but we were all independent and had to look after our own stuff. Then later on as I became a permanent Art department employee, I moved out into a communal living space where all department heads would live in a big mansion, and all amenities provided by servants.
I absolutely loved it, and that’s how I met Keith. We decided to share a room, to split the costs, and the most amazing thing about living at the mansion, was the group breakfasts, evening meals, and movie nights as a group.
As soon as I left the Philippines, I hated to return to the lonely horrible existence of Independant living in England. It’s not even like having roommates is similar - far from it! Having roommates where one has to compromise privacy and constantly adjust sharing of tight kitchen spaces and crappy refrigerator layouts, is awful. I personally don’t mind this compromise, but Keith wouldn’t have it. Being past his “youth” he would not entertain going back to shared accommodation anymore. And I was dissappointed.
So now, when I moved to the US and got a meager paying job which I now realize I actually hated. The torture and punishment of forcing myself to work just to pay double the rent I would like because Keith wanted a nice apartment in Beverly Hills, and I HAD to have a swimming pool, meant that pretty much 80% of my earnings went on half the rent and household costs. And Keith paid the other half, for whatever he was earning. The ratio between us meant that I was paying more out of my salary, in addition to being thoroughly depressed with my marketing work and being blamed for poor results in a company which had the opposite attitude and culture to that of the film studios.
I was essentially punishing myself from all directions. And not receiving any reward. This led to the demis of our relationship, as internally I bore a grudge against Keith for forcing me to be trapped in a job I hated, to pay for an apartment that I didn’t appreciate.
Now, tables have turned. I am the upper income earner, on a meager starting salary, but I will be happy. And more than happy to dump 90% of what I earn into something affordable that we can climb the ladder once again on. And Keith is realizing, that staying within this budget, forces him to look at apartments with shared walls, which he hates. He always complains about his inability to sleep because of hearing other guests in the motel, and I have no idea what he complains about because when I sleep, I’m totally out and will even sleep through his ridiculous choking snores. (I gave up complaining about that a decade ago, when he went to the doctor about it and was told he wasn’t gonna die from it, but then didn’t do anything about it.) Keith snoring is terrifying, one thinks he is going to choke to death and never wake up. But my animosity grew against him over the years, where I simply didn’t care, and if he complained that he couldn’t sleep, my lack of sympathy would lash out atta king him for still hearing his snoring.
Snoring does destroy marriages. If a couple is working on this issue, they will look for solutions to make each other happy. I’ve heard of pallet strengthening techniques, strengthening the younger and neck muscles to provide a support structure to prevent the collapse of the tongue into the back of the throat, I’ve heard of surgeries to scarify the underside of the tongue or to splint it with a piece of plastic. The point is there is research, and he didn’t engage when I told him these were options. Even playing the didgeridoo was an option that was absolutely sworn upon for preventing snoring, but he scoffed at it.
So over the years, of course I have leaned away from Keith, ignored him, disrespected him, disregarded him. Because, the engagement was always so unfair. I should pay a greater portion of my income, to satisfy his needs for accommodation.
Well when I got the opportunity to move to Austria, I jumped. Here was an attractive young man, who wanted to employ me, who pretended to value my insight above all others, and I could get a full salary… choose an apartment if my own… choose my life. It was an escape. I thought this would be a natural end to our marraige. But Keith quit his job, and followed me there, in addition, he packed up everything he had in storage which I had no idea he had accumulated, and when it all went in the container, I had NO IDEA, how I was going to afford a place in Austria, to house ALL OF HIS STUFF. If you think about it, he has accumulated a lot over a lifetime, I always seemed to end up with terrible hoarders, but this was just ridiculous. He can’t even part with sentimental junk. Boxes and boxes of useless family stuff.
Comparatively, I had nothing. I brought with me a suitcase from England, disposed of all my belongings, and didn’t have a thing to my name. Imagine how I felt. I was given a quote to emigrate to Austria, originally for a pallet sized wood crate, that would cost me about $1000. Now all of a sudden the logistics of moving my husband abroad to a place where he would never find work, was insanity. The renewed quote for a 22ft container to Austria that would now take 3 months instead of a logistics flight charter, was $7000 and in addition with three months without our belongings, I had to plan for three months of hotel. In the end the cost of emigration was $40,000. The hotels, the flights, the container, the insurance, buying a used car to get around in Austria. We were in debt beyond our eyeballs, and I was now the sole income person.
I relied on my job, but had to also run the hated personal shitty business of managing clients online marketing, AND, Keith would ask me to “tickle the internet for some clients for him”. I was livid inside, and my boss who was originally going to pay for me to emigrate, now went silent on the whole thing. I was completely unsupported for this cross continent move, and my boss backed out of his promises to me on any contingency plan of returning me to the US if there was a problem.
I was now fully ballsed up. Trapped in a foreign country, with unimaginable debt for the first time in my life, and doing three jobs. I was going against the contract of the main job, because it wasn’t enough money. I rented a house I could not afford, because there was a huge container of shit that I didn’t know where to put. And in addition, at that time I spoke no German, so there was zero administrative help except through the boss himself, as there was no HR at his company, so I was tied to his side. Literally every waking hour of his day. Learning German, studying hard to take over his role pitching to outside companies, while maintaining two more businesses outside of work.
FUCKING DUH. No wonder I burned the fuck out. No wonder Keith felt oblidged and guilty enough to get me out, though he never admitted it, as his survival depends on me. I got him the client, that eventually paid for our travel documentary gig. This gig, enables us to leave Austria by the skin of our teeth. And we had to pack up all those boxes and boxes of stuff again, and another $9000 this time because it’s more expensive going back (which I never knew)
Since that escape, I have not been human. I was tossed around in a state of vegetation, unable to contribute much of anything. Not even cook, or get dressed easily. I would scream and break down into meltdowns, because of sheer agonized inability to understand what the fuck was expected of me. Our relationship died. I hated Keith.
But, he took care of me, he had no choice, he found us a place to live, no rent, in a delapidated house we were to look after, while his sick cousin wanted to repair the house and sell it…. Then the pandemic hit. And the surreal way of living closeted in a run-down concrete floor house with no Kitchen, became the norm for THREE WHOLE YEARS. Or two? I can’t remember. It was fall 2019 we managed to return to US. I don’t even remember how we got to LA. I remember hotel stays, lodging in off season cabins, travelling from San Fransisco. But I was gone.
My only responsibility, was to edit clients films. Keith’s clients.
I was an invalid, I could do nothing, so I built Keith’s websites starting over and forced him to get some marketing training, as I could literally no longer do it.
All I could do, was make videos for Patreon. These were beautiful to me, and relaxing, and whatever the burns were, I could begin to try to get rid of them.
And now, Keith is falling into a physical depression this time, with aches and pains and melancholy, that we will have to suffice for living standards beneath him.
So it is, unless of course I get him an interview at Disney… which I intend to do. I’ll be submitting him wether he likes it or not, for any job I think he can do, just so he can do something rather than fret about cashflow stopped over his laptop 24/7 doing whatever it is he does complaining about no income.
And complaining that Nüwa needs attention and I should work on that too… which I can’t LOL. I told him, I just can’t do marketing if any form whatsoever now, not even for my own business. It takes all the energy out of me and leaves me desperately unhappy, when all I want to do is MAKE SHIT. Not PROMOTE A SINGLE THING. And all this indiegogo bullshit, just finished me off only to be told that I had to manage the entire marketing launch for a solid three months or it would simply FAIL. So I gave up and JUST WANTED TO WORK. Zero marketing. I want to move around and make shit. That’s all.
So here I am. No more marketing. Except of course I am once again pushing Keith into jobs that he refused to look at before, because ITS SOMETHING!
