mzrowan

I've been watching EastEnders for over twenty years. In that time, they've shown many abusive relationships of different types.

( Content warning: partner abuse )

Edit to add even more thoughts: More and more I wish they'd gone with "just" emotional abuse. They've had a ton of rape storylines over the years, and recently they deliberately did one where the rape itself wasn't shown – just the lead-up and aftermath. They carefully constructed a story where both the characters on the show and the general public would be asking themselves – was it really rape? Is the woman lying, exaggerating, or simply mistaken? And in the end, the answer was: yes, that was rape. The men who did it went to prison (a bit of fantasy fulfillment there, I'm afraid).

It would be so powerful for them to do an abuse storyline like that. Is it abuse? Maybe he's just sensitive and has a hard time calming down? Isn't it his wife's duty to drop everything, even things like eating and sleeping, to tend to his emotional needs? How often is too often for that to happen? Does she have the "right" to leave him for this?

And the eventual answer: yes, that is abuse. Or maybe, as Captain Awkward might put it: yes, she has the right to leave, even if she isn't calling it the "a" word (yet?), because everyone has the right to leave situations that make them unhappy; there's no invisible bar of "enough" that you have to meet.

Here's a first for me in 20 years of road warrior life: the airline lost my checked bag. (Specifically JetBlue, although I don't think that particularly reflects badly on them compared to any other airline.)

Dropped my bag off at the counter in Boston...went to pick it up after stopping for a quick lunch in the terminal at SFO...no bag. Stopping for lunch meant all the other passengers were gone when I got there, leaving the unsettling possibility that someone had (mistakenly?) walked off with my bag. So after a few days without news, I figured it was gone for good. If someone were going to call in about accidentally taking the wrong bag, they would have done it by then.

But then! I got someone on the phone at JetBlue who had more data. Seems that the only scan they have for my bag tag is when it got dropped off. It should have been scanned when it got on the plane and again when it got off. This makes it more likely that my bag is lost in an airport somewhere, which actually is good news, I think.

I'm again hopeful I will someday get it back. I like that suitcase. It matches my other suitcase. It has stuff in in that is of sentimental value to me, but almost nothing of monetary value, except an extremely old iPad with no data plan.

I feel like I've been living in an urban version of the classic country song lately – my boss up and quit, my cat is sick, and my luggage has left me.

UPDATE: Got my daily call from JetBlue to tell me they haven't found my bag. On the one hand, I get why they feel they need to do that, but on the other hand, it gets my hopes up every. damn. time. Asked this person what info they had and it was different from what I was told last time: the bag was reported as having been loaded on the correct plane. And tag scans on unload are not usually done, so no data there. SFO says they don't have my bag. So we're back to someone took it home?

First thing I'm doing with my new and/or returned luggage is adding a ribbon to the handle and filling out the address tag.