More and more, I feel like my life is spinning crazily out of control and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
My job sucks and is a dead end job. There. I said it out loud! I desperately need to get into something else soon because this thang ain’t even paying the grocery bills anymore, but *sigh* there’s all that unpaid vacation time coming up that I desperately need in order to get things done that need doing. I feel like I’m moving much more slowly than I used to. I sometimes feel like the world is in fast forward while I’m stuck in slow motion.
Mom is painfully thin now and hardly eats anything. She says she’s just not hungry. I need to go up to her house over Christmas vacation and help her clear out the clothes that she is getting rid of because they’re now all too big and help her put her house in order. She’s giving me all of her painting supplies and beloved paint brushes because painting, her former passion, is just too hard to do. Her extensive flower gardens are gone now, as is her garden that she used to be so proud of. She’s so tired. Now she wants me to come pull up the shrubberies that are dying because of the deep drought. I didn’t know she couldn’t drag the water hose out to water them. She never told me until I wondered aloud why her landscaping was dying. She’s gotten way, way worse since school started. How could I have missed it? My mom is slipping away, and I’ve been so busy with job and home responsibilities and finances that I have been oblivious to the changes. Perhaps I’ve just been ignoring the changes hoping that they would go away.
She’s been telling my obliquely all along that she doesn’t have much time left. Her affairs are in order. Her headstone is in place in the cemetary. She told me that she probably wouldn’t outlive my stepdad, who is a complete invalid that needs her constant care.
We sat out on her front porch just rocking in the breeze on Thanksgiving afternoon and reminiscing about times past. I felt relaxed and peaceful for the first time in a long time. We talked about the carpentry shop where I worked during high school, and she urged me to go ahead and quit my job and go back into business for myself. She went inside to check on my stepdad, and while she was inside, SwampMan told me that it isn’t that he dislikes my family, he just wanted to spend the rest of the day with me. So we took our leave and headed back home, where I fed the livestock and SwampMan watched movies that I don’t like and that he knows I don’t like. Nothing says Thanksgiving like people chopping off each other’s limbs with swords and axes with fake blood spraying everywhere followed by the Godfather.
It’s 1:30 a.m., and I’ve been pacing the floor trying to decide what to do for 5 hours now. Back and forth, stop at the computer, type a sentence, stand back up, pace back and forth. My heart is telling me to drop everything because family comes first. My head is telling me that property taxes are due (about $4,000 this year), property insurance is due, we need a new roof, and we need a new A/C and heat system. Children need Christmas presents. We can’t really afford it with my underemployment, and we damn sure can’t afford it if I walk off my job. Hyperventilation. Pace.
I am depressed. Maybe I need to pay somebody to come kick my ass so I’ll get really pissed off and snap the hell out of it. Probably most of my problem is that I’ve cut out my prescription medicines that allow me to sleep at night because my prescription costs have doubled, my fuel costs have increased, my grocery costs have gone way up, my feed costs have gone way up, but my pay has decreased. I went to get my prescriptions, was told the cost, and didn’t have enough money in the bank to cover them. We’ll probably owe more federal taxes, too. We did last year. Dang. I’m going to need some really kickass antidepressants.
SwampMan would be totally pissed off if he found that I was saving money by cutting my prescriptions. He would say “it isn’t my money, it’s OUR money” and that I should ask for it when I need it, but I can’t. I’m an adult. I should be self sufficient. Now it’s 2:30 a.m.
My whole problem is that I can’t ask for help from anybody. I am incapable of even praying for help with my problems, but I can ask for (or even demand!) divine intervention for others. Strange. Am I even a real believer or not? If I am, what do I believe in? Seventeen steps into the dining room. Pivot. Seventeen steps back to the computer. I need a better-paying job. Pivot and walk 30 steps into the living room and back to the computer. If I have a better-paying job, I’d be working longer hours and would have even less time available for family. Pivot and walk the long way around again.
Guess I’m not going to solve anything tonight. Maybe things will be brighter in the morning. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be all strong again and have my perpetual smile pasted firmly in place. Maybe everything will work out. Maybe I’ll get enough sleep in the 3 hours left before the alarm goes off if I go to sleep right now.
A1A South 