And??

A blog? Why am I doing this? What do I hope to accomplish? I have been asking myself these questions over and over. What makes me think anyone will read this, and is that even my goal? I am not sure actually. All I know is that I am on a roller coaster of anger, hurt, hopelessness followed by hope...or maybe it is hoping for hope, resolve, and determination...then I am suddenly painfully aware of my inability to take action again. 

I go off to bed every night saying "Tomorrow I will do this." Then, I can't fall asleep because my mind races with the indignity and insult of my situation. I get stuck on this broken record playing my feelings of shame and anger and hopelessness, over and over...round and round. The next morning, I wake up feeling physically ill and like it is all just impossible. I convince myself that I have brought this upon myself and am somehow so inept and unworthy of anything better and that it is all just a useless fight not worth fighting. Then in the back of my head I hear that little voice say "Bull Shit!"

"I have something to offer this world, damn it," that small voice says. I mean really, what am I whining about. It's not like I am homeless, starving, imprisoned for life or on my death bed. All of those things could certainly happen to me, but they haven't. I am not completely destitute. I haven't hit the lowest possible low that I could hit. Obviously I have to have done somethings right. So, I can take credit for that, right? I feel like a complete failure but I actually could be worse off.

Right now, as I am writing this, I am confident that I can survive. I know, and I think that I have always known, that unless someone or something comes and takes my life from me, forcefully and against my will, then I will survive. What I struggle with now, and at various times in my past, is the desire to do more than just survive. To put a comfortable distance between me and the end of the survival rope...the one we tie a knot in and hang on to. I want to move away from that end, I want to feel like I could slip a little and not run out of rope. Most of my life I have been just barely hanging on. I want to get past the fear that around the next corner something might take my last inch of rope away and replace it with...nothing.

I am on a roller coaster here. And as the track rolls through crest and trough after crest and trough, my resolve to endure it rolls with it. When I am on a crest, I have enough hoping for hope to make an attempt. Attempt at writing or thinking, to attempt at hope, to attempt at taking action. It is while I am on these crests that I am hopeful enough to actually try and build momentum that will carry me through the next trough. 

That is why, at least for now, I am writing this blog. To document that momentum. To share it with not only the me that is down in the dip side of the roller coaster ride, but also with anyone who might need some momentum to make through to that next crest. My hoping for hope is that I will find a way off the roller coaster. And that documenting it, I will help others find their way, too.

That's not rain...

I commented to my husband, last week, that everything seemed to be falling apart around the house. The washing machine only works on the hot cycle, the dryer now requires two cycles to get clothes dry, the garbage disposal hasn’t worked for a couple of weeks and then the AC went out late in the evening and we only realized it when we woke up to 89 degrees of drenching night sweats. “When it rains, it pours” was our general sentiment. Little did I know last week, that that wasn’t rain falling on our heads, it was the sky.

Yesterday, I lost my job.

The official reason given was “resizing”, but we had just hired two new people the week before. I can’t even begin to absorb the absurdity of that, as I must first try and get this chunk of sky back where it belongs. I simply can’t function under the weight of it all. But, how does one go about getting the sky right again. How do I pick up these pieces and put them all back in their rightful place? Is it even possible, and if so, do I have the right tools to get it done?

This is the real question…do I have what it takes? Honestly at this stage of the game, less than 24 hours after the crisis began, I feel like I do not have the skills or drive to recover. I have been fighting a mild depression for the last four months. Now I feel the undertow of a full blown shut down tugging at my limbs. How do I do this? What just happened? Where do I go? Where have I even been? Why is this happening to me? Did I do this? Will I do it again? Where do I even start?

I am so overwhelmed with humiliation, fear, and anger that my brain seems to be incapable of logical thought. I have always been a left-brain thinker. I like plans. I like to think out the action steps from start to finish and then just follow the map. I need to know what comes next, what the goal of the current step is and how it will impact the subsequent steps. I consciously plan to use my current efforts proactively to allow for the best possible outcome of the next effort. But I can’t even think of an outcome, much less what effort to take.

I feel destroyed, in every sense of the word, in every aspect of what is me. My ego, my outlook, my skill set, my appreciation of people, my belief in good; all that I thought was right is all gone. It’s just gone. I feel empty. Like all hope has just been sucked out of me into one of those locked vacuum canisters at the car wash. It is gone and I saw it get sucked up, but I am now powerless to retrieve it. I want it back. I want a rewind, a do over, a re-dub. This is not what I had planned. It isn’t on my map. This is my life and I had no intention of disposing of it. Give it back! Why is that stupid canister locked anyway?

Then it occurs to me... The canister is locked. With a lock. You know, one with a key?

 So…there is a key? There has to be. This can’t be the fate of my self. It’s not like it was sucked into a black hole, right? It must still be there, inside that thing. I mean it wasn’t incinerated. Not yet anyway. Maybe I can get it back. I can’t see it but I know it must still exist. It can’t just end like this. I don't just fade out to black. There is a key. Somewhere...