Got home. Doing okay. Doing stuff. Cleaning, getting ready for the week, recalibrating to being in this area that is no longer home and that feels so incredibly foreign...
My foot hit a step at the top of the lower flight of stairs and down I went.
WTH.
At my age, I fricken fell down the stairs. Slid more, really. Landed faster than I could think of what happened, and just sat there.
I mention it because it really tossed me for a loop. I don't know if I had a concussion, i know I hit my neck but I'm not aware of a head hit, or what, but for the next 2 days I was in fuzz land. Thinking was HARD. My focus was not right, in any respect, not just visually. I was in a fog and couldn't seem to remember how to find the door to open and leave. At work, they sent me home early, my eyes didn't look right, they said. Then I told them about the damn fall. Then they saw the bruise on my hand and made me show them my back.
So, home I went. Couldn't sleep.
Because the child, the younger, sends me a message while I'm at work that she wants to quit the program. Which I mentioned.
16 yr old delusional stuff. It's so romantic to get a job, to work, to make your living, to be a "real" human. I've been there. I've had a kid there before. And I don't need to go into how dumb this is. It's almost a rite of passage.
This isn't flowery prose. I'm in a hurry, but there's something that I have to get out before I go. Today, today is a ritual and a step.
I talk to her a bit, careful to navigate the mine field. She is glued to a friend right now, her crutch and security blanket. It's her way. And there's suddenly a new boy in the picture, but after the fact.
I talk to her sister.
I start talking to her father.
I talk with her advisor. Or try, rather. This program is designed to be student run. Period. No parental anything other than a ride there if needed. But he agrees to give her a few more days, if she calls him.
Persuade daughter to call. They have an appt tomorrow.
Try to put together a plan to help her accomplish her goal without adding another quit to her list.
Finally, yesterday, father and I come to an agreement. Well, to be honest, I persuade him to my point of view on the subject. He says we can't force her but we have to make her. I ask what his plan is for that. Not smarmy. I'm open, if he's got a plan worked out. Because I had a detailed plan to offer her. He didn't have one. I understand the dilemma. That's parenting. Persuasion with love through the dilemmas. God. I love them so much. They add a depth to life that nothing else can. What a pain in the ass.
Meanwhile, the move. The job. All on hold and I found myself in this past month, frozen with fear. Unable to move forward, and not knowing why. WHY??? I know it's the right thing. I KNOW it is. KNOW. More than I know how to breathe, because I am consciously aware of the RIGHTNESS of this. But frozen, nonetheless.
And my anxiety over that, over daughters, with the fall and that disruption included, it spilled out into other areas of my life. I tried so so so hard to keep it reined in, to not let it show much. I know it did. My struggling was intensely overwhelming and if it wasn't noticeable, then I am fricken amazing and mail me my damn Oscar/Emmy. Address will follow. I'm serious.
Oh. Add severely cash strapped to the above. No pay day in almost 2 months, savings scraping bottom, credit living to a small extent. Not just the stress of that...but hunger. No pity party. I've been hungry. Period.
So, a hell of a week.
And a realization. A true, not hiding it from myself realization early on in the week.
So, yesterday, at work, dealing with former spouse, texting daughters, working somehow at an incredibly efficient level of ability and even more hours offered(would have loved to, but that'd put me over 40 and they can't do that. I'm solid at 36, which allows for 4 sub hours a week at the main franchise branch when necessary. I hate to say it, I'm a damn good secretary/office manager), while I'm texting another friend in a panic over the frozen move and that other issue...swallowing tears. I tell her, I want to find the seed of this in my psyche and dig the poison out of me. Forever.
She says, Good Luck, honey. I love you. She tells me to throw love at it. And I do.
She's right.
And a phone call that I couldn't take. But that lit up my day to see had happened.
But later, at home, alone, I'm still fighting this thing. We have a plan in place to help daughter. She may not accept it, but that's her choice. Their dad and I are on the same page, not a small undertaking and it always exhausts me.
I contact another friend. Someone who knows me well, who reads my emotions. Who hears what I'm not saying.
Help me. I didn't ask.
Tell me what to do.
Tell me why I do this thing that I am doing.
Everything I want is ready. Everything I want, everything that is what I've dreamed of, well...close...is on the other side of this chasm. It's there. Waiting for me to step through and take it into my hands, to own it. To live it.
Quiet for awhile, then very softly...turn the mirror back to yourself. You know the answer. Speak it.
Oh my God.
That was powerful enough to hit me solid and hard in my chest, knock the air out of me...bring tears pouring from my soul.
Yes. I do know that answer.
Fear.
It's all that I've wanted. Life is waiting to hand it to me.
My terror lies in the accepting of it...and the potential to lose it, after tasting it and knowing the happiness that has eluded me all of my life, that has called to me from deep inside, pulling and driving me to find it.
So.
Today. I choose. I choose to step through. To step on. To do it.
Whatever comes, comes.
I'm a survivor. This I know.
I will not borrow trouble, as a most favorite person, a someone, tells me that I do. And he is right.
Transparency. I am going to step out of these shadows in myself and expose to my soul what it is that I want, to focus and to open myself to it. Fully.
Today, I have a ritual to attend to.
And after that, a job to apply for.
One that was sent to me 2 days ago.
My daughter...she will protest. But I see, at this moment, a clear vision that she is waiting for me to stand up and make this happen. To allow this to happen.
This I had to put down here.
And damn it, the tears won't stop. It's an open, flowing thing. It's okay. I can act through tears. Through fear.
As for my heart.
It's not as tough. It's very soft. Tender. Involved. I try to hide that. I try to hide the deeply romantic person that I am from places like fb and friends, work. Here, it's all open. Not just romantic in the sense of human love, but romantic in the sense of wonder of life and it's beauty and joys and fullness.
But. My heart. God help me. I accept full responsibility for it and it's own silly self.
But that...that is another post. For another day.
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