I got to do something last night I’ve waited all year to do.
And I was surly and miserable and did not make a single attempt to enjoy myself.
In fact, I had my resting bitchy face on all night.
I was just resentful. Normally I am grateful for what I have, happy things aren’t worse and as at-peace as I can be with The Way Things Are.
And last night I was like, well I could be dead at any moment. How has revolving my schedule, my life, my money, my FEELINGS around everyone but myself benefited me?
I had another irritated moment not too long ago during some trip-planning and realized I couldn’t do something that would have been fun. Not for the usual lack of time or money, too.
I realized in a bigger way that my schedule wasn’t exactly my own.
And it never is.
Sure there are ways to reclaim pockets of my schedule. But it’s a dance. And my toes, if they aren’t getting squashed, well I end up stepping on myself just to keep from feeling like I could actually take the lead.
And while I know to be grateful for the time off (which, I just lost eight weeks of vacation. Throw a parade for those two days I’ll be off but on call), and for the money and ability to be able to do it, I know that there’s never a guarantee of a next time.
There is no “I’ll get to do it again” in my world. Then you get a hard job and inherit a dependent and people move away and feelings change and places close and souvenirs break and jobs get lost and people die and you’re so fucked up in the brain you don’t have any memory of who it is you actually were.
So, yeah. My life isn’t my own. And instead of being happy when it mercifully ends, I would rather die being happy with the way it went. And today I don’t know if I could say that.