Last day at the ranch. Trying to clean when the place wasn’t exactly clean and proper when I moved in. Oy vey.
The sadness is overwhelming. I mean I have a cute new (emphasis new. Built five years ago) place waiting for me.
But still. Gonna miss life on the A1A.
I’m very tempted to be crabby about some things. But i got to thinking about a video a friend sent me a long time ago.
Basically the speaker said in one hand you gave crap. And in the other you have a delicious … melting … ice cream cone.
Guess which one you should focus on.
I was just thinking how nice it would be to take some time off to deal with my move.
But I know to be happy I am able to pull it off in the first place and I could afford the deposits and the movers and the buying of overlapping time and storage units to make it possible.
It’s hard sometimes to keep myself from thinking about what other people have. Time or more money or help or furniture or whatever. In other words, crap.
Today I’m trying to zero in on the come. And pray it’s not poop-flavored when I get it.
Every Wednesday, one of the boys gets brave enough to start hinting around about the weekend.
Which is proper. He might have been raised right.
However, I always either drop out of the conversation or dismiss the idea before it can even be broached. And I’m home free. Generally.
Today I didn’t get so lucky.
He texted while I was driving home. To ask if he could have the honor of taking me out Friday.
It’s been four hours and I haven’t replied.
I can’t be on social media because then i will have to reply. So at this point I’m just pretending I died or something.
Like my friends say, if a guy is going to get pissy and leave you at a bar when he was the one who took you there, why on earth would you voluntarily go out with him again?
Mom is a little more forgiving, although not much. She said you don’t have to sleep with him. Um, wasn’t planning to.
I want friends. I want love. But why does this one think that it might be him?
Last time I let a guy wear my defenses down (and I had them up when it came to him for a long time. Eight years if you can believe it), it turned out interestingly.
Very interestingly.
But …
But in the end he’s just another guy who survived the chase and decided that was good enough once he got the girl.
He didn’t need to keep her. Not even after he got her to feel the way he said he did.
Which is fine. I think he did care. I know he still does. But that just wasn’t enough.
In any event, I have zero desire to be in that situation again. So I can’t put myself in it.
And silence is the kinder response than what I really want to say about it all.
I don’t ever doubt that I’m smart enough or good enough or that people like me. Because I am smart enough and I like me just fine and I really don’t care about others all that much.
But every once in a while people find their way under my skin and I wonder whether their perception of my value is far less … or far greater and they don’t want me to ever, ever know that.
In my younger years, I remember taking on better jobs with more responsibility and more pay. And I always assumed that I’d keep moving up … keep making more … keep achieving more and keep earning my “Goddess” title.
And yet life hasn’t worked out that way. It’s been a lot of up-down-up-sideways-down-down-up. With some breaks in between with no income whatsoever.
I always feel poor, too. I grew up poor and even now, no matter how hard I work or how much I make, I see everybody else who might have had a better start in life … or who got started younger … or who doesn’t have more college debt than they started out with (thanks 9% interest rate) … who married well and didn’t have my expenses …
And I don’t get mad or sad or anything. But I do wonder whether it will all ever pay off or whether mediocrity is as good as it gets.
I like to think that the universe and most of the people in it serve to crush your soul to keep you from feeling not only worthy of more, but worthy of what you have.
Because, as said universe has proven many times, it can take it all away and leave you with less.
So yeah. These are the thoughts I think as I contemplate moving costs and taking on another ridiculous rent.
A kid I went to elementary school with was just killed in a car accident.
He was one of the nice ones too.
Damn.
41 is too fucking young.
He was killed on a road where my family got into a terrible accident too. We were hit by a drunk driver. Screwed us all up for life.
My friend had four small kids. And everyone will say how sad that he was a father who left them behind.
I worry that if something happens to me, mom will be alone with no support or income. The woman who can’t leave the house by herself would be forced onto the streets without my income. She would probably die of a broken heart. And I wonder if the world would notice whether either of us were gone.
In any event, I hope his family finds a way to survive without him, financially and emotionally. And I will thank God that, by His grace, mom and I are OK for one more day.
This time last year, a friend gave birth to a baby girl on the same day that a friend’s little girl got killed crossing the street in front of her school.
Today a friend is having donor eggs implanted so she can finally finally finally after years of trying have a successful pregnancy. And on this same day, another friend’s son was stillborn.
Remind me, when I want to light my own world on fire, of this post. That when there is something wonderful, there is also something terrible.
Either that means things aren’t that bad and and at least something truly terrible hasn’t happened. Or else things suck and maybe something magical is on its way.
If I didn’t have a permanently puzzled reactionary look on my face, people probably wouldn’t recognize me.
Apparently anything you do to attempt to preserve your fragile emotional health can and will be used against you in a court of law.
