me too...

Every night, I lie in bed with My Girl for just a few minutes. Every night, even when there's been fighting and yelling and sighing and door-slamming...every night My Girl still wants me to lie down with with her. And even when I'm tired and just want to watch The Neighbors, goshdarnit, I treasure these moments when we remind each other that yes, we really do belong to each other. And sometimes, just sometimes, these are the moments when My Girl chooses to share a part of her heart. Like last night...

I hope God is real and heaven is real.

Me too, My Girl, me too.

I'm afraid

I'm afraid it's been since July 26, 2012...that was the last time I wrote in this space. 7 months of busy-ness and tiredness and hopefulness and sadness and joy and fear, but none of it seemingly blog-worthy. No Big Important Words to say. And so I stopped writing.

But today I write again, even though I still have No Big Important Words. Today I write again because I'm selfishly hoping the very act of writing will calm my heart and mind. At this point, I'll try anything. Maybe even meds. But I'll get to that.

Two months ago I quit the job I'd had for 3 1/2 years as a church secretary in order to finish my Occupational Therapy Assistant degree, which requires two 8-week full-time fieldwork assignments. It was a job I considered both a blessing and a curse. More blessing than curse, but the frustrations were wearing on me, and though the end was bittersweet, it wasn't an end I regretted. Until now. Because now I am almost through fieldwork experience #1, and I'm thinking if I had just stayed at the easy, predictable if unfulfilling job, life would be a whole lot calmer right now and I'd feel a lot less like I'm coming apart at the seams.

Why coming-apart-at-the-seams, you ask (all 4 of you who may actually read this). Well, here's why:

1. Turns out I kinda suck at pediatric OT, which my supervisors all say is OK at this point (and say I shouldn't used the word "suck") but means I am in a constant state of tension about how badly I'm doing at this job I really, really wanted to be good at. Pediatric OT was the whole reason I started OT. 
2. It's almost guaranteed I couldn't get a pediatric OT job upon graduation anyway, even if I were good at it (which remember, I'm not). 
3. Which means getting a job with adults, which is OK, except that I have so little experience with adults that I'm unsure whether I'll like it or hate it (or somewhere in between). 
4. And frankly, it doesn't really matter what I like or don't like about OT settings at this point. I have to get a job. I went back to school hoping to find a more fulfilling path for me, yes. But I mostly went back to school to get qualifications for a job so that finances wouldn't be such a worry every month (day). But now I have to actually find a job so that large school debt won't just put us in way worse shape than we were before ("way worse:" don't I sound like a middle-schooler). 
5. And I don't know how to find a job. Not in the real word. I've only done job searches in the ministerial world in the past (and that is definitely not the real world). Though I've had secretarial positions for the last 7 years, I never applied or interviewed for them. I got those because I knew someone. Even the job I got as a math teacher, I got with only a phone interview because my parents knew someone who had a son teaching at the school (the school was desperate, obviously). I don't know how to do a job search in the real world.
6. And even if I manage to get a job, what if I hate it? Or just tolerate it? What if I did all this for a job that I dread more than my old one? At least I'll be making more money, I guess.
7. But I'll be giving up for good (well, already have given up for good) the one dream I've had since childhood...being a stay-at-home mom. I know that's not glamorous or feminist or even what I'm good at, and I know that statistically very few women in this world can afford such luxury (please don't tell me we could afford it if we just budgeted better...I've tried that) but it's what I wanted, and if I couldn't be a stay-at-home mom, I at least wanted to be flexible enough to spend time with my family, but I feel like I've hardly seen them these last couple of years, and in the last couple of months even when I do see them, I'm such an exhausted zombie that I'm not good for much (how's that for a run-on sentence).
8. And so right now I'm looking at trying to survive another week of never-ending stress, then another 8 weeks of stress in a different setting (inpatient rehab) which I've seen before and didn't love the first time, then (or concurrently) the stress of finding a job (any job), then the stress of passing my certification exam so that I can keep/get said job, then who-knows-how-long to adjust to this new life that I've chosen but right now am very afraid of.
9. And I could add another list of stress over church, faith, community that would be longer than this one, but really, this seems long enough, doesn't it? Maybe I'll save that list for tomorrow.

In the meantime, the stress is getting to me. I've spent the last 4 hours unable to stop crying unless distracted by reading (or now writing). For the first time in my life, I'm thinking of making an appointment with my doctor to ask about anxiety meds. Because even if I survive this year, I'm afraid. I'm afraid of the toll this stress is taking on my family, on my relationships with the ones I love the most. I'm afraid of what the stress is doing to my body physiologically. I'm afraid of always feeling so inadequate. I'm afraid of always being so sad and scared and confused. I'm afraid.

And now I'm going to publish without even re-reading this, which will be the first time I've ever not agonized over every word. But right now I'm going to play Crazy Faces with the family because The Boy asked while tears still stain my face, so editing will just have to wait.