Adrift

Insomnia.

Snow days.

Too much time to think.

Stress.

I bought a new car. I had to before my credit goes to shit when we short sale the house. My stomach is in knots. I have a short fuse and even shorter patience. In my life, that is a bad combination. I have been ugly to my kids. I have been short with my students. I have not been there for my friend going through a difficult time herself.

I peruse the rentals in my area, and find that I’m not excited or interested in ANY of them. “More will come up soon”. And just thinking about the time frame I am planning on moving…within the month…is enough to make my head spin. All with no place to land.

My son is having a hard time. He’s so smart it’s scary…but is failing his Advanced English class because he hasn’t turned in 2/3 homework assignments and isn’t reading the book assigned because “he doesn’t like the book”. I’ve restricted him and put him to work around the house. But truly I feel for him. He expressed that he’s scared. He doesn’t want to leave (after he graduates). He doesn’t know what he wants to do. He’s not sure about college. He says maybe he needs the military because he needs someone to tell him what to do still. My heart aches for him. I’m hoping that with the next couple years he gains more maturity and he is ready to make decisions that will benefit him in the long run.

My daughter is having a hard time. She is 13, going on 25! She is so responsible and driven, yet at the same time she is a perfectionist. She puts so much pressure on herself to be and do all that she can. She is applying for an advanced course load program next year for high school. There are moments when I believe she is a shoe in, and then there are moments I hope to God that she doesn’t make it because I am afraid the pressures will break her delicate psyche. She is the one who always feels responsible for others. She takes so much on herself. Yet she also has such high expectations of others as well, it can often make for a divide between herself and others. She doesn’t relate quite the same with peers, somewhat socially awkward in some ways…but only because she is so mature beyond her years.

Then my baby, she’s just turned 11. She is so sensitive…feeling everything. She tries hard to be strong. She’s the dreamer. She’s the one who would snap her fingers and have everything back to when her family was whole…mainly because she has no idea what that looked like…only the image in her head of what she ‘wants’ it to look like. She worships her daddy. She sees him differently.

All this stress.

All this turmoil.

Is this really what its all supposed to be about?

Is this how my life was meant to be?

Alone.

Figuring everything out on my own.

Working towards…what really?

I’m at the apex of my life and more things are falling apart around me than are being built solid and strong. I feel less sure of things than I did when I was a teenager. I feel less hopeful and just as scared, if not more.

I used to have starry eyes dreaming of what my family would become. The home I would create around myself and them. The memories we would make and the traditions we would build and share. The experiences we would laugh about years down the road. The connections we would have.

I wanted my kids to feel that our house was “the house” where they could all gather with their friends. Now they rarely have anyone over. I wanted to have a group of families that all surrounded my family as an extension of our core. A ‘chosen’ family as it were. I don’t have closeness with my own family this way, nor did I ever have that feeling growing up. I yearned for it for them.

Now I feel we are adrift on our own.

Me struggling at the helm.

Overwhelmed.

And alone.

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