The Frazzled Scribe

I really felt like I needed to take the time to write something because I have been feeling, as they love to say so much on Facebook, “some kinda way.”

Part of it, I know, is related to mom’s upcoming birthday. She would have been 59 years old on September 14. And I still can’t believe she’s not here to celebrate it. It boggles my mind. She wasn’t even 60 years old!

Around this time, were she alive, I’d be stressed. My mother was an only child, used to being celebrated on her birthday, and she was quite vocal about HOW she wanted to be celebrated. Throughout the years I had some hits (I threw her a party as a kid), some misses (one year she straight up stormed out of a homemade spaghetti dinner I made), but her birthday was always the beginning of fall to me, much in the same way my birthday (December 4) is my mental beginning to the Christmas season. So understandably I’m feeling a bit out of sorts.

But along with that, I just feel…unsettled. Unanchored. It’s bugging me. Before we packed up our entire household and moved across town there were certain things I looked forward to and few of them have come to fruition. In hindsight many of my goals were aspiration and conditional on things going the way they were supposed to go (a rookie mistake to be sure).

My house doesn’t feel like home. This is not aided by the fact that I have a boarder who has taken up residence in my living room, limiting the amount of activity I can have going on in my own house. Why I feel compelled to continue this arrangement is beyond me but I do. Usually when I have that gut feeling about something it is God speaking to me. So maybe the message is that I shouldn’t be the only grown-up in my house right now. Or maybe it is to get me to focus on something outside myself. I have no worldly clue. But every time I feel like moving to end this situation something deep inside says “ride it out.”

Now I’m no sucker. I’ve been pulled in by misguided feelings of generosity before. This isn’t it – honestly! I have developed a healthy sense of self-centeredness over the past five years so I know that’s not it. Sigh.

The kids don’t particularly like the new house. Probably simply because it’s not the old house. Or maybe because they both attend school in the old neighborhood (a necessary evil as the old school is close to my current job. With little support in the way of picking them up in cases of unexpected emergency, keeping them close seems the best option). They come home and they are bored. I am not sure why. It isn’t like they had that many friends on our old block. But something is DIFFERENT.

And the dog. Oh, the dog. I am starting to question my sanity in getting that dog. I love him (yes, him, not her) very much but a dog is a lot of work, a lot of responsibility, requires a lot of patience. I don’t have much patience these days.

And we’re broke. Very broke. And the kind of broke I hate. The kind of broke I can tolerate is the “I can flip the money so we have a little wiggle room” kind of broke. Nope. We are “on our last two nickels” broke. And I hate that.

I still own my old house, a problem I don’t envision will end in my favor. I need to resolve that. I think I am still mad that technically I could have been living rent free all this time instead of stressing in this new house. But we can only live in the present.

So there’s a lot of unresolved…stuff…in my life. And it’s not going away anytime soon. I just want to go home and feel at home. I want to feel like there is somebody to take care of ME (my latest batshit crazy thought: if I were to die today who would bury ME?). I’m stressed out and if history is any indicator I don’t deal well with stress. Thankfully, I’m not a stress eater. But the physical symptoms can stack up FAST.

Sorry to be such a downer (as if anyone reads this blog!) but that’s where I am today. In desperate need of an exhale. I’m working on it.