Please know, dear blogosphere, that I've had a really strong cup of coffee.
I told my husband this morning that last night I gave up. I was up with our son for about an hour in the middle of the night helping him settle down after a nightmare. Drew (The Husband) thought when I said "I gave up" that I had somehow lost my parenting marbles at 3 in the morning and plunged Will (The Son)'s head into a hot fudge sundae and then built a ball pit in our bathroom.
"It's OK that you gave up. It was late and whatever you needed to do to get him to sleep, I support you."
"Oh, no," I said, "That was fine. I meant I gave up on all my hopes and dreams last night."
Short pause as he pours coffee, then "Ah. Way to go, Job."
And I did by the way actually lie in bed last night (after having helped my son rank the twenty-five different angles at which his feet could possibly be tucked under his blanket) and say, out loud, "Universe, I give up. I give up. I give up."
I'm not sad or depressed or despondent. I think life is pretty awesome. The people in my life are exceptional. Drew and I are happy. My son floats around on a tiny little motor-powered cloud and emits sunshine and I have to keep my mouth shut about how fabulous he is 90 percent of the time I'm thinking it so I don't sound nuts and so the women (or men, whatever works) in his life in the future have half a chance.
However, there's a lot of half-fixed stuff in my life that I thought I was going to complete through sheer willpower, or chutzpah, or by singing a song from Mary Poppins (and I do the most awesome Julie Andrews accent, which is all the better when it comes out of a Jewish-Puerto Rican person like myself). My apartment is half-nice, but then you open the door to our bedroom and the zombies fall out. Our kitchen cabinets are about to FALL OFF THE WALL (it's kooky) and we don't have the money to fix them. We're halfway out of an enormous debt. My current job is cool, but I'm still really broke, and it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life. I don't blog enough and I haven't finshed a big project for my dad's business that I promised him I would do. I got all the plants in on our deck but the deck itself looks like the opening credits of "Sanford and Son". My husband is sick right now, and just lost a big client, and I feel like we're blankly staring into the future, blinking occassionally, not really knowing how to pull it off.
I'm out of optimism. I need it all to come together already. I've spent ten years saying it will, and some of it plain hasn't and just might not. I need a clean, completed house, I need a rollicking career. I need, it seems like, a hundred thousand dollars to politely climb up my yoga pants leg and into my pocket. And Universe, you know me, I'll pay this jazz back tenfold, but really, I give up.
Help, please. You know where to find me. Still love you, Universe.
Jen
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4 comments:
I liken my house more to "Miss Haversham" than Sanford and Son. I love my job very much but in an area with the highest concentration of PhDs in the country I often face a derisive "oh" when I talk about what I do. I'm *just* a writer. OBVIOUSLY not as smart as the lawyer scientist doctor blah blah blah.
Fight it Jenny, fight it. You have what matters in life. You could beautifully remodel your apt and in 10 years, will need to do it again. You could find the job of your dreams and lose it or have snobby PhDs blow snot on you. You could get out of debt only to have to go back into it because of some emergency.
Maybe instead of saying half-fixed, think more that it's just slowly-fixed? You're doggie paddling instead of butterfly stroking, but the point is, your head IS above water.
Mama said there'd be days like this.
xo,
JC, NC Div. Int. Order of Jennys
Wow Jen, your blog is über interesting.
I thought it might be comforting to know that we are in the same boat at the moment. I totally hear you on the 100K... Our one bedroom can barely contain us and sometimes it feels like the walls are caving in.
Maybe it's part of us being responsible adults and wanting to secure our children's future, maybe there's no particular reason for it.
All I know is that the universe has a way of course-correcting and I am hopeful that our day will come :)
Dear Jen
You do know that there is nothing that is ever out of place, order or time, don't you?
And you do know that complete acceptance of everything you are aware of, without exception, also means complete openness to everything that you are not aware of, don't you (yeah, think infinite possibilities)?
Which means that when you accept completely, you and I are in complete sync and that's when we do our best work together - creating that which your heart desires! Now that's the sort of thing that gets me really excited! Bet it does you too!
So Jen, when do we start???
Your best friend, God.
Jen:
About 3-4 months ago I saw this article about Haitians eating dirt to survive, and it really put everything in perspective:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-01-30-haiti-poor_N.htm
Since then, every time one of my clients talks about how unfair something is, I remind them that we all all in the wealthiest top 5% of the entire planet, and as long as you are not forced to choose which of your children will get to survive by eating dirt cookies tonight, you can STFU and GBTW.
I know this is a little on the tough love side, but its the truth. Most residents of this world would kill dozens just to live our lives for a while. We are truly lucky to have the opportunity to scrape together a living.
I also look at my own family history with its Ellis Island/LES/Hell's Kitchen background and realize the difficulties we face are nothing compared to those suffered by my own family just 75 years ago.
One day, you may or may not get past the debt and worry, but until then, there is no reason to give up. You are already doing a lot better than you realize. yes, this is all a matter of perspective, but you were the one who brought the Universe into the discussion.
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