Spoiled Only Child

Words from my dark place

Maybe if I can just slap some words over all this dread and fear, it would help. So even though I feel like I can't do it, I'm going to try.

Things I am afraid of:

• That working here is going to drive me crazy. I feel crazy right now, I really do.
• That I'm going to be laid off.
• That I'm never going to find another job. 
• That I am absolutely, positively, unemployable outside of this place.
• That, without my income, we will have to sell our house.
• That I live in a world that no longer has any use for people like me.
• That I am lost, and I will never find my way.
• That our country, our economy, our world are broken beyond repair.
• That I'm not going to sleep tonight.
• That I am depressed.
• That I am headed for some kind of mental breakdown.
• That I am ruining other people's lives with my anxiety and depression and insomnia.

Things I need to remember:

• That, unlike many of the people on this sinking ship of a company, my husband has a good job that will allow us to live a good, middle-class life even if I lose my job. (No, we probably can't afford our house without some kind of income from me, but we won't starve or have to move to the projects.)
• That the economy will get better one day.
• That this situation is temporary. Someday, somehow, I will find my way out of this stuck place.
• That I am valuable.
• That my situation is only intolerable inside my own head. In every rational respect, I am perfectly OK.

Last night, I hardly slept. I'm working the fucking night-shift this week--I now have to do it one out of every nine weeks--and it's got my very delicate sleep schedule out of whack. And I lay there in the dark feeling like my chest was squeezing, crumpling. And I kept thinking, I'm stuck in a work situation that is intolerable. I can't stand it anymore. And there's no way out. None of the masses of people that our company has laid off this year have found full-time work in this area. Not a single one. So I am trapped working at this place that is making me crazy. I'm not emotionally capable of continuing to work there, but I have no choice. I felt like I was going to die or go nuts or I don't even know what.

Today, I came to work and our boss told us that it's looking like we're going to have to make lots more severe cuts next year. He told us all to start getting prepared. The tone of his voice and the look in his eye said, "We are fucked. We are hanging on by a thread. There is no hope." I'm not sure what preparations I'm supposed to be making. I feel overwhelmed, powerless, lost, adrift in an endless ocean. I know that someday I will look back and see how close I was to shore, how everything really was OK. That I had my family and my health and my (relative) youth and all the things that really mattered. But right now I can't see it. I can't see the horizon from here, and I am scared.

I need to focus on what's right here and now. Telling myself stories about a better future is not going to help. Right now, I have air to breathe and food to eat. Right now, I have a steady income. Right now, I have a beautiful, happy daughter. Right now, I have a husband who loves me. Right now, I have lots of vacation time. Right now, I get to go home every night to my family. Right now, I am healthy. Right now, there is a beer in the refrigerator waiting for me. Right now, I am going to leave work and go home and try to breathe.

Zen list

One night this week, I was doing my usual nightly routine of lying in bed stressing about the millions of things I want to get done but will never have time for. And I turned and asked Mr. SOC, "Do you worry about all the things you need to get done?" And do you know what he said? His answer was absolutely stunning. He said, NO! To me, worrying about the things I need to get done is such a huge and integral part of my life. I can't even imagine what I would do with all that spare brain space. If I could remove that worry from my head, 75 percent of my life would be the mental equivalent of sitting in deep meditation beside a serene mountain lake. This is revolutionary, the idea that there are people who actually don't have an unending to-do list cycling through their brain at all times. Can I ever be one of them? That is the real question.

I am clearly not there yet. But one thing that might be constructive is to lay out my priorities for my limited time. Because as it is, I think I spend a lot of time doing things, or mostly one thing, that is not a good, or even enjoyable, use of my time. (I'm looking at you, MacBook.) And if I could do less of those things, I might be able to do more of the stuff that I want to do. So I'm going to make a little mini-list. Somehow I doubt that zen masters make such lists. In fact, Mr. SOC has never made anything more than a grocery list, and even those tend to be woefully incomplete. But I'm choosing to believe that this list is better than my usual lists, and so it represents progress.

Things I want to spend less time on:

• Aimlessly surfing the internet until my eyes blur and my mind fogs, reading crap that rots my brain
• Worrying about what I need to do
• Being angry

Things I want to continue to spend time on:

• Being present with my family
• Cooking
• Writing
• Reading novels
• Exercise
• Learning new things (Spanish? Really should get back to that.)
• Meditation

Things I want to spend more time on:

• Music
• Kind acts
• Romance
• Keeping my house neat and uncluttered (I never want to be one of those people who spends all their spare time making their home perfect. But maybe 10 minutes a day trying to keep the clutter monster at bay?)
• Getting out of the office (Stop eating lunch at desk while surfing the internet. It's just not good.)
• Personal grooming (I know, this is sad.)

I should probably delete this post

So here I was worrying about death and infirmity, and something completely unexpected came and whacked me on the back of the head. Politics. I am not the kind of person who takes politics personally. But we just had a school board election, and the people who won want to dramatically change our schools in a way that I think is unconscionable. And I can't do anything about it. These people who I don't support in any way are going to ruin our schools. My child will probably be OK, but the poor kids, the ones who live in disadvantaged neighborhoods, well, good luck to them. And we will all be poorer for that.

This election got me thinking that this whole far-right movement really is taking hold again, that less than a year after Bush left office, all the hope is disappearing in favor of the most polarized politics our country has ever seen. I mean, there are actually people--lots of people--who are prepared to kill health care reform just to make the president look bad. Something our country so desperately needs. If you don't like Obama's plan, then come up with an alternative, but please don't send crazy people out in the streets with signs saying "Hands off my healthcare!" It feels almost as if we've come to the end of the viability of the two-party system in America. This just isn't working anymore.

It's all making me start to wonder if this is even the kind of country where I want to live, the kind of place I want my daughter to grow up in. I am profoundly disillusioned with the selfishness that seems to permeate the American psyche. Who cares about the poor? Who cares about the uninsured? Just as long as I get mine. This goes totally outside the bounds of what I allow myself to write here, but I just cannot keep it inside. I have actually started to cry multiple times every day for the past three days thinking about this stuff. I am so afraid of where my country, my state, my county are headed. I just don't understand why those of us who have more can't seem to find the slightest bit of care for those who have less. But I guess it's more important to us to have five televisions, to have closets stuffed full of crap we don't need from Target, than to make sure that poor people have healthcare or decent schools for their kids. So we'll just build more jails and pay for more ER visits, all for the luxury of not having to give a shit about anyone else.

The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

Oh my. That was intense. I finished this book just before going to sleep last night, and for a while I thought it was going to keep me up. It broke my heart. It confirmed my deepest fears. It was fascinating and wonderful and sexy and completely unbelievable and totally true. I hardly know what to say.

So it's about this guy, Henry, who time travels, and not in some metaphorical sense. He actually disappears from wherever he is in the present and materializes, stark naked, in some other place and time. He has no control over when or where he goes. It's also about Clare, the woman who marries him and loves him completely and puts up with all the annoyances of being married to a guy who might not be present for the wedding day with nary a complaint. I know, it sounds ridiculous. But it works. Their love is so beautiful and palpable and hot, it will make you swoon. 

But here's what I think this book is really about. The fact that everything has already happened and is always going to happen, that none of it is under our control. We all like to think that if we work hard and make the right decisions and have the right intentions, we can bend life to our wishes. But it is all an illusion. Henry visits his past, but he cannot change his future. He knows he is going to be shot, and yet he cannot move out of the way. Everything is happening just as it was always going to. Clare knew that marrying this guy was probably going to be a disaster, and yet their marriage was something that simply was. It was not a choice. It was a fact. That's kind of how I've always felt about my own marriage. (Not the disaster part. Just the idea that this person had become my family, and that I had no choice in the matter.)

This book is also about the impossibility of holding onto anything. No matter how solid, how permanent, this moment might seem, it will vanish. Everything does. Last night, I held onto my husband and was terrified. It could happen at any moment, the vagaries of time and fate could take him from me. Solid flesh and bone can turn to vapor in a heartbeat. Anything, anyone, can be taken from us. Henry could look up his own obituary, know the exact moment of his death, but really he is just like all of us. We all live with the knowledge of death hanging over us. Sometimes I don't know how we do it.

These are realizations I came to well before reading this book--and they scare the hell out of me. And so does this book, because it does not give me a window into a place where I can be OK with this stuff. Henry's death is unhappy and violent, full of regret about all he is losing. Clare never gets over his loss. Is this life all about losing things, gradually, piece by piece, until we are broken and limbless? Our parents die, our spouses, sometimes even (oh god please no) our children. Our bodies whither. Our physical pain increases. I have developed this fear recently that things are only going to get worse from here. I have come all the way up. I have married and found my career and bought my house and had my child, and now I am at the top of the roller coaster, as Clare says. Now all that is left is to start losing things.

I know my mind is in the wrong place. I need to bring it back to the here and now. I know that suffering is the space between where we are now, this moment, and where our minds are. My fear is an illusion, created by me. I'm trying to stop, but this book did not help. I love it still.