Ah, Relief!

It is Monday morning but I don't have the blues. Wow-that might very well be a first. I don't know; due to a combination of things that have happened over the last week as well as an enlightening discussion with a good friend on Saturday, I am starting to feel better. My problems haven't changed, but I feel like there is finally small glimmering of light. I can't see clearly yet, mind you, but there is starting to be just enough light that I am starting to make out images, see the shapes of things.

The first thing that happened is a huge thing. Like, huge beyond my power to adequately explain. I received an amazing, unexpected and un-asked for offer of help from someone-financial help. In the form of a monthly gift to help make up for the huge amount of money being garnished from my paycheck (can you say 25% of my monthly income, folks?). For a period of a year. A year. To say this offer is appreciated is to understate it greatly. What this means in a very practical sense is that I will again be able to both pay bills AND buy groceries; I will again be able to know with certainty that I am going to have a home to live in and electricity. See, before this happened, I was broke but okay; I mean, we had everything we needed and even a little bit of breathing room. Not breathing room like we could eat out nightly, but you know, I could do silly things like buy a new pair of shoes for E. without NOT paying one of my other bills. Breathing room in that I could take the kids to McDonald's, at least, if not a "real" restaurant. Breathing room-and for some inexplicable reason, this person that I know and love is going to give me that breathing room back again.

This is more than a weight off of my shoulders. This is the difference between having to contemplate a second job and letting my teenaged daughter raise my younger kids. This is the difference between having to seriously think about packing it in a going home (which for a lot of really valid reasons is NOT a good idea). this is the difference between meat at meals and having milk in the house for the baby. So needless to see, I am both astounded and so grateful and humbled that I have been in tears over it. Just like having all of the security I have worked for swept out from me literally overnight, this is giving it back-also overnight. I am-well. I really don't have the words.

And then on Saturday my friend came by. We talked about this offer, and about my gratitude as well as my feelings of shame, and she actually got annoyed and told me , "Sometimes things happen that really are NOT YOUR FAULT, and how much longer are you going to allow HIS problems and choices to cause YOU shame and embarrassment? So you have to pay financially, and you ARE, but how much longer are you going to pay emotionally for choices you made over ten years ago?" That helped put things into perspective for me. Because as long as I am using myself as a whipping post for his irresponsibility, I am allowing him to control me. Period. And I have come too far and worked my ass off hard enough that I don't need to do this anymore. When all this happened earlier in the year (when I thought that bankruptcy was going to be an option, which I have since discovered isn't), I thought, "Okay, when all this is over and paid, I will finally be free of him," but really, as long as I waste a single brain cell in allowing him to have any effect on my emotions, I will never be free. And I desperately want to be free; free of shame and embarrassment, free of anger.

In addition to the very insightful comments, my friend is also a medical professional and suggested that maybe I should be back on my anti-depressants. There is no denying that I have been completely emotionally unhinged for the last six months or so. There has been a lot going on, of course, but all this time I thought I was feeling so crazy due to hormones. After over two years, my body is suddenly doing all of those things that a normal body does, so I thought I have been experiencing some major hormone changes. And maybe that is part of it, but not all of it. So I am getting back on them, in addition to starting the Chantix (anti-smoking drug). The Chantix won't be here for about six weeks ( I qualify for the Patient Assistance Program, which means I get them free, since I have no insurance, but they have to be approved and ordered), so you can bet that I will be smoking like a freaking chimney until then.

So all in all, my problems haven't gone away, but it feels like a beginning. And with the money thing less an issue, I think I need to spend some of the energy I was using to worry about that to try to work on some of the other many, many things about myself that I need to work on. But for today? Yeah, I am better than I have been in a really, really long time, because I am beginning to feel the faintest glimmer of hope.