Hang in There

The notion that is Time for Change becomes less of an idle pursuit and more deadly serious every month. Here it is, nearly June, nine months into the best of plans, with disaster only another personal loan or the sale of the house away. Here we are, an academic year, the gestation period of a human child hence, yet without any visible, constructive change.

We remain a house divided into three parts, like Gaul. Only we are vulnerable, more and more at risk. We had a plan that took some net worth and has, even though it seemed sound a year ago, managed to piss it away. Why does hindsight always reveal a better way? Why do things not work out "miraculously" for the better, just once in a while?

For me, the year and plan begin to feel like a colossal failure, to smell. How could I do this to my family, manage to squander opportunity and jeopardize the things I count important? My marriage, my daughter's education and security, my future doing something that gives us some financial stability while affording me some self-respect and job satisfaction? At the moment, it feels as though I have the magic, Midas touch, turning all to shit, not gold. If I am feeling sorry for myself, and I must, I do not project or reveal it to those around me, except Sally, who has an insight into my desperation and paralysis.

I am surrounded by successful people. They all seem to fit into this world, finding a pathway that I can never seem to discover. Why is this my perrenial issue? Why do so many others glide through a lifetime without such borderline panic and despondency? They have teflon on their frictionless bodies Is is merely a simple matter of a genetic imbalance in the lithium content of my blood? It is all around me in my family, even schizophrenia and suicide.

Is there some way to moderate the constant depression that surely must lie at the bottom of these troubles? Why should the sale of a house, the finding of a job, the payment of mounting bills, the enjoyment of one's family and friends be allowed hegemony over having a happy life? Instead, they dominate my gloomy mood, like the rains and the grays of the low pressure systems of this dark, wet New England spring. These insidious matters color everything, exerting dominance in a resolution-starved vaccuum. The sun will come out tomorrow, sings Annie. Tomorrow will be another day, I have always to remember.