Seems to be, brilliantly, memories of you

August 03, 2006 | Category: In My Life

Quiet times have come before. A hush falling into my world, my thoughts racing maybe - but my words, still.

A saxophone playing while pictures slide across the screen. But no lyrics. No rhymes or soft alliteration. The sunset speaks for itself, because I can not.

Some call it writers' block, but the truth hides behind the label - as it will.

It's easy to write when life makes sense. Angry, lusty, giddy, wistful, grinning, yawning, yearning, bristling with outrage. Wanting a baby. Losing a baby. Seeking God. Losing weight. Gaining it back. Propping up my husband. Agonizing over my son. Tangles of friends. Battling the corporate titans. And sometimes winning. Tripping over the mess in the hall. Groaning over the mess in Washington. Striking up the grill over some new recipe. Striking out on a trip across the ocean. Stroking my son's hair and wondering how I would explain that daddy doesn't live here anymore. Slipping, with relief, back into love with my husband and sneaking something more than kisses before our son wakes.

Everything that is life. The granules that fall from my hand back into the sandbox. Reflecting the sun sometimes. And real.

I am sick, and that is real. My Lupus has flared up, due in part to my own carelessness. I have done all the things I should not do since leaving Mega - tossed away my structured (if stressful) existence for hours in the sun, poor diet, not enough sleep.

Lupus flares mean that my body is, sort of, attacking itself. My short-term memory flits on and off. My bones break easily (I have a broken knuckle and toe). I fall, for no reason. I become crushingly tired, holding my son in my arms in front of Noggin TV while I doze in and out. My kidneys struggle.

This is the worst flare since my diagnosis, a decade ago.

But it is not what silenced me. Only the last straw, really, in a battle against the quiet.

Life has stopped making sense.

Not that I contemplate the alternative.

But I do not know, quite literally, where I am going from here.

The money is running out. There is no better job for CD on the horizon. I had thought he would get one, at the last minute - which is his way. After all, before his Depression, he was making a fine living. But that hasn't happened, although he has looked.

Happy Montessori became a battleground last year, and is not for Bear this year. I am not even sure anymore that holding him back for a second year of Kindergarten is the right thing to do. And even if it is, the local public elementary school is so poor that it is regularly reviled in the newspaper.

There is no Elia, to help. I miss her. Our new health insurance, switched to CD's job after I left Mega, is inadequate. Our out-of-pocket for even regular lab tests is about 50%. And I am sick, which means even more bills. And even a part-time job waitressing is out of reach until I'm well.

We are about to run aground.

I am 40 years old, and I walked away from a lucrative career. I thought it was the right thing to do, and in many ways it has brought this family closer together than it has ever been.

But, I ... think it might have been a mistake that will cost us all everything.

Would CD and I have divorced if I'd stayed at Mega? I don't know. We were headed there, for a long time.

I don't know.

But I do know that the money is finite. And almost gone. And economizing simply won't make it be enough. 1+ 1 will never equal 3.

Something will be changing. Soon.

6 months ago, I was sleepless in fear for my marriage, my priorities, my son's childhood. I made a decision that I revisit every day. A leap of faith that is quickly turning to disaster.

There's a piece of dialogue I remember, vaguely. About someone saying, sadly, "look how things turned out". And the other person saying "we're not at the end yet."

That's what I hold on to. That in the next 2 months there is some kind of... miracle. That he gets a better job. That my health improves, so that maybe I can work too. And, you know, not end up in the hospital calling my mom for a loan and one of her kidneys. That ... well, that we find the path forward.

But for now, I battle my body. My terror. And my words? Have fled. For the dark quiet, and the unknown.

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