Adaptation is the key to living successfully.

Adaptation, as I mentioned above, is the key to living successfully.  If you can’t adapt, you perish.  That is that is happening with me right now.  I want to be home with my sons and daughter.  I thought I was in a solid relationship, and to some extent it was.  Except  you can’t marry someone with an issue like paraplegia and a variety of other past issues, and expect things to stay the same.  Part of why it felt like I’d made the “right” choice in my life was the “stability” he offered.   Not that I blame him, I’m a hell of a person to live with, but I thought finally there would be some stability in my life.  My parents breathed a sigh of relief because of his job, and income, saying, “Finally we won’t have to worry about you anymore.”  Now my Dad is gone, my Mom is getting older and all I want to do many days is run home to her and stay close so I can be with her as much as possible, because I don’t know how I’ll live when she’s gone.  Young men are dying every day with the condition one of my son’s has – four this summer so far.  Two of the families  are having to ask for donations just to have a funeral.  That’s what our country has come to.  Families who can’t even afford to bury their children because of the broken economy, and the 1% yachting about or shooting their t.v. shows like “The Real Wives of ‘Name Your City.'”  Atlanta, New Jersey, New York, it doesn’t matter.  I don’t watch the shows, but hear the names in passing and keep asking myself, “really?  is this what we’ve come too?  watching rich wives mess up their lives while their husband’s work?”  So many of us are already stuck not working.  Even with multiple degrees  (in my case) it’s hard to find work.  After years of paying into disability, my husband can’t imagine finding a job that will pay him as much as staying home and collecting his disability will, something that he’s paid into for years and never used.  It makes me feel desperate and depressed because (curse me, I deserve it) I believed, as my parents did, that I’d be safe and things would finally be stable when we got married.  I didn’t marry him for his money or job, but I did think we’d have some stability for years to come.  Instead we’ve had health problems, his, mine and my two son’s, taking over our lives since 2005.  The “great” job is gone, a lay-off.  The second job, related to a family member, gone – another lay off.  I’ve had three, and been laid off once.   The first one was too many hours for me to handle, the second, a place so down on it’s luck it felt like I was risking my nursing license every time I walked through the doors.  Now our insurance is going to run out if I don’t get a job, and I’m angry, depressed, sick and moody.  Some of it is probably losing all of my reproductive organs back last October.  How much  I don’t know.

I know the vows, said them all, sickness and health, richer or poorer.  Damn if I wasn’t stupid enough to think I’d found my “prince” and that all the ways he triggers me because he’s like my Dad, would get worked out because FINALLY my life would have stability.  Laughable.  It’s a Buddhist’s dream, you think the ground beneath you is finally solid, and it gets ripped out from under you like a throw rug.  It’s not the case that I haven’t thought about the ways I’ve let him down.  I should be bringing home the bacon, frying it up in a pan, and, “never, ever, ever let him forget he’s a man.”  (Too bad I hate perfume, and don’t even know if Anjoli is available anymore if that’s  how it was spelled) If for no other reason, than in gratitude for all he’s done to help support my kids and I.  None of what I feel is fair to him, and I don’t know how to even be fair as my genetic predisposition to depression, or whatever it is, grabs me by the lapels and pulls me to the floor.

I”m not adapting, I’m not being the person I want to be for him or my kids.  So what does that leave for my life?  Going outside and laying on the grass, looking up at the sky and remembering there is some reason I’m here.  What is is, I don’t know.  One breath at a time.  NONE of it, and I really mean it, NONE of it is his fault.  It’s thanks to him we have any life at all.  What a way to say  “thank you.”
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