What's the Point


At one point in my life, I had everything mapped out.  I was going to get an education, get married, have kids, be a stay-at-home mom, be a homeschool teacher, the whole deal.  And for many years, that plan seemed like what I truly wanted, and I stuck with it.  I got my degree.  I got married in between junior and senior year of college, I got pregnant, and then... then it all changed.  One miscarriage for a healthy woman in her 20s, not entirely unusual.  Two?  A little weird.  Shake it off.  Try again.  Three?  There was something wrong with me.  And that's when I began to question everything.  Did I actually even want kids?  Did I actually even like the subject I got my degree in?  Did I even love my husband?

Not sure, not really, and no.

So began my journey of self-discovery and discovery of the world around me.  You see, I lived an extremely sheltered life during my childhood and even through college.  And I had never lived alone.  I went from being under my parents' roof, to living in a dorm with roommates, to being married & living with my (then) husband.  So after pitching the apparently unforgivable idea of polyamory to my husband and imploding my marriage, I took my dog, a large portion of my yarn stash, the laptop, and I left.

I moved into a shitty apartment in an even shittier neighborhood with a really shitty roommate I found through a Craigslist ad.  Weekly calls to report gunfire in the parking lot were common, as were getting flashed whenever I took my dog out to do his business after dark.  Used needles and condoms littered the sidewalk... you get the picture.  

Once I finally managed to work my way up as a lowly cashier from part-time to full-time, I figured I could (JUST BARELY) afford a place of my own.  As long as I didn't pay my student loans and let the payments defer and ruin my credit score.  But HEY, living in a place where I wasn't terrified 24/7 of being raped or murdered, and where I didn't have to have a craigslist roommate (couldn't ask friend because they all abandoned me when I destroyed my marriage)?  Sounded like heaven!  So here I sit in my tiny ass 350 sq ft apartment with my dog curled up at my feet... and I'm sitting here starting to question everything again.  Is this what I want?  To barely scrape by in a retail job so I can drown in debt in this tiny ass apartment all alone?  Or do I want to bust my ass to get a job in a 9-5 career that matches my degree somehow with a four-year gap in my resume - oh, a degree in a field I couldn't care less about, I just happened to be halfway decent at?  None of this sounds like how I want to spend the next year of my life, much less the next decade or more. 

So what's the point?

I'm not even spiraling into a depressive episode, TRUST ME, I've been there, and I know what it looks like.  This is just logistics.  Why?

I don't know.  Maybe I never will.

The only thing that has made sense in my life trajectory recently is some stupid-ass comment a drunk woman (pretending?) to be a psychic said to me one late Friday night at my favorite bar: "You're a kind and nurturing soul.  You don't have kids in this life because you're resting.  You've been a mother in previous lives, and now it's time for you to rest."

Is that what this life is about for me?  Learning to rest?  If so, I'm doing a shitty job at it.  Maybe one day I'll get to rest.  

Or maybe as the saying goes, "I'll rest when I'm dead!"

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