Wow I am struggling today. I can always tell as soon as the alarm goes off in the morning, what the entire rest of my day will be like. I have mornings where I hop right out of bed. I have mornings where I get up, begrudgingly. And I have mornings like today where I can barely wake up, and J says just stay in bed for awhile honey. But I never do. I am afraid if I continued to lay there, 6am would suddenly turn into noon very quickly. No one would care but me, J won't be home until 7:30pm at the earliest. I could go back to bed every morning and frankly, J would never know the difference. I could nap every day and not a soul would realize it. But I don't. Some days a migraine will be bad enough that I have to just stretch out on the couch in the basement for a short while, and submit to the darkness and the hum of the fan blowing on me. But today it was more mental than physical. It was just one of those mornings where I closed my eyes and listened to J in the shower, thinking to myself, why do I bother?
I go through it more often on Mondays than any other day. I think Mondays are just emotionally a letdown. I've had uninterrupted time spent with my husband, and Monday morning is the first time I have to face the empty and quiet house. I simply do not know how much longer I can stay at home. I don't mean because of finances, or that I will "have" to go back to work. I mean, I don't know how many more weeks or months I can remain sane being alone in the house day after day after day. I know I'm not a voracious social butterfly, but lately NO socialization has been getting me down. Or maybe it's just that I rarely leave the house except for the errands in town I mentioned in my previous post. I don't know what it is. It's been four months now since I left my job, and my only accomplishments have been losing 30 pounds (many more to go), keeping the house relatively cleaner than when I worked full time, and getting my pottery listed- but not selling- online. That's pretty much it.
I'm not exactly sure what I'm complaining about, there's a lot of folks out there who wish they didn't have to work at shitty jobs, dealing with assholes, for little money. I'm sure the person who took the job I vacated is thankful for my decision to leave it. Lots of people would love to be in my situation, and so for right now, I'm going to assume my attitude today is just a momentary UFO (Unintended Freak Out) on my radar. I'm not certain what I expected to do in just 1/3 of a year, and all of it under the cloud of crappy health. I really have no obstacles in my way, to do anything I want to do. J said I could take college courses if I want to- we have a small college campus here and I only have an obsolete AS degree from 25 years ago. He said I can sign up for art classes or a pottery workshop. He tells me to go to the farmers markets, the coffee shops, the hiking trails, the craft supply stores, to join the gym. He tells me to finish my almost-completed novel. He said I can go do anything I want to do. The things he said I can't do- sit around the house and mope and get depressed and do "nothing". I feel like I'm spending at least half my day every day in that mode. And I feel like many of my posts here are just repetition about me spinning my wheels, along with a mighty dose of self-pity. Blah.
My current daily routine is still getting up at the same time I always did, 5:30am. I get J ready to go off to work- make him coffee, breakfast, pack him up a bottle of tea and some snacks, sometimes even leftovers for lunch. I sit and have my coffee, skim through the newspaper after he leaves at 6:30. The rest of the day is a mixed bouquet of light chores around the house or yardwork when I'm up to it, fighting off spiderwebs while I'm on the treadmill down in the basement, spending a little time throughout the day online, working upstairs in my art studio. And every once in awhile relaxing in my favorite space in the entire house- the big chair in the corner of our bedroom, where I sit to read my 50-cent used paperbacks and usually with a cat in my lap.
The TV stays off- I may turn it on really late in the day just as background noise while I'm in the kitchen, but I never sit down and watch it. I don't even have a radio on or my iPod playing. Come autumn, I will be able to open all the windows in the house- and trust me I always do- so the house will be filled with birdsong. Right now it's simply quiet. But I like peace and quiet these days, I left a job that was so noisy I couldn't hear myself think most of the time. In the afternoons, around four or five, I start to get dinner ready. J always calls me when he leaves work, which is normally near or after 7pm- and I know I have precisely 25 minutes before he gets home, so I can put whatever in the oven or heat up something on the stove. Since I have the extra prep time now, I'm actually starting to become a (slightly) better cook. I recently made a sweet potato pie from scratch for the first time, and he swears it was the best he's ever had.
That is pretty much how my every day goes, except for the one or two afternoons where I go into town. So you can see I have a very easy, very stress-free life these days. I have about 13 completely open hours every day to do exactly what I want to do. I'm surprised at how busy I stay, and even more surprised at how quickly the hours fly by. Yet at the end of each day I think, what did I do with myself today? And instead I always seem to focus on what I didn't do or what I meant to do. J would say I'm not being fair to myself, and I'm not giving myself enough credit. But sometimes I worry if he comes home and also wonders what I did all day long, and do his eyes land on the rugs I didn't vacuum or the bathroom counters I didn't wipe down, instead of noticing the two loads of laundry I did. I confess with embarrassment that sometimes, sitting at the dinner table, I actually feel compelled to tell him I cleaned the litter boxes or washed all the towels, like a kindergartner vying for his favorite teacher's attention and approval. See, looky what I did today!
I understand I can't clean every single surface in this house, every single day. And hell, I don't want to, that's not why we decided that I would quit my job. J is more than patient with my physical limitations, and I think for the most part he's still very happy with me being at home. I also think it's a little bit of an ego trip for him, that he makes a good enough living that his wife doesn't have to work outside the home. But I think he's less aware of my true mental limitations, he thinks I just get "blue" sometimes. His response to my depression is for me to shake it off, to go outside for a walk, to busy myself with organizing the basement, to take more supplements from the health food store. They are, of course, all good suggestions but not really the right answers.
I love him, and I love that he loves me so much. But he's a strong man who always pushes through whatever is going on in his life because he feels he has to, be it at work or his health or personal relationships. He's rarely down, he never loses his focus, and he's always tough. So while he's always patient and tender with me, I sometimes think he doesn't understand the real depths of my torments and doubts. And because he's so strong, I sometimes think his strength feeds my weakness- I know no matter what, it will all be okay because he's there to prop me up when I start to tilt dangerously to one side. I know I don't have to fight so hard because J is there to do my fighting for me. I know I don't have to find more energy, because he is there to pick up my slack. He likes to tell me with a smile I am very spoiled, but he knows he's the one doing all the spoiling. If I'm a princess, it's because he sees me that way.
I'm not sure what all this has to do with me staying at home, as always I seem to have gotten off track with my train of thought. And my posts keep getting way too long. And look, I started this Monday morning but didn't finish it until Tuesday afternoon..... Wow, aren't you all tired of reading me yet??
MISS GEE
(Me on a happier day- but not at home)
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