Day 338--What am I doing?

Yeah.  What am I doing to myself?

Last night was terrible.  I felt awful physically, and useless in a lot of ways.  I felt like a useless daughter, useless mother, useless person.  My physical pain was so immense that for the first time since really getting going on the Nucynta I felt as though I needed something stronger.  My entire right side was killing me, clenched into knots from my shoulder to my hip.  I wanted to have a slumber party with my daughter, but my husband had taken over the bed in our room.  He has a habit of sleeping diagonally on the bed, so there's no room for anyone else, and expects me to wake him and wait for him to move every time he does this.  It's one of many things that is grating on me about him right now.  Probably if everything else seemed to be going well I wouldn't feel this way.  But it isn't.  My life isn't going the way I want it to, and some of that is beyond my control, but some is very well IN my control.  I'm just not managing it well.

My mom bought me a date book about a month and a half ago.  I had been needing one.  I can't remember anything, and that's the God's honest truth.  Sometimes I look at people I know well and can't remember their names for a moment.  I've been told it's stress and chronic pain, and it probably is.  But here's the thing.  I lost the damn planner she got me.  Lost it.  I kept it in my purse and I damn well lost it.  I've also lost my prescription for flexeril, my muscle relaxant.  Genius.  My mom took pity on me and bought me a new planner.  I need to get it up to speed.

Last night I aired my dirty laundry for all to see.  I didn't go into tremendous detail about what happened to me at the lab, but I think I should.  One of my friends suggested I write a book about my time there, and publish it. I briefly considered that idea.  Actually , now I'm considering it again.  Not a bad one, actually.  I love to write and maybe someone would be willing to publish it.  I have to say i was overwhelmed last night and today with the number of people who jumped up and told me how I had affected their lives in a positive manner.  That's what i want to do.  I don't want to be a complete waste of space.  It's been hard on me to scale down and give up what I feel I can handle and do well.  In another year I'll be eligible for in state tuition and can go back to school if I so desire.  I can work on the doctorate if that's what I want.  Probably I could start in the spring.  But I don't know what I want to do.  I don't want to hurt.  I want to live on my own with my kids and my dog.  I go back and forth on the husband.

Last night I told people things I had sworn I would never tell.  That I would not go that way, I would take the high road, hold my head high and know I did the right thing.  But holding my head high got tiring, and it's the end of the school year at my old school, and I'm missing my families and my kids and my routine.  Maybe that's what's going on for me.  I would be starting summer school.  But I'm not.  I'm sitting here, writing, grabbing odd jobs here and there, babysitting and whatnot.  I finished my first semester at the community college and did a less than adequate job.  Not because I'm a less than adequate teacher, but because I'm sick.

I know the move home was the right thing to do.  For the last twenty years or so I've listened to God and let Him guide me to where I'm supposed to be.  Sometimes that's an easy step and sometimes it's a leap of faith.  I knew I needed to come back to VA.  What i didn't realize was how hard it was going to be to give up my life in Norman.  How much I would miss my friends, my house, my job.  And how I feel that, to a large extent, I was forced out of my job.  I could never work under the constraints my new boss had put me under.  I felt like I had gone from having a master's and doing quality work to someone from a junior college who answered phones.

My deepest, dearest passion is to be able to open my own school that resembles the school I was at.  A part time preschool program that I can build from the bottom up, creating quality experiences for children everywhere.  I also know though, that I'm sick, and that limits what I can do.  Sure I can babysit overnight like I did the other night (I was sick to my stomach but I survived it), and I can watch kids for a short while, but that's not what God has in store for me.  I don't know if His plans include public or private school.  I don't know if they include me working at all, except from home.  I'd love to get a job where i could write for a living.  But i would miss the chance to go into schools and childcare centers and make my mark as a resource person.  I'm very good at fixing problems.  You have a problem in your classroom?  I can help you fix it.  But I don't know how to charge for that, and I don't know how to get insurance.

Oh, how insurance wears me out.  I hate it horribly.  It's ridiculously expensive and holds me back from a lot of things.  I'm angry that I'm the one who's supplied insurance for my husband for so long.  I feel the weight of everyone riding on my back.

This post is rambling, rumbling, everywhere.  What I can't get out of my head is how much I hate this person.  How I hate her destruction of everything I held dear.  How she treated me illegally, not to mention immorally.  How she lied, deceived, and created a hostile environment for everyone.  I. Hate. Her.  And I have to figure out what to do so I can be at peace with that now.

No answers.  Just questions.