Before I begin this attempt at unadulterated internet communication I feel it necessary to explain that I have become one of those “Pollyanna” people who rarely admit to being anything other than fine. I wish I could say it was out of some brave desire to save those around me from my problems, but in reality it stems from stress and exhaustion, and the fact that talking about my problems means dealing with them. Dealing with my problems, on an emotional level, is a lot harder than simply “moving past” them and on with my life.

Of course, I am perfectly capable of ignoring the effect this lack of dealing has on my life. Hence my reason for being here, tonight, and writing this.

I am not fine.

I am stressed, exhausted, overloaded, sad, and generally too busy to do anything about the above.

I am terrified that my new practice is going to fail, and that even if it succeeds it will happen too late to make a difference in our current precariously balanced financial situation. Everyone tells me it takes three years to make a go at a practice, but tell that to the fucking credit card companies and student loan holders who ask for a combined total of over $2000.00 a month. I don’t have three years to make this a success. I have to succeed at something now.

To top it off, in an effort to lower that frightening $2000.00 a month by deferring my loans, I have gone back to school part time. Therefore I am spending 10 – 15 hours a week on a classload I don’t need just to buy me time to build up the practice. My class time interferes with my practice time, and the babysitting help I have is used up for school and I haven’t even had time to work remotely close to as much as I should have in one class. I am bound to fail it, which shouldn’t matter, except that it will show up on my transcripts if I wish to apply for graduate school someday. Which I do.

I never have time to clean my house, we don’t have the money to fix the leaky roof or the swollen floorboards or hire an exterminator for the hideously large flying ants that have invaded the rooftop deck and pop into the masterbathroom for a shower or a spa from time to time. We have a broken dishwasher that we can’t afford to fix, even though that means more than tripling the time we spend doing dishes.

I am sucking at being a mom right now because I don’t have a lot of time to spend with my children and they are “babysat” by the television more than I ever wanted them to be. I don’t have the energy or the time to play a lot, and I often feel as though all I do is oversee them, instead of interacting with them. I occassionally remedy this by ditching work and school to play with them, but that always results in less success in work and school.

I am not the best partner right now because I am so stressed out that I never feel as though I have time to be a wife. I rarely play and laugh anymore, and I have developed an uncanny ability to fight and argue with my darling husband. I used to take all the things he said with the idea that he meant well, even if they came out really badly. This is an important thing to do when you live with an engineer, they really think from a different perspective and find nothing initially wrong with telling you a dress makes you look “hippy”. To them, it’s a problem solving thing. Thusly it is enormously important that I retain my sense of humor and ability to recognize that he means well and isn’t being a dick.

I am sad because as much as I love my life, and I do, I don’t dream anymore. I realize on every level that I am incredibly blessed. I have an amazing husband, who is a best friend and partner in addition to being a spouse. I have two funny, intelligent, caring, sweet, and lovely children who I get to spend most of each day with. I have a lovely home that, as of yet, is not in danger of foreclosure, and my husband has a job that pays most of our bills. I wouldn’t trade anything about my life at all. I look at my life and I feel like an ass for complaining about it for even a moment.

As a child I spent hours building castles in the air, dreams about what my life would someday be. I don’t do that anymore. It seems a waste of time to dream about things that will never be. I miss being able to lose myself in a rosy image of my future. I miss my dreams.

So I am not fine these days. I don’t know if there is anything to do about it, other than continue to move on with my life and do what I have set out to do. I don’t know why I finally felt like saying this, online, tonight, but I couldn’t help myself. I guess this is part of saying goodbye to my childhood, and hello to everything adult.

Thank you for listening.