two thousand nineteen

 

Farewell to the most challenging year of my life. (As far as daily life goes. I have had much more emotionally challenging years. But this year presented many challenges outside of myself).

It went by at break-neck speed, yet at the same time seemed to inch its way forward second by second. What a strange year it has been. Full of frustration, confusion, and determination. Every other moment I was overcome with the instinctual desire to run away. To flee from the challenges being presented to me and wander the woods where I could find a nice patch of clovers to rest my head. How I resisted I do not know. I can only attribute it to God, and to that small part of me, that is strong and resilient. It's VERY small. But it's there.

In the year two thousand nineteen, I...

• Moved out with my sister into our own place. At the same time, my family moved a great distance across the country and left my sister and me to be truly alone independent?

when my mother announced her departure just as I began college.

• Began a new job and continued to work it despite having to go to the bathroom and scream and rage daily. I worked this job five days a week unless I had one of those sweet blessed schedules where they gave me an extra day off. 

when I can't take people or their grocery items anymore and just murder everyone in the surrounding area.

• Completed my first semester of college. I did not enjoy this. I have come to the conclusion that I don't like school very much. It agitates me, and depresses me, and takes up all of my time and focus and sucks my soul out of my skull. I attended classes two days a week having two classes on a single day one of those days while completing online modules and reading textbooks and doing online discussion boards where you had to comment on someone else's every ding dang week and nobody made any logical sense and I had to write papers, so, so many papers and stayed up late into the night to write them and felt crazy. (make sense? it didn't to me either). 

me waiting for my final class to end.

• Paid my own bills. 
• Wrote my own checks. 
• Made my own phone calls. (When I wasn't avoiding them like the bubonic plague, finding ANY other project to complete other than phone calls). 

me when I realize I have to call a person.

• Worked out consistently for the first time. I stopped, but that's not important. 

• Auditioned for a project for the first time. I am still currently working on the tape and I feel... I don't really know how I feel. My emotions get blocked up inside me because they start to flow, but then I panic and they freeze over like a waterfall in winter that keeps building up until it has eroded my ability to feel at all. So, I'll stick to facts instead of emotions, that's always comforting. I have taped a few of the scenes but I feel think I could do better. 

My accomplishment checklist consists of things I found very hard, that other people don't find hard at all. Such is the torment of my life. I cannot express how difficult I found it to work five days a week, go to school the other two, complete all of my homework, and still remain alive. I enjoy being busy, it is not the busy schedule that wears me down. It is the bitter monotony of this life. This pointless job I only go to for money, and this community college I attend that doesn't pertain to my major at all grind at my bones and twist my heart and make me want to scream. I desire so much more than living paycheck to paycheck and spending nine hours in a grocery store. My mind rebels at stagnation, and I am very poor at taking it. 

I also lost my sister, not to death, but to distance. That has been the most challenging thing of all. All of her life, we were together. Every day we saw each other. And now, she's miles away. But I am working hard so that we can be together again.

Nevertheless, I have tried to remain thankful along the journey this year. Again, and again, the Lord provided for my sister and me. Timelines aligned perfectly, somehow we would have money just in time to fix a car, or pay a bill. For that, I am forever grateful. And for our home, our food, our car, our health, all of it.

At the beginning of 2019, I was in a figurative ditch. Now, it's safe to say I am halfway to the top of the ditch. I can see the light, see the puffy white clouds overhead, the pure white stars winking at me. I have begun to feel a bit of the wind on my face. But I still have a ways to go.

M.