Stressed

Most days...I feel like THIS.

When I wake up at 3:00am and can't get back to sleep I'm worried about work, and keeping my job in an industry desperately trying to transform and evolve to stay afloat.

When I put my chin in my hand and drift off for 30 seconds while at my desk I'm worried about things at home: About paying bills and raising my children in a household where I cry at least once a week and try desperately not to let them see that.

When I put The Munchkins to bed at night, I worry about all the things we're missing out on, being in a single-parent household. I worry about all the things I never got to do, and about the mountain of things I should be doing right that minute instead of wallowing in a sense of quiet desperation. I worry about the piles of school work, the mountains of laundry, the closet of shame that's so stuffed with coats and boots and umbrellas and last year's rain boots and reusable shopping bags that we never reuse - that closet whose door I only pry open  when I'm drunk and find it all just hysterically funny. That closet talks to me...like a Parkay commercial. I worry about it all.

An amazing friend, one of the good ones, recently sent me the following:

And you know how sometimes you receive exactly the right compliment at exactly the right time?
This was it.

It's near-impossible some days to shut off the voice in my head telling me I'm not good enough, that I'm screwing things up, that I've made all the wrong choices in my life. That voice is loud, and it bounces and echoes off the caverns inside me. It settles into small cracks and slides under scar tissue. It is so much a part of me, that on some days I don't even try to shut it off, I just slog through it. That voice makes it hard to roll out of bed each morning. It makes it difficult to lie still at night. It makes it impossible to drive unless the windows are down and the radio is up to drown it out.

But, you know, that's life. 

Isn't it?

Everyone has that voice.

This is my one saving grace. 

I am priveleged to have enough good souls in my life that remind me, everyday, NOT that it will all be okay, NOT that I'm doing a good job, but rather that they feel THE EXACT SAME WAY.

Love you all.
You know who you are.