57: Whatever!!

Blogged on Monday, August 20th, 2007 by Rachael. Filed in Emo.

Okay. I think I kind of suck, really - look at this blog! It’s pitiful! What happened to all my lovely posts about interesting things *cough*nothing*cough*?!

I tried a few times to write a second installation about living here, but I just couldn’t bring the funny. It’s been pretty much unfunny around here lately, really. It takes all my energy, every day, every minute, to find the silver lining I have always been able to see. And even then, sometimes I lose it. I have days where I don’t see the silver lining, I don’t see the light in the distance, I don’t smell hope on the breeze. All I see is clouds, driving rain, and the mud I seem to be sinking in faster every moment, faster especially the harder I try to get out.

I shouldn’t be complaining so much. I have so much I’m thankful for, in spite of life being such a bitch right now. My children are more amazing every day, even though the terrible things that happened to my first two are, at times, enough to double me over in tears - in private, of course, because I would never show them how distraught it makes me. We are finally close to having the kind of insurance that will allow us all to be in counseling, and for that alone I am more grateful and hopeful than I can express.

I have a place to live, and by the sweat and tears and the use of precious hours in which I could be sleeping or something else equally tempting, I am working to keep it for my kids and for myself. I can buy them groceries, even if it’s just hot dogs on sale two for a dollar (two packages for a dollar! That’s 6.25 cents apiece!!), and I can take them to the park (and not use any gas when it’s a nice day out), and I can read to them (I love the library and their stacks and shelves of lovely books) - and listen to them reading to themselves (even Ian, who reads his train book quite seriously and with many sound effects), and I can listen to their gloriously infectious laughter as they play together or tell each other jokes or have a spontaneous tickle fight in the middle of the living room floor.

The best things in life are free, or nearly free (hot dogs!), and while money is damned important to our survival, I still don’t want to be the kind of person who needs it so much that I forget to listen to laughter and soak up sunshine when the clouds do break. Because they do break, sometimes. It’s not always raining on me. Sometimes, for even the briefest of seconds, I’m drenched in light.