'Hey Jude'

This song just came on at the cafe.  Like I wasn't sad enough today.  Crap.  My oldest Kathy (born in 1956) was a huge Beatles fan.  I miss her, especially these days when I am feeling so low.

I keep wondering what is it that I have to be depressed about anyway?  Then I realized that this feels like grief.  I know this well.  I've buried my father when I was 20, Kathy when I was 36, my other sister Liz when I was 47.  I've (partly) adjusted to having a chronic illness that keeps chugging along.  I ended my 23 year marriage in 2011.  Yeah, grief and I know each other well.

"Existential Blues" that is a term that also describes what is going on with me.  I look around and DO NOT understand what the hell people are thinking/doing.  It seems everyone buys into whatever is cool these days.  Is anyone noticing the truth?

Is life really about buying beer and having a sexy looking girlfriend?  Is like really about your house smelling like lavender?  Is it about shiny hair and a new car?  Is shopping the new xanax?  Is everyone on some kind of medication?!

I am 47 and all I see in my future is becoming another tiny cog in this big machine.  I don't want to be a cog.  I don't want to be like everyone else.  I don't want to live in a box, drive 45 minutes to find culture, and have no friends.  But this is how I live.

What does society do with the people who don't fit in?  Are some of the homeless people those who dared to say no?

What are the alternatives?

The worries of life never seem to decrease.

My ex-husband hours have been cut at work, so we have gone from living week-to-week, to a new very tight budget.  This is life. People seem like surfs, struggling to keep their heads above water.

I live off my ex-husband's income for another 2 years, until our youngest is 18.  Who am I to complain.

I don't think I have what it takes to make it out there.  Honestly.  Life isn't for everybody.

What I do, who I am, is not enough to live independently.  How do I accept that about myself?
I can hate myself but that gets me nowhere fast.

I do love teaching, which I do once a week for 2 months.  In that, I can be myself.
When I dance, I am me.  When I write, I am me.

So I need to find a teaching, dancing, writing gig?

I am finding everything difficult these past 3 days.  I am off-track.

What is the grief about?  The loss of my life, how it used to be.  The old friendships are over.  I can't run until my knee heals.  I have made major changes in my diet.  My life has been stripped down, deconstructed.  My 'home' is now 2x4s and studs.  What to do?  What to do?

Feel it.

I am.

Oh, I really am.