~A Bitter Swallow~

I'm having a really hard time this go-round.  It is all so much more difficult to cope with.  I feel like I am falling apart.     You know when you pick up a great big stack of laundry, and pieces keep falling, and every time you bend over to pick it up, even more falls out of your hands, until eventually you give up and just throw the whole stack down and go find a laundry basket?  Yeah, I can't find my laundry basket.   I'm trying to just take it over in smaller handfuls, but there is just so much, and the washer is so far..

I feel like I have never made a good decision in my life. I mean, I know I've made a couple.  I have my children.  They are the one thing I can look at and know that I've made at least two positive choices; that I did do at least one thing right in my life.  They are my saving grace, and the one thing that keeps me going.  I have a job that I enjoy, although I'm worried that my job is being threatened by my current state of mind and current state of life.

I'm in a rut, and the walls are too slick and the well too deep and all my attempts at clawing my way out are only digging me deeper and deeper down.  It makes me sick to my stomach when I have to borrow money from my kids to go buy milk and bread; when their friends can't come over because I won't be able to pick them up or take them home; when they show me they need underwear, socks, or new pants because theirs are all ripping in areas that can't just be mended....  I try to keep a smile on my face and not let them see my tears.  I try to keep up this strong persona and project the image of "everything is going to be alright".  I don't want to show them my weakness.  I don't want them to see how desperate I feel; how pathetic I've become. 

The depression is sucking the motivation out of me.  I find it harder and harder to get out of bed.  I can find no joy or comfort in things that use to give me either one or the other.  I have no energy to exercise, or even bother making dinner or working in the yard.  I force myself to do them, because they need to get done, but more and more I'm just letting things go. 

I need more hours; more money.  I don't want to go anywhere else, though.  I'm concerned that going elsewhere, even as a secondary position/job, is going to interfere with the job I'm at now, and eventually push this one out.  I don't want that to happen.  I also am so terrified of winding up once more with a job that I loathe.  I don't want to resent work.  I don't want to resent working.  I don't want to absolutely dread getting up and going in.  My mind frame is already fragile.  Something like that could just be the end.  I don't want to feel like money and things are more important than the health of my mind, but at the same time, not doing it is making me feel worthless.  I am just hoping something comes up that will work.  It all just feels so hopeless, though.