Jacquelyn's Space

I hate to write this. I hate to feel like this. I hate myself right now. Okay. It helped to write that because it made me realize that hate is too strong of a word. That is too strong of a sentence. I guess I am so depressed right now that feeling anything with any sort of strength is impossible for me. I just can’t stand myself. I am in self-sabotaging mode. Well, as much as I will let myself fall into that. I just lay around when I am not working. If I get up to do anything it is to buy things online and I really don’t have to get up to do that.

I want to write. I want to write about the good in my life but I tend to dwell on the bad. This awful feeling of being unmotivated and uninspired. I am looking for inspiration, thus the shopping. I know I don’t need anymore crap though. I just need to get busy and do things, write, live life, etc. I can’t though because I am stuck in this black hole. It sucks away all my positive thoughts, creativity, and imagination. This post is my way of reaching out of it, of trying to break through.

I have to attempt this every day. As meager as it may seem, and as boring and/or short.

Because I am all over the place, this post will be all over the place.

I haven’t hardly posted anything this year. I look back at the posts I did make and it seems forever ago, at least years ago. I don’t know why this years seems to be dragging on. I don’t mean to complain. I tend to want to slow down time, it is just that I have been battling depression (it expresses itself in anger) this year so everything seems kind of shitty and dark. I haven’t been happy and I need to figure out why. I have many blessings so it makes me feel even worse that I have been so angry and ungrateful.

When I really think about it, the thing I think is making me the most unhappy is I want more money. I hate to get so twisted up over money and it’s not like I am poor. I have a lot more than a lot of people and I should feel fortunate. I should…and I do, some of the time. But I just want to make more and more money. I think I am feeling the crunch of my age. How much longer can I work? How much retirement do I need and how much can I acquire before I can’t work anymore? Really, I don’t want to work any more. Ha! So many other things I want to be doing. It’s not just all about retirement though.

There are just too many things that I want. WANT, not need. I can’t seem to stop wanting things. Yes, material things on top of wanting better for my family and wanting to help the world. Well mostly animals because fuck people.

But in addition to that, in all reality, what is really bugging me, is that I want more money so I can help family and animals. My mom needs help. My brother needs help. My stepson needs help. I can’t afford to help them. I can’t even do things for them because I work full time and by the time I am done working full time, I am done. All my energy is gone. I can’t afford to not work…I can’t afford to give them money…and really, some of it is that they just need some of my time. I can’t afford to give them time. I’ve been feeling that crappy and I feel more crappy because I feel crappy.

My mom had a stroke on 2019. She stayed with me for a few months after a few months in rehab. She didn’t want to stay longer. She didn’t want any more rehab or physical therapy. She wanted to live up north, to continue to live up north on her own though she can’t physically do it. She was hoping to have some come and live with her but she expects a lot from people that stay with her and ultimately I think her demanding personality scares people away. I know I have trouble dealing with her. My poor nephews have been stuck with her for the most part because their dad (my brother) just drops them on my mom. I can’t go up north and take care of her, I have my own stuff I have to take care of down here, not to mention my husband. Thank God I don’t have kids. I for sure don’t have the energy to clean her house and I don’t like staying with her anyway because her house stinks of cigarettes and musty basement. I can’t fix these issues. I tried to help her but she is so stubborn and has to do things her way. Plus she got herself into a mess of financial problems with Medicare due to her own stubbornness. Her savings and investments are pretty much gone. It is all very sad and depressing and I can’t do anything about it to help. What’s gone is gone and the Medicare stuff is something I don’t even want to deal with. Now my mom is talking about selling her house and she will need help with that. I don’t have any idea where she will go. No fucking idea. She cannot live with me, not unless I have a bigger house on a bigger piece of land. She supposedly asked my dad if he wanted a roommate. Yeah, not that all her money is gone (half of their retirement savings she got in the divorce) she wants to go back to my dad. He don’t want any part of her BS though he does help her when he can, just not with money. It is all a big mess. It is tragic when you boil it all down. Tragic.

My brother, at 43, just had another kid. He can’t even take care of the 3 boys he has already but he had another baby. His on again off again girlfriend and baby mama is 28. 28! I like her, she’s sweet. It seems she is trying to whip him into shape and I really feel for her. I hope she can succeed where others have failed. I hope it is the right time and my brother is ready to make the change. Lord knows I can’t help. I basically stay away from my brother because he drives me crazy. I don’t want to get drawn into the messes he creates because he doesn’t want to do the right things. I do want to spend time with the new baby and I want to get to know his girlfriend. I also miss my nephews. I want to spend more time with my family but it all comes back to energy, or my lack there of. It is frustrating.

The baby is about 2 months old now and I just saw her for the first time a week ago. My brother kept bugging me to see the baby. I wanted to see the baby, but I didn’t want to go anywhere. I finally made the effort. It was nice.

My dad tries to help both my mom and my brother when he can. He says he is done loaning my brother money. I hope he is because my brother doesn’t pay him back, often because he just cannot. My brother doesn’t work a regular job. He cannot. He has issues that make if next to impossible for him to work a regular joe type of job. I think he is bipolar. I know he is ADHD. He probably could get disability if he had the attention span to apply and follow through. But he doesn’t so he won’t. Well, he has a misplaced pride too. He don’t want a handout, so he says but he has little problem taking from my parents though they can’t afford to support him and his kids. Hell, they already bought him a house.

But my dad, my dad. I was scared for him. He had a stroke in December of 2020. He didn’t even realize he had had a stroke. He woke up, got out of bed, and fell down right away because one side when weak. He even hit his head upon the window sill, yet he went about his day as if nothing had happened. He went to the foot doctor, he went to see his girlfriend who lives an hour away from him. He felt a little funny, really tired, and he kept dropping things. He went over to my mom’s house to take my nephew to the hospital at my mom’s request and he was telling her that he wasn’t feeling right. My mom convinced to go to the hospital. So yeah, he did, and yeah, he had had a stroke. Thankfully it didn’t do much damage. He found out that a carotid artery on one side is 100% blocked. Nothing they can do for that. There is blockage on the other side but not too bad. He is on blood thinners now and thankfully he went back to his normal routine. He is really active and I am happy about that. He likes to play pickle ball. I worry about him, living alone in the middle of 20 acres, far away from town but that’s how he wants it. So I just worry and hope for the best. He did asked me to put a tracker on his phone so did do that. I think it was because he was concerned because he keeps saying his memory is getting really bad. Yikes.

He was good for over 6 months. Then he was having chest pains so he went to a cardiologist. They did a stress test. Test was abnormal. Supposedly, he had an abnormal stress test a couple of years before –nobody told him. Cardiologist didn’t know what was going on, just gave him some new meds (nitro was one) and told him to call or go to the hospital if the chest pains worsened. Well they did. He wasn’t feeling well one Thursday and went to the hospital in the evening. I was busy working and not monitoring the tracker. I didn’t realize he had went to the hospital until Saturday when my brother messaged me via Facebook. He only knew because he had called my dad–he needed help on the job he was doing. UGH!! My dad had blockages in his heard and they were transferring him to the bigger hospital in Traverse City. Thankfully they were able to stent (going through his wrist) the blockages. He had 2 angioplasty procedures. I went up for the first one, with my Aunt JoAnne. My dad also had a strep infection so that was worrisome but everything went well. Thank God! I had to miss 3 days of work. I was going to go for the second angioplasty but my Aunt arranged it so my Uncle Bill would take my dad to that one. I had the time off but my husband and I had a trip planned. Everything worked out and I am glad my extended family came through for me because Lord knows my brother didn’t and my mother couldn’t.

So my dad is well and he went to cardio-rehab though he doesn’t really need it. He got the okay to go back to pickle ball. He can go back to his regular routine, he just needs to watch it. I worry about him though, he is still living all alone in the middle of 20 acres. I need to visit him more. He is actually the parent that is doing better. I really need to worry about my mom more. Her problems are just so huge and overwhelming. I just can’t even…plus, she is depressed (though she doesn’t realize just how much and would not even admit or get treatment for it) and she lets her depression get the better of her. That and her physical pain–she won’t do anything because it hurts but sometimes you got to make yourself do things regardless. Her issues play on my issues and I end up getting really depressed when I am around her. So I stay away. Not that I have the energy to visit her (or anybody) anyway.

My stepson, he is doing okay. I wish he was doing better. He and his girlfriend need help with her kids. She has four kids! That’s a lot to handle. He kept asking me to babysit. Well, he’d call his dad and ask him if I could babysit. Ha! I really can’t because I work full time and you know, energy or my lack there of. Well, some of the time they would need a babysitter bleeds into my work schedule anyway. I would like to help, I would like to spend some time with the kids to get to know them but I just can’t. It makes me feel bad because I know they really need the help. I wish I could help them afford a larger home too. They really need it. I don’t know, I guess that is something they will have to work on themselves. They seem happy regardless so I try not to worry too much about them.

Then there is my husband. He is really getting the shaft. I’ve been feeling like such shit, and I really just want to be alone so my husband has not been getting the attention he needs. Well, I try but I feel like I am doing the bare minimum. He does a lot of work around the house (mostly the yard) in addition to working more than a full time job. Plus school, he is going to school now too (and complains about it quite a bit because the online stuff sucks, the professor suck, his computer and/or the internet is slow…) I want to help out more but physically and mentally I cannot. Then he wants to go out and do more, and I cannot. I just want to hide away… though the times I have spent out, with family (or my work fam) anyway, I have come to the realization that socializing does make me feel better.

To complicate matters, we got a puppy. My husband really wanted a dog. I was okay with it before I knew just how much work a puppy is. It is like having a toddler. It is getting better but the puppy needs a lot of attention, attention I just cannot and don’t feel like giving right now. I was fine with just having a cat. Hell, I couldn’t even give her all the attention she needed. So go around feeling guilty all the time because my husband, the dog, and my cat are all getting the shaft. Everyone wants attention but all I want to do is have time to myself, for myself.

I went to my cousin’s wedding Friday night, my dad’s side of the family, and I did have a good time though I bitched about going. I hate to admit it but being around people does make me feel better. It does seem to energize me in some way. I just need to get over the hump of not wanting to go out, of wanting to hide away.

Writing this has helped. I see that worrying about everybody else has diverted my attention away from worrying about me. There isn’t much ME right now although I feel like I am being very selfish. All I do is work and come home and lay around because I feel so bad. It isn’t just about worrying about everyone else, it is about the pain I am in. Mental pain because I can’t do the things I want and physical pain, mostly physical pain. My knees hurt, varying degrees of pain and discomfort all the time, and then my lower back gets pinched and starts hurting, ultimately becoming stiff until it is hard to move my legs. Not to mention all the pain I often feel from fibromyalgia–neck and shoulder pain….it is too much. I get overwhelmed. So thus, I am unhappy. I need to break out of this somehow. I need to get ME back. I need to quit hiding away.

Yesterday, I forgot it was April Fools’ Day. They got me good at work. A coworker, Alexus, offered me a truffle. She said they were chocolate covered chocolate cake. I’m like, “Yum! A cake pop!” as I grab the last dark chocolate “truffle” off the plate and go to take a bite, anticipating nice soft, cakey goodness inside. “Just pop it in your mouth,” says Alexus. I think, no, I want to enjoy this! I take a bite. CRUNCH! What the hell!! I immediately stop eating. What the …! This isn’t a cake pop! I know my face was screwed up in disgust. Alexus, Chris (another co-worker), and my boss are laughing. Alexus offered me the trash can and I throw the rest of the “truffle” away and wonder what to do with whatever was in my mouth. I hate spitting, especially in public. I mumble to them, “What is this?” It was a chocolate covered Brussel sprout. Yikes! At least it wasn’t a pickle or hot pepper like I was thinking. So I finished eating what was in my mouth rather than spit it out, partially to show off. You can’t get me! Ha ha! Even though they did. But actually, that chocolate covered Brussel sprout wasn’t half bad.

My boss at 11pm tonight called a meeting for tomorrow morning. I knew it wasn’t good news. I texted her and told her I couldn’t make it to the meeting because I had a participant to pick up in the morning. Then I realized I got a text from her on the January 1st, asking me how I was doing after the vaccine that I hadn’t seen. I texted her back on that phone (yeah, I have 2 phones, one for work, one personal–she texts me on both, don’t know why) and told I had been fine with the vaccine. Well she called me. Right away I could tell she was not good. She was crying. Well, our co-worker, who had been fighting coronavirus, died. Just terrible. He was fighting hard but he had been in the hospital for a month, maybe just over a month. He was on a vent. He would rally at times but then take a turn for the worse. I hadn’t heard anything the last week or maybe two. I thought that maybe he had been doing better. We went and saw his wife a couple of weeks ago–we had a shuttle bus parade to her house to show our support. We all prayed together and she gave us all a hug. She had coronavirus too, in November but had been released while her husband had had to stay in the hospital. He hadn’t even been on the vent at the time but that had been discussed because his condition was worsening. How sad. I couldn’t have done it. I couldn’t have left. And then not to be able to see my husband. I felt just terrible when my dad was in the hospital with a stroke–that I wouldn’t be able to visit, to offer in-person moral support. Thankfully he was sent home from the hospital. I can’t imagine not being there. Not being able to…I would fight them on that…but this poor woman, I know she probably did her best and didn’t want to raise a fuss because she works at the hospital anyway. If they wouldn’t even let her in then…IDK, there is no way they’d let me in. It is hard to imagine how shitty that must feel. I don’t want to.

But now my co-worker is dead. Like, I feel bad for him because his life was cut short. He in no way expected this. He went hunting in November and I never saw him again. He wasn’t a favorite with many at work but no one would have wished this upon him. He really wasn’t a bad guy, just flawed as we all are. I feel so bad for his family. I feel bad for my boss. She is broken up about this. And I feel had for my co-worker’s special buddy at work. He will be broken up and he has already experienced a lot of loss in the 8 months I have known him. I would always see those two together, cutting up. Another life lost to coronavirus and I don’t even know how to deal with it, well other than with anger. It is all hard to process. He was only 53.

I always think of this blog as forgotten but I wrote more than I remembered last year. I had some good posts too. All together I wrote 39 blog posts! More than the year before–I only wrote 7 posts in 2019. Of course I always want to write more, and not just blog posts. I did write some in my diary and jotted down some ideas for a series of novels but I didn’t really write anything of substance, just thought about thing to write. So of course a goal for the new year is to write more.

I suppose I could make it a resolution to write at least once a month in this blog. Perhaps set a goal to write 3-4 blog posts a month and resolve to beat my 2020 post count. So altogether I resolve to write 40 blog posts in 2021. That I can do as long as I keep on living.

Not much to share. I basically worked and stayed home. Didn’t plan any big trips because I didn’t want to get or spread COVID. Didn’t want to add to the selfishness traveling people, didn’t want to add to the madness. Tried to set a good example. It was good to stay home regardless.

We did go up north to my dad’s a few times. We spent a week up there in the fall and had a lovely time along the Manistee River, looking at the fall colors. We did spend a few days on Mackinac Island. That was awesome as usual. We spent a night with my nephew, who lives near Traverse City. We got to see his house and party it up with him and his fiancé, their friends and my sister-in-law CeCe. It was fun–more fun that I expected.

I didn’t get laid off in 2020. Yay me! I’m essential, lol. I did lose some hours but gained them back again because people at work quit or took a leave of absence because of COVID. Then I found a new job, a better job. And found it, got it, during a pandemic!!

I probably made more money in 2020 than I’ve ever made, especially with all the bonuses I received.

Best of all we got rid of trump in 2020. We voted his ass out. I wasn’t sure it would happen but we made it happen. I was part of that in small ways.

Now I need to work on making 2021 a better year, a more exciting year. Do I want a more exciting year? I don’t know. I would like to travel more but I am not sure about doing that in 2021. I have some financial and fitness goals I want to work on first.

Do I need to make resolutions?

I probably do, probably will, but I am not quite ready to do that yet. I need to think on them, make resolutions that are attainable. They are probably going to be the same resolutions I make every year but I need to narrow them down, refine them…

Perhaps my only resolution should be to constantly refocus myself on my goals. Daily. Weekly. So I don’t get lost. I tend to get lost in day to day life, and all the drama in the wider world.