There is a theme to my life right now. It is plain and simple: Anxiety Management. This seems to be overtaking every aspect of my life.
Here are the events that took place over the last several months.
Dec 23rd, 2016: I lost my contract job after only 3 weeks. They ditched me via text 2 days before Christmas. I had been out of work for long enough that I had just run out of unemployment when I got this position. I happened to land a contract doing what I always wanted to do at Microsoft. A dream job. But it turned out that they were only going through the motions because they had to in order to convince the VP to approve the FTE job rec for the contractor that was leaving the position I was hired for... who happened to be the best friend of the Creative Director of the team since 9th grade.
Jan - June, 2016: Every month I scrambled to garner enough money to cover rent, bills, and food. Somehow each month, I managed to pull off a miracle and keep us under a roof and fed without borrowing any money. But it was exhausting and stressful... and I was in a frantic, wide-eyed push 24 hours a day.
Nov 2016, Feb 2017, and June 2017: My mother was in and out of the hospital on her death bed each time. In May, I went and stayed 4 days with her at her place while she was out of hospital. My childhood was not ideal and it culminated in my mother dropping me off on a street corner in Portland with a note that said I wasn't her daughter anymore. The years before that were fraught with abuse, pain, hunger, and loneliness. I am not looking for sympathy, I'm just being concise. To say that my feelings are complicated about my mother, her exes, and her friends she had when I was growing up is putting it lightly. It is a cause of a great deal of stress.
June 1st: Our rent was raised an additional $600 making it $2800 total. I found 2 roommates to move in. 1 on June 1st and 1 on Sept 1st. Got no help to clean out the first room so managed to do it myself. By the way, it is almost September 1st and I've had no help to clean out the second room either... Will be starting on that this week.
June 29th: After being out of work for almost a year (except for that 3 weeks at MS), I landed a contract at T-Mobile and started my first day. I worked Thursday and Friday. Because this is a 6 month contract, I've decided to keep doing my part time job which is 2 days a week and gives me insurance. Because in 6 months I will be right back where I started again.
July 3rd, 2017: My mother passed away. I had been going to see her in the hospital over the prior several days. But it was July 4th weekend and my 'friends' who always said I could stay with them any time would not let me stay with them on the first night... because they had a standing 'tabletop game' that night. The second night I asked they said no with no reason at all... even after I explained that I would have to go in to the hospital in the morning because they were unplugging all of my mother's life support. still just no. Never ever asking again. So, another friend offered and I'm so very grateful. At 4am or so, I got a call that she would be gone soon. I rushed in but it was too late. I spent some time with her body. A long lost cousin offered to help me pay for the cremation which was $800. Everyone else, all of my mother's very close friends that I mentioned earlier, avoided me. Avoided my phone calls to let them know she was gone. Avoided calling me back, messaging me back, etc. Later one of them said it was just too hard for them. Part of it was they didn't want to pay for anything. I wouldn't have asked them anyway. Later my cousin said she couldn't help me with that either. I never wanted help. I never asked for it.
July 3rd - 4th: I felt incredibly sick when I got home and so I took my blood pressure. It was 210/193. Ten minutes later it was higher. So I called a nursing line and she told me to go to the ER right away. So I spent hours in there while they got my blood pressure down a bit, then was ordered on rest for at least a week.
July 5th: I had a miscarriage. I can't get into this now. It's just a thing that happened...
July 6th - 14th: For some strange reason, I couldn't go to work . I felt horribly guilty, filled with anxiety, and freaked out, but I had to take the remaining 3 days of the week off and then had to call back to get the next week off. I still had a job when all was said and done.
July 10th: I got a long, scrolling text from one of my Mom's friends explaining how I am now responsible for my mother's roommate/boyfriend. It was a huge story about how she had given up on life but how her daughter had come in and sang 'You are my sunshine' to her and it brought her back from alcoholic rock bottom on the brink of death. And now, it was my turn to save John. I remember when I was a kid, John threw a 12 year old boy down a flight of stairs because he thought one of us kids had eaten some of the filling out of a pie. I wish I was exaggerating. I don't hate him, but it is very hard for me to suddenly be expected to care for him like he is my father. So, I flipped out. With that message and all of the other messages all of the sudden about my responsibility to have a service for my mom. When. We want to know... etc. etc. etc. I lost it.
Rest of the time till now: A bunch of shit has happened. I've still not had my mother's service. Somewhere in there I also started Physical Therapy which is scary and hard... but I'm doing it!!! yay me.
And all I'm doing now is mitigating anxiety. I don't know what to do. It's getting worse not better. My job is paying the bills and I'm able to keep us afloat on it. But the back stabbing and politics there is immense. My second job is going okay, but I constantly feel guilty because it truly is a part time job now. I feel like I'm steeling from the people I work for because I can't devote as much time anymore.
I'm lost. I'm miserable. It's getting to be just too much.
