If you can spare a positive thought for me and mine, we'd appreciate it. Hubs and I are under a thick, putrid cloud of negativity (due to an outside force and not internal demons). It's trying to occupy our thoughts like a window breaking, bloody nose delivering mob calling itself a peaceful assembly.
My solace (other than my loving husband) is hard work. I'll be tearing through revisions this week. I need something to do.
But it's a hard time to believe in our dreams -- to push through not worrying about when things will improve and just accept life will change with hard work. Sometimes being an adult means making sacrifices. It's tough knowing how long to hold on to hope and when to accept setting aside dreams.
Ten years ago I was at another emotionally terrifying time. My father had just died from cancer nine months after detection (he was a paragon of health prior) and I was let go from my job due to the affects of recession. I hid from my pain by planning a wedding and working toward my MFA. Most of my classes were completed but I was denied formal admittance into the program. I applied a second time with a much better thesis proposal in the Spring of 2004. Unfortunately, before the decision was rendered by the school my (ex) husband's job required us to move. I let our need for his job persuade me that I couldn't wait for the school's decision. After we moved from Boston to California, I was accepted into the MFA program. I had three courses left but I didn't finish my degree. At the time I made peace with it. It's taken years to see that I didn't fight hard enough. I let fear, fatigue, and a general desire to avoid difficulty control my future.
This time my dreams, our dreams, are jeopardized by legal issues. The word "fair" (wholly abused) is battering us like a police baton. "Fair" doesn't exist anymore. It's mutated and obscene. It's stripped of its superficially pure objective. Fair is a word I do not like.
But so far we haven't retaliated. We've maintained our dignity when it counted (cursing, as is only natural, in private). And I choose to believe that I'm being tested. If I turn away again, take the easy out, it will be my fault. Trick me once and all.
