On selfishness.

I have friends who are going through some horrible struggles.  I care deeply; I worry about their lives and what will happen.

The problem is, I am so self-absorbed right now, I don’t have the energy I wish I did to devote to what they are going through.

That’s why I’m so grateful to have this place – my place  – because it’s my space for ME.

I don’t have to care about other people. I’m allowed to be selfish.

I’m probably not a truly selfish person 100% of the time but my God.  With everything going on, I can hardly afford not to be selfish.

These jobs, and my spouse who is fucking incapable of making a choice, and the implications for his career, and our children, and moving…

Can we move them away from all they know?

The next person who tells me that because some of my kids came from a foreign country, moving will be easy is going to get smacked in the mouth.  I don’t want to hear that anymore.  And it’s not EVEN TRUE!

Do we stay here?  Career killer?  Does it matter?  What does HE want? Does anyone fucking know?

What about me?  What about my career that I am struggling to restart?  What about the legal problems I have with my own sibling?  What about my mother, who recently moved to this state, and though she says it wasn’t because of me, I just know it was?

There’s no way we could move. Our house is a disaster, we couldn’t sell it.  We’d have to look at renting it and then renting a house somewhere else.  With shot credit, we can’t finance anything.  A rental house?  With four kids and a boatload of cats and dogs?  Do we just start giving animals away?  Fuck no.  That happened once.  ONCE.  And I assure you, I could never do that again.  That’s another entry I think.

We can’t move.

We should stay here.

But moving would mean good things too – and probably more money.

The kids won’t survive a move.

We’ll be miserable and we’ll all miss my mother.

But it will be a fresh start on so many levels, in a new place, in a state I’m particularly fond of.

The kids will never fit in at school.

My license won’t easily transfer.

He’ll blow this job and we’ll be up shit creek just like we always are.

He’s already taken the job I said not to – and it’s local.  Please, let’s end this nightmare.  We need money.  We are running out of fucking money.

I hate my life right now.  There is nothing about it that I like.

We were talking about adopting another child.

Oh, did you miss that?

Nobody anywhere knows about that either except those that live in this house.

It’s actually been in the works for almost a year.  But nobody knows.  There was a young girl, my oldest daughter’s age.  And we agreed to adopt her.

The girl knows that we are coming for her; at least she thinks she does.  But my oldest daughter’s interest has waned.  I don’t think she wants a sister anymore.  The process is so long.  But we’ve invested money in it.  And there’s a girl in a foreign country who wrote us all a letter at Christmastime about how happy she was to find a family.

If we move, that will end.  That girl will be lost.  Maybe another family will adopt her.  Maybe it won’t matter, maybe it’s the right thing to let that go.

Maybe our camp should be let go too.  If we move far away we will lose our camp that we’ve had for two years.  The place I hoped would be “our” place, like a vacation home.  But it’s expensive and maybe we should let that go.

Maybe we should let none of it go.  Maybe we should just stay here and keep our camp, and our cats, and our home, and our adoption.

Maybe not.

I hate this, I hate this.  I hate this.  I have rarely hated anything more than this terrible process.

I don’t feel resilient.  I feel like putting my kids to bed and getting myself so fucked up, I forget how to form sentences.

It will help nothing.  But it’s how I feel.