Thursday, September 25, 2008

ON THE TURNING AWAY

I would love to be able to say that I feel good about everything I have accomplished this week, but I don't. What accomplishments I have had are tempered by the overall sense of discouragement I have taken away with me. I mean, I was discouraged before, but it seems that with each passing day, with each passing rejection, with each passing glimmer of hope extinguished one at a time, I am finding it more and more difficult to look at the bright side of things. I have long known that life is not easy generally, but I never really expected it to become this difficult.

I have long heard it said that "bad things happen to good people", and "no good deed goes necessarily unpunished". Okay... it was my sister telling me these things, and I never really spent a whole lot of effort listening to my sister. She has had a lot happen in her life, and to be frank, she depresses the hell out of me sometimes. When she isn't depressing me by being critical of the things I do, she is making me feel like crap by telling me how bad she has it. It was this uncomfortable relational dynamic that more or less helped me to decide to move out from her place nearly a year ago. I spent about 10 months living with her after losing my home. It was supposed to be a hand up, a mutually beneficial arrangement to help us both out. It did not work out that way. Over time she got on my nerves, and I suppose I on hers. The arrangement became unhealthy for both of us it seemed. Now, had I listened to my brother Joe, I would have learned not to sweat the small shit, and that it is all small shit. Fine, Joe. You were smart. You never ever lived with her.

Then there of course is the whole plethora of other things going on in my life. It is complicated when everything gets muddled together like this