I once heard that "In order to enjoy the rainbow, you must first endure the rain". Well, I have been enduring the rain for years and years and years. About 5 years ago, things were so bad in my life that I started writing a journal of sorts. Someone once told me I was going to write a book and I kind of believed them at the time. So I wrote. I wrote about my life, my experiences, my challenges, my struggles, my sadness, my innermost feelings that I never told anyone else. In the end, it became very therapeutic for me and helped me get passed a very rough time in my life. It also helped me to realize things about myself, my situation, the state of affairs in my life that I had never realized before or that I did not want to realize, but most importantly, it helped me to gain a new understanding of what was truly important in life.
I got really into it the writing. There were days things were so bad, I sat and wrote for 8 hours at a time because that was all I had at the time. Other days, I just felt the need to tell my story. I started making up characters, poking fun of my situation using laughter instead of tears. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote......for 3 years. Finally I had to make the decision to stop writing. I love to write and to stop was hard for me, but I needed to start living my life instead of writing about it. So I boxed up three years of my life, backed it all up on CD's and disks and began living life away from the keyboard. One day the hope was that my life would get better. When I worked up the courage I was going to turn my years of struggle into a reality book of sorts, but first I needed for my life to get better - I needed to have a good ending to my story. After all, what would be a fairytale if it did not have the "happily ever after".
Well for about 2 years now, I have been waiting for that "happily ever after" and wonder if it will ever come. I know that deep down inside, I am a good person. I know that I am an honest person, a caring person, a dependable person and I have always strived to do the right thing and be the better person. (Yes sometimes I admit my temper gets the best of me, but I truly am a good person.) I believe on some level that what goes around comes around and one day good things will start happening to me and one day I may finally get my "happily ever after". In the meantime, this year alone I have left my husband, my high school sweetheart who mentally abused me for years. He took everything good away from me and reduced me to nothing. This was a hard decision that took me years to work up the courage to even come to, but I finally took a stand for myself and said that I deserved better. The story of what happened in that instance is all contained in the box that I wrote about for 3 years. You may hear dribs and drabs here and there and then there are the 2 years in between that I need to bring everyone up to speed on, but I leave that for another time.
So after being tormented for years by my husband that was supposed to have my back but ended up being a major con artist, manipulative liar and self centered criminal for lack of a better terms, I lost my job. I was the bread winner and paid for everything. My husband had me convinced I needed him and could not live without him, but the truth was, I did not need him. I was self sufficient, independent and more than capable of taking care of myself financially. For years my husband pretended he was going through a social security number change and he was not. He falsified bank records, made up documents from the IRS, pulled all sorts of criminal scams that I did not find out of until after we separated. He made up stories of why he could not get paid properly when in fact he cashed his checks for the better part of 5 years leaving me to carry the load. He was even kind enough to sell all my jewelry at a pawn shop. The list of what he did to me goes on and on, but that is in the past and I have been working real hard to move forward. Anyway, I finally say I don't need this anymore, I can support myself and I then I lost my job.
Right now the economy sucks, people are losing their jobs left and right and having worked in the employment industry for 10 years, I heard the war stories of people who could not find work. Not knowing how long it would take me to find work, being an emotional wreck after leaving my husband and not feeling financially sound after he took me for broke, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life- I throw all my stuff in storage and moved back in with my parents not knowing how long it would take me to find work. At the time, I felt like the biggest loser, but in the end, I think it was the best decision that could have been mase. It has been a tough adjustment and I am still adjusting, but my parents helped me out emotionally and financially and as it turned out, I helped them out as well. You see, my father is ill, very ill. Not being around all the time, I had no idea how much his health had declined so I was in for a rude awakening after I moved in.
All summer long I went to therapy to get my head right and while everyone else sat on the beach or by the pool, I sat inside at my computer looking for work with no luck. Some great things came and went and I did not understand it at the time, but I do now. You see things in life happen for a reason. We may not understand it at the time and we may not like it, but they do happen for a reason.
Since August, I have been back and forth to the hospitals with my father. He never drank, he always wants people to know that about him, but there seems to be a family predisposition to liver disease on his end and he is in liver failure. He was on the list for a transplant, but that has recently changed. As I looked for work, I watched day by day as my father deteriorated right before my eyes. First fluid build up in the stomach leading to a collapsed lung, then heart instability followed by dehydration, a diagnosis of stomach cancer throwing him off the transplant list. Two weeks ago he was rushed to the hospital by ambulance in a hepatic coma because the ammonia levels in his blood had reached toxic levels. Then there were the three bowl obstructions this month alone and a ton of incompetent doctors that either don't know what to do for him or don't see the point in doing anything for him because he is so sick anyway they figure "what's the point". Well I will tell you the point, to them he is a patient, a paycheck- to me he is my father, the man that raised me and brought me into this world.
For months I argued with him to take care of himself better, to take his meds, to stop feeling sorry for himself, to fight and not take what life he has left for granted. Now day by day I sit here and watch as he gets sicker and weaker. I see him in pain, I see a totally non emotional person tell me for the first time in 33 years he loves me and is proud of me. I watch as a person who never had any faith, finds God so he feels at peace with his passing. I work hours a day filling out disability paperwork for him, getting his affairs in order, setting up and taking him to and from doctor appointments and just being his general caretaker. I always knew that at some point, I would care for my sick parents as they aged- it is a fact of life, but not when I was 33 and he 58. I never thought I would be taking note dictations to various family members because my father can no longer write, had trouble holding his hand steady, problems thinking and with his memory.
For months I have been strong, I have held back the tears, but after all that has gone wrong so far, trying to remain positive and optimistic that better times lie ahead is becoming harder and harder to do. This time last year, I knew going in that 2009 was going to be a very tough year for me- a lot of challenges, a ton of changes but I figured if I could only push through, 2010 was going to be my year- I was just certain of it. Mid year things got better and I was surprised at how well I was doing and how happy and positive I was despite all that had happened to me this year. But it has all been downhill since September and I have really been struggling. Divorce, job loss, loss of the home I had built, a feeling of worthlessness, total despair and loneliness- things I thought I could not recover from and enough stress to throw anyone over the edge. I fought like hell and I stayed focused and worked harder than I have ever worked in my life to stay positive, but never did I think I was going to have to add taking care of my father and watching him die before my very eyes to the list.
I said all year when things went wrong that it was OK because "next year is my year". "You will see, little by little it is all going to fall into place for me- a great new job that I actually like, a new man that actually treats me good, my own place again and how lovely it will be. 2010 is going to be my year" I would say. Well here we are, literally an hour away from 2010 and I am frightened. I can no longer cope so I started writing a blog. I never blogged before in my life. I have no idea what I am doing, no idea what I am getting myself into. My blog probably looks like crap. There are all sorts of pretty background colors and templates you can use......that will come in time. I just needed to start writing. Almost 2 years ago I stopped. I thought life was getting better and I no longer needed to write as my therapy and 2 years later, here I am, once again typing away because I don't know what else to do. I even paid for a domain name to go along with my blog- not sure why I did that or what I am hoping to accomplish with it, but I now have it.
Waiting for the rainbow or http://www.waiting4therainbow.com/ as I have just paid for, is the story of my life heading into 2010- the year that things are supposed to fall into place for me. In case you have not figured it out, I have been enduring the rain which sometimes you have to suffer through until you can enjoy the beauty of that rainbow that is supposed to follow. Well it is raining, it is raining real hard- right now, even some snow mixed in. This is the story of my struggle in the rain, the challenges that I face day by day until one day the sun finally comes out and hopefully it is the most beautiful rainbow I have ever set eyes on in my life.
I have no idea what I am doing by blogging, no idea who will see this or who will even care. For now, it is for me- my therapy, my way to deal with rough times. And if people read this, I hope you enjoy it. The one thing I have learned over the years is that even when you think you are alone, you are not. There is always someone going through the same thing, someone that has been there and come through the other end and often times you will find that when you think things are bad for you, there is always someone else that has it worse off which serves to put your own situation into perspective in a messed up sort of way. If I am going through it, someone else has to be. During some of my roughest moments of the year, what comforted me most was listening to others tell their story. Their tragedies became my lifeline- if they could do it, so could I. So if nothing else, if my putting it out there helps just one person in this world hang on for another day, then I have served a purpose in life and any embarrassment I may face will be worth it in the end.
My one concern is that once I start writing, it gets hard for me to stop. If someone wanted to pay me to sit and write about my life, my struggles, the lessons I have learned- I would be the luckiest person in the world- getting paid to do what I love to do- write. But that would be in a perfect world. For right now I have to balance my time between caring for my sick father, trying to get out with friends when I can to keep my sanity, writing because I can no longer afford my therapist (although I may have to rethink that one) and looking for a job before my unemployment runs out. I certainly have my work cut out for me. It may be later when I actually publish this, but as I type this, it is 11:20pm on New Years Eve. Forty more minutes and "it is my year". I even have my entire family asking if I am excited because 2010 is my year.
So how am I spending the last 40 minutes of 2009, I will tell you. My father came home from the hospital this morning and I am wondering if he will be so sick that I will once again get no sleep this evening. He is doing horribly and can hardly stand. I was too exhausted- mentally and physically to go out this evening after 4 trips to the hospital with him this month alone. My mother prepared a decent meal and I watched as once again my father was too weak and ill to eat. He is withering away to nothing and all round are pictures of him when he was healthy and when my mother asked me if we may ever see his chubby cheeks again, I burst into tears as I realized that this is New Years Eve- tomorrow starts "my year", not the year my father perishes. In a few minutes I am supposed to be having the best year of my life and yet at 7pm, I was contemplating going to bed at 8pm because I was too tired to make it up to midnight to watch the ball drop. In a few minutes it is "my year" and yet I am unemployed with no prospects of that changing any time soon and here I am living in someone elses home. In 2010, I was to get my own place and it was to be lovely, but how can I move out when my father is so ill and should he pass, how can I leave my mother alone, yet how can I live in this house will so many memories.
2010 is going to be my year- it just has to be. I have been through so much this year, it certainly isn't fair to make me have two crap years in a row.
My father is sick and my parents have gone to bed already. My mother has informed the rest of the family she will be asleep and they should not call to wish her a happy New Year. So how do I spend my last minutes of 2009- alone, on the sofa watching Dick Clark (or whatever they call it now) with my laptop writing my first blog entry ever. For the first time in my life, I all alone on New Years- no calls, no one to wish a Happy New Years to and wondering if this is a sign of things to come - but surely it can't be because 2010 is "going to be my year".
So as I prepare to say good bye to the last minutes of 2009 and welcome in a year that has a lot of pressure on it to meet up to my high expectations, I say, "HAPPY NEW YEAR" to whomever is out there tonight. May 2010 be a wonderful year...... no matter what may be going on in our lives right now.
