Summertime Blues

Turning 30 didn't work out too well for me. I had usually been of a pretty bright, optimistic and generally rosy disposition until then and that is when a creeping malaise set in to my skull.

Or maybe it began directly after my birthday when my beloved grandmother died? 

Or maybe it began soon after my grandmother died when I went through the most incredibly difficult and heartbreaking (and achingly personal) experience of my whole entire life?

Who knows. All I am sure of is that my energy is sapped from time to time, I wallow in buckets of self pity more often than I ever have and worst of all, I can be bombarded with waves of body drenching sadness that although it is usually easy to overcome still depresses me because of it's blasted existence.

I have a ukulele and before I started making dinner last night I began learning a new song, "I Can't Make You Love Me" originally done by Bonnie Raitt and recently redone by Bon Iver, either way I've always loved that song. And of course it makes me cry. Then I became overwhelmed while making dinner because the puppy and the boy child were directly underfoot in our tiny kitchen and would follow me in and out of the house as I went back and forth to the grill and then back to the kitchen. So I was frustrated, already tender from the dumb song playing and then every time I would pass the game room where Jeremiah was blissfully napping on the way out to the grill, boy and puppy in tow I would get angry.

Then the combination of sadness, frustration and anger starting boiling around in my head for the rest of the night while I thought over and over again, 'I like my job, it's fulfilling, I adore my children and am proud to care for them, I share custody and it's a wonderful thing, and although I share custody I handle all my daughters' school work, medical needs/insurance and all of their clothes and shoes purchases/cleaning and that's just fine, I am happy to take care of my home and it's occupants, budget our finances and take the blame when absolutely anything goes wrong in the confines of my increasingly burdened responsibilities, but this boat is taking on too much water and if someone doesn't bail me out I will surely go under. Say that ten times fast.

By the end of writing this short and whiny bit on my long neglected blog I have already started to feel better. Maybe this whole process of catharsis via blogging is more important than I had recently assumed.