One Day Past Crazy.

Hard to deny a crazy day.

So it's been really rough this year thinking and planning for the holidays. I think I mentioned that in my last post. Maybe even the one before. Why is it that when a person is already having a hard day, everything that might go wrong...does? Days when you think all the bases are covered, that there's no way what you have planned can go awry?

And then it does.

This menopause thing seems to touch on nearly every area of my life. I remember feeling so annoyed with my mom sometimes back when I still lived at home when she'd explode with impatience, her face dripping with perspiration and flushed with hectic color. She got upset seemingly at nothing at all sometimes. She didn't sleep well. I'm beginning to resemble that woman, and it sucks. Feel a little guilty now for my disgust.

I deal with chronic pain from a birth defect. I have had to live with it since just before I turned 40. It, too, affects everything. Whether I can go shopping, do laundry, vacuum... Whether I'll spend a day doing housework, yard work or simply sitting and doing something like knitting or watching a movie. A bad hip, one that has a mind of its own, tells its own story.

So, with those two very obvious strikes against me, I have to weave in and out of life's obstacles with delicacy and caution if I want to not hurt or not have to take three showers in one day (those are the sweat-my-guts-out menopausal days). When something small--like missing a mail delivery I was expecting and actually really needed in a hurry--happens, it's almost like the end of the world. Tears have been right at the surface for days. My period hasn't come since last spring...until day before yesterday. And then...wow. Felt like the world was ending yesterday.

Today I got four calls and texts from current and former family members, letting me know that a beloved uncle (from my first marriage) had passed on today. How do I separate the emotions from the situation? I don't feel really free to just call anyone from the family I used to be a part of. There are a lot of situational issues there...mostly with the woman who is now married to my ex. I'm sure--and she's probably totally normal in this response--that she does NOT like me to insinuate myself in any area of her new family. I have held nothing against her, was very happy for her and my ex. But she stepped into something that wasn't her place to step into and tore the fragile bridge I'd hoped to keep open (for the sake of my kids ONLY) to pieces and then set fire to them. I did write a tiny note of condolence to a cousin (the son of the uncle who died), being very careful in my wording so as not to offend anybody. It's really sad that it has come to this.

Life is really hard sometimes. I think I'm in a season of rotten apples in my orchard.