Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Keep Going



Today I know money will come.  It will be for the better and easier to know when it is my money from my labor that comes in.  I woke up early (4AM) with a sort of converging fear.  I’ve been here before.  In order to do what I am doing these few precious months I’ve had to slice work schedules.  I am down to one job and a full load at school.  I feel myself clawing from the inside out.

The other day I sustained an unforeseen financial smack in the form of ANOTHER towed car.  Last spring I purchased a Jeep.  Much like the Jeep I had purchased after I shrugged off an overly materialistic life and sold a Mercedes that kept breaking down – sounds ridiculous right?  Even now I feel like that life was some misty vision.  When I bought that Jeep it did something to me.  It gave me a sense of self one cannot describe.  It was purchased, paid for, in good working order, and it was mine.  I loved that car – yes, I mean I loved the car, but I loved more what it represented; freedom.

It became my makeshift camper – I even made screens for the windows so I could sleep in it or hang out and read in fresh air.   It became my hauler – many a piece of furniture got dragged off of someone’s lawn and pushed in its bay.  The car had my back in the form of 4 wheel drive.  I got ‘stuck’ more than once, but 'unstuck' more than that.  The car had my heart at hello.  So I found one last spring for $600 (that runs!) but needs work.  

Well, they were sealcoating in my development last week and she was parked in the wrong place at the wrong time (much like her owner at many points in my life)  so ‘they’ (the proverbial evil ‘they’ that represent suck bags everywhere) towed her.  She had it coming, I knew she did.  She a bad inspection sticker (I’ve been trying to put $ together for exhaust system repairs), her plasti-dip body (my kids run amuck), and she had been taking up space…the wrong space.  So they towed her.  My son called me while I was in class to let me know as he discovered that she had vanished.  F*CK

$300 to get her back (less than 24 hours later).  $300 I certainly didn’t have.  When I asked someone close for help in the form of ‘put this on your credit card until Thur and I will give it right back,’ I was met with negativity and abrasiveness.  Noted.

My son contacted (of all people) the ex-husband who has more $ than the Pharaoh King Tut and within an hour all was taken care of.  Noted.  I was touched when he endearingly (for him) called to tell me he knew exactly what ‘those piece of shit’ cars mean to me.  He also said he understood what I am currently trying to do (school) even though he doesn’t agree with it (because I should’ve stayed married to him and I wouldn’t have needed anything else in life…sigh) and he wanted me to know that he knows I am sitting in shit.  Sitting.  I still know him better than anyone to understand what he means.

We all sit in things; jobs, friendships, relationships, complacency, many times far longer than we should.  He was right and for him, 2 out of 3 is a perfect score.  So help arrived in the strangest of vehicles.  Help arrived in most gruff yet tender of ways. To someone like him, $300 means very little; to someone like me $300 was a total ass-saver.  I’ve never been good with accepting help it is the hardest thing for me to do.

The next few months will be like this – a bit less than one FT job – a full course load where I am carrying 3 A’s and a fourth class that is so hard it could be the wild card to wreck my GPA.  Naysayers lurk everywhere (even in the shadows of my mind).  ‘You’ll have a hard time finding work’ well that has yet to happen, it may not have always been the work I wanted but it was work.  Sometimes it had been work without purpose, which can feel like toil, but there has been work.  ‘You’ll never make any real money.’  Define real money?  Honestly I’ve learned to live on so much less and still be ok, I know anything above where I am currently will feel like a lottery.  If I couple that feeling with actually doing something my soul believes in, I will be the richest woman in the world – even if I wind up in a rented room somewhere, which I think sometimes a rented room wouldn’t be half bad – especially if it had a fireplace.  ‘You are older; this is stuff young kids do.’  That, my friends, is horseshit.  I just met a student in her late 60s.  And the mother of a friend of mine graduated at 83, because it was 'one of those things' for her.  I get that.  When I go in the box there will be instructions to throw that degree in with me.

I have to keep going.  I cannot let my mind be poisoned by naysayers and negativity.  I will not believe the life I am in now is the life I shall remain in.  That this story; my story, (with some of the main characters as undesirable as tumors) is destined for anything other than happiness.  I have converging fear, but I will keep moving forward.  There is no logical reason all of this is working out, yet it is.  God and the universe have opened doors I didn’t even know where there.  I have hard work on my side and when I fall asleep sitting up at the dinner table (yes it happens) I have faith that carries me to bed and wakes me up again.  I cannot and will not accept the easy way out.  I came this far and I’m going to make it count.  A diamond was just a piece of coal that stuck around, under a hell of alot of pressure.

Last night, before class, a PhD came in to talk with us about our upcoming graduations in the spring.  She had brochures on Masters Degrees.  The dawn in the next day?  Maybe...

I need to remember, it is always darkest before the dawn.

Goethe said: “the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.”  Prov-i-dence (prov’i dens) n. 1.(often cap.)  The foreseeing care and Guidance of God or nature.

The Universe rewards action.  Keep going.

Namaste.