I know exactly how a fish in the Marianas Trench would feel if she were suddenly brought up from the depths…I’m about to explode from the lack of pressure! Okay, okay, aside from the still-have-to-do-and-keep-my-jobs part, and the wishing for a miracle so I can go home for my dad’s 60th birthday, I feel positively free. I aced all four of my graduate classes. Pienso que mi reciber una A en mi clase de Espanol por que te di mi profesora un reir. That means, with out the benefit of accent marks and tildes, I think I got an A in my Spanish class because i made my professor laugh. The last oral question was, “Tiene que hacer Ud. despues de todos los examenes?” I answered, “Tengo que beber una cerveza.” I didn’t, but I did have the most well-earned glass of wine I have enjoyed in some time.
It’s so refreshing to come home and not have to go back to work, cramming nine weeks of coursework into three. But a part of me is itching for it. I wonder if that’s a cause or a result of my condition? I feel like I’ve gotten so used to 14 hour days that it’s the norm. Is it just normal decompression?
Of course, now I’m free to work on what I love. I have time to write, and time to work on this website. I have time to sit down and read a novel for pleasure, time to actually breathe through my yoga practice instead of it being just another obligation.
But was my coursework really all that dreadful? If I hadn’t been trying to cram it in to keep my job, I’d have to say definitely not. It’s good to have my mind thinking again about something other than survival. It’s wonderful to be enrapt by something other than, “How am I going to pay the bills,” and the next day’s lesson plan.
I’m trying to understand this aversion I have to all things “have to.” Do I like my job? Yes, but the fact that I ‘have to” put up with some of the ridiculous restrictions, stipulations, and otherwise bureaucratic bs makes me want to pull the sheets back over my head and call in sick (how does the joke go? I’ve used up all my sick days, so I’m calling in dead). I’m very proud of the fact that I am supporting myself and don’t have to rely on anyone (thankfully, given my past wiht my ex-husband), but every month when the bills come due, I wish I could treat myself to a nice pedicure and dinner out instead of another month’s worth of utilities. I love both of my second jobs, but yes, every Friday night I wish it were truly the start to my weekend instead of the eve of my long-run-and-teach-at-he-gym-day. It’s like I love what I do, but hate that I have to. How fubar is that?
I think, relating it to what I am going through, and remembering my childhood, I can kind of understand this love/hate affair with survival and surviving. I never, never, had personal time as a child. Every moment I wasn’t in school, I was at the mercy of whatever chore my parents could think up for me. You didn’t disagree with my father. Not in those days when he was still a mean, stinking, ugly drunk 90% of the time instead of just 20% or so of the time like now (yes, the same dad I want to go home to see for his birthday). Cut the back mountain of a yard with the heaviest power mower Rickel Home Center could come up with at the time? You got it, Dad, even though I weighed maybe 80 lbs and the mower 100. If you think I’m exaggerating to make a good story, then you’ve never had to mow an acre walking behind a monster that could cut your foot off on a 45 degree slope in the good old, damp, heavily-grassed, northeast (the damp grass made up for the majority of weight – and guess who got to go empty the bag? Yours truly). In the end, I figured it was good exercise. This was after I had become a teenager, and bulimorexia had me in it’s grip.
My dad, love him as I may, did try to teach me the value of hard work. I’m not quite sure I understand it in his terms. According to him, hard work is a death-trip along which you buy up what little pleasures you can (mostly by treating people well so you feel justified in torturing them. Do I see that sin in me? You bet.). I always thought – call me a died-in-the-wool liberal if you must, but I thought this even as a young child – that life was supposed to be, well, a journey you enjoyed, and work was something you did to better humanity. Not that bettering humanity isn’t an arduous task – but the means employed in this endeavor are far gentler than those of my father, who told me to go to work at the age of 14 (never mind if that old creepy cook sexually harasses you – I got you this job, and you keep it!). At least it got me out of the house. Sad. Just sad.
I’m tired of typing for the evening. I apologize to any Constant Readers may be out there (besides the spam artists) for my disjointed memoir. Again, this is just one woman’s journey, trying to understand why things are as they are so I can hopefully change them for the better.
