Quick summary to date - Student loans fiasco, Ms. J's mom passed away after a very valiant and brave battle with lung cancer, I've taken on an internship and my supervisor is now leaving and the job has a huge learning curve and the man has lost one of his jobs and will be losing the other in time. And this is hard because well we need money to live but these jobs have been soul sucking and so we're trying to fight in the midst of our school work the valiant and soul sucking fight of finding him a healthier job.
In the middle of all this I've been struggling head on with insecurities born in the fire of graduate school or more so yet to be smelted out, those of perfectionism and over-extension and the new ones that pastoral care seems to be drawing out of me. Painful toxins of control and anxiety in the face of all that I cannot control and know I cannot control but feel like being in that space has set me adrift. It is hard, there has been much weeping and bless his heart, most of it has been done with fetal, head in his lap. In writing this I realize I'm in the throws of waves of grief for so many things I thought I had ridden through. But like the waves we were in on a glorious beach in South Florida, you think you're good and the soft looking foamy waves have violence and they can come in rapid succession, with just enough time to gasp a breath. Not enough time to consider the spiky seaweed in your hair or consider how salty the Atlantic is and how much your eye BURN. I am in those waves. And to hell with them because the sand is soft, the sun and the water are warm and the company is salve for my soul.
I am trying to remember this - holding to this while I venture through the mess that is my maternal family - for those who don't know I was part of an article on the weekend and I'm grieved by the response of my maternal family. Thankfully I'm in Florida so who knows what I would have been fielding on Saturday but it seems there is anger that I've shamed the family. I have no words for this, seriously, especially for people who do not even share my last name. It is moments like this where I am beginning to be okay with taking the man's name. Maybe it will give me freedom to speak and not have the shamers follow me. The financial situation of the man and I as we do want to get married but right now that seems like something slipping far beyond our reach and maybe that is for the best, maybe we're just good where we are, leaning on each other and praying that we'll be able to weather all of these storms.
This feels appropriate right now, so here it all is and I will try to keep posting.
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