After losing my job last month, I decided to seize the opportunity to join my daughter on her annual summer trip to spend time with my parents in Pittsburgh. I was hopefully optimistic that it was exactly what I needed, as so many times before it's provided me with a refreshing break from, well, everything.
In my college years, I only came home during trimester breaks because I never wanted to leave my beautiful college town nor my friends who made those years so special and memorable. But when I did come home, I sought the rest I needed and found an increased longing to go back.
In my mid-twenties, my visits provided me a break from the big city lifestyle comfort in the form of homecooked meals, nostalgic conversations with friends and family, and the refreshment that I needed to go back and do it all over again.
And in my thirties, I enjoyed bringing my new family to my hometown and introducing them both to family, friends, neighbors, and the places that served as the backdrop to my youth. I also enjoyed the ability to sleep-in, and date nights when my husband joined in the earlier years, since my parents embraced their alone with their granddaughter.
But this trip, it felt anything like the break that I needed. Shortly after my arrival. I felt rushes of sadness and waves of distress hitting me almost all day, every day. At times, I laid in my childhood bedroom under the covers feeling the same doubts, insecurities, and body image issues that I struggled with during my teenage years, at times even feeling that I was that girl again instead of the woman who learned to overcome it all.
At first I couldn't make sense of all the extra emotions I was feeling, but decided to just let them hit me as they only seemed to fade away by a nap, shower, or a glass of wine- and then another.
All of this just made me realize that this just isn't home to me anymore. The irony of it all is that lately I felt that this may end up being my physical home again, as moving back seemed to be a likely answer to my unknown future, especially after losing my source of income and our soon-to-be-former home.
Tomorrow I head back to Chicago, having absolutely no idea what's next. Part of me is anxious beyond-belief knowing I have to start packing up our home for it's planned demolition in October, but then there's still a little bit of hope that something good is going to come of this.
But today, and all of this past week, I just keep thinking:
It's Just All Too Much.
If it was one thing, then I could pick myself back up and focus on that. Get a new job, or find a new rental. But it's not just the one thing, nor is it only those two things.
It's so much more. It's the every day concerns of my husband's heath, and the never-ending financial strains that we've endured since he stopped working as a teacher in 2018. It's fighting to keep our family together in one home for as long as we can, knowing that it's best for my daughter.
And it's my mental health and my well-being, and finding the strength to keep going and fighting against my worries and all the unknowns. If anything, this week reminded me just how much I struggle with it, even if on the outside I appear strong and that I have altogether.
Honestly, I haven't absolutely nothing figured out and really never have, I have just had to keep fighting for my family because it's all I really could do.
The truth is, the world isn't set up to support families like ours. It's fair to say that I've learned it the hardest way by failing to get proper diagnoses, supportive medical care, or continuation of disability insurance. Other than love and support from friends and family, this battle has been ours, and ours alone. There hasn't been a doctor to confide in about ongoing struggles, or a social worker to help us obtain the benefits and support that my family needs and deserves.
And as a younger family at the beginning stages of life together, not having savings built up or retirement funds to rely on, we are just fucked. (Sorry, but that's really the only word to describe it.)
Sometimes I think all this happened so that I can help change the world- or at least this part of it. Did all of this happen so that I can help make sure no other families have to endure the challenges, hardships, doubts and dismissals that we've had to face? Is this my next job? Is this my true calling?
More than anything else lately, it feels like it is and I would love to do so.
But then again, when you need a new job to rent a new home, it feels more like a daydream than the harsh reality I'm living in when nothing seems to be working in our favor these days, and money is the constant need and stressor.