Thankful and Musings

Thanks to a very generous Holiday bonus at A's work, and generous X-mas cash... we're getting closer to our injectable funds goal!

Is this hope? Maybe. Of course we'll just have the one shot this year, but that's okay. It's a chance. I'll take it. If it doesn't work, then we'll start saving and try again next year.

The reason I say one chance... if it doesn't work, that's about $4,000 down the drain with no results. Remember, my insurance covers NOTHING. I don't think I could flush $8,000 in one year... I can't bring myself to do that. That's a lot of money. So, one try a year is all I am willing to do for now. It's a more bearable amount.

So, I am somewhat thankful right now. I'd be more thankful if A's work gave him the raise they promised instead of the bonus... but like I said, I am glad they did something. It helps.

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I have to be at work in 6 hours to man the midnight to 8am shift at the DV shelter. I really do like my job, even if it can be stressful at times. I think I fit there better than anywhere else because I know firsthand what these woman have been through. I'm not serving donuts, or ringing a cash register... I'm actually helping people get out of violent situations, helping them get on their feet. It's rewarding. And the kids,it touches me that these woman are willing to leave everything behind to try their hands at a better life for themselves and their children. My mother was never brave enough to do that for me. I wish she had. I would have given anything as a child for my mother to just go her own way and live by herself for once. She never did, not until after she admitted herself to a psychiatric ward and I moved out. She's been on her own ever since.

Of course, we have woman who come into the shelter who lie, abuse the system, who go back to the lives they used to lead even... but there's only so much you can do. Those woman hurt me. I know you can only show them the way, you can not make them walk it. But still...

I'm okay with that for the most part... it's just when I see the children that I get a little uspet inside (I'd never show it though.) I sometimes want to shake the moms who drag their children back to their old lives, I want to tell them, "Don't you know what you're doing to your child? You can't tell now, but that life is going to hurt them. You can't know now how they will cringe when people raise their voices, how they will be terrified of the smell of beer, how they will either implode or explode someday."

I was an imploder. I caved into myself and my depression, I stayed quiet because it was safer. It's safer to stay off the radar. Being noticed as a child always meant being beaten, sent to a corner, screamed at with foul Busch breath.When I got older I started exploding, reverberating from the implosion all those years before. I started screaming back.

My brother's were exploders from day one, getting into drugs and drinking, lashing out. Getting suspensions from school, in trouble with the law, fights. I never exploded like that. I was a calculating exploder. I refused to do anything that the abusers did, I refused to do anything my mother did, I was going to live a different life. I started telling myself at 6 that this was not the way I was going to live. I got good grades, I latched onto books, I stayed out of trouble, I was quiet, I didn't have sex while still in school because my mother was a teen mother (the biggest regret of her life, by the way), I told myself I was going to go to college, I was going to live a different life. I was going to have children, I would love them, and they were going to have a different life. I was going to make sure they had everything I never had. They were going to be loved, and wanted. I went to college for my future children, not for myself...

Everything I ever did in my life was because I was not going to live my mother's life. My children were not going to live mine. I am thankful I came out of my childhood unscathed. The statistics say I should be a teen mother, a drug addict, a highschool dropout... I am none of those things. The odds were always against me though. I've seen enough people come out the wrong side, while I was lucky enough to come out alive and well. I don't know how I did it. Resilence? Bullheadedness? Will power? Luck? Whatever it was, I am thankful.

The thing that gets me... I did a majority of this in the hopes of the future I had dreamed of. Now that future is falling apart. I am afraid of what that means. What if I can't attain the future I've sought all my life? I mean, if I can't get pregnant and I can't adopt for some reason... What do I live for then? Will I be able to dream up something else? Will I be able to live for myself? I don't think I can do that, I can't even imagine doing that.

Ah, anyways. I am thankful for somethings and musing on others. And there you have it.