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Saturday, October 26, 2013

One year later

Wow, it's been so long since I've written anything here.  I don't know that I've gone this long without writing something about the kids.  I'm often inclined to summarize my life from the last post until now in the situations but I'm not going to today.

It's be a tough few weeks at home.  On Friday, October, 4th, shortly before lunch at work, our producer gathered us and told us we wouldn't be starting the next episode the following Monday.  He referred to it as a short "hiatus", a break so the network could decide the new direction the show would take.  For a week we dangled in limbo, thinking we'd return to work the Tuesday after Columbus day but at 3pm that Friday, we were all called to say no, we were done.

It wasn't the best job but it's never easy to be out of work.  I was offered another job but it doesn't start for over a month and a lot can happen between now and then so officially I'm unemployed.

There are perks to unplanned unemployment when you have kids.  I've been able to share a lot more and do a lot more with them since my show got canned.  But I've also been walking around in a fog, reliving my life last year, with the anxiety of not working mixing in with the grief.  Because I lost my mother and that grief is never going away, instead it only gets deeper.  I think on many levels my mother kept me grounded and now without her, I feel like I'm unraveling.

My mother was really all I had.  She was the only person who cared about me whom I spoke to on a regular basis.  I haven't, not once, picked up the phone to call her because I know she's gone.  But I have held the phone on many occasions, wishing I could call some one, anyone.

As a freelancer, I've always seen myself as one step up from homeless.  All that it will take to trigger a state of homelessness is a long stretch without work.  When my mother was alive, I had her home as a fallback.  I knew I always had a place to go to, a family to turn to if times got really bad.  But now, my grandparents have been dead for more than two years, my father lives in a retirement community that doesn't allow kids.  And if I dumped the kids on C's porch, my father and his wife still couldn't tolerate an interloper for too long.  The extended family I had when my grandparents were alive don't think about me or my brother so I certainly don't imagine them providing a place of refuge.  The one really close friend I had decided to pack up and move her family to Israel into a small settlement that wouldn't exactly make me feel welcome.

So it's just me out there with no backup.  If I become sick, injured, weak, broken, I will quickly have no home.

For the most part, I feel pretty good and have the energy of some one much younger so I'm not too worried.  But it's always there, whenever I see a homeless person, and I see plenty more of them now with this economy, that a few years from now, yeah, that's me.

My mother not only provided that safe feeling from homelessness, she also was the only adult who truly loved me.  Without her, no one calls to see how I'm doing if they haven't heard from me.  No one thinks about me unless I contact them first.  I have gone from some one who really mattered to some one who's importance can only be measured on how much my kids need me.  That's not nothing, of course, the kids, but I find myself wondering how long I can keep operating without an outlet for myself.  I think of joining a local health club with a gym because swimming always makes me feel better but it's tough to spend more money when you're jobless.  I try to drum up some interest from my friends and I do have plans tonight and another night next week but it's still disheartening when the plans are always originating with me.  Being one's own cheerleader gets so tough after a while.

A lot is happening around me too.  I have two friends going through marital splits.  One happened very suddenly and only now is my friend really feeling the impact.  My heart breaks for her as she has been with her husband longer than I've known her, and I've known her a long time.  Another friend, who's marriage I believed to be rock solid, is also breaking down.  I'm so far away from them physically and they keep themselves so busy, I've hardly spoken to her much but I feel terrible for them both and wish I could stop them from doing this to each other.  At midlife, it seems a lot of friends are going through some major stuff so I can't fault anyone for not being there for me.  And I do have some friends going through some great stuff right now which is wonderful, it's not all bad out there.  Life is not easy, we know this.  I think about my grandmother and how she lived through the depression.  Then I realize she was young, as she got older her life got easier, at least workwise and finance wise.

I miss my grandmother, almost as much as my mother.  Both women still serve as an inspiration to me.  As long as they were alive, I always felt taken care of, loved, not in danger of being homeless.

Now, I just don't know.