Dig Deep

I was going to write this last night, but couldn’t. The tired finally took over. It’s always a clue when I fall asleep in meditation.

This week has been mentally rough. I don’t really know why, but I knew Friday had the potential to be a mental clusterfuck, so I woke up and told myself that it wasn’t going to be that…that I was going to be productive, focused on a goal, and I wasn’t going to let that sad bitch inside me fuck me over. It was a test day, so the kids are super quiet, yet the unprepared ones are more demanding than ever, and it’s often just a difficult day anyway, but it leaves me too much mental space to wallow. I often get in a really bad place on test days, and they’re usually on a Friday, and then that fucks the weekend over.

But I didn’t. I made it through and I wasn’t in a shitty mood. I got lots of things logged in. I had a couple kid issues and I handled them. For once this year, after 12 years of teaching, I felt like I had it, I was in control, I could do it.

I cried in counseling, but not like the world was ending. Just trying to suss out what I’m depressed about exactly so that I can attack that and make it leave. (I typed “make it leaves”…now there’s a drawing popping into mind…I really need to make time to draw this weekend.)

And then I got home. And the toilets are still backing up, so I had called the plumber, and he told me to check something on the septic before he committed to coming out, so I did, and then called him, and he said to call the septic people, and yeah. We think it’s the leach field. Like it’s done. Like it needs replacing. Like thousands of dollars.

And I lost it. I mean, it’s understandable. I have too much on my plate, I’m financially not in a great place, and I’m depressed. It does often feel like the universe is out to get me at the moment, that everything under the sun is conspiring to fuck me over. I know notionally that is not true, that I live in an older house and it needs to be maintained, and I don’t do a great job of that due to time and money, but that sometimes things just stop working or need to be replaced, and those things cost money.

And so I tried to call my parents and they didn’t answer, which is probably a good thing, because I would have lost it. The phrase, “I can’t do this any more,” has been in my head so many times over the last 6 months, and the reality is…I DO do it. (huh huh huh…she said do-do). I do. I get up off the fucking ground and I do it. I researched home equity loans and I have my tax refund coming in (which was going to get me through the summer), and I will just have to make it work somehow.

Then the girlchild came home in tears and bounced back into crazy hyper after I fed her (she’s like a puppy sometimes, because then she falls asleep), and she said something about needing an adult and here she has me, the crazy depressoid (not her words…mine), and I said that I had called my parents and they didn’t even answer (it’s OK…I dealt)…and she sent me this…

That’s it. I need an adultier adult. Like, dammit…I’m the adult. There’s no one else here but me. I’m pretty capable though. I got the septic guy to feel sorry for me (not hard really). The drainage guy (who is the fixer guy) is coming this afternoon to see if he can figure out if it’s just the leach field or if it’s something else. I just dumped all the sand out of my hiking boots from last week’s hike so I can put them on for this week’s hike. The girlchild got herself up and out for the ACT this morning. Boychild has some scholarship stuff to do, especially now that there will be even less money and UCBerkeley sent him an application for a scholarship for low-income students. Fuck. Now I’m low income…which is funny (not really), because compared to a lot of my students, I’m not low income…although they have iPads and I have a mini that was a gift…but the boychild qualifies. He has another interview next week for the college of his choice…so I hope that goes well. Who knows, though? There are no fucking guarantees for anything, as my life has slammed down on me over and over.

Which brings me to the title of the post. Girlchild’s soccer team yells this out as one of their cheers during games…Dig Deep! It’s amusing to me, because I don’t think most of those girls really have to (or choose to) dig deep for anything, even the physical demands of the game. You can see a few giving their absolute all, but most of them don’t. And some of their personal lives may require them to dig deep emotionally…we can’t ever know, but when I got up this morning after a longer than usual night’s sleep, after yesterday’s slump, I heard them yelling in my head…Dig Deep. Yeah. I am. You know I am. Every day.